Took a while! As somebody who made the transition from academia to industry this is a huge deal for me. I would not want to work for a company that does not allow scientific publications. Moreover, I think a closed policy would shun off a lot people I admire and would want to work with.
Apple to Start Publishing AI Research
71–80 of 121 posts
Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft is 23 years older than Google and it usually takes time for a corporation to create an R&D lab. Given Google's rich academic roots this happened faster there than usual. Google is doing a good job given that it's a relatively young company. I hope their research output continues to increase in quality and volume. If you go by publication count alone, I suspect that IBM Research is still near the top. They h…
Microsoft research was only formed in 1991, according to wiki.
I'd also assume Google hires MANY more PhD's than Microsoft did and does. Could be wrong though.
Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research
#73Of 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.
# of papers published is a poor metric (google's published like 40% as many papers, over a shorter period?) MSR has done cool work and important work, but google's publications have been often been major paradigm shifts. In a lot of ways they're currently way out ahead of everyone else.
Microsoft created Haskell. Google created Go.
Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research
#74Of 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.
# of papers published is a poor metric (google's published like 40% as many papers, over a shorter period?) MSR has done cool work and important work, but google's publications have been often been major paradigm shifts. In a lot of ways they're currently way out ahead of everyone else.
[deleted]
Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research
#75The free market wins.
All the AI/ML engineers were going to FB/Google/etc. (and on some rare occasions M$)
Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
And of course, Microsoft has been in business 41 years where as Google has been 18. I'm guessing publication rates between the two are comparable. I wouldn't be surprised if IBM were similar. All three are highly committed to research.
Regardless, comparing the number of papers is meaningless. A better metric is comparing how many significant advances resulted from research funded by the company. Using the second metric, the winner in all cases - without negotiation - would be AT&T Bell Labs.
Perhaps we could develop an algorithm that uses the number of citations from other papers to rank the importance of each paper, a "PageRank" if you will.
Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless, comparing the number of papers is meaningless. A better metric is comparing how many significant advances resulted from research funded by the company. Using the second metric, the winner in all cases - without negotiation - would be AT&T Bell Labs.
Perhaps we could develop an algorithm that uses the number of citations from other papers to rank the importance of each paper, a "PageRank" if you will.
There is something similar for ranking people. H-Index. Given the list of people in each lab it might be possible to quantify the output of a group using that.
Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research
#78Earlier 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.
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, go…
Peter Thiel wrote an article along these lines..
http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-l...
"A monopoly like Google is different. Since it doesn't have to worry about competing with anyone, it has wider latitude to care about its workers, its products and its impact on the wider world. Google's motto—"Don't be evil"—is in part a branding ploy, but it is also characteristic of a kind of business that is successful enough to take ethics seriously without jeopardizing its own existence. In business, money is either an important thing or it is everything. Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money; non-monopolists can't"
Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
# of papers published is a poor metric (google's published like 40% as many papers, over a shorter period?) MSR has done cool work and important work, but google's publications have been often been major paradigm shifts. In a lot of ways they're currently way out ahead of everyone else.
Microsoft created Haskell. Google created Go.
Microsoft didn't create Haskell, though they did ultimately hire many of the movers and shakers who did.
(I agree that Go is a horrific mediocrity in comparison.)
Re: Apple to Start Publishing AI Research
#80Earlier 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.
I once read a Microsoft research paper. I think its central premise had a fatal flaw: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/b... The author confused continuity of the DECISION FUNCTION with continuity of the OUTCOME CURVE. In other words, an algorithm such as "keep trying to make a decision until you notice that t > C, after which always pick the left one" will in fact NOT have a continuous outco…
Even the best scientists are not machines. It is naïve to think that the best papers are flawless. (I used to think so when starting grad school.) They is not.