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Apple

Apple Has Dismissed More Than 200 Employees From Project Titan, its Autonomous Vehicle Group (cnbc.com) 58

Posted by msmash from the selfdriving-dream dept.
Apple has dismissed just over 200 employees this week from Project Titan, its stealthy autonomous vehicle group, CNBC reports. From the report: An Apple spokesperson acknowledged the layoffs and said the company still sees opportunity in the space: "We have an incredibly talented team working on autonomous systems and associated technologies at Apple. As the team focuses their work on several key areas for 2019, some groups are being moved to projects in other parts of the company, where they will support machine learning and other initiatives, across all of Apple," the spokesperson said. "We continue to believe there is a huge opportunity with autonomous systems, that Apple has unique capabilities to contribute, and that this is the most ambitious machine learning project ever."
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Apple Has Dismissed More Than 200 Employees From Project Titan, its Autonomous Vehicle Group More

Apple Has Dismissed More Than 200 Employees From Project Titan, its Autonomous Vehicle Group

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  • Give It Up (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Drivers are required.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      This is what it really is. We are not ready for self driving cars, the infrastructure isn't in place to support them. For self driving cars to be reliable the roads will need to be specifically designed to support them.

      • For self driving cars to be reliable the roads will need to be specifically designed to support them.

        And exactly what technological innovations are we lacking that prohibits this from being accomplished?

        Your cell phone works because we've put up towers all over, you have electricity because we've run wires, GPS works because there are satellites in space, etc. We're not going to give up on self-driving technology just because some infrastructure needs to be put in place to make it work.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by jwhyche ( 6192 )

          And exactly what technological innovations are we lacking that prohibits this from being accomplished?

          There is none. In fact with today's level of technology if we where to design and build roads for self driving cars it would be stunningly simple.

          What I'm saying is the the current infrastructure in place we are not ready for self driving cars. We are trying to do this the hard way, which is to teach computer cars to drive like humans. With the current level of technology will not work. There are two many variables for the cars to analyze and do it safely 100% of the time. I can get in my car and dr

  • The most ambitious machine learning project (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ...this is the most ambitious machine learning project ever.

    Wait until RealDoll perfects the small-talk subroutines for their A.I.-equipped "companionship" dolls. Simulating female bitchiness such as being able to make crazy links between totally unrelated events is going to require massive amounts of processing power.

  • Apple I smart I think to not build a whole car, integration into car systems is the better idea for Apple.

    I'm just not sure how Apple could bring anything extra to the driverless car space, which has quite a lot of players of all kinds feverishly working to deliver results.

    Maybe after that area has solidified they might find some way that makes sense to enter, but for now sitting back and waiting is a good idea.

    • They could sure bring rounded corners and twice the price to the table.

    • Re:I think Apple is waiting to se the space shake (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Thursday January 24, 2019 @02:55PM (#58016260) Homepage Journal

      In the distant past Apple would pay people to work on new ideas in case they came up with something new they could sell - the ATG. Most of Apple's new tech came from there and they made money commercializing those ideas. They trimmed non-product research when they had money problems. Steve claimed that all necessary research would happen within the product groups, but he knew well that kind of R&D doesn't generate new markets - this was reasonable as he was cutting the company back to four products, but it wasn't until the iPod group came onboard that they had something new.

      Does Apple do anything new these days? Every product release seems to be a slightly faster, slightly thinner, slightly bigger-or-smaller version of the same products they've been selling since Steve was a vegetarian, from what I've seen.

      Whether or not they're the richest company in the world this week, it wouldn't kill them to try some new stuff. Unfortunately they no longer have a leader, they have an efficient manager in charge. Does Tim even trip?

      • Does Apple do anything new these days?

        The letting go of people from this car group is proof they do.

        Just because this did not work out does not mean they do not have other ideas under way that might.

        FaceID, the Apple implementation, was very new (who else was doing 3D face auth in mobile profile before that) and just was released last year... cut them some slack man! Can't have something new and amazing every year.

  • Driving (anywhere on the surface of the Earth) cannot be defined with a reasonably finite set of rules, period.

    • "Driving (anywhere on the surface of the Earth) cannot be defined with a reasonably finite set of rules, period."

      So, why are we giving 16 year olds keys to cars with often only a few hours training?

      And are you telling me an algorithm can't be created that simulates the sense nearly every animal in existence possesses? Sure, it may not work in rain, snow, or some conditions; but if it worked half the time it would be a boon to humanity.

      • Because we accept 16 as the age of driving because in our experience most 16 year olds understand all they need and are capable of driving. What I'm telling you is that there is no algorithm that can run on the car (because any wireless connection would be too slow) and identify that animal within the 0.001 seconds it needs to in order to make the correct decision.

        • What I'm telling you is that there is no algorithm that can run on the car (because any wireless connection would be too slow) and identify that animal within the 0.001 seconds it needs to in order to make the correct decision.

          You do realize that in 0.001 seconds, a human literally cannot possibly even see that animal? If we saw anything, it would just be a blur. And we certainly wouldn't have time to think about doing anything about it.

      • "Driving (anywhere on the surface of the Earth) cannot be defined with a reasonably finite set of rules, period."

        So, why are we giving 16 year olds keys to cars with often only a few hours training?

        They drive better than the current crop of AIs.

  • I bet the employees that were laid off were part of a company they bought to specifically address autonomous driving, and no employees that were actually hired by Apple itself to work on Apple-related projects. Such is life when your company gets bought out by a monolithic entity, at that point you're pretty much expendable. Sure, I'm betting some (like software devs or hardware experts) were able to shift, but not everyone's roles are that movable.
  • Good. I don't want an iCar

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