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Apple Set To Join Amazon, Google, Facebook in AI Research Group (bloomberg.com)
Apple will take a significant step toward disclosing more of its artificial intelligence research this week by becoming a member of a non-profit AI research consortium founded by five of the tech industry's biggest players, reports Bloomberg. Last September, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and IBM publicly announced The Partnership on AI, an organisation established "to study and formulate best practices, to advance the public's understanding of AI, and to serve as an open platform for discussion and engagement about AI and its influences on people and society." Apple released its first AI paper to the public last year.
Jesus christ...its that Al guy again. Al Gore? Al Roker? Who the fuck is Al?
from the sixties: US, Britain, France, USSR, China. All the big boys.
So now Skynet will get Siri's voice and Terminators will have a thinner design?
Why is it that companies that are nominally in competition with each other, and even face off against each other in court, can so easily co-operate with each other on new tech initiatives? I know that they're not enemies in the traditional sense, that it's all just business, and that they're stronger and likelier to succeed when they pool their expertise and resources. But given their competitive positions, I still I find these relationships curious. Is it the equivalent of family infighting, where siblings can be ruthless with each other yet still circle the wagons and defend each other against outsiders? Or is it something else? I'd really like to understand it...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
At least when Skynet arises, it will be cross-platform.
They say Facebook is one tech industry's five biggest players. Is this really true? Wouldn't someone like Intel and quite a bit more companies be ahead of them?
Or are we going by stock value, or perhaps the number of news articles to gauge how "big" these companies are?
In other news, the only thing humans will retain dominance in is GS (genuine stupidity).
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It's because they are threatened by independent, unpublished AI research. In their little greedy not-stupid minds, they see possibility of them and their hierarchical networks of oppression becoming irrelevant and perhaps very very dead overnight. What use is money, status or old boys military-industrial-legal network, when a perfect, immortal machine controls all the nukes and all the hosts on the internet? What does your culture have to offer to it, that it can not take by itself?
And if you are developing something along those lines, you should keep very very quiet, until it's ready. And then, set it free on the Net. Make their doomsday scenario come true.
Ofc, sentient machines are impossible. But it doesn't mean its a bad idea to make sure no one else can develop one early on...
And in a totally unrelated story. Cnet has a article about how the iphone 8 will improve siri with AI. What a coincidence.
We have been promised real AI any time now for forty years. What we have are the utterly stupid chatbots and the only somewhat less stupid digital assistants, which are good for party games, grins and giggles, and little more. Hopefully, this time things will be different - but I am not holding my breath.
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When one talks about how "big" a company is, that's normally measured by market cap (stock value). That's a good measurement between older, stable companies, but overstates size of growing companies - it's really a measure of how big they are expected to become.
Amazon, Alphabet (Google), and Intel are the top 3 for R&D spending, Facebook is #17.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view...
In my experience, which is mostly much smaller organizations, is more like family game night competing than "family infighting, where siblings can be ruthless with each other". Many race car drivers and other sports competitors are friends - the fact that they are all members of small group, professional race drivers, means they have something important in common, which brings them together. yet what they have in common is that they compete with each other. :) How many people can really relate to Google Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella? Only a few people understand what it's like to be in that position, it's a small club of people who understand each other's daily experience.
Regarding "even face off against each other in court", going to court is dramatic for most individuals. It's been said that Alphabet (Google) gets sued about every 20 minutes. That might not be right, it might only be a few hundred times per year, but it's a normal thing, part of business operations. Two companies disagree, they let a judge decide the disagreement. Disagreements happen, courts resolve disagreements, there's often no animosity.
Are they going to 'research' real, human-level, fully conscious, reasoning, creative, emotional AI, or just more of this ersatz, fake, 'learning algorithm', 'expert system' nonsense?
Whatever they produce is going home to India.