In indications of Apple’s growing AI ambitions (as if this was unknown..duh !), Reuters reports that the Cupertino giant is now looking to hire as many as 86 artificial intelligence and machine learning experts. While this could pretty much be something related to iOS 9, reports suggest that it Apple isn’t limiting its AI capabilities to just software.
Apple is infact looking to make your smartphones “smarter” and is hence hiring experts from PhD programs, posting dozens of job listings and greatly increasing the size of its AI staff. Reuters’ report has been corroborated by numerous staffing sites and internal sources within Apple itself.
Reports suggest, that while ramping up iOS and iPhone’s AI tech is obviously the motive, the hiring is also a part of Apple’s larger intentions of taking on Google in a field, which has been largely dominated by the latter on both smartphones, and their software front.
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.
Through an iOS 9 update, Apple is looking to bring in multitude of features for users.
For example, your Mail and Calendar services will work based upon your previous actions. So if you’ve been contacting one particular contact via Mail too frequently, Apple would automatically suggest that and relative recipients, the next time you go out to send a mail.
Similarly, Calendar would take note of the most frequent meetings you’ve set up and then set up your meetings for you, based on your past experience. And integration of Sir into this, and bamm ! you get the perfect Jaarvis-like assistant you’ve been dreaming of.
But then again, Apple is known to uphold user privacy at the highest level. Hence collection of such large amounts of data for its AI and machine learning programs would require major overhaul in its privacy stand.
Machine Learning, if you are not aware, requires programs to crunch in massive big data based upon your usage and then translate it into meaningful actions for future operations.
