Open versus closed: Apple and artificial intelligence
Apple has announced it is joining Partnership on AI, an alliance of companies including Amazon, IBM, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, to share advances and best practices in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence development.
The move is seen as the a first step toward greater openness from a company that has carried out its entire development alone, but is now in an area where things are not so simple. Apple was seen as a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence thanks to the early development and addition to the iPhone of Siri, but over time, Siri has been eclipsed by competitors created by other companies.
In fact, the company seems to be having big problems in attracting talent in this field, the main reason for which is precisely its lack of openness: what artificial intelligence developers seem to need at the moment is access to the community allowing them to share advances and news and to publish their achievements and contrast them with other developers, something that Apple has tended to restrict among its workforce. For a company that has traditionally been seen as a magnet for talent and whose products are highly appreciated, seeing its job offers systematically rejected is not sustainable over time.
