Owning a piece of the AI pie has become a universal aspiration. Amazon, a silent player in the race, has pulled back the curtain on its latest creation: Project Olympus. Boasting a massive 2 trillion parameters, Olympus signifies Amazon’s ambitious leap into the forefront of large language models. In a landscape where personal AI is the ultimate symbol of technological prowess, Olympus emerges as a silent giant, ready to challenge norms and redefine the future of artificial intelligence.
Amazon unveils Project Olympus: A 2 trillion-parameter giant
Amazon Olympus AI is a cutting-edge project undertaken by Amazon, aimed at developing a large language model (LLM) with a remarkable 2 trillion parameters. In the context of artificial intelligence (AI), parameters are the internal variables that the model adjusts during the training process to make predictions or generate responses.
The project is shrouded in secrecy, with the codename “Olympus” chosen to keep details confidential. Large language models are at the forefront of AI technology, allowing machines to understand and generate human-like language based on vast datasets.
Rohit Prasad, former head of Alexa and now the head scientist of artificial general intelligence (AGI) at Amazon, leads the dedicated team behind the Olympus project. Prasad has strategically brought together researchers who previously worked on Alexa AI and the Amazon science team, fostering collaboration and consolidating AI efforts across the company.
The significance of Amazon’s investment in Olympus lies not only in the development of a colossal language model but also in the company’s broader AI strategy. Amazon has already trained smaller models, such as Titan, and formed partnerships with AI model startups like Anthropic and AI21 Labs, extending these models to users of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The ultimate goal of Olympus is to position Amazon as a leader in the AI landscape, particularly within AWS, where enterprise clients seek access to top-performing models. While there is no specific timeline for the release of Olympus, Amazon’s commitment to advancing AI technology is evident in its strategic shift, as highlighted in an earnings call where executives announced increased investment in LLMs and generative AI. Can they succeed? We have to wait for the answer.
