“Artificial Intelligence is a tool not a threat”
-Rodney Brooks
A couple months ago, John Giannandrea, the former head of Google’s search and artificial intelligence division, joined Apple. Reporting directly to Tim Cook, Apple stated that they wanted John to run Apple’s “machine learning and A.I. strategy”. The company is confident in his ability to utilize AI while keeping customers privacy intact.
Apple recently updated their leadership page to include John’s position with Apple, which is Chief of Machine Learning and AI strategy. The company is now combining the machine learning and AI team under John’s leadership. Thus, Core ML and Siri teams are working under one umbrella for the first time.
(Source: Apple)
This is a big win for Apple because they are currently lacking in the AI industry, mainly due to their protection of privacy causing limitations on data collection. Compared to competitors, such as Facebook and Google, Apple is leagues behind in development. John could provide great potential for the growth of Siri and other machine learning technology.
This also has the potential to make advancements for HomePod which uses Siri, a speaker similar to Amazon’s Alexa. The HomePod only has 6% of marketshare, so an expanse into a more knowledgeable Siri could bring it into more homes. Also, with the new Apple maps roll out happening soon, the company hopes for AI to make it more powerful and accurate than ever.
AAPL has been down this week, along with the DOW.
AAPL and DOW (Source: Yahoo Finance)
