FP TrendingDecember 10, 2020 2:47:39 PM
Apple Inc. replaces self-driving car unit under John Gianandria, the company’s top artificial intelligence executive. Gianandria will oversee the company’s operations over time in an autonomous system that can be used in its own car Reported Bloomberg. People familiar with the project told the publication that the Titan named after the project was run by Doug Field and that Field had moved to Gianandria’s artificial intelligence and machine learning group with his team of engineers.
However, an Apple spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Bob Mansfield, Apple’s former senior vice president of hardware engineering, recently retired, replacing Gianandria. Field used to report previously in Mansfield. Mansfield initially retired from Apple in 2012. However, he returned less than a year later as the senior VP in charge of chip technology. He left the position in 2013 and has since continued as a part-time consultant.
According to the report, Giannandria joined Apple in 2018 as Vice President of AI Strategy and Machine Learning. That same year, he was promoted to senior executive on Apple’s executive team. Gianandria had previously conducted Google’s machine learning and search teams. In addition to the car project, he is responsible for Siri and machine learning technologies across Apple products.
In 2014, Apple set out to build an EV against Tesla and other manufacturers. However, they resigned from their project due to leadership issues and technical challenges. Apple brought back Mansfield to lead this effort, and observed the now retired Mansfield moving from a car development to a mere autonomous system.
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