Apple’s Mysterious Dismissal of 200 AI Employees Could Mean a Shift in Technology

Last week, the leading electric car company in the world, Tesla, took a dramatic turn when it announced the dismissal of 3,000 employees in a desperate effort to cut operational costs. Tesla’s founder, Elon Musk explained that the cost-cutting measure was crucial for the company’s survival since the cheaper Model 3 cars weren’t generating enough profit for it to breakeven. The company must also fork over $920 million in either stock or cash this March to pay of its debt as confirmed by Musk.

It turns out that Tesla is not the only company that is looking into reducing its human workforce, since tech-giant Apple, also revealed that it will be dismissing over 200 employees who have been working on the tech giant’s AI Project Titan, that has to do with self-driving cars.

The employees that were left from the project were transitioned to other departments

Over 200 Employees Fired

It is not every day that you hear that one of the biggest tech companies in the world finds itself in need to fire over 200 employees. But Apple did it just a few days ago, after announcing that it was cutting some employees loose from its Project Titan. According to the spokesperson for Apple, despite how many people have been fired from the project, they still see massive opportunity in the AI sector.

In a recently released statement, Apple assured that it still has plenty of employees who are working within their autonomous systems for their Apple products, however, this year changes will be made to some departments, with some employees moved to other projects to work on the company’s future ventures.

The company even hired Doug Field, the engineering Vice President of Tesla, to be the leader of the Project Titan together with Bob Mansfield. The 200 people who were recently dismissed used to be part of the team, whereas those who weren’t fired had to be transferred to other departments of the company. In an interview with Apple’s chief executive officer Tim Cook, the company is still trying to bring innovation into the health industry since they believe it will be the key to future success.

He explained that no matter how you look at it, Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind will always revolve around health. From their iPhones, Macbooks, and most especially their Apple Watches, health has always been a driving force behind their technology which definitely helped people improve their lifestyle. Project Titan, on the other hand, is known to be all about the self-driving cars, as the tech giant’s biggest hope to get in the same league as Tesla.

Apple continues to hide plans about self-driving vehicles

The Titan Project

It was in late 2015 when Apple was rumored to be doing something outside their comfort zone involving artificial intelligence. Since then, Apple has been hiring engineers and researchers all around the world for their ‘top secret’ project which was later revealed to about autonomous cars as the company took a leaf out of Tesla’s playbook.

Even Elon Musk said that it is pretty tough for Apple to hide their project since it has been trying to hire so many engineers. Tim Cook once said in 2016 how the auto industry will soon see huge changes that may surprise us. Just 2 years after that, Apple revealed that they have registered 27 self-driving cars to the Department of Motor Vehicles to be allowed all over the state of California.

It was reported the same year that Apple may not exactly be making their own vehicles, hence they have been trying to partner up with some of the most famous car manufacturers in the world such as Mercedes Benz and BMW. Unfortunately, the partnership didn’t happen, so instead they had to strike a deal with Volkswagen.

Apple self-driving car tests approved by DMV

Up to this date, the company is still trying their best to hide this project by being vague about it’s purpose. This is despite of all the reports regarding the Titan and all the issues it has been involved in, such as a former Apple employee being arrested for trying to steal some of the company’s trade secrets about the self-driving cars.

Another incident happened just a month after that, but this time around it was a self-driving car that got involved into an accident. Reports revealed that no one got hurt by the incident, and that there are over 111 drivers who are registered to operate the self-driving cars used for testing.