Swift creator Chris Lattner moving to Google Brain's artificial intelligence effort

After a six-month stint at Tesla, one-time Apple engineer and Swift champion Chris Lattner has landed at the Google Brain artificial intelligence project.

Lattner announced in a Tweet that he was starting at Google Brain around August 21.

Given the relatively open-source nature of Swift, Lattner can continue to contribute to the language, to some extent even after his departure from Apple.

Lattner studied computer science at the University of Portland, Ore. After being one of the co-authors of LLVM, Lattner was hired by Apple in 2005, and was instrumental in the advancement of Xcode, Apple's OpenGL implementation, and every aspect of Apple's Swift rollout and continued development.

Tesla hired Lattner to serve as the company's Vice President of Autopilot Software. The match only lasted about six months, with Lattner ultimately stating that the position wasn't a good fit for him.

At the time of Lattner's departure, Apple coder Ted Kremenek was selected to lead the Swift development team. Given the relatively open-source nature of Swift, Lattner can continue to contribute to the language, to some extent even after his departure from Apple.

Google Brain is Alphabet's division focusing on machine learning and artificial intelligence. It is more about practical application of the technology across Google's entire product line, and stated goals for the group are to advance the discipline widely beyond the company's halls.

25 Comments

greg uvan 11 Years · 86 comments

About 7 years ago

Oh Great, now he's working for Google. Crap. I hated to see him leave Apple, but moving to Tesla seemed harmless enough. Now he's working for the enemy.

sirlance99 11 Years · 1301 comments

greg uvan said:

Oh Great, now he's working for Google. Crap. I hated to see him leave Apple, but moving to Tesla seemed harmless enough. Now he's working for the enemy.

You see an enemy. The people that work for these companies see the other companies as opportunities to expand.

gatorguy 13 Years · 24627 comments

sirlance99 said:

greg uvan said:

Oh Great, now he's working for Google. Crap. I hated to see him leave Apple, but moving to Tesla seemed harmless enough. Now he's working for the enemy.

You see an enemy. The people that work for these companies see the other companies as opportunities to expand.

Nor is there any evidence that I'm aware of that Tim Cook's Apple considers Google an enemy. That's something a very loud but probably relatively small number of Apple users promotes. In the meantime Cook and Pichai might enjoy more lunches together.

MacPro 18 Years · 19845 comments

gatorguy said:

sirlance99 said:

greg uvan said:

Oh Great, now he's working for Google. Crap. I hated to see him leave Apple, but moving to Tesla seemed harmless enough. Now he's working for the enemy.

You see an enemy. The people that work for these companies see the other companies as opportunities to expand.

Nor is there any evidence that I'm aware of that Tim Cook's Apple considers Google an enemy. That's something a very loud but probably relatively small number of Apple users promotes. In the meantime Cook and Pichai might enjoy more lunches together.

You're right. After all Gates ripped off Mac OS and Schmidt ripped off iOS so Tim and the rest of Apple have to have thick skins these days so lunch sounds fine. Besides, 'keep your enemies closer' as they say.

applesauce007 17 Years · 1703 comments

gatorguy said:

sirlance99 said:

greg uvan said:

Oh Great, now he's working for Google. Crap. I hated to see him leave Apple, but moving to Tesla seemed harmless enough. Now he's working for the enemy.

You see an enemy. The people that work for these companies see the other companies as opportunities to expand.

Nor is there any evidence that I'm aware of that Tim Cook's Apple considers Google an enemy. That's something a very loud but probably relatively small number of Apple users promotes. In the meantime Cook and Pichai might enjoy more lunches together.

Make no mistake, Google is a fierce competitor to Apple although Chris Lattner going to Google is harmless. If Google could kill the iPhone they would do it in a second and avoid having to pay $3 Billion a year to Apple for default search setting on iPhones. Apple has become very smart in how they announce new products and avoid giving too much info to the competitors too early.

Apple competes with Google on every aspect of the iPhone, iPad, CarPlay, Mapping, HomePod, Autonomous systems, iTunes, Apple Music, AppleTV, AppleWatch, Messaging, SIRI, Translation, Machine Learning and many more services.