Apple has been hiring AI people for a while, and there is a possibility that the openness of the rest of the world (academia, open source, other big companies w

Apple has been hiring AI people for a while, and there is a possibility that the openness of the rest of the world (academia, open source, other big companies working with academics and open sourcers) will diffuse AI discoveries fast enough for Apple to make almost as much use of them as Google & Facebook. Of course, that still leaves the question of access to data, and the best of today's AI algorithms get their power from data more than clever logic. Google and Facebook have a huge lead in customer data, but how much data is enough? Presumably it depends on the product, and for some products (say, image processing magic in a smart camera), Apple might be able to come up with all the data they need.