Doug Herrington, Amazon's head of retail, has been hosting an “AI Show and Tell” event in his office for the past year to keep up to date on artificial intelligence and related projects the company is working on.
Herrington believes the current AI boom is more important than any major technology change in the past, such as mobile and social, and says Amazon must stay ahead of the curve if it wants to remain successful. Warned employees.
His comments were made during an all-hands meeting last week, a recording of which was obtained by Business Insider. Herrington shared some of the new projects his team is working on, sounding the alarm on the importance of AI.
“I think it's important to remember that history is full of large companies that have been successful in the face of major technological change,” Herrington said during the event. “They couldn't adapt and then disappeared.”
The big boom in AI, led by the sudden rise of ChatGPT, has led many companies, including Amazon, to pursue new technologies more aggressively. Internally, Amazon Brainstorm a new AI project. Some of those ideas include: A new shopping agent powered by AI A major overhaul of the Alexa voice assistant, As previously reported by BI.
Meanwhile, some employees have voiced their dissatisfaction. Amazon's new Q chatbot suddenly released And that Increasing pressure to deploy AI in everything they do.
An Amazon spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
“AI Show and Tell”
Herrington said at an event last week that AI shows and tells at the office have been held every few weeks for the past year. He said it started as a personal “learning and curiosity mechanism” by inviting teams from across the retail industry to come and show us what they're working on.
Currently, many people are waiting to announce their projects. Herrington oversees Amazon's entire retail business, including its online marketplace, healthcare division, and logistics services.
Recent projects he has seen include new features that can automatically create product images for sellers and new medically trained models to help support clinicians. There's also a new AI model that helps warehouse robots look through buckets full of products and pick out the right ones, and another that helps Amazon quickly identify bad actors in the marketplace, he said. said.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy shared a similar message during the all-hands meeting. He said “virtually every customer experience” will be reinvented by generative AI, and emphasized that “every part” of Amazon is working on generative AI applications. Those new features include the ability to summarize Amazon customer reviews and new image creation capabilities for advertisers, he said.
Herrington added that the AI transformation currently occurring is “really remarkable” and “much bigger” than any major technology transformation he has seen in the past. Herrington said he believes Amazon will be a leader in AI, citing large companies that failed to adapt to these changes and ended up phasing out.
“It's up to all of us to make sure that doesn't become the Amazon story,” Herrington said. “The good news is that we have great confidence in our culture of foresight and innovation to not only survive this transition, but to be a leader in it.”
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