Amazon is adding artificial intelligence visionary Andrew Ng to its board of directors, a move that comes amid intense AI competition among startups and big technology companies.
The Seattle company said Thursday that Ng, a managing director at the Palo Alto, California-based AI Fund, will replace a seat vacated by Judy McGrath, a former CEO of MTV who told Amazon she won't run for reelection.
Ng's AI Fund, which he founded in 2017, invests in entrepreneurs building artificial intelligence companies. Previously, he led AI teams at the Chinese tech company Baidu and Google, where the team he oversaw taught a computer system to recognize cats in YouTube videos without ever being taught what a cat was.
Ng's addition to the board comes as Amazon, like other tech companies, makes massive investments in generative artificial intelligence. The company has invested $4 billion in the San Francisco-based startup Anthropic, which is partnering with Amazon to develop so-called foundation models that underpin generative AI technologies. In the past year, Amazon also rolled out a chatbot for businesses called Q and a generative-AI powered shopping assistant named Rufus.
In an annual shareholder letter released Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy suggested generative AI could be the next big pillar of Amazon's business, joining the company's prominent online marketplace, Prime subscription program and its cloud computing unit, AWS. Jassy wrote that generative AI may be the largest technological transformation since cloud computing, and “perhaps since the internet.”
Meanwhile, other Amazon innovations have encountered some hiccups. The company said last week it was pulling its Just Walk Out technology from Amazon Fresh stores in the U.S. after receiving some customer feedback. Amazon said it was replacing the technology, which allows customers to skip the checkout line, with smart carts that would allow them still to do that but also see their spending in real time.
FILE - In this Friday, July 14, 2017, file photo, computer scientist Andrew Ng poses at his office in Palo Alto, Calif. Amazon announced Thursday, April 11, 2024, that it added artificial intelligence visionary Andrew Ng to its board of directors amid intense AI competition among startups and big technology companies. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Prosecutors asked for a September retrial for Harvey Weinstein during a hearing at a Manhattan courthouse Wednesday, the disgraced movie mogul's first appearance since his 2020 rape conviction was overturned by an appeals court last week.
Weinstein, wearing a navy blue suit, was seated in a wheelchair pushed by a court officer as he entered the preliminary hearing.
Weinstein’s defense lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said his client was attending the hearing despite the 72-year-old having been hospitalized since shortly after his return to the city jail system Friday from an upstate prison. He has said Weinstein, who has cardiac issues and diabetes, was undergoing unspecified tests because of his health issues.
Aidala said he has no concern about his client’s mental abilities, describing Weinstein as “sharp as a tack. As sharp as he ever was.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office has said it is determined to retry the case against Weinstein. Legal experts say that may be a long road and come down to whether the women he's accused of assaulting are willing to testify again. One of the women, Mimi Haley, said Friday she was still considering whether she would testify at any retrial.
Prosecutors said one of the accusers, Jessica Mann, who was in court Wednesday is prepared to testify again and suggested locking in a date after Labor Day for the retrial.
Aidala said his client wants to prove his innocence: “It's a new trial. It’s a new day.”
The once-powerful studio boss was also convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and is still sentenced to another 16 years in prison in California.
In the New York case that is now overturned, he was convicted of rape in the third degree for an attack on aspiring actor Mann in 2013, and of forcing himself on Haley, a former “Project Runway” production assistant, in 2006. Weinstein had pleaded not guilty and maintained any sexual activity was consensual.
The Associated Press does not generally identify people alleging sexual assault unless they consent to be named, as Haley and Mann have.
On Thursday, the New York Court of Appeals vacated his conviction in a 4-3 decision, erasing his 23-year prison sentence, after concluding a trial judge permitted jurors to see and hear too much evidence not directly related to what he was charged with.
The ruling shocked and disappointed women who celebrated historic gains during the era of #MeToo, a movement that ushered in a wave of sexual misconduct claims in Hollywood and beyond.
FILE - Harvey Weinstein arrives at a Manhattan courthouse as jury deliberations continue in his rape trial in New York, on Feb. 24, 2020. Weinstein will appear in a New York City court on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
