A big name in tech was conspiciously missing from the list of companies that formed the Partnership on AI last year—Apple. But now Apple is reportedly planning to join the research group, which promotes education and interoperability issues around artificial intelligence. Existing members include Amazon, Google, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft, Here are the key details on Apple's pending involvement, from Bloomberg:
Apple’s admission into the group could be announced as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the situation. Representatives at Apple and the Partnership on AI declined to comment.
While the introduction of the Siri virtual assistant in 2011 gave Apple an early presence in AI for consumers, it has since lost ground to rivals such as Google and Amazon. Apple’s penchant for secrecy limited its efforts to improve AI offerings and hire the best talent. That’s because researchers in the field like to publish their findings, something Apple frowned upon in the past.
But late last year, Apple lifted the veil of secrecy over its AI research with the publication of a research paper focused on machine image recognition. The paper's release was viewed as a good first step but hardly an opening of the floodgates. Joining the Partnership on AI represents a much bigger show of openness on Apple's part.
The Partnership on AI's goals include the development best practices around AI for ethics, trust, transparency and interoperability; to advance the public's understanding of AI and its potential benefits to society; and to provide a way for AI researchers to collaborate in a structured manner. Similar efforts include the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence fund, which is backed by well-known tech industry figures in collaboration with Harvard and MIT.
The Bottom Line
Overall, Constellation believes that industry collaboration around the many pressing issues concerning AI is important and therefore, Apple will be a welcome addition to the Partnership.
Given how dramatically AI stands to transform the consumer and enterprise tech landscape, interoperability is one of the most important of those issues. Apple's inclusion in the Partnership can only help meet that need.
"Similar to the protocols for previous technologies like email, calendar and contacts, ideally AI will stop being silos and different systems will speak with each other," says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Alan Lepofsky. "Apple clearly is an important player in NLP, as Siri is using by millions of people for voice commands. Making sure Siri can interact with content from Google, Facebook and others is important."
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