Apple to build the mother of all AI projects

Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed his plans on building autonomous cars with autonomous software and elaborated on the future car’s plans.

The company’s work regarding self-driving technology was kept behind the curtains for a long time until now when Cook informed that Apple has been secretly working on these cars.

In an interview with Bloomberg at Apple’s WWDC conference, Cook confirmed, “We're focusing on autonomous systems. It's a core technology that we view as very important.”

Regarding this artificial intelligence as a major one Cook said, “We sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects. It's probably one of the most difficult AI projects actually to work on.”

The Financial Times reported that the firm has already recruited many autonomous experts from renowned companies like Ford and Mercedes-Benz and now, the iPhone maker company has more than 1000 engineers working on automotive.

Being a topic of gossip and rumor for years, the self-driving car efforts are known as “Project Titan” internally after it started back in 2014. It was previously believed that the company was building its own car. However, it turned out that the company’s focus from building its own car has shifted to building autonomous software instead.

According to documents acquired by Business Insider, Apple has created a system which is able to send electronic commands for steering, accelerating and decelerating. The documents also stated about how the company plans on putting staffers through a training program for operating vehicles before conducting tests on California roads.

In his interview, Cook exclaimed, “I think there is a major disruption looming there. Not only for self-driving cars, but also the electrification piece.”

He added, “If you've driven an electric car, it's actually a marvelous experience. It's also a marvelous experience to stop at the filling station, gas station, whatever you want to call it. Plus you have ridesharing on top of this. So you’ve got three vectors of change happening generally in the same time frame.”

Executive analyst for Autotrader, Michelle Krebs said, “Apple has long been the wild card in the autonomous car game. Now we know Apple is all in, and judging by its track record in other areas, it will be a force.”

“Apple’s strategy to commercialize autonomous vehicles remains to be seen – will they partner and sell the technology or actually develop their own vehicles?” questioned Krebs.