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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

#81

Post by cromwellian »

I realize this is going to get voted down, but piece reads like a Trumpism "we have great AI, trust me, you would not believe, if you could see what we're doing".

I don't think you get to claim PR credit for advances in ML unless you publish. In general, for R&D, IMHO, you need to publish. There's product R&D, and there's fundamental R&D. If you make an advancement in something fundamental, but that helps your product, then publish it. If it is specific to your product only and can't be transferred elsewhere, then maybe it's ok to keep it secret.

Apple and Google's competitive advantage now arises from scale and path dependency. I think they need to let go of this idea that somehow they derive a competitive advantage by keeping these things secret. The Open AI community is going to advance at an accelerated rate regardless and IMHO, it's better to be part of it than to be seen as a kind of parasite that consumes public R&D, but doesn't give back improvements.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#82

Post by soperj »

throwanem wrote: post #79
soperj wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's taken me way out of the way, and through a toll bridge when that was not even close to the best way to go. Safari is bad because it's behind the times, and doesn't keep up with standards. Makes it really annoying to have to wait to use certain features because IE and Safari can't keep up.

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.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#83

Post by mwfunk »

oblio wrote: post #45
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #36

Why should Apple researchers contribute back to the AI community on their shareholders' dime? What makes AI special as opposed to any other field of computer science?

The long term goal is loftier than almost all others except for extending human life and populating other star systems.

That's an opinion. I don't think you could get a random group of 3 AI researchers to agree on what the long term goal is, or if there even is a long term goal as opposed to this simply being a very buzzword- and marketing-friendly area of research at the moment.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#84

Post by wodenokoto »

cromwellian wrote: post #81

I realize this is going to get voted down, but piece reads like a Trumpism "we have great AI, trust me, you would not believe, if you could see what we're doing". I don't think you get to claim PR credit for advances in ML unless you publish. In general, for R&D, IMHO, you need to publish. There's product R&D, and there's fundamental R&D. If you make an advancement in something fundamental, but that helps your produc…

> If it is specific to your product only and can't be transferred elsewhere, then maybe it's ok to keep it secret.

wouldn't it be the other way around? if the competitors can benefit from your knowledge, you'd want to keep it secret.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#85

Post by posterboy »

leereeves wrote: post #23
posterboy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the top level comment said, you are only adding noise.

I added a question. My impression is that Apple invested vastly more in the closed parts of OS X than the open parts.

a rhetorical question, i thought

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#86

Post by suyash »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #32
CogDisco wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

+1 Apple doesn't have a great relationship with open source community and that should not discredit them of innovating and trying the use AI, ML, NN in the products. I think even by being closed source, they still are pushing the envelope by inspiring us and their competetion.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#87

Post by suyash »

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…

Please get over it already. Steve jobs was just one man in the company of thousands, sure he was their leader but someone else will step up for him and I'm sure the company has many brilliant minds within who are still trying to innovate. Let's give Apple some slack and stop crying about Steve Jobs.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#88

Post by leereeves »

sangnoir wrote: post #71
c0g wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple can free ride on other people publishing and synthesise in house. The field might lose out (but there are always free riders) but does Apple?

> 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.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#89

Post by coldtea »

leereeves wrote: post #19
coldtea wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple built a proprietary product using open source technology You say it as its somehow contradictory. Open Source licences allow (LGPL etc), and some even welcome (BSD, MIT, Apache) creating proprietary software based on open source technologies. Besides, Apple also did extend open source technologies (as open source) a hell of a lot. Webkit past Apple is 100x bigger/fancier/better than the puny KHTML it started…

Apple's core "product" is the user experience. Darwin is open source, Carbon and Cocoa are not. I think that philosophy will continue as they use ML tools. They might share the ML equivalent of plumbing like Webkit/LLVM/Swift, but probably not improvements to the user experience like Siri's brain.

>Apple's core "product" is the user experience. Darwin is open source, Carbon and Cocoa are not.

So? Why should they open source and commoditize their core product?

Besides, I don't know any company that did it and got much out of it, except for some gratitude from OSS fans.

Re: How AI and Machine Learning Work at Apple

#90

Post by soared »

I've never had a single one these happen to me. Has anyone actually seen these behaviors out in the wild? Is it because I use gmail, chrome, google maps, and shut off most of the siri/recommended apps/etc functions in favor of serious battery life gains?

>You see it when the phone identifies a caller who isn’t in your contact list (but did email you recently). Or when you swipe on your screen to get a shortlist of the apps that you are most likely to open next. Or when you get a reminder of an appointment that you never got around to putting into your calendar. Or when a map location pops up for the hotel you’ve reserved, before you type it in. Or when the phone points you to where you parked your car, even though you never asked it to

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