Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#11

Post by jswny » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 6:32 PM UTC

LA_Banker wrote: post #2

This is interesting because while Apple's (comparative) dedication to privacy is endearing, it's a long-term existential threat. Google knows all about me and its assistant is, usually, great. Amazon has troves of data on what I buy, and I get to yell at Alexa to order more TP as soon as I see we're on the last roll. Apple knows much less about me and, while I'm still an Apple fan and am tied to iPhones/Macs thanks t…

Totally agree. Lots of commentators here on HN love to get angry about companies like Google collecting so much of their data, which is perfectly justified. However, you have to be willing to accept the consequences of privacy policy like that, which is the kind that Apple somehow still carries out stringently. The consequences are that any service or product that relies on data, ML, AI etc. aren't going to work well coming from a privacy conscious company like Apple, at least not nearly as well as the products from the companies like Google which don't value privacy as much. You can't complain about Google taking your data but also complain about Siri being a load of garbage, you can't have it both ways (and I see lots of people here trying to have it both ways).

It will be interesting to see if Apple holds its ground on privacy with the increase of AI/ML driven features and products. Coupled with Apple's closed culture which discourages open research (although they have been improving this), their concern for privacy could put them well behind other companies in this space. Depending on how you look at privacy vs. product, this could be a good thing or bad thing.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#12

Post by blazespin » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 6:33 PM UTC

wklauss wrote: post #8

> Six years later, the technology giant is struggling to find its voice in AI. I know that this is the most common approach to the situation but the article -as many other articles that have argued this before- provides no proof other than analysts speaking in broad strokes. I use Siri, Alexa and Assistant several times a week if not everyday and I'd hesitate a lot before saying that Siri is behind. Alexa is more res…

For me, Siri is horribly behind. I've gone to the point of installing Google on my iPhone and using it even though it's a struggle to activate it compared to Siri.

My big problem with Siri is that I have to time when I start talking. Also, her voice recognition is awful in noisy settings.

I have an iPhone 7

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#13

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 6:34 PM UTC

wklauss wrote: post #8

> Six years later, the technology giant is struggling to find its voice in AI. I know that this is the most common approach to the situation but the article -as many other articles that have argued this before- provides no proof other than analysts speaking in broad strokes. I use Siri, Alexa and Assistant several times a week if not everyday and I'd hesitate a lot before saying that Siri is behind. Alexa is more res…

[deleted]

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#14

Post by dgfgfdagasdfgfa » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

wklauss wrote: post #8

> Six years later, the technology giant is struggling to find its voice in AI. I know that this is the most common approach to the situation but the article -as many other articles that have argued this before- provides no proof other than analysts speaking in broad strokes. I use Siri, Alexa and Assistant several times a week if not everyday and I'd hesitate a lot before saying that Siri is behind. Alexa is more res…

Ultimately Siri is a chatbot, and the pushback against Siri is a pushback against expectations with chatbots. The movie "Her" is still utter fantasy to mankind.

It's a massive stretch to call voice recognition AI, and the recognition leap that happened recently is not so much better from what was built into the early OS X versions. Apple's largest AI project that I've seen so far has been music recommendations on apple music.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#15

Post by naravara » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 6:36 PM UTC

LA_Banker wrote: post #2

This is interesting because while Apple's (comparative) dedication to privacy is endearing, it's a long-term existential threat. Google knows all about me and its assistant is, usually, great. Amazon has troves of data on what I buy, and I get to yell at Alexa to order more TP as soon as I see we're on the last roll. Apple knows much less about me and, while I'm still an Apple fan and am tied to iPhones/Macs thanks t…

Aside from recommendation engines and targeted advertising, what does this deep knowledge of everywhere I've been and everything I've done do to dramatically improve the experience of using the AI?

I think it makes Apple slower at making their assistant good at parsing what you're saying and returning an answer, but that's a problem that benefits from crunching reams of data in general, not so much knowing everything about you personally.

For one thing, a virtual assistant that works even when I don't have an active internet connection seems like a perk in itself no? The Siri approach is closer to being there than the Alexa/Google approach.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#16

Post by naravara » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 6:37 PM UTC

kingbirdy wrote: post #7

spiderfarmer wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What can Google do in the cloud that Apple can't do on the device?

Apple can only look at you to learn - Google can look at you, and a million other people like you

I thought Apple figured out a way to create unique IDs and profiles that can't be traced back to the individual person? So they can still find people like you for analytical purposes to tune their models.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#17

Post by paul9290 » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 6:37 PM UTC

wklauss wrote: post #8

> Six years later, the technology giant is struggling to find its voice in AI. I know that this is the most common approach to the situation but the article -as many other articles that have argued this before- provides no proof other than analysts speaking in broad strokes. I use Siri, Alexa and Assistant several times a week if not everyday and I'd hesitate a lot before saying that Siri is behind. Alexa is more res…

I have used Siri faithfully from 2011 til about the start of this year where I bought a google home.

Siri is flat out dumb and frustrating to use comparatively in terms of only understanding 85 percent of my queries vs. Google Home understanding 97 percent.

It seems to me Apple has not taken all their hordes of cash and used it to up the AI game. Looks like they are solely focused on the present while competitors are building the future in which they foolishly try to catch up with.

Like last weeks WWDC they debuted the AR kit but did not bother to create an amazing/innovate AR app to showcase and get the masses excited for AR and their possible upcoming AR gear.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#18

Post by Osmium » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 6:38 PM UTC

On a technical point, I was impressed by their CoreML model format. The specification is open, optimized for maximum transferability, it can convert models from Keras (with TensorFlow), scikit-learn and others, and their Python model converter is also open source: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/coremltools

Once you have your model as a CoreML file, it is stupidly simple to incorporate it into an app (the live demo with the flower model was very impressive), and Xcode will convert it to a machine-optimized version.

I was skeptical when I saw the announcement, but honestly it seems like a game changer -- to be able to drag-and-drop models that other people have trained into an app and use them with virtually zero boilerplate is just great.

Video here: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/703/

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#19

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 6:40 PM UTC

dr1337 wrote: post #9

spiderfarmer wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What can Google do in the cloud that Apple can't do on the device?

The simplest example would be speech recognition. With the exception of Keyword Spotting Systems like Hey Siri or OK Google, it's currently practically impossible to implement larger vocabulary speech recognition on device.

I'm pretty sure larger vocabulary local speech recognition on devices with less computing power than modern smartphones has existed (products for continuous speech recognition on PC go back to at least Dragon Naturally Speaking in 1997.)

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#20

Post by __jal » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 6:40 PM UTC

macinjosh wrote: post #3

I am an Apple fanboy but I am also a privacy fanboy. As AI, IoT, and consumer tracking continue to invade our daily lives I think Apple will continue to do quite well if they maintain there pro-privacy heading. Privacy is a feature, it's something people want, and unfortunately its becoming a luxury. That is something that attracts Apple's customers.

Can't claim to be a fanboy, but I am a longtime user[1], and this is the primary reason I stick to them for my phone. I frankly can't imagine using Android the way I use my Iphone - the privacy invasions considered acceptable are well in to the "no go" range for me, before even getting to the malware that pass for "free apps". If I were somehow forced to use Android, I'm pretty sure I'd treat it as an adversarial device, mostly like a feature-phone.

Trust is vital in devices like this.

[1] I'm becoming less of a fan, as MacOS becomes "cloud aware" and less of a Unix workstation.