Apple just hired its first director of artificial intelligence

Salakhutdinov researches very large neural networks used in a technology called deep learning, which lets a computer learn to perform a difficult task by consuming copious training examples. Speaking recently, Salakhutdinov said that there are three big areas where AI is progressing: giving computers better language understanding; enabling them to learn through repetition and positive reinforcement; and developing ways for machines to learn from unlabeled data. In recent years, competitors such as Google and Facebook have hired leading figures in deep learning to lead their AI efforts. Deep learning has gained prominence in recent years, after proving spectacularly good at enabling machines to recognize objects in images and spoken words in audio.