Exclusive: Apple ups AI hiring, but faces obstacles to making phones smarter
Exclusive: Apple ups hiring, but faces obstacles to
making phones smarter
Technology | Mon Sep 7, 2015 9:07am EDT
BY JULIA LOVE
Apple has ramped up its hiring of artificial intelligence
experts, recruiting from PhD programs, posting dozens of job listings and
greatly increasing the size of its AI staff, a review of hiring sites suggests
and numerous sources confirm.
The goal is to challenge Google in an area the Internet
search giant has long dominated: smartphone features that give users what they
want before they ask.
As part of its push, the company is currently trying to
hire at least 86 more employees with expertise in the branch of artificial
intelligence known as machine learning, according to a recent analysis of Apple
job postings. The company has also stepped up its courtship of machine-learning
PhD's, joining Google, Amazon, Facebook and others in a fierce contest, leading
academics say.
But some experts say the iPhone maker's strict stance on
privacy is likely to undermine its ability to compete in the rapidly
progressing field.
Machine learning, which helps devices infer from
experience what users are likely to want next, relies on crunching vast troves
of data to provide unprompted services, such as the scores for a favorite
sports team or reminders of when to leave for an appointment based on traffic.
The larger the universe of users providing data about
their habits, the better predictions can be about what an individual might
want. But Apple analyzes its users' behavior under self-imposed constraints to
better protect their data from outsiders.
That means Apple largely relies on analyzing the data on
each user’s iPhone rather than sending it to the cloud, where it can be studied
alongside information from millions of others.
"They want to make a phone that responds to you very
quickly without knowledge of the rest of the world," said Joseph Gonzalez,
co-founder of Dato, a machine learning startup. "It's harder to do
that."
BEYOND SIRI
The Cupertino-based tech titan’s strategy will come into
clearer focus on Sept. 9, when it is expected to reveal its new iPhones and
latest mobile operating system, iOS 9. Apple has promised the release will
include a variety of intelligent reminders, which analysts expect will rival
the offerings from Google's Android.
While Apple helped pioneer mobile intelligence -it’s Siri
introduced the concept of a digital assistant to consumers in 2011 - the
company has since lost ground to Google and Microsoft, whose digital assistants
have become more adept at learning about users and helping them with their
daily routines.
As users increasingly demand phones that understand them
and tailor services accordingly, Apple cannot afford to let the gap persist,
experts say. The iPhone generated almost two-thirds of Apple's revenue in the
most recent quarter, so even a small advantage for Android poses a threat.
"What seemed like science fiction only four years
ago has become an expectation," said venture capitalist Gary Morgenthaler,
who was one of the original investors in Siri before it was acquired by Apple
in 2010.
PLAYING CATCH-UP
While Apple got off to a slow start on hiring for machine
learning jobs, it is closing in on its competitors, said Oren Etzioni, who is
CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and a professor at the
University of Washington.
"In the past, Apple has not been at the vanguard of
machine learning and cutting edge artificial intelligence work, but that is
rapidly changing,” he said. “They are after the best and the brightest, just
like everybody else.”
Acquisitions of startups such as podcasting app Swell,
social media analytics firm Topsy and personal assistant app Cue have also
expanded Apple’s pool of experts in the field.
Apple does not reveal the number of people working on its
machine learning efforts.
But one former Apple employee in the area, who asked not
to be named to protect professional relationships, estimated the number of
machine learning experts had tripled or quadrupled in the past few years.
Many of the currently posted positions are slated for
software efforts, from building on Siri’s smarts to the burgeoning search
features in iOS. The company is also hiring machine learning experts for
divisions such as product marketing and retail, suggesting a broad-based effort
to capitalize on data.
Apple’s hiring mirrors a larger hunt in Silicon Valley
for people who can help companies make sense of their huge stashes of data,
said Ali Behnam, managing partner of Riviera Partners, an executive search
firm. Data scientists are the most sought-after experts in the market, he
noted.
Asked for comment about Apple’s strategy, a company
spokeswoman pointed to statements from Craig Federighi, senior vice president
of Software Engineering, who described the release at a developers’ conference
in June as “adding intelligence throughout the user experience in a way that
enhances how you use your device but without compromising your privacy, things
like improving the apps that you use most.”
But Google and others have an edge in spotting larger
trends, meaning Apple's predictions may not be as good, said Gonzalez, echoing
a commonly held view among machine learning experts.
What’s more, there are some features for which Apple has
yet to find an answer, such as Now on Tap, which Google will release this fall.
When users press the home button, Google will scan their screens to deliver
helpful information – a user reading about an upcoming movie, for example,
might receive reviews or a list of showtimes. It would be difficult to deliver
such services without sending data to the cloud, experts say.
ACCESS TO DATA
Some techniques Apple and Google are investing in - such
as deep learning, a hot field of machine learning that roughly simulates the
human brain so that computers can spot patterns and classify information –
require massive amounts of data that typically cannot be crunched on the device
alone.
For machine learning experts at Apple, access to data
complicates the work at every turn, former employees said. Siri enjoys some of
Apple's most liberal privacy policies, holding onto user information for up to
six months. Other services, such as Apple Maps, retain information for as
little as 15 minutes, the former employee said.
Machine learning experts who want unfettered access to
data tend to shy away from jobs at Apple, former employees say.
But Apple is strengthening ties to academia to find the
talent it will need, attending more industry conferences and discussing its use
of tools emerging from university labs, academics say.
"They are gradually engaging a little more
openly," said Michael Franklin, who directs UC Berkeley's Algorithms,
Machines and People Lab, which Apple sponsors.
And some machine learning experts might be enticed by the
challenge of matching Google's smarts amid privacy constraints, suggested John
Duchi, an assistant professor at Stanford University.
"New flavors of problems are exciting," he
said.
If Apple succeeds without compromising privacy, its
Mountain View rival may face questions about its approach to analyzing users'
data.
"People might start to ask Google for more
privacy," Gonzalez said.
(Reporting by Julia Love; Editing by Steve Trousdale and
Sue Horton)
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