Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple to Start Publishing AI Research

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 121 posts

Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research

#51

Post by airesQ »

j1vms wrote: post #44
Cyph0n wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you consider the number of papers published over the lifetime of IBM, and the fact that IBM Research does work in all levels of computing (materials science -> software), Microsoft's research output looks minuscule in comparison. But if you're considering only CS research, then you might be right. Here is a nice snapshot of the major contributions that came out of IBM Research over the past 60 years: http://www.re…

And all of these, in terms of quality of research output, pale by about an order of magnitude in comparison to Bell Labs for much of its existence (particularly in the era ~1940 to mid 1980s). They were the R&D benchmark for most improvements to IBM Research from the 1960s onward. Additionally IBM sought out its alumni and populated their ranks with notable management and research minds from the Bell Labs stable.

Not sure if anything can be considered successful when compared with Bell Labs. It is a very high bar to meet (given they mostly invented transistors, information theory, unix and c).

The modern world is to great extent a byproduct of the experiment that was Bell Labs. Some laugh, and say that it was experiment that has gone awry.

Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research

#52

Post by [deleted] »

sanswork wrote: post #25
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Craig Federighi, senior VP of software engineering, only losers who want to pad their resumes at the expense of their company care about publishing: “Our practices tend to reinforce a natural selection bias — those who are interested in working as a team to deliver a great product versus those whose primary motivation is publishing,” says Federighi. https://backchannel.com/an-exclusive-look-at-how-ai-and…

You're putting a lot of words into someones mouth here.

[deleted]

Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research

#53

Post by leereeves »

airesQ wrote: post #51
j1vms wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And all of these, in terms of quality of research output, pale by about an order of magnitude in comparison to Bell Labs for much of its existence (particularly in the era ~1940 to mid 1980s). They were the R&D benchmark for most improvements to IBM Research from the 1960s onward. Additionally IBM sought out its alumni and populated their ranks with notable management and research minds from the Bell Labs stable.

Not sure if anything can be considered successful when compared with Bell Labs. It is a very high bar to meet (given they mostly invented transistors, information theory, unix and c). The modern world is to great extent a byproduct of the experiment that was Bell Labs. Some laugh, and say that it was experiment that has gone awry.

And yet it didn't work out well for the company that funded it.

Much like Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (inventors of the mouse, GUI, and object oriented programming), which Xerox failed to profit from.

Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research

#54

Post by seeekr »

airesQ wrote: post #51
j1vms wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And all of these, in terms of quality of research output, pale by about an order of magnitude in comparison to Bell Labs for much of its existence (particularly in the era ~1940 to mid 1980s). They were the R&D benchmark for most improvements to IBM Research from the 1960s onward. Additionally IBM sought out its alumni and populated their ranks with notable management and research minds from the Bell Labs stable.

Not sure if anything can be considered successful when compared with Bell Labs. It is a very high bar to meet (given they mostly invented transistors, information theory, unix and c). The modern world is to great extent a byproduct of the experiment that was Bell Labs. Some laugh, and say that it was experiment that has gone awry.

As someone who doesn't know a whole lot about Bell Labs, its history, how it worked, etc: Why and how did it produce so much great research output? What was different or special about Bell Labs? Answers as well as pointers to other material appreciated!

Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research

#55

Post by j1vms »

Cyph0n wrote: post #48
j1vms wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And all of these, in terms of quality of research output, pale by about an order of magnitude in comparison to Bell Labs for much of its existence (particularly in the era ~1940 to mid 1980s). They were the R&D benchmark for most improvements to IBM Research from the 1960s onward. Additionally IBM sought out its alumni and populated their ranks with notable management and research minds from the Bell Labs stable.

You could probably bundle all of the achievements of the aforementioned companies into a single decade of research output from Bell Labs. It's not a fair comparison at all.

> It's not a fair comparison at all.

Especially since Bell Labs sat within a state-sponsored (enforced?) monopoly until the mid-80s, so there was no direct concern about revenue. Which is not to belittle them in the least as they made outstanding organizational decisions, and had the most enviable pure research->development->production pipeline to this day.

In terms of the R&D USA, the closest comparison is IBM (which also enjoyed a monopoly for some of its existence). MS's monopoly, with the benefit of hindsight, was feeble in comparison even to IBM's -- though they, like IBM, are absolutely one of the greats and have redeemed themselves particularly in the past few years.

Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research

#56

Post by leereeves »

hota_mazi wrote: post #40

> Researchers say among the reasons Apple has failed to keep pace is its unwillingness to allow its AI engineers to publish scientific papers, stymieing its ability to feed off wider advances in the field. I don't follow. How would preventing employees from writing papers would stop them from reading papers?

I think they mean that Apple isn't offering researchers the incentives they desire, and may have trouble recruiting them.

Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research

#57

Post by agumonkey »

Cyph0n wrote: post #10
amelius wrote: post #4

Of course! What researcher would want to work for a company that prohibits scientific publications? I've always been amazed by their attitude. Look at Microsoft Research, and their enormous scientific output over the years. IBM and Google look bleak by comparison, and Apple is not even on the chart.

If you consider the number of papers published over the lifetime of IBM, and the fact that IBM Research does work in all levels of computing (materials science -> software), Microsoft's research output looks minuscule in comparison. But if you're considering only CS research, then you might be right. Here is a nice snapshot of the major contributions that came out of IBM Research over the past 60 years: http://www.re…

Beware of the sheer count, IBM is quite trigger happy on Patent submission. There can be lots of "parking" papers for low complexity or novelty stuff.

Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research

#58

Post by Ar-Curunir »

mtgx wrote: post #29

My hope is that Apple will continue research on privacy-protecting and privacy-enhancing machine learning, because out of all the big tech companies using machine learning, they may just be the only ones to do that. Some random research for privacy technologies may come out of Google, too, but they are much less likely to actually use them at scale, especially if they conflict with ad revenue.

MSR researchers essentially invented differential privacy, so...

Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research

#59

Post by grzm »

seeekr wrote: post #54
airesQ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if anything can be considered successful when compared with Bell Labs. It is a very high bar to meet (given they mostly invented transistors, information theory, unix and c). The modern world is to great extent a byproduct of the experiment that was Bell Labs. Some laugh, and say that it was experiment that has gone awry.

As someone who doesn't know a whole lot about Bell Labs, its history, how it worked, etc: Why and how did it produce so much great research output? What was different or special about Bell Labs? Answers as well as pointers to other material appreciated!

"The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation" by Jon Gertner is a fantastic book on this subject. I highly recommend it.

Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research

#60

Post by cmarschner »

airesQ wrote: post #51
j1vms wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And all of these, in terms of quality of research output, pale by about an order of magnitude in comparison to Bell Labs for much of its existence (particularly in the era ~1940 to mid 1980s). They were the R&D benchmark for most improvements to IBM Research from the 1960s onward. Additionally IBM sought out its alumni and populated their ranks with notable management and research minds from the Bell Labs stable.

Not sure if anything can be considered successful when compared with Bell Labs. It is a very high bar to meet (given they mostly invented transistors, information theory, unix and c). The modern world is to great extent a byproduct of the experiment that was Bell Labs. Some laugh, and say that it was experiment that has gone awry.

Bell Labs was special in that (a) they were building the largest system known to mankind at the time (an effort only rivaled by Manhattan snd Apollo projects) where they (b) couldn't use standard components but had to invent every piece by themselves, from the cables to amplifiers to satellites and lasers. Furthermore they were (c) very special in that they helped the government on certain projects like Manhattan, got a decades-long minopoly in return, and had to make their patent portfolio publicly available. In other words they were a semi-public organization with a very well-defined goal, that of building and optimizing the telephony system. Only when it became clear that a monopoly was no longer needed due to advances in technology did Bell lose its privileges, and with it Bell Labs started to wither. It does seem to be a pattern that companies that have created monopolies tend to use their excess money to start showing behaviors of a public service. Namely the research departments of Xerox, IBM, Microsoft, Google and now facebook all come from current or former (quasi-)monopolies.
Post reply on HN