Rumors of Apple working on its own self-driving car resurfaced after a report revealed that the company poached an artificial intelligence expert from Nvidia.
The employee that Apple hired is Jonathan Cohen, who was previously the director of deep learning for Nvidia. Deep learning is an artificial intelligence branch that is regarded highly in tech companies, as it is able to teach computers on how to analyze process the contained patterns within large amounts of visual data.
Specifically, Cohen led the Deep Learning Software program for Nvidia, wherein he was overseeing the development of the GPU acceleration software technology and CUDA platform libraries.
Nvidia is known as a chip manufacturer, creating graphics products that are used for video games, but it has also recently been pushing to enter the autonomous vehicles industry with its deep learning technology. The company is selling its graphic processing units, or GPUs, to automobile companies, which use the components to power the cameras and radar systems which allow self-driving cars to operate autonomously.
Cohen's change of employment can be seen in his page on professional social network LinkedIn, where his employment in Apple that started this month is simply stated as under Software.
"This is a big hire for Apple," said Chris Nicholson, who is the co-founder of the deep learning startup company Skymind.io, stating that the implications of the move are clear considering that the GPUs of Nvidia are being utilized in the systems of autonomous vehicles.
Earlier in the week, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the automotive industry is gearing up for a "massive change." However, Cook never mentioned that it would be Apple that would be bringing about this change, playing it safe and declining to discuss whether the company is actually working on its own self-driving car.
Nvidia, in its most recent financial year, revealed that its automotive division has reached revenues of $183 million. Apple, on the other hand, has used deep learning technology for projects such as voice recognition with Siri and maps.
