Will Amazon's LLM Be The Game-Changer Against OpenAI And Google?

Guess who's stepping into the AI arena?

None other than Amazon – so, let’s jump in and see what Amazon’s latest announcement is all about!

It's no secret that Amazon, among other tech giants, has focused investments in AI technologies. It is part of Amazon's overarching plan, that they call the "flywheel strategy," in which AI and ML are constantly being reinvented and then distributed to other parts of the organization. With this plan, Amazon and more specifically AWS can continue to develop and improve its offerings.

For instance, chatbots, speech recognition, fraud detection, etc. are just some of the ways Amazon is leveraging AI. Then, products such as Alexa and the Amazon recommendation engine also make use of AI/ML.

So, it’s no surprise that Amazon is continuing to invest heavily in the research and development of its own large language model (LLM), codenamed Olympus. The tech firm is reportedly investing millions in this endeavour to develop a model with an unprecedented two trillion parameters. In comparison, OpenAI's GPT-4 has around a trillion parameters.

With this move, Amazon will compete head-on with AI firms, including OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, Google and others. Former Alexa head Rohit Prasad now leads the team driving Amazon's Olympus project and reports directly to CEO Andy Jassy. As Amazon's head scientist for AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), Rohit Prasad will be is responsible for coordinating the company's AI initiatives.

 

Why Is Amazon Placing So Much Stock On Its LLM Model?

Amazon's notion that their own LLMs may make their solutions more appealing, especially on Amazon Web Services (AWS), led them to make the choice to invest in building domestic models.

Amazon's move is an attempt to meet the rising demand for cutting-edge AI solutions, as businesses using AWS are always looking for improved AI models. While Amazon has not announced when the Olympus model will be made public, sources say the business is putting a lot of effort into training AI models to show that it is serious about staying at the forefront of AI research and development.

Amazon's plan to invest extensively in LLMs is part of its larger AI strategy, as announced in its
earnings call in April. During the conference call, Amazon's top brass revealed plans to cut back on retail fulfilment and shipping costs while increasing funding into LLMs and generative AI.

With this step, Amazon has opened a new chapter in the battle for artificial intelligence dominance, with major tech firms racing to advance the state-of-the-art technology.

As Amazon gears up to build its own Large Language Model, can they challenge OpenAI and Google in the arena? Will Amazon’s clients and the overall AWS ecosystem benefit from the move?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!