The Washington Post merilis hasil wawancara dengan Tim Cook selaku CEO Apple. Membahas berbagai hal seperti kedekatannya dengan para customers, privacy, penjualan iPhone yang menurun, Steve Jobs, isu-isu sosial, dsb. Berikut beberapa kutipan yang saya ambil dari wawancara tersebut.
You’ve talked about privacy being part of Apple’s values. How personal is it for you? You’re known as a very private person. You grew up gay in a red state. Did those early years have an impact on how you lead Apple and on your public stances about privacy?
Undoubtedly, your childhood and your upbringing is a constant across your life in terms of the things you learn and your point of view.
But in terms of privacy, I wouldn’t link the two. There’s a broader thing in play. Privacy, in my point of view, is a civil liberty that our Founding Fathers thought of a long time ago and concluded it was an essential part of what it was to be an American. Sort of on the level, if you will, with freedom of speech, freedom of the press. The other thing is how all this data sits out there in different places. I do worry about people not really understanding deeply about what kinds of things are out there about them. So it’s really both of those — not really the growing up in the South.
Let’s jump to Apple’s future. You made some statements in the earnings call about artificial intelligence that got a lot of attention. Can Apple catch up with the AI efforts from companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon?
Let me take exception to your question. Your question seems to imply that we’re behind.
Let’s take a look at that. We’ve been shipping Siri since 2011, and Siri is with you all of the time. Which I think most people would want an assistant with them all the time, whether they’re at work or at home or in between or on the soccer field. You don’t think of your to-do list, so to speak, only when you’re in your kitchen. And the breadth of Siri is unbelievable. Increasingly, Siri understands things obviously without having to memorize certain ways to say things. The prediction of Siri is going way up. What we’ve done with AI is focus on things that will help the customer. And we announced in June that we’re opening Siri to third parties, so third-party developers can now use Siri. So a simple example with that, whatever kind of ride-sharing app you might use, Uber or Lyft in the United States, you could just — using your voice — order the car. So third-party developers are writing tons of those that will be available to the public in the fall. And that’s how we’re broadening Siri in a huge way.
Do you have a concern about privacy as you push into AI?
No. I think that talented people can come up with fantastic ways of using AI without violating privacy. There’s a new technology called differential privacy which essentially looks at large data sets to predict user behaviors and requests without going to the precise individual, which might violate privacy.
Apple yang sekarang berbeda dengan Apple yang dahulu dipimpin oleh Steve Jobs. Gaya kepemimpinan Tim Cook yang lebih tenang serta keterbukaan ditunjukkannya dengan semakin terbukanya Apple terutama terhadap isu-isu sosial. This is a very nice read.