Apple now sees AI as being as important as its retail, services, hardware, software or design arms – and that’s why machine intelligence now has a seat on the company's executive board.

How Apple works

Think about how Apple works. Former CEO Steve Jobs deliberately organized the company so that it fostered topic-related expertise.

Company executives reflect this – most have been involved in their department (marketing or hardware design) for the majority of their Apple careers. They are experts in their field.

[ Further reading: AI and speech advances bring virtual assistants to work ]

What that means is different teams have different needs and different responsibilities. That’s why a procurement official sent to China to source components for an unreleased and unannounced Apple device didn’t realize they were ordering the parts for the original iPhone until after the product was announced.

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