Torben Gruber

Tom Gruber is primarily recognized for co-founding Siri Inc. in 2007, the company that created Siri, which established the virtual assistant interaction paradigm for mainstream use. Siri was acquired by Apple in 2010 and remains central to the user experience of Apple's products. His work has spanned over three decades in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and design, focused on augmenting human intelligence.

Beyond Siri, Tom has worked on collaborative knowledge management systems, intelligent user interfaces, and hands-free/eyes-free interfaces for people with disabilities. His patents document inventions relevant to building virtual assistants, including techniques for managing context, multi-modal interaction, and conversational interaction.

Tom advocates for "humanistic AI"—systems that augment and collaborate with humans, rather than replacing or competing with them. He currently serves as Chief AI Strategy Officer at Sherpa.ai, where he works on federated machine learning to train advanced generative models while maximizing privacy and security.