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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?

by c0g 10y ago

sangnoir 10y ago
> 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.
- leereeves 10y ago
  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.
  - Chronic9q 10y ago
    > 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.
    - leereeves 10y ago
      You need people who understand the science but whose primary focus is developing the product, not developing new theory. Edison and Ford vs Einstein and Faraday.
  - sangnoir 10y ago
    > “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,” This is a blatantly false dichotomy: there's nothing about publishing that precludes anyone from "working as a team to deliver a great product" > Researchers often aren't the best product creators. Tell that to Andrew Ng!
    - leereeves 10y ago
      Andrew Ng is a great example. He's made enormous contributions to human knowledge, but doesn't seem to be interested in the hard work of bringing a product to market. He even left Coursera to return to theory.
      - sangnoir 10y ago
        > He's made enormous contributions to human knowledge, but doesn't seem to be interested in the hard work of bringing a product to market. what exactly do you define as "the hard work of bringing a product to market"? To me, his work at Google certainly applies as bringing a product to market - the cat recognition deeplearning AI is a product.
        leereeves 10y ago
        To me, recognizing cats isn't a very useful product; that's just a demonstration of the technology. That led to an interesting paper and a lot of potential applications. By "the hard work of bringing a product to market", I meant the process of perfecting the product for actual applications.
        sangnoir 10y ago
        "recognizing cats" isn't a product at all - the AI behind it is the product, albeit barebones. I've heard folk on HN call such a thing an "MVP". > By "the hard work of bringing a product to market", I meant the process of perfecting the product for actual applications I'll have to disagree - "perfecting the product" is one of many roles required to bring a product to market. Other roles that are just as important are "dreamer/visionary", "practical starter/founder", "scale-up person". Sometimes one person can assume multiple roles, but rarely all roles, all of them are hard work.

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?

by c0g 10y ago

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?

sangnoir 10y ago

> 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.

leereeves 10y ago
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.
- Chronic9q 10y ago
  > 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.
  - leereeves 10y ago
    You need people who understand the science but whose primary focus is developing the product, not developing new theory. Edison and Ford vs Einstein and Faraday.
- sangnoir 10y ago
  > “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,” This is a blatantly false dichotomy: there's nothing about publishing that precludes anyone from "working as a team to deliver a great product" > Researchers often aren't the best product creators. Tell that to Andrew Ng!
  - leereeves 10y ago
    Andrew Ng is a great example. He's made enormous contributions to human knowledge, but doesn't seem to be interested in the hard work of bringing a product to market. He even left Coursera to return to theory.
    - sangnoir 10y ago
      > He's made enormous contributions to human knowledge, but doesn't seem to be interested in the hard work of bringing a product to market. what exactly do you define as "the hard work of bringing a product to market"? To me, his work at Google certainly applies as bringing a product to market - the cat recognition deeplearning AI is a product.
      - leereeves 10y ago
        To me, recognizing cats isn't a very useful product; that's just a demonstration of the technology. That led to an interesting paper and a lot of potential applications. By "the hard work of bringing a product to market", I meant the process of perfecting the product for actual applications.
        sangnoir 10y ago
        "recognizing cats" isn't a product at all - the AI behind it is the product, albeit barebones. I've heard folk on HN call such a thing an "MVP". > By "the hard work of bringing a product to market", I meant the process of perfecting the product for actual applications I'll have to disagree - "perfecting the product" is one of many roles required to bring a product to market. Other roles that are just as important are "dreamer/visionary", "practical starter/founder", "scale-up person". Sometimes one person can assume multiple roles, but rarely all roles, all of them are hard work.