Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) raises the layoff sword to the AGI department, focusing on AI research and development priorities.

According to reports on Wednesday, Amazon.com, Inc. is laying off employees in its General Artificial Intelligence (AGI) research department. This department is responsible for developing core models that drive autonomous AI agents. This is the latest in a series of smaller-scale workforce reduction actions within the company following a large-scale layoff in January of this year. General artificial intelligence is a hypothetical AI system that surpasses human intelligence, capable of autonomous learning, evolution, and operation. Currently, most top AI companies worldwide are focused on developing similar systems in hopes of applying them to solving complex problems. The team previously launched the Amazon Nova Act tool, which allows businesses to build AI agents that can autonomously browse the web and complete daily online tasks without human intervention. An Amazon.com, Inc. spokesperson responded, "We have been building large AI models for many years, which has always been one of our most important business directions. We are further focusing on the most critical projects for our customers in order to progress faster on what truly matters. This focus also means making some difficult decisions, including reducing some positions within the AGI organization." Rohit Prasad, the core executive responsible for overseeing AGI business, left at the end of last year, and the AGI lab director, David Luan, departed in February of this year. In December of last year, AGI-related work was integrated into a larger department led by Senior Vice President Peter DeSantis, which also covers chip development and quantum computing business. Online forum posts by employees on Wednesday showed that employees in the teams under Adib Shana, Vice President of AGI Data Services, and Vishal Sharma, Vice President of AGI Information, were affected by the layoffs. However, the specific scale of this layoff could not be confirmed at the time of writing. Despite Amazon.com, Inc.'s commitment to invest up to $200 billion in capital expenditures in AI and cloud infrastructure, the company continues to lay off employees across its entire business to streamline management levels and optimize resource allocation. As part of a larger plan to cut around 30,000 positions (with a significant portion stemming from post-pandemic hiring expansions), Amazon.com, Inc. has already laid off approximately 16,000 people this year.