John Giannandrea, Apple’s Senior Vice President for Machine Learning and AI Strategy, and Bob Borchers, VP of Product Marketing, spoke with Ars Technica about Apple’s AI strategy and beliefs.
When I joined Apple, I was already an iPad user, and I loved the Pencil,” Giannandrea (who goes by “J.G.” to colleagues) told me. “So, I would track down the software teams and I would say, ‘Okay, where’s the machine learning team that’s working on handwriting?’ And I couldn’t find it.” It turned out the team he was looking for didn’t exist—a surprise, he said, given that machine learning is one of the best tools available for the feature today.
Some Apple users are seeing smarter web answers when they use iOS Spotlight Search and Siri.
The new web answers appear to be a further expansion of this technology. If the statistics are not readily available from the knowledge database, it seems Apple is now using algorithms to crawl websites and find possible responses to questions.
I think this is great, and it might be the first front-facing results we’re seeing from Apple’s hiring of John Giannandrea.
Siri co-founder Tom Gruber has left Apple to “pursue personal interests.” He was the last of the original Siri group to go.
Adam Christianson from the Maccast and Bryan Chaffin join Jeff Gamet to talk about Apple’s AI boss John Giannandrea, plus they share their thoughts on a leaked photo showing the next iPhone’s glass front.
Apple Music now has more than 40 million subscribers, up from the 36 million milestone made public earlier this year.
In a letter to employees, Tim Cook said that John Giannandrea shared Apple’s commitment to privacy and “our thoughtful approach” to machine learning.
