“Apple has a brand new CEO; he’s a {hardware} man.”
That fast distillation of Apple’s impending management change unfold quick throughout Silicon Valley and the broader tech world. The corporate’s alternative, John Ternus, rose by way of the ranks on the {hardware} facet, taking up iPhone engineering in 2020 and all {hardware} engineering a yr later.
Analysts say Ternus’s elevation to succeed Tim Cook indicators that Apple will enter the AI period with a household posture: utilizing AI strategically to make its units work higher, however not stretching to include AI into all of its companies and companies.
Whereas its friends are pouring tens of billions of {dollars} per yr into AI analysis and information facilities, Apple’s spending on these areas has remained comparatively flat. Its AI analysis group has not turn out to be the corporate’s middle of gravity.
However appointing a “{hardware} man” as CEO doesn’t imply Apple’s AI efforts might be suppressed or confined to inconsequential options like erasing an undesirable object from a photograph. That’s as a result of Apple’s large alternative lies in operating highly effective AI fashions by itself {hardware}, not within the information facilities of some unaccountable company.
The corporate’s private AI fashions would reside in a safe enclave inside an Apple chip, very similar to Apple Pay, which retains monetary data invisible to Apple or anybody else. Operating on-device, these fashions might course of private and delicate information with pace and effectivity with out sending that information to the cloud whereas additionally sustaining privateness.
Do this stuff actually matter? You wager they do. As mistrust of massive AI labs grows and regulators lag, ensures of safety and privateness will turn out to be potent promoting factors. Apple has spent years building credibility on information privateness. AI is its probability to money in.
Proper now, operating big AI fashions on laptops and telephones remains to be a piece in progress. However beneath Ternus, Apple could have the correct management combine to get there. He helped drive the transition to Apple Silicon, which is foundational to the corporate’s AI technique. Johny Srouji, who constructed and ran Apple’s silicon engineering effort, is transferring into Ternus’s former position main {hardware}.
Ternus additionally has an extended and productive working relationship with Apple software program chief Craig Federighi, who’s taking control of most of Apple’s AI analysis group and can play a key position in integrating AI fashions into Apple’s working programs and apps. To make giant fashions run on small chips, Apple’s {hardware}, silicon, and software program groups might want to work in tight coordination.
Apple’s file on AI consists of loads of misses. Siri stays a damaged promise. In 2024, Apple mentioned it could remodel the command-based assistant right into a systemwide AI agent powered by giant language fashions and ship extremely customized options to iPhones. It has yet to follow through.
However as I wrote at first of this yr, the corporate nonetheless has an opportunity to steer from behind. Apple is unlikely to meet up with OpenAI, Anthropic, and others in constructing large general-purpose fashions. What it may well do is use these fashions to energy Siri, because it has mentioned it would, whereas focusing its personal analysis on smaller fashions tuned for the distinctive data duties of particular person customers.
My solely concern about Ternus is his repute as a perfectionist. {Hardware} design rests on mathematical certainties. AI doesn’t. At its core it’s probabilistic, not deterministic. It may possibly’t be perfected; it needs to be iterated, usually within the wild, to enhance by way of real-world use. That could be a troublesome shift for an organization constructed on polished, “it simply works” merchandise.
Ternus will really feel strain to play it protected. He’ll quickly be operating a $4 trillion firm and might be accountable to shareholders. It will be simple to prioritize avoiding errors over taking dangers. However AI simply hits too near Apple’s core id to play issues protected.
Apple’s superpower is offering an suave hardware-software expertise that mediates between a human person and digital expertise. Ultimately, anyone will wield AI to humanize, personalize, and produce extra intelligence to that have. Why not Apple?
