Rohit Prasad

Developing artificial general intelligence (AGI)—or an AI smart as a human—is the “north star” for Amazon’s Rohit Prasad, who jumped from being Alexa’s head scientist to running a newly-created Amazon AI team last year. While the retail tech juggernaut trails in the large language model (LLM) race against competitors like Microsoft and Google, it hopes to leverage its formidable resources to build an LLM.

This summer, Prasad’s team hired several leaders of the AI startup Adept in order to bolster its efforts, and paid the startup a licensing fee to use some of its technology. Amazon is also reportedly racing to upgrade Alexa with new AI capabilities. Prasad, who reports directly to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, wrote in an email to TIME that the number of years it takes to achieve AGI is not important. “What matters is the journey that drives us—relentless pursuit of developing the most advanced, trusted and sustainable AI that anyone, anywhere can use with minimal effort.”

Correction, Sept. 6

The original version of this story mischaracterized the status of Alexa's AI capabilities. Amazon is working on an AI overhaul for Alexa, but Alexa already has AI capabilities.