Apple CEO John Ternus pressured Apple senior VP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi to “accelerate the company’s road map and move quickly beyond merely making necessary improvements to Siri,” reports Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter.
Citing anonymous sources, Gurman writes that Ternus is “frustrated by what he sees as a reluctance to embrace AI with the same urgency as competitors,” and pushed Federighi for changes in a meeting behind closed doors. Federighi, Gurman points out, has been considered an AI skeptic with concerns “about the technology’s privacy, security, societal and employment implications.”
I worked for one company that had a CEO like this except he was also a heavy cocaine user. One time we had a client visit our offices for a meeting; we had written software for this client for more than ten years at that point. In the middle of the meeting the CEO wanders in randomly and starts just talking incessantly for 45 fucking minutes straight. Finally he slaps his thighs and says “so, do you think you want to do business with us?” We damn near lost the client over this.