
Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse - ghosh
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/06/05/why-apple-is-struggling-to-become-an-artificial-intelligence-powerhouse/?utm_term=.7607d61ec928
======
Osmium
On a technical point, I was impressed by their CoreML model format. The
specification is open, optimized for maximum transferability, it can convert
models from Keras (with TensorFlow), scikit-learn and others, and their Python
model converter is also open source:
[https://pypi.python.org/pypi/coremltools](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/coremltools)

Once you have your model as a CoreML file, it is stupidly simple to
incorporate it into an app (the live demo with the flower model was very
impressive), and Xcode will convert it to a machine-optimized version.

I was skeptical when I saw the announcement, but honestly it seems like a game
changer -- to be able to drag-and-drop models that other people have trained
into an app and use them with virtually zero boilerplate is just great.

Video here:
[https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/703/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/703/)

~~~
shostack
Apparently you can only view that video in Safari or the wwdc app. That's
awful.

~~~
agrahul
I believe it's a HLS video. If you're on Windows, Edge has support for HLS.
Otherwise, you'll have to resort to using a media player.

~~~
shostack
I'm in Firefox on Android.

------
macinjosh
I am an Apple fanboy but I am also a privacy fanboy. As AI, IoT, and consumer
tracking continue to invade our daily lives I think Apple will continue to do
quite well if they maintain there pro-privacy heading. Privacy is a feature,
it's something people want, and unfortunately its becoming a luxury. That is
something that attracts Apple's customers.

~~~
pwython
I'm one of the few in the "tech world" that isn't so much pro-privacy. Google
can read my email, Apple can track my movements, my Amazon Echo can even
listen in when it wants. The end result is a huge benefit to me. How is any AI
supposed to know what I want, if I try to be an anonymous user? I prefer
targeted ads. I prefer submitting my information to "robots" in the hopes that
my user experience is tailored to what I want. I see all of these articles on
HN on how to break free from Google or some other eco-system because they're
"evil." I dunno, I guess I don't have a CIA-level job that most of these
commenters have where they need to be off the grid.

"Alexa, play me that song I like. And while you're at it, order me a case of
my favorite beer. Thanks."

~~~
old-gregg
You are making two assumptions that aren't necessarily true. First, you're
assuming that you have control over what kind of information is being
collected and shared, and you're assuming it's always good for you.

Here's a fairly innocent scenario: if Amazon Echo can learn everything about
you, they may discover that you're crazy about Paris and you have good income.
Then they can sell this info to every travel website who'll put you into a
pricing bucket which would guarantee that you'll overpay for your next trip.

But generally speaking, we take advantage of information asymmetry all the
time: buying real estate, getting a new job, planning a vacation, etc.
Sometimes you have the leverage, sometimes you don't. With massive information
gathering by a handful of big players you'll most likely end up on the losing
side in the future, especially when dealing with businesses/governments who
can afford to buy a profile on you before engaging. Imagine if your religious
beliefs and either you voted for Trump were available to anyone via an API
call which takes your face image as the input and costs $0.02 to make.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
You say "overpay" but if the user pays for it then that would have been an
efficient price - making the entire transaction beneficial.

Economically it would be the market clearing price so would be beneficial to
the market generally. Sounds like a great thing.

~~~
old-gregg
Actually, no. Such price isn't "efficient" because of how efficient markets
are defined [1]: _"...prices fully reflect all available information."_ But in
this case one of the market participants (you) are not aware that others are
getting a better deal.

In fact, this would lead to widespread pricing discrimination [2] based on
what they learned (or bought) about you. Imagine seeing 20% markup on
virtually everything available to you online, because every retailer can see
your higher-than-average income before their page loads in your browser.

Personalized content (which everyone seems to love) is just an inch away from
personalized pricing.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-
market_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination)

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Yes, note the all _available_ information.

It's not perfectly efficient because there isn't perfect information, however
it's more efficient than it otherwise would be.

More information in the system = greater efficiency.

~~~
freyir
> _More information in the system = greater efficiency._

More information _does not_ always increase market efficiency. In fact, it can
have just the opposite effect when there is information asymmetry.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry)

[http://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Market_failures/Information...](http://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Market_failures/Information_failure.html)

~~~
AndrewKemendo
For sure, but only in the short term. History shows that there is a push and
pull here and that on aggregate more information is being input to the market
from all sides and available for price discrimination. Inefficiencies are
great for enterprises to attempt to capture, and by doing so exposing the
inefficiency.

------
wklauss
> Six years later, the technology giant is struggling to find its voice in AI.

I know that this is the most common approach to the situation but the article
-as many other articles that have argued this before- provides no proof other
than analysts speaking in broad strokes.

I use Siri, Alexa and Assistant several times a week if not everyday and I'd
hesitate a lot before saying that Siri is behind. Alexa is more responsive but
it's domain is also more narrow. Siri does a pretty good job when I dictate a
message or want to set a timer. It's limited, sure, but so are the other
assistants I use. I might be the odd case, but speech recognition of Siri vs
Assitant is pretty comparable in my experience.

Moving onto services. Google Photos is outstanding, yes. But I fail to see any
other example that proves the big advantage other players have over Apple in
the ML or AI field.

Am I missing something? I feel like a lot of these articles argue their view
from the experience they got from Siri 5 years ago.

~~~
paul9290
I have used Siri faithfully from 2011 til about the start of this year where I
bought a google home.

Siri is flat out dumb and frustrating to use comparatively in terms of only
understanding 85 percent of my queries vs. Google Home understanding 97
percent.

It seems to me Apple has not taken all their hordes of cash and used it to up
the AI game. Looks like they are solely focused on the present while
competitors are building the future in which they foolishly try to catch up
with.

Like last weeks WWDC they debuted the AR kit but did not bother to create an
amazing/innovate AR app to showcase and get the masses excited for AR and
their possible upcoming AR gear.

~~~
abritinthebay
I feel this fundamentally misunderstands how each of their AI's work.

You're describing an interface problem. Google's AI is _extremely_ good at
recognizing speech in comparison to Siri but that's a wholly different thing
to deep understanding.

Siri is a more advanced AI in many ways due to it's understanding of intents.
Google's is much more command based (under the hood). However Apple's speech
recognition is letting it down here. Intents are a much more sophisticated way
to interact with an AI than Google's command based structure but they are
correspondingly more complex to integrate and you realistically need to infer
things more from the user (which Apple needs to get better at).

I don't disagree that Apple needs to step up their game with how people
interact with Siri, but it's a perceptual issue with the _interface_ not with
the underlying AI.

(source - have discussed these exact issues with one of the founders of
Nuance).

~~~
wstrange
This runs contrary to the experience of most people.

See [http://www.businessinsider.com/siri-vs-google-assistant-
cort...](http://www.businessinsider.com/siri-vs-google-assistant-cortana-
alexa-knowledge-study-chart-2017-6)

Siri is dead last. Surprisingly, Cortana did quite well (I didn't realize
Microsoft was catching up in this space).

Those responses require a lot more than just voice recognition - they require
an understanding of context and "intent".

~~~
eridius
That study isn't very useful.

> _A recent study […] asked the major voice assistants 5,000 general knowledge
> questions_

General knowledge questions is just one of the many things you can use voice
assistants for. It's well known that Siri is the worst at general knowledge
questions, but that doesn't mean Siri is the worst digital assistant.

------
starchild3001
This article ticks me off. Apple announced some really good features on Monday
(CoreML and a bunch of ML driven features). Having this kind of article after
WWDC is unfair. As a consumer, I applaud Apple's approach. The so-called AI as
pursued by Google & other tech companies isn't AI at all. True AI won't need
as much data. You do need data for Machine Learning (i.e. pattern matching).
That's what other tech firms are pursuing. Apple being a hardware, systems and
frameworks company is doing the right thing respecting my privacy. They leave
data mining and personalization to 3rd party apps. If and when true AI
happens, there's a good chance Apple will be leading that. (Why? True AI won't
happen overnight, and true AI won't require access to a billion customer's
emails or browsing history).

~~~
Mikushi
> The so-called AI as pursued by Google & other tech companies isn't AI at
> all. True AI won't need as much data.

Deepmind / AlphaGo, Watson, and other like them are about the best thing we
have nowadays when it comes to AI. Let's not even talk about True AI, which if
you take any of the definitions can only become reality with so much data
we're only brushing on it actually. Saying True AI won't need as much data is
failing to understand how much "data" it takes to make a human brain function,
and while that is a whole other can of worm, one thing is certain it's a shit
load accumulated over time.

> If and when true AI happens, there's a good chance Apple will be leading
> that.

Apple is not even in the same arena when it comes to AI. And they shouldn't
be, with the cash piles they have it's better for them to wait for somebody
else to make the breakthrough and pull a Siri, buy a company that does what
you want and integrate it how is needed for you product / consumers.

Also don't confuse AI/True AI with clever algorithm.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
I spent the last two days in IBMs Watson Innovation Centre, working with the
Watson Conversation APIs. To say I was not impressed is putting it mildly. Can
you name any examples where Watson is good?

------
rosstex
Me: Hey Siri, what cheese goes well with fruit?

Siri: Here's what I found on the web for "What cheese goes well with fruit..."

Me: Hey Google, what cheese goes well with fruit?

Google: "Edam"

~~~
eridius
I assume you're trying to say that Google's answer is better, right? Google's
certainly being more authoritative, but the answer to your question is
actually fairly subjective, there's more answers than just "Edam", so IMO
surfacing search results is better than just having Google pick one answer.

Google's also been known to produce completely incorrect "authoritative"
answers.

~~~
wvenable
If you are speaking to your device for this kind of question, the
authoritative answer is what you want. You expect me, after taking to my
device, to go over and pick it up and search through web results? If I wanted
to do that, I wouldn't have asked the question by voice in the first place!

~~~
stouset
I believe you have failed to understand the original point you are replying
to.

"Edam" might be authoritative, but it is not _correct_. The problem isn't
simply that the answer is fundamentally subjective, the bigger issue is that
there's not enough contextual information in the question to even arrive at an
answer that one could consider subjectively correct.

I replied elsewhere, but it's like answering the question "What wine would
pair well with dinner?" with "Zinfandel". Without having even a vague idea of
what's on the menu, you're just picking a wine at random. Maybe it's correct,
maybe it isn't. But being authoritative when there's not enough information to
actually speak with authority is not the right answer here.

~~~
wvenable
The agent should then ask for more information; not point me to a web search.
In most cases, the authoritative answer _is_ what I'm looking for and the
question less likely to be this subjective.

The thing is Siri won't give me an answer either way.

~~~
stouset
Nobody's arguing that sending you off to search results isn't particularly
useful. We're just pointing out that authoritatively answering a nuanced
question without enough context isn't any better, it's just _differently
wrong_ (and in some cases, strictly worse).

Whether or not Siri or Google Assistant correctly and authoritatively answers
more (or more relevant) questions is a completely different topic than what's
being discussed here.

------
orthoganol
Well yes, - they don't publish, they don't have a reputation (no teams like
FAIR, DeepMind, MetaMind, MSFT AI, etc.), they don't attract the top AI
talent, and anecdotally, they don't even even know how to hire for AI (had a
brilliant colleague working in AI turned away because he didn't know some
facets about the Python language when they hit him with Leetcode whiteboard
questions; IMO they aren't in a position with AI where they get to flex
programmer egos).

~~~
santaclaus
> had a brilliant colleague working in AI turned away because he didn't know
> some facets about the Python language when they hit him with Leetcode
> whiteboard questions

I mean, to be fair, isn't that every company? Google pulls the same sort of
nonsense.

~~~
gervase
My understanding is that this is not the case when you get up to the research
level, where they use altogether different signaling (citation count, impact
factor, etc) to disqualify applicants.

------
LA_Banker
This is interesting because while Apple's (comparative) dedication to privacy
is endearing, it's a long-term existential threat.

Google knows all about me and its assistant is, usually, great. Amazon has
troves of data on what I buy, and I get to yell at Alexa to order more TP as
soon as I see we're on the last roll.

Apple knows much less about me and, while I'm still an Apple fan and am tied
to iPhones/Macs thanks to iMessage, Siri stinks as a result.

If voice assistants based on machine learning (specifically, personalized
voice assistants) are the next big thing, Apple's privacy ethos will separate
it from its major tech competitors – either in a great way, or a very negative
way.

~~~
spiderfarmer
What can Google do in the cloud that Apple can't do on the device?

~~~
kingbirdy
Apple can only look at you to learn - Google can look at you, and a million
other people like you

~~~
jug
I think many Apple users would be happy if only Siri could answer factual
questions objectively and follow a conversation, being happy with a minimum of
privacy collection like current location, name of spouse for messaging, etc.

While some may prefer a knowledge about you or you via people like you, as in,
"Please recommend me a great movie", Siri is currently not in a stage where
she may tell you stuff like "How do I mix a White Russian?" Google Assistant
give me 6 steps with a photo and a follow up question "What about
Screwdriver?" Siri gets utterly wrecked in the knowledge based questions.

I think the main problem is not privacy-related, but knowledge base-related.
Google is building upon a fricking huge search engine via a knowledge graph
and the sky is the limit for how well an AI can do. Apple is building on what,
a shut down Ping social network, Apple Music listening habits, Wolfram Alpha
hopes if all else fails, and a sparse Bing Search API if that failed too?

~~~
naravara
>While some may prefer a knowledge about you or you via people like you, as
in, "Please recommend me a great movie". . .

Not to mention that Apple positioned itself as a brand for people who "Think
Different." I don't think people who got taken in by that messaging would be
attracted to the prospect of services that can more efficiently pigeonhole
them.

------
eric_b
I've still not seen any AI that really gets me excited. Google Now does some
neat things - but if the home automation products from Amazon and Google are
representative of the state-of-the-art - we have an awful long way to go
before AI is any kind of game changer.

More likely AI/ML is another trip down buzzword lane. It can hang out with
IoT, VR, Big Data, and hell, even containers and microservices.

It feels like everyone is casting about for that next revolutionary
technological innovation, but maybe we just need to be at a plateau for
awhile.

~~~
snarf
I, too, don't get the hype about voice assistants. There are a few uses cases
where they may be genuinely useful like if you are driving and don't want to
take your hands off the wheel, but for nearly everything else, it is usually
faster, more accurate, and more reliable to use a GUI with touch or a
keyboard.

------
eridius
Google and Amazon may get there faster, but personally, I'm quite ok with it
taking a bit longer to get a truly smart digital assistant if that means I get
to keep my privacy.

------
namuol
I love Apple's commitment to privacy, but the notion that privacy precludes
powerful AI strikes me as a false dichotomy, and a cop-out. There must be some
middle-ground.

~~~
jswny
Anonymous, transparent data-gathering perhaps? If Apple stripped data of any
kind of personally-identifying information and allowed users to view all of
the data that was being sent, it could be a good middle ground. However, the
problem with that solution is that it's already _possible_ (not easy) to
identify users with very little information. Stripping out identifying
information doesn't necessarily mean that the information wouldn't be useful
at all in the right hands (say, the government) to identify someone.

~~~
eridius
Apple talked last year about their approach here, which IIRC is basically to
introduce random noise into the data they collect. This way, data at the
individual level may be wildly inaccurate (and therefore not suitable for
actually identifying specific people), but in the aggregate it still produces
the same results.

Of course I may be completely misrepresenting this. I encourage you to go look
up the relevant info from WWDC 2016 (I believe that's where they talked about
it).

------
jefferson123
Honest question: in the context of the realistic range of consumer AI
applications in 2017, what are some meaningful shortcomings Apple products
have? And do those shortcomings have any interest to the majority of consumers
(and not say, to developers or analysts)?

~~~
reckoner2
As an owner of an iPhone 7 and a Pixel I'd say there are not many. Google
Assistant is way ahead of Siri at pretty much every imaginable task, and
Google Photos can do a lot more than iOS Photos.

That said, none of those features interest me much. And I'm not sure how many
average consumers they do interest. It's more of a 'oh, that's cool I guess'.
I prefer my iPhone 7 still.

~~~
mercer
Yeah, most people I know do use their 'assistant' to some degree, but it's not
even close to crucial for any of them. That said, Siri is a running joke among
many of us, so if/when assistants become more important, Apple might have a
problem if they don't make some big improvements.

Anecdotally speaking, anyways.

------
eanzenberg
One thing to remember is, it's easier to build AI and ML when you are willing
to use lots of user data but it's not impossible if you put limits on your
access to user data.

For example, when you meet someone, they don't need to know everything about
your life to be useful. The same is the case for building internet AIs. Using
more pre-trained models. Asking the right questions and listening to the
responses.

Sure, it's easier if you have access and are willing to use user data to build
those predictive models. But there is some real value in the world for
companies who respect user privacy AND build predictive models.

------
strin
> ... the company hired Russ Salakhutdinov, a Carnegie Mellon professor whose
> expertise is in an area of artificial intelligence known as “deep” or
> “unsupervised” learning, a complex branch of machine learning in which
> computers are trained to replicate the way the brain’s neurons fire when
> they recognize objects or speech.

The author of the article clearly made a mistake saying "deep learning" is the
same as "unsupervised learning".

------
NumberSix
Regarding privacy, when human beings meet a new person, they do not need tons
of data about that person to understand their spoken language. We learn
English or any other language once and then rarely need to adapt to new
people, unless they have a strong accent or speak a truly different dialect of
the language. This demonstrates that the much touted speech recognition
technologies from Google, Amazon, and Apple do not match human level
performance. Are they really exceeding the marginal performance of the Hidden
Markov Model based Dragon Naturally Speaking which took around two months of
training to achieve its maximum accuracy ten years ago? Or are they just
running similar models with huge numbers of adjustable parameters tuned to
each user on the "cloud?"

If Apple invested in genuinely new, creative AI technologies that matched
human level speech recognition and other tasks then they could preserve their
purported emphasis on privacy. They would not need to collect huge amounts of
personal data on most customers, unlike Google or Amazon.

~~~
gls2ro
I am not an expert in AI, ML or any other thing like his.

But related to

> Regarding privacy, when human beings meet a new person, they do not need
> tons of data about that person to understand their spoken language.

I think that we understand context and symbols and syntax because we used
it/learned it before.

So when I meet a new person I use previous cultural/language learnings to
understand the new person. Not just dictionary.

And even if I met a person who speaks a new language, I might understand after
a period the words but still I use logic and symbols to get that when that
person points to ice and says something that something means ice. And this I
think is possible because of some previous knowledge on how to interpret the
interaction that I discovered before about this context.

I think it is the same with Assistants: there is an advantage in being able to
access and process large amount of communication so that you can infer meaning
or predictions.

------
norswap
I probably won't receive any medals for this, but it is my most humble opinion
that most of these AI gimmicks (Siri, Alexa, etc...) are useless.

I will concede I get moderate gag value out of Google automatically creating
animated gifs from a string of photographs.

------
mirekrusin
AI is a funny field where you may still be in a great position by just having
millions of your capable devices distributed to people. Software wise it's
relatively easy to adopt state of the art - without necessarily doing research
yourself. On the cloud side they have the capacity as well, that's not a
blocker for them.

------
mark_l_watson
I haven't made up my mind on this yet: I really like Apple's privacy policies
but I also like Google Assistant on my iPhone.

As usual, for a business trip I took this week, I went all-in with Google
(location, my email forwarded to my gmail account, used Google Travell app,
etc.). Very convenient for keeping my schedule, travel arrangements, etc. in
order.

That said, when I returned home last night, as usual after a trip, I stopped
forwarding my email to gmail, uninstalled most Google apps from my iPhone, and
turned off location.

When I am at home (most of the time) I like using duck-duck-go, and just
Apple's software.

EDIT: I have been working in the field of AI and machine learning for about 30
years. I think that Apple will find a sweet spot between good privacy and
making Siri into a useful digital assistant.

------
ungzd
Collecting location data, visited URLs and phone books is absolutely not
required to make speech recognition. You don't have to learn computer vision
algorithms on people's private photos: you can use public photos instead. Even
"context based computing" does not seem to work better if data from all users
is put into single database. Why "AI" and surveillance are usually treated as
related?

Most creepy forms of surveillance are used for ads (but I'm not sure if it
even works, I always see completely irrelevant ads) and Apple is not
advertising company.

------
patsplat
Currently, the only documentation I've seen for extending Siri depend on an
app running on a particular device. More than anything else, this device-
centric focus is holding Siri back when compared to Alexa and Google Home.

Am I missing something? Has there been any announcement that third party
developers could add skills or actions across all Siri instances via the
cloud?

------
wkoszek
Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse, but it just deployed top-notch
machine learning frameworks to millions of portable devices around the world
in a way in which its hundreds of thousands of developers can use machine
learning now. I want to be struggling at investments in the same way. :)

------
d_burfoot
Why on earth does Apple want to become an "AI powerhouse"? Please, Apple, do
what you're good at: design great consumer electronic products. You should be
hiring the top talent in fields like HCI, AR/VR, and wearable computing, not
AI.

------
thadk
Does anyone have details on the AIKit & Apple CNN for AMD graphics cards? This
was previously the exclusive territory of Nvidia and this week, Apple promised
expanding that for the other half of discrete graphics cards. Will there be
Python APIs?

------
real-hacker
So the deep learning machinery is becoming part of OS. I am wondering if part
of the model (the relatively stable layers) will also be released with OS.

------
Fede_V
The description of differential privacy in the article is completely wrong. I
am really shocked it was described so poorly.

------
idibidiartists
$221B in cash on hand. They can get any AI researcher super start they want.
No?

~~~
ikeyany
I would love to hear all of the reasons why top minds reject top companies.
It's a fascinating subject.

~~~
remir
The company's culture, perhaps.

------
nikon
They've just entered the race no?

------
naaaaak
WashPo, owned by Bezos whose fortune is in Amazon, is criticizing a
competitor.

------
mtgx
I bet they won't be quoting this headline at the next WWDC.

------
endswapper
DUPE:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14499511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14499511)

------
ProAm
Two reasons, One) Apple is currently a lifestyle company and not a technology
company so AI is well outside their wheelhouse in what they have spent the
last 5 years doing.

Two) Apple is never really bleeding edge with it's products, it waits to see
what the industry is doing and then subsequently tries to take something and
make it better, something tough to do with AI/ML. You can't really just take
someone's idea and build on it with $$, there needs to be a lot of groundwork
done first to even get to that point and it looks like Apple has barely done
any (looking straight at Siri for an example)

~~~
macinjosh
Lifestyle company? What does that even mean? If Apple isn't a tech company I
don't know what is. They design their own processors, programming languages,
operating systems, web browser, batteries, etc. Sounds like a tech company to
me.

~~~
ProAm
The last few years of their 'tech' have been less than inspiring... They have
focused on Apple becoming part of your life with a watch or a touchbar and not
updating their hardware and software with anything that moves the needle
(AppleTV languishing, Siri a joke compared to Amazon, Google and even
Microsoft, MacBook Pros barely updated after years of neglect, MacPro
potentially on the horizon for a reasonable update in 2018 after years of
nothing. and now HomePod is basically a boombox that connects to the
internet...not really a stellar new product especially without AI). This is
clearly evident with them in scramble mode with the last several
press/developer conferences & intentional leaks (how often has Apple mentioned
products that are no where close to shipping?), they are in triage mode. I
still feel T.Cook will be out in ~ 2 years.

~~~
macinjosh
ok

