How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple • Hacker News Board

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#101

Post by Chronic9q » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 1:09 AM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #34

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 g…

> Just like Apple there are plenty of companies hard at work on various AI initiatives who are also not going to said events.

So what are these companies doing? Linear regression in excel? I don't see any of them beating Go players or building self-driving cars.

> Does anyone really care Apple doesn't give away free time / knowledge to people?

End users, no. Engineers and researchers, yes. Who builds the products the end users love? Engineers and researchers.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#102

Post by Chronic9q » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 1:09 AM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #34

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 g…

> Just like Apple there are plenty of companies hard at work on various AI initiatives who are also not going to said events.

So what are these companies doing? Linear regression in excel? I don't see any of them beating Go players or building self-driving cars.

> Does anyone really care Apple doesn't give away free time / knowledge to people?

End users, no. Engineers and researchers, yes. Who builds the products the end users love? Engineers and researchers.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#103

Post by Chronic9q » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 1:12 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #88

sangnoir wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The field might lose out (but there are always free riders) but does Apple? Yes - those in the field who prefer to publish will not be willing to join Apple. How much of an opportunity cost this is to Apple remains an open question.

In the article, Apple spun that as an advantage. > “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. And I think they may be right. Researchers often aren't the best product creators.

> Researchers often aren't the best product creators.

You NEED researchers to build a robust autonomous vehicle or speech recognition system. Hell, you know how many electrical and materials scientists they have working on the iPhone?

Physical products actually requires science and research. Designing a responsive landing page does not.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#104

Post by throwanem » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 1:18 AM UTC

soperj wrote: post #82

throwanem wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You blame Safari for not being Chrome? I mean, OK, I guess, but there are a lot of browsers that aren't Chrome. Why single out Safari for vitriol? (And I'm not even going to touch the frankly invidious IE comparison.)

Chrome and Firefox and Opera all keep up. Safari is worse than IE/Edge at this point in terms of implementing standards. It's the absolute worst because it's not even available for anything but Apple products now so it's a pain in the ass to test.

IE is dead. Edge is embryonic. I can't speak for Opera. I use Firefox every day, both as my personal browser and as my primary development target, with validation in other browsers performed via automated and manual testing. And, if Chrome is your standard, Firefox cannot honestly be said to "keep up". It's consistently a few versions behind, at least, in supporting major innovations which reliably appear first in Chrome.

I grant testing is an issue if you don't own Apple hardware, although there are free and inexpensive remote testing services which cover that need well, and I'm certainly not about to say that Safari doesn't pose any unique difficulties to the web developer. But so does every other browser.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#105

Post by wavefunction » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 1:27 AM UTC

jomamaxx wrote: post #73

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…

"real question is why they avoid the research community so strongly." I think it's within their DNA. They are a very secretive company for a lot of historical reasons. Company culture is what companies are ... they are the social rules built into the organization that are very difficult to change once established. Apple is within their moral right to do what they are doing. There are different approaches taken by oth…

>>They are a very secretive company for a lot of historical reasons.

It's true, they saw what happened to Xerox PARC's ground-breaking UI work...

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#106

Post by monkbent » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 1:39 AM UTC

IBM wrote: post #6

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…

What makes you think this is self-congratulation? This is a response to Marco Arment, Ben Thompson, and other pundits (largely spurred by the PR efforts of Google and to a lesser extent Facebook and Microsoft) who claim that Apple is "behind" in this field or that it somehow poses an existential threat to Apple. This is Apple saying "uh no". They'd be perfectly fine with not talking about it as they've done until now…

"This is a response to Marco Arment, Ben Thompson, and other pundits (largely spurred by the PR efforts of Google and to a lesser extent Facebook and Microsoft)"

It may not be self-congratulation, but this sentence is definitely unsubstantiated slander.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#107

Post by johncolanduoni » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 1:47 AM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #68

atonse wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure you actually read the article. It explicitly talks about how they've accomplished a lot of this without violating their users' privacy. And that the fact that they deny AI researchers big hoards of data, hurts their reputation in the AI community, because most AI researchers want mountains of data.

> It explicitly talks about how they've accomplished a lot of this without violating their users' privacy. My question are: A. who is violating user's privacy, B. How is Apple any different[1] from them, besides proclaiming they aren't violating privacy? 1. Some data is collected from the device and sent to a server for processing. Until Apple does something truly radical (like 100% encrypted information that is proc…

They're certainly not the only ones in this space, but they've been talking about differential privacy recently[1]. So there are possibilities between "everything is on our server" and "everything is on your device".

[1]: http://www.recode.net/2016/6/24/11967188/apple-data-collecti...

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#108

Post by nemothekid » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 1:50 AM UTC

Chronic9q wrote: post #101

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 g…

> Just like Apple there are plenty of companies hard at work on various AI initiatives who are also not going to said events. So what are these companies doing? Linear regression in excel? I don't see any of them beating Go players or building self-driving cars. > Does anyone really care Apple doesn't give away free time / knowledge to people? End users, no. Engineers and researchers, yes. Who builds the products the…

>I don't see any of them beating Go players or building self-driving cars.

Because they aren't telling the world. On a lesser scale, CMU was building self driving cars for years before Google decided to step up the PR and tell everyone self driving cars were possible.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#109

Post by m_mueller » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 1:59 AM UTC

tahoeskibum wrote: post #72

Nice article, but in my perception, Apple is way behind in AI vs. Google on mobile. Siri's current speech recognition is still far behind Google on my iPhone. Half of the time it Siri doesn't recognize something but Google recognizes it right way. Apple Maps continues to lag in the following features: biking and public transit and even things like which lane to take on a big interchange. As a result I end up using Go…

Never mind biking. For example in Switzerland Apple Maps doesn't even seem to take traffic information into account when it gives you ETAs. It shows heavy traffic as red spots, but it doesn't know the delay. Google meanwhile gets all of this perfectly.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#110

Post by BinaryIdiot » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 3:11 AM UTC

Chronic9q wrote: post #101

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 g…

> Just like Apple there are plenty of companies hard at work on various AI initiatives who are also not going to said events. So what are these companies doing? Linear regression in excel? I don't see any of them beating Go players or building self-driving cars. > Does anyone really care Apple doesn't give away free time / knowledge to people? End users, no. Engineers and researchers, yes. Who builds the products the…

> So what are these companies doing?

Uh, well, what are the use cases for AI / ML? That's what they're doing. They're using it all over the place. It's almost unheard of to find a small tech company not at least exploring ML to see if they can use it to gain an edge.

Why do they have to detail what they're doing so they're not automatically bucketed into the "doing linear regression in excel" camp?

> Engineers and researchers, yes. Who builds the products the end users love? Engineers and researchers.

Funny, these same practices at Apple for the past 40 years haven't turned engineers and researchers off from working there. It isn't turning them off now, either. Apple has never had to give away time and knowledge for free to attract talent. In fact most companies don't need to do this. Relatively speaking only a few companies do this.

Seems a bit entitled, in my opinion, to think technology companies have to give away their time and expertise. They're going to attract talent if they're interesting / create interesting things as a company.