Amazon is showing, with its heavily investments in the ChatGPT technology, that it will be part of the newest tech arms race. ChatGPT is a type of Artificial Intelligence that, through user prompts, is able to produce essays, stories, and pictures. As noted by Amazon (AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy in his most recent shareholder letter, the company is looking to bring large language models (LLMs), and generative AI, to the forefront of its customer experiences.
In addition to its investment in big language models, Amazon has also launched a new service called Bedrock that makes foundational models from various AI companies, like AWS CodeWhisperer, available to customers through an API. This tool revolutionizes productivity for developers by providing code suggestions in real-time, a feature that Jassy believes will “change the game for people.” The primary goal of Bedrock is to make machine learning more accessible to both small and large companies, through the use of complex models that can be adapted to fit a company’s needs.
Despite Amazon facing “one of the harder macroeconomic years in recent memory” as noted by Jassy, the CEO still remains optimistic, believing that there are better days ahead for Amazon. While this has been true for Amazon, Jassy has emphasised to shareholders the importance of cutting costs which has resulted in 27,000 job cuts, the cancelation of free delivery options, and the closure of physical stores. All of these difficult decisions are a part of Amazon’s effort to get back on track and continue its success.
On the other hand, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is the mastermind behind some of the most recent major decisions Amazon has taken as a company. In 2021, Jassy’s compensation package was worth around 1.3 million. Despite his salary being worth around $212 million which was mainly stock awards, he did not earn any more stock awards in 2022. From the get go, Jassy has made it clear that Amazon’s investments in AI are part of its mission to remain one of the biggest players in the game.
