Amazon was not seen as a thought leader in AI in the same way Google and Meta are. Probably, this move is mostly to fix these optics.
As someone who knows Andrew Ng for his AI/ML work but not familiar with the inner workings of Silicon Valley, is there anything more to this other than sort of "strengthening" Amazon's strategic direction in that field or adding credibility?
It gives the board someone credible to ask dumb questions to, while also making it look like they’ve doing something
Boards don’t really add direct value in that sense. They are mostly there to manage the CEO and otherwise stay hands off. My guess is this is more about the optics of getting someone famous in the world of AI on the board so they don’t look like they’re out of the AI race.
It reflects the fact that Amazon in serious about AI. If fact they are well positioned with their datacenters and a lot of ways to apply, starting with smarter Alexa.
Eh, Condoleeza Rice was on the board of Dropbox. Probably just Stanford connections, and yeah him being an AI leader has some good optics on top