4 ms·

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 A

by Smerity 10y ago

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 whether they're from industry or academia. Employees from competing companies will meet at a conference and actually discuss methods. Papers are released to disseminate new ideas and as a way of attracting top tier talent. Code is released as a way of pretraining students in the company's stack before they ever step through the company's doors. Papers are published on arXiv when the authors feel they're ready - entirely free to access - without waiting for a conference for their ideas to be spread. This entire push of camaraderie has accelerated the speed at which research and implementation have progressed for AI/ML. ... but Apple are not part of that. They publish little and more broadly don't have a good track record. On acquiring FoundationDB, they nixed it, with little respect to the existing customers. Fascinating pieces of technology lost. If they aren't using the exact thing internally, why not open source it? I fear the same is likely to happen to Turi, especially sad given the number of customers they had and the previous contributions that many of Turi's researchers made to the community via their published papers. Apple may change in the future - they may become part of the community - but a vague article of self congratulation isn't going to sway me either direction. "We have the biggest and baddest GPU farm cranking all the time" ... Really? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

IBM 10y ago
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 if they weren't trying to counter these media narratives. As to your point about Apple not engaging with the research community, how is this a surprise at all? Their M.O has been secrecy ever since Jobs returned to Apple.
- mathattack 10y ago
  Some companies engage academia, many others do not. I find it very surprising how willing companies like Microsoft and Google are to let their best and brightest invest in publishing. I get the long term benefit, but in most companies secrecy is the default.
  - throwaway287391 10y ago
    To me it's much more surprising that Apple and other companies refuse to allow publishing. Anyone in AI who wants to continue to be recognized in and remain friends with others in the field and advance their career should absolutely refuse to go anywhere like Apple, unless they plan to stay at that one company their entire life. It's amazing how frustrating it is trying to talk to Apple employees at conferences -- at this point I pretty much avoid it if possible.
    - Twisell 10y ago
      A friend of mine work in medical drugs research. Secrecy is definitely the norm in this field and they even prefer to keep formula in a safe than publish a patent, because they think patent system is not protective enough to get they R&D money back. Now that all come down to the same old paradox. The current patent system encourage patent troll and discourage real innovators to publish because they are too easily copied. One alternative is open source, but when huge R&D costs are involved it's maybe not the best idea. I think Apple is currently doing a great mix, they work on some project with OpenSource (WebKit, Swift) were community feedback is important... and they keep innovative R&D technics under secrecy to monetize them.
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  [voluntarily removed]
  - IBM 10y ago
    His blog post was the direct result of Google I/O.
Jerry2 10y ago
>the real question is why they avoid the research community so strongly. Along the same vein, does Apple even employ any 'brand-name' researchers? From what I've seen, all they do is take research invented somewhere else and just apply it. I think Alex Acero is the biggest recognizable researcher that Apple employs. So to answer your question, they don't publish and don't attend conferences because they simply don't have many researchers on board.
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
> 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 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 whether they're from industry or academia. You get this in every field but there are also a ton of players out there not going. Just like Apple there are plenty of companies hard at work on various AI initiatives who are also not going to said events. I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill here. Does anyone really care Apple doesn't give away free time / knowledge to people?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Chronic9q 10y ago
  > 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.
  - nemothekid 10y ago
    >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.
    - jeswin 10y ago
      There's a big difference between driving in a controlled environment or track versus driving on the street in numbers, where it can pose real danger to people. Google's self driving cars in one of the most advanced use of technology I've seen. It's borderline magic in our time. Edit: removed "give credit where it's due". You weren't withholding that, apologies.
jomamaxx 10y ago
"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 other companies so it's healthy to have that. If this were weapons systems or cancer cures, I might have a different opinion.
- wavefunction 10y ago
  >>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...
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    Every companies copy other companies innovations. Smartphones would not exist unless BlackBerry created the market for them. But they are secretive not for that reason - they are secretive because they want to announce and present things on their own terms. They don't want leakage pre-product.

by Smerity 10y ago

IBM 10y ago

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 if they weren't trying to counter these media narratives. As to your point about Apple not engaging with the research community, how is this a surprise at all? Their M.O has been secrecy ever since Jobs returned to Apple.

mathattack 10y ago
Some companies engage academia, many others do not. I find it very surprising how willing companies like Microsoft and Google are to let their best and brightest invest in publishing. I get the long term benefit, but in most companies secrecy is the default.
- throwaway287391 10y ago
  To me it's much more surprising that Apple and other companies refuse to allow publishing. Anyone in AI who wants to continue to be recognized in and remain friends with others in the field and advance their career should absolutely refuse to go anywhere like Apple, unless they plan to stay at that one company their entire life. It's amazing how frustrating it is trying to talk to Apple employees at conferences -- at this point I pretty much avoid it if possible.
  - Twisell 10y ago
    A friend of mine work in medical drugs research. Secrecy is definitely the norm in this field and they even prefer to keep formula in a safe than publish a patent, because they think patent system is not protective enough to get they R&D money back. Now that all come down to the same old paradox. The current patent system encourage patent troll and discourage real innovators to publish because they are too easily copied. One alternative is open source, but when huge R&D costs are involved it's maybe not the best idea. I think Apple is currently doing a great mix, they work on some project with OpenSource (WebKit, Swift) were community feedback is important... and they keep innovative R&D technics under secrecy to monetize them.
Analemma_ 10y ago
[voluntarily removed]
- IBM 10y ago
  His blog post was the direct result of Google I/O.

Jerry2 10y ago

>the real question is why they avoid the research community so strongly. Along the same vein, does Apple even employ any 'brand-name' researchers? From what I've seen, all they do is take research invented somewhere else and just apply it. I think Alex Acero is the biggest recognizable researcher that Apple employs. So to answer your question, they don't publish and don't attend conferences because they simply don't have many researchers on board.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

> 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 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 whether they're from industry or academia. You get this in every field but there are also a ton of players out there not going. Just like Apple there are plenty of companies hard at work on various AI initiatives who are also not going to said events. I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill here. Does anyone really care Apple doesn't give away free time / knowledge to people?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Chronic9q 10y ago
> 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.
- nemothekid 10y ago
  >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.
  - jeswin 10y ago
    There's a big difference between driving in a controlled environment or track versus driving on the street in numbers, where it can pose real danger to people. Google's self driving cars in one of the most advanced use of technology I've seen. It's borderline magic in our time. Edit: removed "give credit where it's due". You weren't withholding that, apologies.

jomamaxx 10y ago

"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 other companies so it's healthy to have that. If this were weapons systems or cancer cures, I might have a different opinion.

wavefunction 10y ago
>>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...
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  Every companies copy other companies innovations. Smartphones would not exist unless BlackBerry created the market for them. But they are secretive not for that reason - they are secretive because they want to announce and present things on their own terms. They don't want leakage pre-product.