The AI race is accelerating, and even Apple, the largest company in the world, cannot disregard it. John Giannandrea, Apple’s head of artificial intelligence (AI), is currently under pressure.
The executive confronts a formidable obstacle as his team struggles to keep up with OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft. The team tasked with developing Siri and other AI and machine learning initiatives is reportedly embroiled in turf wars that are impeding their progress. The core of this entire AI conflict is the competition to recruit the best talent.
According to a report by The Information, three essential engineers, Srinivasan Venkatachary, Steven Baker, and Anand Shukla, are coveted by both Google and Apple.
The triumvirate contributed to the modernization of Apple’s search technology before leaving to work on large-language models (LLMs) at Google. Two of these three engineers were IIT graduates.
The Apple team creating Siri and other AI and machine learning projects is alleged to be in ‘turf fights’.
Venkatachary, the current Vice President of Engineering, AI Product expansion at Google, received his Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science from IIT Madras. Anand Shukla, a Google Distinguished Engineer, received his Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur. According to their respective LinkedIn pages, Venkatachary departed Apple in October 2022 and Shukla left the company in November 2022.
The Information reported that the engineers believed that Google was a better location to work on LLMs. The CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, personally courted the group. According to the allegation, Apple CEO Tim Cook also attempted to convince the engineers to remain.
All three engineers are currently contributing to Google’s efforts to reduce training costs and increase the accuracy of LLMs and products based on these models.
Apple’s primary revenue generators to date have been its products and services. The company has not yet unveiled its first LLM-based technology.
In contrast, Google has implemented Bard AI for search in select regions. Microsoft, one of the most formidable AI competitors, has already begun integrating AI and LLMs into its mainstream products, including Bing search and Microsoft Office. In this regard, it remains to be seen how Apple can catch up to its competitors.