Apple is diving deeper into artificial intelligence and machine learning, with the company ramping up its hiring of experts in the field, a new report has revealed.
Reuters reported that Apple is recruiting possible hires from PhD programs and has posted dozens of job opportunities as it expands the size of the company's staff for artificial intelligence development, with the information obtained from numerous sources and from reviewing certain hiring websites.
Apple is looking to challenge rival Google in a specific area where Google has been dominating, specifically on features for smartphones that provide users with what they want even before they ask.
The company is now looking to hire at least 86 more people with machine learning experience, according to analysis on job postings made by Apple. Apple has also increased its efforts to lure PhD holders of machine learning into working for the company, with leading academics stating that Apple has joined Amazon, Google, Facebook and other companies in doing so.
However, experts are claiming that the strict privacy stance of Apple may undermine its progress in the field.
Machine learning allows devices to use previous experiences to determine what users likely want to do or happen next at any given time or situation. The device would learn from the massive amounts of data that it collects to perform tasks such as recommending a gift for a loved one's birthday or making a calendar reminder for received invitations.
The more data available for machine learning, the better the predictions will turn out for the user. However, Apple analyzes the behavior of its users under constraints that it imposes upon itself to protect user privacy, with the data being stored only within the Apple devices and not sent to the cloud.
"They want to make a phone that responds to you very quickly without knowledge of the rest of the world," said machine learning startup Dato co-founder Joseph Gonzalez.
"It's harder to do that," Gonzalez added.
With the daunting task at hand and a slow start for Apple in the field, the company is now said to be closing in on rivals, according to Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence CEO Oren Etzioni.
Etzioni said that while Apple was previously not involved in artificial intelligence and machine learning development, the company is now catching up as it looks to hire the brightest individuals specializing in the field.
Apple's purchase of startups such as Swell, a podcasting app, Topsy, a social media analytics company, and Cue, a personal assistant app, has also increased the number of Apple employees that are experts on the field.
A former employee for Apple also revealed that the number of experts in machine learning working for the company has tripled or even quadrupled over the previous few years.
Former employees also said that experts on machine learning previously leaned away from Apple as they wanted complete access to data, which is something Apple would not be able to provide. However, Apple has been strengthening its relation with academe to pursue its needed talent. In addition, some experts could welcome the challenge of matching up against Google and solving the issue of privacy constraints for machine learning.
