AI: Apple Cuts Bait on Titan

...shutting down self driving EV car project acknowledges hard realities for AI driven cars

It’s tough to ‘Fish or Cut Bait’. But Apple seems to have done just that in self-driving cars. I’ve long maintained that self-driving cars are the ‘Canaries in the AI coal mine’.

Tech projects and ambitions in every wave like the AI Tech Wave generally take longer than expected, and self driving cars, EVs or not, have had a tough, long road.

Most attention of course is on players like ‘Magnificent 7’ Tesla, and others, along with the EV efforts of mainstream auto makers like GM, F, and others around the world. But Apple has had an officially unannounced multi-billion effort in self-driving cars for over a decade, under internal project names like Titan.

There were reports just weeks ago on a downshift of ambitions for the project just a few weeks ago. Now Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports in “Apple to Wind Down Electric Car Effort After Decadelong Odyssey”:

“Staff to end work on endeavor known as Titan”

• “Employees on some car teams will move to Apple’s AI division”

“Apple Inc. is canceling a decadelong effort to build an electric car, according to people with knowledge of the matter, abandoning one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the company.”

“Apple made the disclosure internally Tuesday, surprising the nearly 2,000 employees working on the project, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the announcement wasn’t public. The decision was shared by Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, a vice president in charge of the effort, according to the people.”

“The two executives told staffers that the project will begin winding down and that many employees on the car team — known as the Special Projects Group, or SPG — will be shifted to the artificial intelligence division under executive John Giannandrea. Those employees will focus on generative AI projects, an increasingly key priority for the company.”

Lots of notable details on the move and project for Apple investors and watchers here. But the point I want to focus on is that CEO Tim Cook made the rare, hard decision to walk away from a project with deep ambitions, aspirations and Apple DNA possibilities.

This is hard for most companies large or small to do. ‘Sunk cost’ is an emotionally wrought decision for most, and tough to assess rationally. So one waits often for results longer than recommended in hindsight.

That Apple did this is a positive step on its own. More broadly, it reflects the on-going tough road for self-driving car technologies, which I’ve written a lot about to date.

And I continue to think that AI ambitions beyond self-driving cars will see the same tough issues with ‘Edge cases’ in mainstream applications at scale. So one needs to be prepared for a lot more of these on the AI landscape beyond cars. Lots more decisions ahead on whether to fish or cut bait.

And of course there’ll be unexpected areas of AI applications at scale as well. More on that in future posts. Stay tuned.

(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)