3 ms·

This article lacks any real evidence they're ahead though, which is essentially equivalent to "behind" if (a) the majority of the advances are democratized by y

by Smerity 10y ago

This article lacks any real evidence they're ahead though, which is essentially equivalent to "behind" if (a) the majority of the advances are democratized by your competitors and (b) you lack the ability to attract top tier talent. If AI/ML is an existential threat to Apple, then this article doesn't provide any comfort beyond being a PR puff piece. The talent war for AI/ML is truly insane. Given that the top researchers and engineers can get similar benefits at other entities, whilst also continuing to publish code and research out in the open, Apple aren't that attractive. They may try compensating for this via acquisitions but that still leaves a fundamental issue when it comes to long term retention. As I mentioned before, this is a fairly universal trait. Many come from academia or have open source affiliations / rely on open source tools for their skill set, so the idea of putting their ideas out there to be used, ...

IBM 10y ago
If what AI/ML talent wants is to do research and draw a Silicon Valley salary then you're right, they're not going to work at Apple. Some people don't want to work at Apple because they can't describe their job on their LinkedIn pages or tell their friends and family about what they do. Others don't like that they have to buy their own meals at Caffe Macs. I don't think Apple worries about this too much. What they do worry about is finding people that fit Apple's culture and want to work on products used by hundreds of millions of people. In any case, being perceived or not to be at the top of the field and being able/unable to hire the best ML/AI talent isn't an existential threat. ML/AI isn't magic, it's a technology. If there's one thing that the tech industry should have learned from Steve Jobs, it's that you make good products by working backward to the technology. In that respect, what Federighi mentioned about not having a ML/AI division was reassuring.
- sangnoir 10y ago
  > If what AI/ML talent wants is to do research and draw a Silicon Valley salary then you're right, they're not going to work at Apple. Let me simplify that further: "If what AI/ML talent wants is to publish...then you're right, they're not going to work at Apple". Money may or may not be a factor, but Apples secrecy won't allow the talent to publish their research. Given that AI is highly driven by research right now (no "if" about it), what talent would want to work somewhere where they can't publish research papers?
  - eshvk 10y ago
    > Given that AI is highly driven by research right now (no "if" about it), what talent would want to work somewhere where they can't publish research papers? Ehh. I would question that doing research is necessarily highly correlated with wanting to publish papers all the time. A lot of the work during product development is a mix of AI, UX and engineering. The entire output might definitely fall in research but the individual components of it might require way more fleshing out to bring each to publishable quality. Considering that we don't particularly have the publish or perish doctrine of academia, we are not particularly forced to publish at the same rate as there.
  - fsloth 10y ago
    "what talent would want to work somewhere where they can't publish research papers?" There are lot of people out there who don't particularly merit the publish-or-perish ethos of academia and would rather publish only after they have something worthwhile to publish and not just footnotes to an established scheme. E.g. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/14/higgs-boson-publish-or-perish-science-culture https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/14/higgs-... and so on.
mturmon 10y ago
I agree with your implicit assumption -- that the talent and PR battle is motivating this article -- but disagree with your assertion that secrecy makes Apple unattractive to ML talent. You're weighting open publishing very heavily, but others may have different weighting functions. The ability to interact with device makers may be convincing to some, or maybe others like the Apple company and culture, or Apple's privacy stance. Criticizing the article as PR or boasting is true, but somewhat beside the point, because most of the players in this field have always -- for decades -- had a tendency to PR and boasting. Admittedly, proofs-of-concept like AlphaGo do provide substance behind the boasting, but they have a definite PR element too.

by Smerity 10y ago

IBM 10y ago

If what AI/ML talent wants is to do research and draw a Silicon Valley salary then you're right, they're not going to work at Apple. Some people don't want to work at Apple because they can't describe their job on their LinkedIn pages or tell their friends and family about what they do. Others don't like that they have to buy their own meals at Caffe Macs. I don't think Apple worries about this too much. What they do worry about is finding people that fit Apple's culture and want to work on products used by hundreds of millions of people. In any case, being perceived or not to be at the top of the field and being able/unable to hire the best ML/AI talent isn't an existential threat. ML/AI isn't magic, it's a technology. If there's one thing that the tech industry should have learned from Steve Jobs, it's that you make good products by working backward to the technology. In that respect, what Federighi mentioned about not having a ML/AI division was reassuring.

sangnoir 10y ago
> If what AI/ML talent wants is to do research and draw a Silicon Valley salary then you're right, they're not going to work at Apple. Let me simplify that further: "If what AI/ML talent wants is to publish...then you're right, they're not going to work at Apple". Money may or may not be a factor, but Apples secrecy won't allow the talent to publish their research. Given that AI is highly driven by research right now (no "if" about it), what talent would want to work somewhere where they can't publish research papers?
- eshvk 10y ago
  > Given that AI is highly driven by research right now (no "if" about it), what talent would want to work somewhere where they can't publish research papers? Ehh. I would question that doing research is necessarily highly correlated with wanting to publish papers all the time. A lot of the work during product development is a mix of AI, UX and engineering. The entire output might definitely fall in research but the individual components of it might require way more fleshing out to bring each to publishable quality. Considering that we don't particularly have the publish or perish doctrine of academia, we are not particularly forced to publish at the same rate as there.
- fsloth 10y ago
  "what talent would want to work somewhere where they can't publish research papers?" There are lot of people out there who don't particularly merit the publish-or-perish ethos of academia and would rather publish only after they have something worthwhile to publish and not just footnotes to an established scheme. E.g. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/14/higgs-boson-publish-or-perish-science-culture https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/14/higgs-... and so on.

mturmon 10y ago

I agree with your implicit assumption -- that the talent and PR battle is motivating this article -- but disagree with your assertion that secrecy makes Apple unattractive to ML talent. You're weighting open publishing very heavily, but others may have different weighting functions. The ability to interact with device makers may be convincing to some, or maybe others like the Apple company and culture, or Apple's privacy stance. Criticizing the article as PR or boasting is true, but somewhat beside the point, because most of the players in this field have always -- for decades -- had a tendency to PR and boasting. Admittedly, proofs-of-concept like AlphaGo do provide substance behind the boasting, but they have a definite PR element too.