Apple CEO Tim Cook: Ads That Track You Are ‘Creepy’

Apple CEO Tim Cook claimed in an interview that ads which track you online are “creepy.”

“To me it’s creepy when I look at something and all of a sudden it’s chasing me all the way across the web,” declared Cook. “I don’t like that.”

Despite claiming to be uncomfortable with advertisements that track users, Apple’s virtual assistant Siri, which can be found on most iPhones, has been criticized for the feature that allows it to be in a constant state of listening.

“The virtual assistant will always have an ear open, listening for users to summon it, ever ready to answer questions or to assist with certain tasks,” reported Business Insider in 2015. “Apple is basically making ‘passive listening’ technology a standard feature for Siri and the iPhone.”

Last year, a report also claimed that Siri can be controlled by voices outside the range of human hearing.

During the interview, Cook also claimed “everyone needs to learn to code,” and that artificial intelligence and robots would take over a lot of jobs.

“Jobs will be cannibalized over time and replaced by others. And now, those people that embrace that, they’re going to do incredibly well, and certainly the system to help people retrain has to be put in place and largely needs a lot of work right now to do that, but I think there are going to be incredible jobs in AI, AR. I’m a huge fan of augmented reality. I think it is huge,” Cook proclaimed.  “We’ve had this significant productivity change in the United States for a long time, and there have been jobs that have been displaced, but frankly, many more jobs have been created than displaced. What we didn’t do a good job of is taking care of the people that were displaced and getting them into the jobs that were being created. That is a muscle the US has not done a good job of building.”

“I think that all of us should count on there’s an element of what each of us do that will be automated over time. And part of that, by the way, we should all say thank God because we’re all working too much,” he expressed. “Wouldn’t society be great if we all work a little less, but we didn’t have to dial down our output? That wouldn’t be so bad, but I do think that we all have to get used to the idea of continually learning, refreshing our skills for the jobs of tomorrow. The jobs of tomorrow right now are heavily software-based. If you look in this country today, there’s a half a million jobs that are not being filled; they’re all software.”