Apple To Strip Secret Robotics Unit From AI Chief Weeks After Moving Siri (bloomberg.com) 7
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple will remove its secret robotics unit from the command of its artificial intelligence chief, the latest shake-up in response to the company's AI struggles. Apple plans to relocate the robotics team from John Giannandrea's AI organization to the hardware division later this month, according to people with knowledge of the move.
That will place it under Senior Vice President John Ternus, who oversees hardware engineering, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the change isn't public. The pending shift will mark the second major project to be removed from Giannandrea in the past month: The company stripped the flailing Siri voice assistant from his purview in March.
That will place it under Senior Vice President John Ternus, who oversees hardware engineering, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the change isn't public. The pending shift will mark the second major project to be removed from Giannandrea in the past month: The company stripped the flailing Siri voice assistant from his purview in March.
Seems like a reasonable move (Score:5, Interesting)
If Apple decided Giannandrea wasn't doing his job they probably would have replaced him rather than moving smaller parts of his portfolio to other divisions. Doesn't it seem appropriate that robotics code development be done within the hardware division? That code seems pretty specialized and closely tied to hardware functions.
Re: (Score:3)
If Apple decided Giannandrea wasn't doing his job they probably would have replaced him rather than moving smaller parts of his portfolio to other divisions.
Generally agreed, yes. This seems most likely to be stripping away things that are less core AI work so that he and his team can focus on that as a priority.
There's also a third possibility, which is that he might be considering retiring, and they might not have anyone who they think is ready to step in and take over his entire team en masse, in which case they might be easing the transition by shifting parts of the team to different groups over time. I have no idea if that's actually happening, but his a
They are so busy keeping everything secret... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
... that, alas, there is no time left to development some actually useful chat-bot. The distrust in their own employees at Apple is legendary.
You think you're kidding, but there's a kernel of truth there. Internal siloing of information definitely reduces systemic efficiency, and Apple's information siloing is, as you say, legendary.