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Apple Hires Google's AI Chief (nytimes.com)
"Apple has hired Google's chief of search and artificial intelligence (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), John Giannandrea, a major coup in its bid to catch up to the artificial intelligence technology of its rivals," reports The New York Times. Giannandrea will run Apple's overall "machine learning and AI strategy," reporting directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook. From the report: The hire is a victory for Apple, which many Silicon Valley executives and analysts view as lagging its peers in artificial intelligence, an increasingly crucial technology for companies that enable computers to handle more complex tasks, like understanding voice commands or identifying people in images. "Our technology must be infused with the values we all hold dear," Mr. Cook said Tuesday morning in an email to staff members obtained by The New York Times. "John shares our commitment to privacy and our thoughtful approach as we make computers even smarter and more personal." Mr. Giannandrea, a 53-year-old native of Scotland known to colleagues as J.G., helped lead the push to integrate A.I. throughout Google's products, including internet search, Gmail and its own digital assistant, Google Assistant.
He joined Google in 2010 when it purchased Metaweb, a start-up where he served as chief technology officer. Metaweb was building what it described as a "database of the world's knowledge," which Google eventually rolled into its search engine to deliver direct answers to users' queries. (Try googling "How old is Steph Curry?") During Mr. Giannandrea's tenure, A.I. research became increasingly important inside Google, with its primary A.I. lab, Google Brain, moving into a space beside the chief executive, Sundar Pichai.
He joined Google in 2010 when it purchased Metaweb, a start-up where he served as chief technology officer. Metaweb was building what it described as a "database of the world's knowledge," which Google eventually rolled into its search engine to deliver direct answers to users' queries. (Try googling "How old is Steph Curry?") During Mr. Giannandrea's tenure, A.I. research became increasingly important inside Google, with its primary A.I. lab, Google Brain, moving into a space beside the chief executive, Sundar Pichai.
Siri is so. Fucking. Terrible.
Apple's last update bricked my son's phone with an Error 9.
Geniuses at the Apple Store repeated everything I did, gave up and tried sell me a new one.
I told him I already replaced it with an Android.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That's great for Apple that they hired an expert on machine learning.
Now all they need are google sized volumes of data to train their learning algorithms! So-called deep learning is very data hungry. If Apple wants to train their algorithms about the behavior of people, they will need to start saving a TON of data about Apple customers. Could this be the beginning of the end of Apple's excellent privacy policies?
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Fuck it, just throw money at it..
something will surface.
But look at how that affected the Ifone eX
Look @ how that affected their eXserv platform
Look at how it has affected their standing within the community?
(you still need a windows or linux server infrastructure in order for the apple to play nice with the rest of the werld)
I Mean, can you imagine a truly "APPLE" infrastructure? I cant, nor can any one else, which is why apple products are just parasties. They cannot survive on their own, they require others to serve them to maintain their operations..
Thinking they can just buy a fix for their crappy software.
John Diarrheah ?
So where is John Gia?...John Gianna?....oh well John Giannotgonnaworkhereanymoreanyway
That's great for Apple that they hired an expert on machine learning.
there was a non evil yet interesting emerging field of similar scope worth going after. I've no doubt of AI's potential, even if it is certainly not going to live up to the hype. It does enough. It's most worrying direction seem to be to find the buttons to push to manipulate people in directions that are contrary to their best interest.
Targeted product advertisements are only the tip of the iceberg, but even there you can eventually figure out what a person may buy again and figure out exactly how much they are willing to pay. Perhaps you can even have the AI spawn across sites so you first see it at one site a little higher than normal, then the second site is normal, then the third site is just a little cheaper than normal. Hey, it's a good deal you gotta buy that. Rotate the algorithm and everyone wins. It would also be incredibly hard to prove, particularly if you identify people checking for nefarious pricing models and send them the correct prices. It would be the VW thing updated.
My real concern is when basic observable facts can through the use of systems of systems of AIs can be slowly eroded in the public sphere such that the average person doesn't believe they are true anymore. Sure you needs some human conductors, for now at least, but the potential is there, particularly when a lot of the other sources of information, such as local news are filled with other forms of propaganda.
Hell I just voted today and the voting person actually believed the shit they were selling about it being necessary to photograph your id to prevent serious voter fraud. They even questioned me on my address being different, as if I should have updated my drivers license after buying a house. That is the kind of misinformation that is incredibly commonly spread to game the system and only the tip of the iceberg. You don't need to disenfranchise the majority of your opponents voters. You just want to disenfranchise a few more percent of them than of your own. Zero sum game. Winner takes all.
Hell 51% of republicans still think Obama was born in Kenya. link That has been debunked constantly and should be a no brainer. If things like that are distorted such that half of the republican voters believe that lie, then what other lies do they believe?
Are our elections outcomes based more on lies than truth?
At any rate, that is overall while I can't endorse anyone making AIs more functional. The only positive spin I can think on it is you might be able to code defensive AIs, but getting the truth has never been that hard, and it is not as if you can put the defensive AI in people's brains to force them to think that gee maybe Trump was full of shit every time he said Mexico was going to pay for it the same way he was full of shit about Birthirism?
he could be a mole. Might be there to steal all siris top secret incompetence
I was puzzled because why would Apple need a chef who had worked at Google...
Why is Snark Required?
When it comes to this kind of stuff, all the real AI knowledge is coming from the guys at the dev and engineering level. This guy is just a PHP, unless he manages to drag some of the good dev and engineering talent away from Google. Likely all those guys are under non competes/non disclosure agreements. Good luck with that.
Same old BS as Apple .v. MS of yesteryear
SteveJobs unwound win-lose reductionists, the Google must lose for Apple to win, by simply pointing such belief is a simple error in thinking - a trap.
Siri sucks, Google sucks, Alexa sucks, Cortana sucks and along the way one of them or a new entrant will counter suck. One is culturally programmed to " just work" and has always maintained its counter-culture roots. Apple abstracts some AI insight from this hire into its DNA it will improve everything going forward - even suck.
This is a surprise. I have to think about whether to start writing such articles on my SEO blog http://mateusz-kozlowski.pl/ .