Tech giant Apple has dismissed slightly more than 200 employees from its autonomous vehicle endeavour, Project Titan, in a bid to restructure towards other efforts within the company, CNBC has reported.
“We have an incredibly talented team working on autonomous systems and associated technologies at Apple. As the team focuses their work on several key areas for 2019, some groups are being moved to projects in other parts of the company, where they will support machine learning and other initiatives, across all of Apple,” the spokesperson said of the layoffs.
“We continue to believe there is a huge opportunity with autonomous systems, that Apple has unique capabilities to contribute, and that this is the most ambitious machine learning project ever,” the spokesperson added.
Apple had once previously scaled back plans for Project Titan, when it was reported that the once 1,000-strong team had been reassigned or voluntarily left the programme. Instead of a complete car development effort, Apple has since focused on developing autonomous driving systems, and the company appears to be continuing its pursuit of artificial intelligence, though not necessarily just for automotive applications.
The tech company’s direction appears to shift its focus further away from the automotive efforts previously put forth. “I believe, if you zoom out into the future, and you look back, and you ask the question, ‘What was Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind?’ it will be about health,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook.
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