John Ternus tells WIRED Apple won’t ship AI for AI’s sake

Apple wants people to love its products without having to think about whether AI made them work, chief executive John Ternus told Steven Levy for WIRED. The interview was published on Friday 30 October.

Levy spoke to Ternus at Apple’s Los Angeles launch of the touchscreen MacBook Pro this week. Ternus, 51, has spent 25 years at Apple and has been chief executive for less than two months.

“We don’t want to ship AI for AI’s sake,” Ternus told WIRED.

He said he hoped people would see that Apple’s work is building products that make their lives better. Apple is “absolutely going to” use AI to do that, he said.

“When we’re doing it right, people won’t have to think about whether it was AI that made this happen or more traditional software. What matters is, did we build something that they really love?” he said.

Agents, regulation and security

Levy asked about AI agents that could replace today’s ways of using a computer. More work would then happen on its own.

“That could make life really easy, I suppose, but the creation of products is a deeply human and personal thing, something that we love to do,” Ternus said.

He did not say whether he favours AI regulation. He said he reads the stories and thinks about them “from a cybersecurity standpoint”.

“Clearly these models are very capable of doing things,” he said.

“Our focus is on making sure that our products are secure and safe, and protecting the users’ information,” he said.

Cook, Jobs and ‘product’

Tim Cook, who handed over to Ternus on 1 September, is now Apple’s executive chairman. Ternus said he consults him.

“Tim is available to help wherever I ask him, and it’s great to have him in that role,” Ternus said.

Asked which business leaders inspire him, Ternus said he had not really thought about it. He said he had only “a handful of interactions” with Steve Jobs, but has always felt like “sort of a student of Steve’s teachings”.

He said one privilege of the job is learning many new things, and that he will keep going deeper into new areas.

“But, you know, I do love product. I’m super passionate about it,” he said.

Two of his executives said the same. Johny Srouji, Apple’s chief hardware officer, called Ternus “a product guy at heart”. Greg Joswiak, head of worldwide marketing, said Ternus has a great sense for great products.

“You can’t teach that,” Joswiak told WIRED.

Ternus earlier told TIME that the memory chip shortage is a crisis. Bloomberg reported in September that he is cutting managers to ship products faster.