I am not surprised Apple is in dead last. This is not knocking apple but they just do not have the data everyone else has and they are starting way behind and do not have a great way to get updates.
For example comparing Apple Maps vs Google and Waze. Apple maps is still way behind and does not get updated as fast. It has fewer users to get real time data compared to google and waze and Google has a lot more years of experence in keeping up.
The Voice AI siri is very far behind Amazon and Google and lets be honest they will never catch up due to the shear lack of data and they can not pull it in as easily. Google was using Google Voice voice mails for years to help train AI in understanding human speech and in that case only voice mail volunteered for training where used. Amazon has alexia which is in everything. This is no different.
At some level, yes it might be about information, but therein lies a basic problem - or at least naming issue - with AI (artificial intelligence). ML (machine learning) is probably a less misleading term to use. In other words, if you have this huge, massive set of data a computer can crunch through (something computers are good at), using
human-derived intelligence, properly put into algorithms... you might get a pretty good analysis, and hence result.
Humans, on the other hand, drive around every day with far from a complete data set, and figure things out on the fly. If they have even slightly more than abysmal driver training, and aren't intoxicated or willfully-distracted, they do a pretty darn good job of it, too. I'd argue, this is because there is actual thinking going on.
AI isn't thinking, just following a program. It needs that data set and human-designed way of interpreting the data to even appear to the uninformed as though it is thinking (which it isn't doing). This presents two issues relevant to the discussion.
First, I think Apple's problem isn't on the data-set side of things, especially for many failures of Siri. In many cases, it has the data, it just doesn't know what to do with it. It seems (to me) that Siri suffers a similar problem to Apple's search technology (Podcasts, App Store, Spotlight, etc.) where it can't even do the basic things Google can do with ALL the data right in front of it. They can't even match a search engine like Alta Vista from the mid-90s!
More data isn't going to help if you don't even have the fundamentals of how to process and interpret it in place.
Second, in regards to autonomous vehicles, if they need a complete data-set, that's a problem. And, with some of these systems operating where every detail is mapped out, is kind of cheating (and problematic if they depend on that!). Things change all the time. Crazy events happen. Even if you have the core environment 100% mapped (which is impossible), there are animals, people, weather, etc. which never will be included.
If this stuff is ever to really work, it like us, needs to be real-time taking in and interpreting the data, and then decision making without a crutch of having to have perfect data (and previous results) to fall back on. Much of the argument I've seen from people who actually understand AI (so realize it isn't thinking) is that what this tech really relies on is building a more and more prefect data-set, such that the mess-ups keep dropping. Eventually, they think the mess-ups will drop below human-driving characteristics. (Currently at about 1 fatality per 100M miles driven, and that's with almost insane lack of training, and allowing the most stupid irresponsibility of human drivers... both which could easily be addressed. If they were, where would the stats quickly go? 500M 1T etc.?)
That might be, BUT we could EASILY improve human driving if safety were the actual motive. And, I'm not sure they ever will have that good-enough data-set and/or enough human-designed algorithms to correctly process and react to it.
(As I've heard Adam Curry say on the No Agenda show... that he'll start believing in this AI stuff when they can get email spam filters working. No doubt!)