Apple hires Ruslan Salkhutdinov of Carnegie Mellon to help boost AI efforts

Apple has hired noted computer science professor Ruslan Salkhutdinov of Carnegie Mellon to help its AI efforts in bid to catch up in the race to develop products capable of machine-learning.

They say the induction of Slakhutinov as the director of artificial intelligence research at Apple would considerably boost the iPhone maker's efforts, after Samsung lured away the team behind Siri.

Salakhutdinov would not need to abandon his academic duty. He could continue with his assignment at Carnegie and work on Macs and iPhones simultaneously.

Salakhutdinov's job description had not yet been spelt out, but as per Recode's observations, it would most likely deal with the context behind questions that users ask Apple's voice-activated virtual assistant Siri.

His latest research also dealt with contextual derivatives behind the voice input of users supported this.

Salakhutdinov might prove instrumental in making significant improvement for Siri, which is often faulted by critics, for its slow evolution period as against Google's, Google Assistant, which offered a more sophisticated and functional voice command technology.

According to experts, artificial intelligence might help refine the algorithm, combing voice commands in search of context clues to understand better what was being asked by a user.

Some observers point out that Apple had in recent months also acquired Tuplejump, Perceptio, VocalIQ, Mapsense, Emotient, Coherent Navigation and Semetric, to remain at the forefront of AI, machine learning and other similar, newfangled technologies CEO Tim Cook deemed to be part of ''an incredible future''.