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<\/p>\n\u2018We\u2019re grateful for the contributions of every impacted employee,\u2019 an Amazon spokesperson says.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Amazon has confirmed to CRN that it is \u201celiminating some roles\u201d within its division for artificial general intelligence\u2014a theoretical AI that understands, learns and applies knowledge just like a human\u2014days ahead of when the company reports earnings for its second fiscal quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been building large AI models for several years, and it remains one of the most important things we\u2019re working on,\u201d a spokesperson for the Seattle-based technology giant said in an email to CRN on Wednesday. \u201cThis is a fast-moving space, and we\u2019re sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts. That focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization, even as we continue to invest in the areas most important to our customers\u2019 future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amazon did not disclose how many employees were affected.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson added that Amazon is \u201ccommitted to supporting impacted employees through their transition,\u201d with U.S. employees receiving \u201cpay and benefits for 90 days, outplacement job search support, access to transitional health benefits, and be eligible for a severance payment. We\u2019re grateful for the contributions of every impacted employee.\u201d<\/p>\n
[RELATED: Intel Confirms Data Center Group Layoffs Ahead Of Q2 Results<\/a>]<\/p>\n Amazon Confirms Artificial General Intelligence Workforce Cuts<\/p>\n Ted Stuart, president and chief operating officer of Amazon Web Services-focused cloud services provider Mission Cloud, which is part of CDW, recently told<\/a> CRN in an interview that his company is investing in AI-focused products including AIM, or AI with Mission, a spin on the AI Roadmap Prioritization (AIR) Workshop from AWS, and Five-by-Five-by-Five, based on Amazon Quick<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe also offer a fixed-fee chatbot and an agentic POC (proof of concept),\u201d Stuart said. \u201cThen, depending on what\u2019s important to the customer and what their use cases are, we\u2019ll go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n Multiple AWS partners have looked at ways to combine that practice with one dedicated to an AI upstart such as Anthropic. BizCloud Experts President Sepehr Noorizadeh told<\/a> CRN in a recent interview that, for example, BizCloud leveraged both companies\u2019 technology to improve how a client handled customer quotes and invoice scheduling.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019ve done is look at how can we collaborate with the AWS team and the Anthropic team to actually find the purpose-fit model for them (customers), and provide that feedback loop back to Anthropic and to the AWS team on what we\u2019re seeing in the front line for customers,\u201d BizCloud Experts President Sepehr Noorizadeh told<\/a> CRN in a recent interview.<\/p>\n Although Amazon has continued to invest in AI and new AI capabilities across its product stack that can appeal to businesses in the short term, AGI remains a more far-flung version of the technology. Industry timelines for AGI range from 2027 to 2040 and beyond.<\/p>\n AGI-related executives<\/a> who have left<\/a> the company in recent months include David Luan, the former vice president and head of Amazon\u2019s AGI Lab and agentic AI research and development (R&D).<\/p>\n Amazon reports its next quarterly earnings on July 30, covering the three months ended June 30. The vendor has been cutting tens<\/a> of thousands<\/a> of employees as it prioritizes AI investments and following massive hiring increases industrywide during the global pandemic.<\/p>\n Other layoffs conducted and announced so far this year include Intel\u2019s Data Center Group, Cisco cutting<\/a> thousands of jobs, NetApp permanently<\/a> letting go of 77 employees from around its San Jose, Calif., headquarters, and Cognizant\u2019s plans to spend<\/a> upward of $270 million on employee severance and other personnel-related costs as part of layoffs under its \u201cProject Leap\u201d initiative to become more agile and enable an artificial intelligence-enabled operating model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018We\u2019re grateful for the contributions of every impacted employee,\u2019 an Amazon spokesperson says. Amazon has confirmed to CRN…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6744,24,405,408,406,407,3013,25,9956,402,403,773,9955,223,415,401,404],"class_list":["post-115491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-agi","tag-agi","tag-ai","tag-ai-agents","tag-ai-applications","tag-ai-hardware","tag-ai-infrastructure","tag-artificial-general-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-backup-data","tag-cloud-platforms","tag-cloud-software","tag-cloud-storage","tag-data-protection","tag-generative-ai","tag-llm","tag-managed-service-providers","tag-saas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}