Sami Benjo, a former Google Artificial Intelligence (AI) employee, has now joined Apple to lead a new research unit for Artificial Intelligence with John Giannandrea.
Benjo has been with Google for 14 years but decided to leave last week and stated that he was looking for other opportunities.
Benjamin’s resignation came after Google fired Margaret Mitchell and Timnit Gebru, who led the AI ethics research team. Gebru was fired after Google fired tried to stop articles involving him about AI bias, while Mitchell was fired for transferring documents outside the company. Prior to his resignation, Benjo supported Gebru and Mitchell.
As is so often the case with messages from anonymous sources, Apple publicly rejected Benjamin’s role in the company, but if all were true, it would be immediately recognizable.
Benjamin’s partner in the new role, John Janandrea, is Apple’s senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy. Giannandrea has been with the iPhone manufacturer since 2018, after eight years with Google. It’s unclear which projects Bengio and Janandrea will undertake, but Apple has a lot of artificial intelligence projects in the works and will definitely try to introduce new products and services for future AI use.