“You don’t need quite as much data as you think you do.” —John Giannandrea, Apple SVP for machine learning and artificial intelligence
Excerpts transcribed from Giannandrea’s appearance at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017, six months before Apple poached him from Google:
- Computers are incredibly powerful, but they’re also pretty dumb.
- I’m a big fan of some of the ideas of Doug Engelbart, which led to a lot of the modern computing systems that we have today. And the basic idea is that the technology should augment the human intellect, not replace it.
- There’s just a huge amount of unwarranted hype around AI right now. There’s a bunch of people who are unreasonably concerned about the imminent arrival of artificial general intelligence, as some people call it. I just see no evidence that we’re on the cusp of this. I think machine learning and artificial intelligence is extremely important and will revolutionize many industries. And I’m very excited about the progress we’re making. But it’s very practical and applied progress. I think that what we’re doing is building tools like, say, the Google search engine, that make YOU more productive.
Cue the video:
My take: I already like him.
See also:
The fact that he has General Magic DNA means he’s already got some Apple DNA in him. His discussion was great, I already like him too.