William Gallagher
Apple's Zurich Vision Lab has moved on from the Apple Car and has been poaching Google staff to work on the future of Apple's AI products.
In 2017, AppleInsider reported on the existence of what's believed to be called the Zurich Vision Lab, an Apple Research facility in Switzerland. It was then understood to be concentrating on the now-defunct Apple Car project.
By 2023 the facility was believed to be looking at all future Apple projects, including AI.
Now according to the Financial Times, the facility is concentrating on AI, and as part of that has been steadily poaching Google staff. This started in 2018 with the very public hiring of John Giannandrea, previously Google's chief of AI and search.
Tuesday's report says that he has since been followed by at least 36 other Google AI experts. The publication based this on a study of LinkedIn profiles, plus job postings and research papers.
Specifically, Apple has reportedly been recruiting for staff in generative AI across two locations in Zurich. One of the two unnamed locations is reported to be so low profile that the Financial Times says a neighbor was unaware of the office's existence.
Even before Giannandrea joined, the publication says that Apple was employing AI staff. It quotes Chuck Wooters, an expert in conversational AI and LLMs who worked on Siri for 21 months from 2013.
"During the time that I was there," he said, "one of the pushes that was happening in the Siri group was to move to a neural architecture for speech recognition."
"Even back then, before large language models took off," he continued, "they were huge advocates of neural networks."
The report concentrates on how Apple has this Zurich facility, but that has been known for seven years. It then connects that to how Apple has been recruiting from Google, and recent Apple research papers have been led by ex-Google staff.
What the publication does not do is put those ex-Google employees into context. It isn't clear, for instance, what proportion of the Zurich Vision Lab staff are from Google.
That said, what is clear is that yet again, these employees and that Zurich facility demonstrate that Apple is not behind the industry in AI.
Wesley Hilliard
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
Amber Neely
8 Comments
This is responding to the market and not Apple users, and IMO based on "leaks" from Apple to trusted journalists. There's certainly been a lot of recent drum-beating, evidence that Apple is worried about perceptions in the stock market.....
Why would Apple want to micro-manipulate their share price? They are already fantastically profitable, incredibly competitive, kick-ass technology, a sky-high valuation, etc. Every year they seem to meet or exceed market expectations. It’s Google that is most threatened by generative AI coming along and decimating search — the foundation of Google’s surveillance-advertising business model.
The term "poaching" has such negative connotations and is an implicit claim of an illegal activity. By using it in the headline you are poisoning the well. Offering incentives for skilled professionals who are currently employed with other firms to join you're firm isn't poaching, it's fully legitimate recruiting. Every company needs a certain amount of movement, i.e., turnover, inflow/outflow, in the ranks to prevent complacency and stagnation. Taking on a new role can also be a very positive career move for someone who has untapped/underutilized potential or has hit a wall with their current employer. Calling it poaching does a disservice to those who are choosing to make a move based on what's being offered to them. It's not like employers get a bad rap for laying off employees. They get rewarded by the stock market if the body count is sufficiently high enough to bump the stock price. Those affected are often treated like disposable refuse, severance package or not.