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Amazon is doubling down on artificial intelligence agents, viewing them as the foundation for the next era of computing. David Luan, who heads Amazon’s AGI research lab and previously held a leadership role at OpenAI, articulated Amazon’s vision: AI agents that transcend mere chatbots to reliably execute real-world tasks.
The key challenge, Luan emphasizes, lies in achieving reliability. Amazon is investing in a “model factory” approach, striving for the consistent generation of increasingly sophisticated AI models. Luan defines AGI as a model capable of assisting a human in performing any task on a computer, with the aim of developing a truly universal teammate for knowledge workers. He envisions agents as the fundamental building blocks of future computing, unlocking substantial economic potential. Today these technologies can be used to do things such as find a plumber using Alexa Plus.
To accelerate agent development, Amazon is creating AI “gyms” – simulated environments for reinforcement learning. These gyms allow AI agents to learn the consequences of their actions within simulated knowledge-worker tasks, such as navigating Salesforce or using CAD programs. The overarching objective is to create a dependable AI agent framework ready for deployment through AWS. Luan highlighted the current gap in product innovation beyond chatbots, advocating for collaborative canvases that foster interaction between users and AI for a genuine knowledge-worker partnership. The company already uses technology called Nova Act to build AI agents, automating tasks such as travel booking and QA processes. Amazon plans to increase the scale of its simulations to enhance the reliability of its agents. Luan posits that agents represent the next significant leap forward in AI, an S-curve Amazon intends to lead. He said that he believes the team at Amazon is less than a year from a ‘GPT for RL Agents’ moment.
The information in this article is based on an interview with David Luan that originally appeared on The Verge’s Decoder podcast with Nilay Patel.