5 ms·

At the risk of ad hominem, this is typical techcrunch reporting: >> "Though Apple is said to be enthusiastic about the project, their absence is still notable

by phodo 10y ago

At the risk of ad hominem, this is typical techcrunch reporting: >> "Though Apple is said to be enthusiastic about the project, their absence is still notable because the company has fallen behind in artificial intelligence when compared to its rivals — many of whom are part of this new group." How exactly is it that TC knows that Apple has indeed fallen behind? Are they privy to the Apple ML roadmap? Are they using lack of open source activity as a metric to make this claim? Is there an unidentified source who can objectively measure the ML progress across these organizations, and using this objective metric, conclude that Apple is behind? It's a claim without much substance, and paints Apple in a negative light. You could say that this is a marketing failure on the part of Apple, and you might be correct. For example, see the article floating a few weeks ago on Medium (I think) on how Apple was embedding ML in everything. In the days of price performance wars in CPUs (and GPUs), there were more or less objective (err, almost objective) benchmarks that people could point to. This is not the case with ML/DL. It would be great if we could say: "Across image classification, the precision / recall is X, vs. Facebook's Y. Clearly, Apple has more work todo in image classification. But in Machine Translation, Apple is ahead, with metrics A vs. B from Facebook.. What is happening with ML/DL/AI/whatever is that all companies are using the same bag of words to describe what they do, but the popular press is not discerning enough to make heads or tales out of what they report on, and they end up mis-educating the public. </soapbox> </rant>

vmarsy 10y ago
I think your comment is fair >> "Though Apple is said to be enthusiastic about the project, their absence is still notable because the company has fallen behind in artificial intelligence when compared to its rivals — many of whom are part of this new group." could easily be replaced by "Apple decided not to join the group because they're so advanced compared to its rivals. This group was actually created in an attempt to catch-up with Apple". Both of these extreme claims aren't really back up by substantial facts.
jdavis703 10y ago
Well are we talking about applied AI or theoretical AI? As a dumb user (and I use Apple products), I definitely get the feeling that Apple is behind in the game. Now do they have kick-ass R&D that isn't getting shipped to users? Perhaps, but that's not what customers and investors care about.
s3r3nity 10y ago
tl;dr = "citation needed" =) I also agree with the sentiment here on TC reporting.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
aub3bhat 10y ago
Honestly this comment reads like an emotional outburst, by someone who has zero clue about the domain. Its very well known fact in AI/ML community, that Apple has almost little or no talent nor do they have any major efforts at organizational level (E.g. FAIR at FB, MSR, Brain & Deep Mind at Google). >> But in Machine Translation, Apple is ahead. LOL where did you get this from? I am pretty sure that Google NTM which was put in production yesterday is the state of the art. Also there are metrics e.g. in the report released yesterday you can find BLEU scores on WMT 2014 tasks, and the clear conclusion is that Google is way ahead. Also when it comes to Imagenet or Coco challenges, I don't think Apple has competed in any let alone placing anywhere at top, while FB, MSR and Google all have had top models. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.08144v1.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.08144v1.pdf >> but the popular press is not discerning enough to make heads or tales out of what they report on, and they end up mis-educating the public. Sorry you are wrong, the sad reality (for Apple), is that they are truly 3-4 years behind FB, MSFT & Google.
- aleeds 10y ago
  "But in Machine Translation, Apple is ahead." was an example of a statement that could be made if metrics existed, he is not asserting that that is true.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - aub3bhat 10y ago
    I assumed that he was asserting it to be true, because as my updated comments shows, the metrics do exist. But Apple neither releases them nor does it discloses the architecture/technology (if any) used.
    - phodo 10y ago
      As others have mentioned, you are completely wrong in your assumptions. It is you who shows zero clue in reading comprehension and communication. I'm well aware of the benchmarks used by industry and academia. I've been working in the industry for many years, including multiple ML-based products used commercially and running in production serving a large number of customers. Machine translation was just an example, and there was no assertion that company A is better than B; I was in no way "asserting it to be true". I was merely providing an illustrative example to highlight the fact that * popular press * articles about ml, such as this one, are quick with subjective opinion, without providing in writing the necessary citation and metrics to back their claims. Furthermore, they do so at a generalized level, without going into specific subdomains. My initial post was intended as a constructive comment, so take it as such.
Ros2 10y ago
Apple can't figure out that I don't want to say 'ducking' after hundreds of times of dismissing it with their keyboard. Siri never delivered on what was promised--part of the reason the microphone in the new wireless earbuds is so laughable. Apple currently has no answer to Allo or chat bots in general. >For example, see the article floating a few weeks ago on Medium (I think) on how Apple was embedding ML in everything. Plans are easy to talk about. You seem to want to give Apple a lot of credit for things going on behind closed doors. As far as the consumer can see, they have fallen behind.
- konspence 10y ago
  They recently acquired an AI/ML startup called Turi - I think they see the need to remain competitive. http://www.geekwire.com/2016/exclusive-apple-acquires-turi-major-exit-seattle-based-machine-learning-ai-startup/ http://www.geekwire.com/2016/exclusive-apple-acquires-turi-m...
- Bud 10y ago
  Uh, you're just making this up. You have no idea whether the "microphone" (by the way, for those who are not fact-averse, it's dual beam-forming mics) in the new wireless earbuds is "laughable". They aren't even released yet. You've never tried them. You have no idea whatsoever. By the way, it's actually very easy to teach Apple's devices the word "fucking". You haven't figured it out yet, but that doesn't make it Apple's fault. Did you try Googling it yet or spending five seconds figuring it out yet? I can assure you, I'm quite able to use any profanity I want on Apple's devices; they learned about my inclination towards profanity years ago and have flawlessly handled it since.
  - Ros2 10y ago
    >They aren't even released yet. You've never tried them. You have no idea whatsoever. This is a funny assertion. I've used a microphone before, I've used headphones before, and I've used Siri before. Call me brazen but I believe I can imagine the advanced world that will exist post Apple wireless earbuds, dual beaming microphones and all. You seem really impassioned about for a product that you also haven't used and the media has generally laughed at and dismissed. You also didn't actually respond to my main point about them, that Siri never delivered on its value proposition. If it had, it might be considered a great product.
modeless 10y ago
> How exactly is it that TC knows that Apple has indeed fallen behind? TC is not alone in saying this. It's a very common sentiment in the machine learning community. So much so that Apple recently did a big PR piece in Backchannel just to try to refute it. https://backchannel.com/an-exclusive-look-at-how-ai-and-machine-learning-work-at-apple-8dbfb131932b https://backchannel.com/an-exclusive-look-at-how-ai-and-mach... > there were more or less objective (err, almost objective) benchmarks [...] This is not the case with ML/DL. You are completely wrong about this. Microsoft, Facebook, and Google have all participated in public, objective ML competitions such as ILSVRC. They also all publish academic papers with results on standard ML benchmarks, and often running code as well. They even publish their own benchmark datasets such as the widely used MS-COCO or today's YouTube-8M. Apple does none of this, and that's where the perception that they are behind comes from.
- huac 10y ago
  Maybe if TechCrunch speaks ill of Apple they will offer them a similar PR exclusive as a mea culpa
- phodo 10y ago
  To clarify, this was not in reference to the lack of metrics in the field, which exist, obviously. Nor was it in reference to the lack of metrics / citations in academic and scientific publications. This was in reference to a lack of specific citations/metric backing up a claim, from a popular publication targeting a mass audience does not necessarily have the subject matter expertise to fill in the data on their own. The information you provide comparing Apple's lack of benchmarking to others would have been useful to have in the article.
oxryly1 10y ago
Agreed. I stopped clicking on TC links long ago.
meeper16 10y ago
Historically, Apple is known to focus more on hardware than software. Hence, failures in maps, search and other aspects compared to Google.
Fricken 10y ago
There's nothing wrong with a little trash talk to provoke a cagey player into revealing their hand.

by phodo 10y ago

vmarsy 10y ago

I think your comment is fair >> "Though Apple is said to be enthusiastic about the project, their absence is still notable because the company has fallen behind in artificial intelligence when compared to its rivals — many of whom are part of this new group." could easily be replaced by "Apple decided not to join the group because they're so advanced compared to its rivals. This group was actually created in an attempt to catch-up with Apple". Both of these extreme claims aren't really back up by substantial facts.

jdavis703 10y ago

Well are we talking about applied AI or theoretical AI? As a dumb user (and I use Apple products), I definitely get the feeling that Apple is behind in the game. Now do they have kick-ass R&D that isn't getting shipped to users? Perhaps, but that's not what customers and investors care about.

s3r3nity 10y ago

tl;dr = "citation needed" =) I also agree with the sentiment here on TC reporting.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

aub3bhat 10y ago

Honestly this comment reads like an emotional outburst, by someone who has zero clue about the domain. Its very well known fact in AI/ML community, that Apple has almost little or no talent nor do they have any major efforts at organizational level (E.g. FAIR at FB, MSR, Brain & Deep Mind at Google). >> But in Machine Translation, Apple is ahead. LOL where did you get this from? I am pretty sure that Google NTM which was put in production yesterday is the state of the art. Also there are metrics e.g. in the report released yesterday you can find BLEU scores on WMT 2014 tasks, and the clear conclusion is that Google is way ahead. Also when it comes to Imagenet or Coco challenges, I don't think Apple has competed in any let alone placing anywhere at top, while FB, MSR and Google all have had top models. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.08144v1.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.08144v1.pdf >> but the popular press is not discerning enough to make heads or tales out of what they report on, and they end up mis-educating the public. Sorry you are wrong, the sad reality (for Apple), is that they are truly 3-4 years behind FB, MSFT & Google.

aleeds 10y ago
"But in Machine Translation, Apple is ahead." was an example of a statement that could be made if metrics existed, he is not asserting that that is true.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- aub3bhat 10y ago
  I assumed that he was asserting it to be true, because as my updated comments shows, the metrics do exist. But Apple neither releases them nor does it discloses the architecture/technology (if any) used.
  - phodo 10y ago
    As others have mentioned, you are completely wrong in your assumptions. It is you who shows zero clue in reading comprehension and communication. I'm well aware of the benchmarks used by industry and academia. I've been working in the industry for many years, including multiple ML-based products used commercially and running in production serving a large number of customers. Machine translation was just an example, and there was no assertion that company A is better than B; I was in no way "asserting it to be true". I was merely providing an illustrative example to highlight the fact that * popular press * articles about ml, such as this one, are quick with subjective opinion, without providing in writing the necessary citation and metrics to back their claims. Furthermore, they do so at a generalized level, without going into specific subdomains. My initial post was intended as a constructive comment, so take it as such.

Ros2 10y ago

Apple can't figure out that I don't want to say 'ducking' after hundreds of times of dismissing it with their keyboard. Siri never delivered on what was promised--part of the reason the microphone in the new wireless earbuds is so laughable. Apple currently has no answer to Allo or chat bots in general. >For example, see the article floating a few weeks ago on Medium (I think) on how Apple was embedding ML in everything. Plans are easy to talk about. You seem to want to give Apple a lot of credit for things going on behind closed doors. As far as the consumer can see, they have fallen behind.

konspence 10y ago
They recently acquired an AI/ML startup called Turi - I think they see the need to remain competitive. http://www.geekwire.com/2016/exclusive-apple-acquires-turi-major-exit-seattle-based-machine-learning-ai-startup/ http://www.geekwire.com/2016/exclusive-apple-acquires-turi-m...
Bud 10y ago
Uh, you're just making this up. You have no idea whether the "microphone" (by the way, for those who are not fact-averse, it's dual beam-forming mics) in the new wireless earbuds is "laughable". They aren't even released yet. You've never tried them. You have no idea whatsoever. By the way, it's actually very easy to teach Apple's devices the word "fucking". You haven't figured it out yet, but that doesn't make it Apple's fault. Did you try Googling it yet or spending five seconds figuring it out yet? I can assure you, I'm quite able to use any profanity I want on Apple's devices; they learned about my inclination towards profanity years ago and have flawlessly handled it since.
- Ros2 10y ago
  >They aren't even released yet. You've never tried them. You have no idea whatsoever. This is a funny assertion. I've used a microphone before, I've used headphones before, and I've used Siri before. Call me brazen but I believe I can imagine the advanced world that will exist post Apple wireless earbuds, dual beaming microphones and all. You seem really impassioned about for a product that you also haven't used and the media has generally laughed at and dismissed. You also didn't actually respond to my main point about them, that Siri never delivered on its value proposition. If it had, it might be considered a great product.

modeless 10y ago

> How exactly is it that TC knows that Apple has indeed fallen behind? TC is not alone in saying this. It's a very common sentiment in the machine learning community. So much so that Apple recently did a big PR piece in Backchannel just to try to refute it. https://backchannel.com/an-exclusive-look-at-how-ai-and-machine-learning-work-at-apple-8dbfb131932b https://backchannel.com/an-exclusive-look-at-how-ai-and-mach... > there were more or less objective (err, almost objective) benchmarks [...] This is not the case with ML/DL. You are completely wrong about this. Microsoft, Facebook, and Google have all participated in public, objective ML competitions such as ILSVRC. They also all publish academic papers with results on standard ML benchmarks, and often running code as well. They even publish their own benchmark datasets such as the widely used MS-COCO or today's YouTube-8M. Apple does none of this, and that's where the perception that they are behind comes from.

huac 10y ago
Maybe if TechCrunch speaks ill of Apple they will offer them a similar PR exclusive as a mea culpa
phodo 10y ago
To clarify, this was not in reference to the lack of metrics in the field, which exist, obviously. Nor was it in reference to the lack of metrics / citations in academic and scientific publications. This was in reference to a lack of specific citations/metric backing up a claim, from a popular publication targeting a mass audience does not necessarily have the subject matter expertise to fill in the data on their own. The information you provide comparing Apple's lack of benchmarking to others would have been useful to have in the article.

oxryly1 10y ago

Agreed. I stopped clicking on TC links long ago.

meeper16 10y ago

Historically, Apple is known to focus more on hardware than software. Hence, failures in maps, search and other aspects compared to Google.

Fricken 10y ago

There's nothing wrong with a little trash talk to provoke a cagey player into revealing their hand.