Apple Has Dismissed More Than 200 Employees From Project Titan, its Autonomous Vehicle Group (cnbc.com)

Apple has dismissed just over 200 employees this week from Project Titan, its stealthy autonomous vehicle group, CNBC reports. From the report: An Apple spokesperson acknowledged the layoffs and said the company still sees opportunity in the space: "We have an incredibly talented team working on autonomous systems and associated technologies at Apple. As the team focuses their work on several key areas for 2019, some groups are being moved to projects in other parts of the company, where they will support machine learning and other initiatives, across all of Apple," the spokesperson said. "We continue to believe there is a huge opportunity with autonomous systems, that Apple has unique capabilities to contribute, and that this is the most ambitious machine learning project ever."

Comments

The most ambitious machine learning project

[Anonymous Coward]

...this is the most ambitious machine learning project ever.

Wait until RealDoll perfects the small-talk subroutines for their A.I.-equipped "companionship" dolls. Simulating female bitchiness such as being able to make crazy links between totally unrelated events is going to require massive amounts of processing power.

Re:I think Apple is waiting to se the space shake

[bill_mcgonigle]

In the distant past Apple would pay people to work on new ideas in case they came up with something new they could sell - the ATG. Most of Apple's new tech came from there and they made money commercializing those ideas. They trimmed non-product research when they had money problems. Steve claimed that all necessary research would happen within the product groups, but he knew well that kind of R&D doesn't generate new markets - this was reasonable as he was cutting the company back to four products, but it wasn't until the iPod group came onboard that they had something new.

Does Apple do anything new these days? Every product release seems to be a slightly faster, slightly thinner, slightly bigger-or-smaller version of the same products they've been selling since Steve was a vegetarian, from what I've seen.

Whether or not they're the richest company in the world this week, it wouldn't kill them to try some new stuff. Unfortunately they no longer have a leader, they have an efficient manager in charge. Does Tim even trip?

Re:Give It Up

[jwhyche]

This is what it really is. We are not ready for self driving cars, the infrastructure isn't in place to support them. For self driving cars to be reliable the roads will need to be specifically designed to support them.

Re:Give It Up

[jwhyche]

And exactly what technological innovations are we lacking that prohibits this from being accomplished?

There is none. In fact with today's level of technology if we where to design and build roads for self driving cars it would be stunningly simple.

What I'm saying is the the current infrastructure in place we are not ready for self driving cars. We are trying to do this the hard way, which is to teach computer cars to drive like humans. With the current level of technology will not work. There are two many variables for the cars to analyze and do it safely 100% of the time. I can get in my car and drive two miles down the road and the road conditions will change completely. We are not ready for this.