Apple's AI Team Publishes First Research Paper Focused on Advanced Image Recognition

[truthertech]

It may be because Apple is shipping more and more crap each year and people are bitter and fed up.

There were always trolls and fanboys here. Its the fanboys that are more and more ironic. Blame Apple.

Let's look at that claim that "people are bitter and fed up" with Apple. While I'll readily concede the trolls are bitter and full of something, that people in general are fed up with Apple seems rather dubious in light of:

• People are switching from Android in record numbers.

• Hundreds of millions of people this past year bought Apple products.

• This past year Apple zoomed past Samsung, Google, Lenovo, Garmin and others to take over the number 1 spot in the world in smart watch sales by a country mile.

• Apple Watch looks like it will be the number one choice of consumers for this past holiday period and so many consumers are liking the new Apple Watch that it will be a record quarter for the AW

• Apple started from scratch to now be chosen by consumers for 75% of all contactless payments in the US, leaving Google and Samsung in the dust as over 1 million" bitter and angry consumers" a week sign up for Apple Pay!

• Consumers are choosing Apple Music at the rate of one million per month, and Apple Music moved from scratch to number 2 in the world!

• Apple now has 60% of the premium headphone market in the world and #1 in wireless sales in the entire world!

• Apple routes were just rated #1 by consumers

• The new Macbook Pros set a record for online sales

• Apple services are growing so fast that consumer demand will grow just Apple Services into the equivalent of a Fortune 100 company in 2017, and the revenue from services alone is greater than all of Facebook's revenue combined!

• The Airpods are getting universal acclaim in reviews and Apple's biggest problem is satisfying huge worldwide demand

Every company in the world would love to have so many bitter and fed up" customers

 

[2457282]

Recognize that your complaint and my response to it contribute nothing to the quality of the discussion either. Maybe we both should take your advice and post something quality and relative to the topic.
[doublepost=1482774037][/doublepost]I mentioned when it was first announced that this (researchers being allowed to publish) is one of the best thing coming out of Apple's AI push. Peer review and recognition is one of the cornerstones of research. I bet the group is happy their work can be recognized and possibly appreciated. Happy for them.

Getting recognition is always a positive and often motivating thing. It is therefore plausible that because they are allowed to publish and get recognize they will actually push themselves harder to improve Siri. Technically, however, I am not sure how publishing helps. Yes there is the possibility that through a peer review you get additional insight that you might otherwise not have gotten (or would have taken longer to acquire). The problem is that it is happening a bit in the public eye (the public that understands this stuff and usually works for the competition). Therefore there is a risk associated with publishing in that others can gain ground by understanding what you are doing.

My long winded statement is basically to state that I assume they are not publishing where they are, but where they were. The current work is probably further along and not being shared for competitive reasons. Of course I have no clue, but my suspicions are strong.

 

[69Mustang]

No, they won't.

No, they won't

Which "they" are you guys referencing? Both groups - complainers and complain about complainers - are an equal detriment to the quality of the commentary. So is the contention that reason won't work only applicable to one of the groups? Cuz, both groups drag this site down. That first group is just annoying. That second group is annoying and oblivious. They don't seem to realize they're just as annoying and detrimental as the first group.

 

[wigby]

I know, how dare they say anything negative about a company some treat as a religion.

I say negative stuff all the time but piling on with "witty" comments is truly worthless. Apple doesn't care nor do visitors to this site.
[doublepost=1482797915][/doublepost]

I think the recent sad state of affairs is due to increased postings from school kids out on Christmas break.

Agreed but this has been going on for months now. I blame iPhone actually. Apple sells to so many people now it just throws the signal to noise ratio off. There are hundreds of millions of ignorant tech enthusiasts that just do not understand business or technology but unfortunately still have a voice on a business and tech forum.

 

[69Mustang]

Getting recognition is always a positive and often motivating thing. It is therefore plausible that because they are allowed to publish and get recognized they will actually push themselves harder to improve Siri.

Never underestimate a motivated individual. Toiling away in anonymity without recognition from your peers can be soul sucking. Especially for scientists.

Technically, however, I am not sure how publishing helps. Yes there is the possibility that through a peer review you get additional insight that you might otherwise not have gotten (or would have taken longer to acquire).

You sort of answered your own question here. Breakthrough's rarely happen in a vacuum. Peer review also helps researchers resist myopic tendencies to try to get results to equal their conclusions instead of making conclusions based on the results. It could also highlight a direction you're taking with no promise in the end. Like those guys with the cold fusion.

The problem is that it is happening a bit in the public eye (the public that understands this stuff and usually works for the competition). Therefore there is a risk associated with publishing in that others can gain ground by understanding what you are doing.

This presumes the competition is behind in their progress on a similar issue. They could be a little bit ahead, equal to, or well beyond your research. Which takes us back to your suggestion of additional insight. If you're worried about trade secrets or some breakthrough technical design, I'm pretty sure those aren't the papers submitted for publishing.

My long winded statement is basically to state that I assume they are not publishing where they are, but where they were. The current work is probably further along and not being shared for competitive reasons. Of course I have no clue, but my suspicions are strong.

This one tickled me. If me, you, or anyone publishes we're always publishing where we were since we're publishing results of something. Published results are always past tense.

The goal of publishing and peer review is to move the science forward for the benefit of all, not just the few.

 

[Porco]

No offense, but the reason why this "doesn't excite you very much" is because you don't seem to know much about it. What you've seen so far on your devices is just the beginning, it won't be long until it will transform the way people use their smartphones and computers. Apple really does not want to miss that train.

No offence taken. I hope you're right and I'll look back on my view here as an ignorant and foolish remark.

I also hope I'm still making the choice to use Apple products by then so that I even care either way though. And I think I hope the latter a little more than the former.

 

[kdarling]

• This past year Apple zoomed past Samsung, Google, Lenovo, Garmin and others to take over the number 1 spot in the world in smart watch sales by a country mile.

• Apple Watch looks like it will be the number one choice of consumers for this past holiday period and so many consumers are liking the new Apple Watch that it will be a record quarter for the AW

That's like saying Apple sold more Lightning connectors than anyone else. The Apple Watch is the only smartwatch that is allowed to work fully with the iPhone, and the iPhone is the only device it's meant to work with.

Comparing its sales to anything else is meaningless, because it competes with nothing else.

• Apple started from scratch to now be chosen by consumers for 75% of all contactless payments in the US, leaving Google and Samsung in the dust as over 1 million" bitter and angry consumers" a week sign up for Apple Pay!

Again, something that is not competing with anything else, since it does not work on anything outside of Apple products, nor is any other NFC payment system allowed on iOS.

Now that you bring it up, though, actual Apple Pay usage by those who signed up for it, has dropped dramatically as people give up trying to find places that take contactless NFC payments.

Samsung Pay has a higher percentage of repeat users, who spend on average more, although of course that's because it works almost anywhere, even if NFC isn't supported.

The new Macbook Pros set a record for online sales

Nobody was impressed by a PR stat that says nothing except that more people order computers online now.

Every company in the world would love to have so many bitter and fed up" customers

Now THAT is true

 

[A MacBook lover]

Amacfa, I blame you for the mess in this thread. I say this in jest but your post gaslit these goobers, on both sides btw, by blowing that "complain about complainers" dog whistle. @Porco said the same thing I said to you earlier. Contribute topically. Engaging moronic posts with equally stupid retorts only succeeds in creating the idiocy we see in this thread. If you see doofus off topic quotes, just ask the poster to contribute to the topic. After a while, they will.

In a perfect world, the complainers would create their own thread to moan to their hearts content. That echo chamber would soon become boring. The complain about complainers would create their own separate thread as well, to howl at the moon in ironic ignorance. They could cross over into each others threads and work themselves into a self righteous lather. At some point they'd realize they are just opposite sides of the same dumbass coin. The rest of us could enjoy the site, blissfully unaware.


To be fair, the AI scientists can't really help with other areas. Unlike Mac engineers reportedly being taken from desktops to work on laptops, there's no overlap in responsibility.


This. Everyone seems to forget this. If you want the comments topical, you at least have to make the effort yourself. Like leading a horse to water... and if they don't drink, shoot 'em in the head and make glue.

69Mustang, have to say that you offer a very balanced discussion and points. You're one of the good members around these parts who offer criticism against Apple but not in a trolling fashion. For that I appreciate you.

Please recognize that this is just one of those days I felt like calling people out. This has been an increasing problem here (and not other boards) and it doesn't seem to be getting better. I understand that I may not be contributing to the particular topic at hand.

 

[coolbreeze]

Can you give us some examples beyond the internet rumors.

Umm, simply using Google products myself. I had a Pixel XL and searching, say, photos for literally anything is instant.

Typing "yellow couch" returns every photo of a yellow couch you ever took and so on.

But anyhow, believe what you will. Google's AI when it comes to image recognition is top notch. Still a new venture for Apple (customer-facing, anyhow). They will get there, but as it stands right this moment, Google is king. Feel free to vigorously and emotionally blast me, but this is my opinion.

 

[twa440]

It's unfortuante that your experience is not up par. No one is stopping you from choosing another platform. Perhaps you should try a support forum or heading to a different store rather than venting on macrumors in an article about AI.

Vote with your money. I'm still happy enough with Apple to continue buying from them, and many others as well

Siri has been around long enough where it should far beyond its current capabilities. You don't understand why people are so upset. This company has unlimited resources and should be capable of working on multiple programs and platforms without ANY of them withering on the vine, so to speak. And that seems to be what happens all the time.
As far as the Mac goes, we all love OS X (MacOS) and thats the reason why we stay. But when the hardware it runs on is turned into a steaming pile with no alternative, its time to make noise.

 

[darbus69]

I'm not sure if it is the competition getting better, but I feel as though Siri is getting dumber by the minute. Context requests are out of the question, it isn't current with sports anymore, and I've found myself being cut off with "sorry I didn't get that" while in a quiet room.

Siri stopped being a useful tool ever since they dropped "raise to speak". I find myself using my Pixel for anything requiring hands free.

 

[69Mustang]

69Mustang, have to say that you offer a very balanced discussion and points. You're one of the good members around these parts who offer criticism against Apple but not in a trolling fashion. For that I appreciate you.

Please recognize that this is just one of those days I felt like calling people out. This has been an increasing problem here (and not other boards) and it doesn't seem to be getting better. I understand that I may not be contributing to the particular topic at hand.

Thanks and right back atcha. Trust me, I have days where I just want to watch the world burn. On those days, I spend an inordinate amount of time in my Mustang forum. We have no language or content rules. So if some $%^#$^ posts a brag about street racing I can go off on a voluminous expletive laced diatribe that would make the devil say, "Aw man, he lit." Oh and when some Camaro hump pops in talking about the new 1LE... let's just say we take a dump all over decorum and civility. I just try harder here.

 

[simonmet]

Bunch of sad half witty replies fishing for likes. Try to post some quality discussion next time guys

And this contributes to the discussion how?
[doublepost=1482804101][/doublepost]

Behind the scenes:

Server: Hey, CloudSight, analyze this image.

AI: Oh, wow, look at the pretty lady!

Server: Yeah, what about the rest of the image?

AI: So pretty. Is she wearing a spaghetti top?

Server: Dunno. Please look at the rest of the image.

AI: It is a spaghetti top! Here, look.

Server: …

This made me genuinely LOL! Thanks!

Maybe they want a sexist AI to compete with Microsoft's racist Nazi chatbot, Tay.

 

[drewyboy]

It's unfortuante that your experience is not up par. No one is stopping you from choosing another platform. Perhaps you should try a support forum or heading to a different store rather than venting on macrumors in an article about AI.

Vote with your money. I'm still happy enough with Apple to continue buying from them, and many others as well

I am choosing another platform, I have tried the support forums, and I do and am voting with my money. My upgrade cycles are long, phones 3-4 years, and laptops ~5 years. So until those cycles come around, I'm stuck with Apple and will voice my complaints because I refuse to be a yes man. Apple's software has been hardcore lacking in QA the last few years. Little things here and there I'm willing to overlook by this year has just flat out been bad.
[doublepost=1482810517][/doublepost]

Yeah! Who cares about emoji when the battery life of the flashl…

wait.

The flashlight?

You're not serious, are you? You argue that they spend too much time on relatively features, then complain, in the very next sentence, about the flashlight?

Ok let me explain this for you since you're trying to take a poor cheap shot. They waste time on emoji. Which they do. The flashlight is a built in "feature" for the iPhone, fine whatever. My point is I used it for 4 minutes to find something in my kids room after they went to bed and it sucked up a ton of battery. That shouldn't be happening, it's a freak'n flashlight app.

I don't know why you're all bent out of shape about me using the flashlight. They've never spend time during WWDC to point it out and they sure didn't make it a flagship feature of an iOS release.

 

[Jakexb]

I'm not sure if it is the competition getting better, but I feel as though Siri is getting dumber by the minute. Context requests are out of the question, it isn't current with sports anymore, and I've found myself being cut off with "sorry I didn't get that" while in a quiet room.

Siri stopped being a useful tool ever since they dropped "raise to speak". I find myself using my Pixel for anything requiring hands free.

Siri has been getting better for me. I can even whisper / mumble into the phone and it still works.

 

[truthertech]

Umm, simply using Google products myself. I had a Pixel XL and searching, say, photos for literally anything is instant.

Typing "yellow couch" returns every photo of a yellow couch you ever took and so on.

But anyhow, believe what you will. Google's AI when it comes to image recognition is top notch. Still a new venture for Apple (customer-facing, anyhow). They will get there, but as it stands right this moment, Google is king. Feel free to vigorously and emotionally blast me, but this is my opinion.

Relax, i just wanted some examples. Everyone has their opinion, but when it comes to it, most of the time no one has objective data to back it up and they are just repeating an internet meme or rumor. Based on what I have read, I have no doubt that Google Photo is more powerful than Apple Photos. The question for each person is whether there is something in Google Photo search that is worth the tradeoff of giving them a worldwide perpetual license to every photo of yours and your family.

Apple has decided that your privacy and security is paramount and they do the processing of your photos on your iPhone itself instead of having you upload your photos in a dossier they are building on you like Google. Google is applying facial recognition to you and your family so they and their advertising partners will be recognize you wherever you go and target ads to you. They also use that AI you are impressed with to scan everything in your photos so they know every place you visit, all your friends, your interests, etc. , and then integrate this into the rest of the information in your dossier, such as every place you have driven (Google Maps), every email you've sent and received (Gmail), every search you've ever made (Google), every thing you've ever said in your house (Google Assistant), every document you've ever uploaded (Google Docs), etc.

I hope Apple continues to focus its AI efforts on protecting our privacy and security while still providing useful services. I think you'll see some really impressive next gen Siri improvements in 2017 based on the heavy investments they've been making in AR and AI, e.g., Vocal IQ.
[doublepost=1482813887][/doublepost]

That's like saying Apple sold more Lightning connectors than anyone else. The Apple Watch is the only smartwatch that is allowed to work fully with the iPhone, and the iPhone is the only device it's meant to work with.

Comparing its sales to anything else is meaningless, because it competes with nothing else.



Again, something that is not competing with anything else, since it does not work on anything outside of Apple products, nor is any other NFC payment system allowed on iOS.

Now that you bring it up, though, actual Apple Pay usage by those who signed up for it, has dropped dramatically as people give up trying to find places that take contactless NFC payments.

Samsung Pay has a higher percentage of repeat users, who spend on average more, although of course that's because it works almost anywhere, even if NFC isn't supported.



Nobody was impressed by a PR stat that says nothing except that more people order computers online now.



Now THAT is true

You need to take a logic class or two or lay off whatever is clouding your thinking. When you're making comments like Apple Pay isn't competing with any other competitor, you know you are in trouble. When you're so desperate to troll Apple, you have to be careful or you end up sounding ,well not so "logical."

Samsung, Google, Amazon, Visa, Walmart, etc., all have competing systems that anyone can use. It may have escaped your notice that the readers at the checkout stands don't take just Apple Pay. They are NFC readers so you can use other phones on. Despite these huge competitors, Apple Pay is growing exponentially, adding 1 million customers a week, and now has 75% of the market. You also seem unaware that the number of merchants is growing and now over 35% of all merchants take Apple Pay, and it's estimated that over 60% will by the end of 2017. Sorry that hurts.

One more homework assignment for you to think about--Apple Watch. You left the forum LOL when you said its tremendous sales are "meaningless" and it has no competition. I guess you never heard of Lenovo's watch, the Moto, or Microsoft's Band, or Garmin's many models, or Samsung's Gear, or Jawbones UP, or the Pebble. I'm not sure the phrase "no competition" means what you think it does.

 

[bokdol]

it still cant recognize my cats face.

 

[M2M]

This^^^^ x 100. Apple's implementation of family sharing makes me think it was designed by a bunch of single guys who have no idea what a family is or how it operates. Photos is a big failure area for the feature and one of several reasons we don't use it.

And I hope apple is reading whatever google puts out on this topic cuz Google Photos still wipes the floor with Photos even after they shamelessly copied part of their app. Photos is literally just a backup method or phone storage. Google photos even on my phone is so much more capable.

Well how should Tim know how about a family ...

 

[hagar]

Well how should Tim know how about a family ...

Wow, and the winner of the most ignorant post is....

Low dude, very low.

 

[M2M]

Wow, and the winner of the most ignorant post is....

Low dude, very low.

Wouldn't have let myself carried away if Apples recent hard- and software quality and general lineup would not be on such a bad state.

Anyway the comment was more referring to Tim not having a partner then to anything else.

 

[Abazigal]

Can Apple make an AI that shows them how to eliminate dongles?

The answer has been there since day once. Get USB C peripherals and you won't need dongles.

 

[rbolick]

Earlier in December, Apple announced that it would begin allowing its artificial intelligence and machine learning researchers to publish and share their work in papers, slightly pulling back the curtain on the company's famously secretive creation processes. Now, just a few weeks later, the first of those papers has been published, focusing on Apple's work in the intelligent image recognition field.

Titled "Learning from Simulated and Unsupervised Images through Adversarial Training," the paper describes a program that can intelligently decipher and understand digital images in a setting similar to the "Siri Intelligence" and facial recognition features introduced in Photos in iOS 10, but more advanced.

In the research, Apple notes the downsides and upsides of using real images compared with that of "synthetic," or computer images. Annotations must be added to real images, an "expensive and time-consuming task" that requires a human workforce to individually label objects in a picture. On the other hand, computer-generated images help to catalyze this process "because the annotations are automatically available."

Still, fully switching to synthetic images could lead to a dip in the quality of the program in question. This is because "synthetic data is often not realistic enough" and would lead to an end-user experience that only responded well to details present in the computer-generated images, while being unable to generalize well on any real-world objects and pictures it faced.

This leads to the paper's central proposition -- the combination of using both simulated and real images to work together in "adversarial training," creating an advanced AI image program: The rest of the paper goes into the details of Apple's research on the topic, including experiments that have been run and the math proposed to back up its findings. The paper's research focused solely on single images, but the team at Apple notes towards the end that it hopes to sometime soon "investigate refining videos" as well.

The credits on the paper go to Apple researchers Ashish Shrivastava, Tomas Pfister, Oncel Tuzel, Josh Susskind, Wenda Wang, and Russ Webb. The team's research was first submitted on November 15, but it didn't get published until December 22.

At the AI conference in Barcelona a few weeks ago, Apple head of machine learning Russ Salakhutdinov -- and a few other employees -- discussed topics including health and vital signs, volumetric detection of LiDAR, prediction with structured outputs, image processing and colorization, intelligent assistant and language modeling, and activity recognition. We'll likely see papers on a variety of these topics and more in the near future.

Article Link: Apple's AI Team Publishes First Research Paper Focused on Advanced Image Recognition

 

[Abazigal]

It may be because Apple is shipping more and more crap each year and people are bitter and fed up.

There were always trolls and fanboys here. Its the fanboys that are more and more ironic. Blame Apple.

People can be bitter and fed up and still take the time to craft out a proper and well-reasoned post which sparks discussion and isn't a pain to read.

But yeah, research is hard, understanding is hard, writing more than a one-liner is hard and it's way faster and easier to post a tired old refrain.

Seriously, look at sites like daringfireball and ars technica. The contrast in the quality of comments is like day and night!

 

[rbolick]

Has anyone commented on the relationship between the Generative Adversarial Networks technique and the Aerial screensavers? Is the image of the sailboat in San Francisco Bay that should move but doesn't and has a wake longer than that of a larger moving boat a synthetic image added to drone-captured scenery?

 

[chucker23n1]

That's like saying Apple sold more Lightning connectors than anyone else. The Apple Watch is the only smartwatch that is allowed to work fully with the iPhone, and the iPhone is the only device it's meant to work with.

Comparing its sales to anything else is meaningless, because it competes with nothing else.

You mean other than Tizen and Android Wear? (And, until recently, Pebble…)

It's a smartwatch. Just because other vendors have so far sucked at getting competing devices out doesn't mean it isn't a market.

Ok let me explain this for you since you're trying to take a poor cheap shot. They waste time on emoji. Which they do. The flashlight is a built in "feature" for the iPhone, fine whatever. My point is I used it for 4 minutes to find something in my kids room after they went to bed and it sucked up a ton of battery. That shouldn't be happening, it's a freak'n flashlight app.

I don't know why you're all bent out of shape about me using the flashlight. They've never spend time during WWDC to point it out and they sure didn't make it a flagship feature of an iOS release.

Again, you're complaining that they focus on one minor feature, then point out flaws in another feature that you yourself admit isn't particularly major.

I, too, use the flashlight. I wouldn't mind if it had better battery life. But between that and the million other things that could be improved upon iOS, they might as well add another emoji. It's not as though the sort of engineer who works on Unicode support is likely to have been the same person to make low-level energy usage improvements.