Amazon has announced the creation of a new research and development lab in San Francisco, the Amazon AGI SF Lab, to focus on building “fundamental” capabilities for its AI agents.
The Amazon AGI SF Lab, led by David Luan, co-founder of AI startup Adept, uses computers to build agents that can “perform actions in the digital and physical world” and “process complex workflows.” We aim to Web browser and code interpreter.
“Our work builds on the work of Amazon's broader AGI team,” the post co-written by Luan and Pieter Abbeel, a robotics research leader who joined Amazon through the company's acquisition of Covariant. It is written. An Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch that Abbeel will continue to work “closely” with Luan and AGI SF Lab.
“Our initial focus is on some important research that will enable AI agents to perform real-world actions, learn from human feedback, self-orient, and infer goals.” added Ruan and Abbeer.
The lab will be seeded with Adept employees, and Amazon says it plans to hire “dozens” more researchers in areas such as quantitative finance, physics and mathematics.
Adept, which develops AI-powered agents that complete software-based tasks, agreed in June to license its technology to Amazon, with Luan and part of his team at the e-commerce giant. joined. Luan worked and will continue to work for Rohit Prasad, the former head of Alexa who leads the AGI team specializing in large-scale language models.
Amazon's quasi-acquisition of Adept was similar to the deal Microsoft struck with AI company Inflexion in May. Both are under regulatory scrutiny as policymakers at home and abroad try to determine whether the tech giants are holding back their AI rivals.
Adept was founded two years ago with the goal of creating AI models that can perform actions on any software tool using natural language. At a high level, the vision was to create some sort of “AI teammate” trained to use a variety of software tools and APIs.
Many others now share this vision. According to Emergen Research, “agent” AI could be worth $31 billion as a sector by the end of the year. According to a Capgemini poll, 82% of organizations say they plan to integrate AI agents within three years, appealing to the potential for increased efficiency.
Startups like Orby, Emergence, and Rabbit, as well as OpenAI and other major AI players, are also developing agent products to complete tasks nearly autonomously. OpenAI rival Anthropic announced its take on the technology earlier this year, and Google is reportedly working on an AI agent that can make purchases such as airline tickets and hotel reservations.
Amazon has dabbled in the agent field, but has yet to take it seriously. In July, the company announced a conversational agent for its Bedrock AI development platform, and just last week it introduced the agent to its Amazon Q Business Assistant platform for enterprise customers and developers. Meanwhile, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has hinted at a more agent-like Alexa that can perform actions in addition to responding to questions.