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How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

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Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#31

Post by throwanem »

ricksplat wrote: post #21
throwanem wrote: post #12

I like how Apple can't win here. If they publish, they aren't doing anything new and they haven't innovated since Steve died, and they should really just give up because there's obviously no point to anything they do and hasn't been since 1997. If they don't publish, they're evil secretive bastards who don't contribute to the ML community and probably drown puppies or something because who knows what goes on behind c…

> if people Your mistake here is thinking "people" are one coherent group when in fact what you're describing here is (probably) two different ends of a polarised discussion! You're probably in a more moderate central position ( generally satisfied iphone owner ). It may or may not be a good thing that apple is so controversial that they provoke such vigorous discussion (my personal take is that it is), but that not…

Vigorous discussion isn't an unqualified good. If it goes somewhere, sure. But discussions on HN of Apple's business activities seem rarely at best to do that. I don't understand why the light:heat ratio in this kind of thread is so low, and usually I keep my mouth shut about it, but today the urge to say something overmastered my self-discipline on the matter. I don't pretend that my comments here constitute any more of a contribution to worthwhile discourse than anyone else's do.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#32

Post by BinaryIdiot »

CogDisco wrote: post #27
throwanem wrote: post #12

I like how Apple can't win here. If they publish, they aren't doing anything new and they haven't innovated since Steve died, and they should really just give up because there's obviously no point to anything they do and hasn't been since 1997. If they don't publish, they're evil secretive bastards who don't contribute to the ML community and probably drown puppies or something because who knows what goes on behind c…

If they were serious, they'd provide objective evidence for their claims. Papers, source code, numbers. Not "we have the biggest, baddest GPU farm" and refuse to say any more as policy. Under this veil of secrecy and doubletalk, all they have is marketing: Trust the brand rather than objective reality. Many other companies are mature enough to show their cards but Apple keeps declaring victory. Apple writes its own n…

> If they were serious, they'd provide objective evidence for their claims. Papers, source code, numbers. Not "we have the biggest, baddest GPU farm" and refuse to say any more as policy.

But why? Who cares about papers, source code or numbers beyond the tiny segment that HN caters to? Apple has always been about the user experience. When they discuss a vast majority of prior accomplishments they discuss them, many times, in terms of the layman. Does that mean they can't manufacture? Nope. AI is simply harder to show without the papers / source code you mention but this isn't typical Apple to release that.

I honestly don't think they care to go beyond the level of details outlined here. I interviewed with the Siri team twice now and they certainly have some incredibly smart people. Whether they're "winning" against Google, Microsoft or whoever? I say who cares. They want to control their narrative without divulging too much detail like they have always done.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#33

Post by k-mcgrady »

CogDisco wrote: post #27
throwanem wrote: post #12

I like how Apple can't win here. If they publish, they aren't doing anything new and they haven't innovated since Steve died, and they should really just give up because there's obviously no point to anything they do and hasn't been since 1997. If they don't publish, they're evil secretive bastards who don't contribute to the ML community and probably drown puppies or something because who knows what goes on behind c…

If they were serious, they'd provide objective evidence for their claims. Papers, source code, numbers. Not "we have the biggest, baddest GPU farm" and refuse to say any more as policy. Under this veil of secrecy and doubletalk, all they have is marketing: Trust the brand rather than objective reality. Many other companies are mature enough to show their cards but Apple keeps declaring victory. Apple writes its own n…

>> "If they were serious, they'd provide objective evidence for their claims."

Why do they need to? At the end of the day all that matters is that the products they ship are good and aren't lacking compared to competitors. The only reason they would provide evidence for what they claim other than that is to appease people calling bullshit and unless it's effecting sales no company should stoop to that.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#34

Post by BinaryIdiot »

Smerity wrote: post #2

None of this really answers the overlying question that Jerry Kaplan and Oren Etzioni raised. The question raised by most in the field isn't whether Apple use AI/ML internally, the real question is why they avoid the research community so strongly. For me, the greatest thing about the ML/AI community is how open it is and how strong a sense of camaraderie there is between people across the entire field, regardless of…

> The question raised by most in the field isn't whether Apple use AI/ML internally, the real question is why they avoid the research community so strongly.

I'm not sure why this is a "big deal" or even much of anything. Apple has always done this. Even their work on WebKit they were not always "there" with the community. This is how Apple has always worked, why would it be any different with AI / ML?

> For me, the greatest thing about the ML/AI community is how open it is and how strong a sense of camaraderie there is between people across the entire field, regardless of whether they're from industry or academia.

You get this in every field but there are also a ton of players out there not going. Just like Apple there are plenty of companies hard at work on various AI initiatives who are also not going to said events.

I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill here. Does anyone really care Apple doesn't give away free time / knowledge to people?

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#35

Post by c0g »

davidcgl wrote: post #26
c0g wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good comment - a few thoughts: AlphaGo is impressive no doubt but has DeepMind done anything really key to Google's bottom line yet? A lot of the really sweet stuff they do doesn't have immediate commercial utility that I can see. Apple might be waiting to strike once Google has found the killer app (remember they're never really first at anything and focus holistically on the product). Apple is benefiting from other…

DeepMind reduced Google data center cooling bill by 40% in an experiment. If this effect is real, it probably more than justified the $500m tag Google paid to acquire DeepMind. Google might not have come up with a killer app, but perhaps the real killer app is not in the consumer space. https://deepmind.com/blog https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12126298

Taking that at face value that's amazing.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#37

Post by starchild3001 »

emehrkay wrote: post #30

Off topic a bit, but this article makes me wonder where does one start with Deep/Machine Learning/AI? I've seen a few posts the past few days talking about the topic (Deep Learning with Python, etc.), but what are the core requirements regarding math, statistics, programming, etc? Where should a web developer start?

Check out the stanfard MOOC class taught by Andrew Ng... that's where most people (I know of) started. https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Andrew+...

Web developer to ML? Doable but you may have to work harder than some other folks have a background in statistics, probability, signal processing etc. Plus, you don't have to be an algorithms developer... doing the backend, compute cluster is hugely valuable, too.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#38

Post by aljones »

davidcgl wrote: post #26
c0g wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good comment - a few thoughts: AlphaGo is impressive no doubt but has DeepMind done anything really key to Google's bottom line yet? A lot of the really sweet stuff they do doesn't have immediate commercial utility that I can see. Apple might be waiting to strike once Google has found the killer app (remember they're never really first at anything and focus holistically on the product). Apple is benefiting from other…

DeepMind reduced Google data center cooling bill by 40% in an experiment. If this effect is real, it probably more than justified the $500m tag Google paid to acquire DeepMind. Google might not have come up with a killer app, but perhaps the real killer app is not in the consumer space. https://deepmind.com/blog https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12126298

up to 40%

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#39

Post by cdgore »

vonnik wrote: post #8

I have a big problem with articles like this. Apple's PR is notorious for cracking the whip, which means that the "inside story", if they give it to you, comes with a warning to the journalist to behave and be nice. Levy's piece is generous with flattery and cautious with criticism. He quotes Kaplan and Etzioni high and briefly in the piece, and spends the rest of it refuting them. Apple will give him another inside…

>> "Google's building models with billions of parameters that require much more than 200MB, and that are really, really good at scoring data. I have to believe either that a) Apple is not telling us everything, or b) they haven't figured out a way to bring their customers the most powerful AI yet. (And the answer could very well be c) that I don't understand what's going on...)"

The 200 MB figure quoted appears to refer only to the model stored locally on the phone. In my experience, 200 mb translates to a few million parameters in one or more sparse matrices.

The figure on the whiteboard in the background says "Hey Siri small". I take that to indicate the model that does feature extraction and prediction for some queries, such as "set a timer for 20 minutes", while there is a larger, more general model for other use cases in the cloud.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#40

Post by spitfire »

c0g wrote: post #24
vonnik wrote: post #8

I have a big problem with articles like this. Apple's PR is notorious for cracking the whip, which means that the "inside story", if they give it to you, comes with a warning to the journalist to behave and be nice. Levy's piece is generous with flattery and cautious with criticism. He quotes Kaplan and Etzioni high and briefly in the piece, and spends the rest of it refuting them. Apple will give him another inside…

Good comment - a few thoughts: AlphaGo is impressive no doubt but has DeepMind done anything really key to Google's bottom line yet? A lot of the really sweet stuff they do doesn't have immediate commercial utility that I can see. Apple might be waiting to strike once Google has found the killer app (remember they're never really first at anything and focus holistically on the product). Apple is benefiting from other…

So apple is choosing to play a prisoners dilemma game and defecting every time.
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