I was starting to get worried about the data collection already happening individually at these big companies. Now that they have announced a partnership which potentially combines all this data together, I feel so much better!<p>The funny thing is, the companies are ALWAYS going to put a positive spin on this. Not very different from the WhatsApp "we won't show ads, ever" messaging. Now I am in the camp which says "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me". Almost none of these companies can be trusted at this point. [1] Their refusal to ask OpenAI to be at the table really does not reflect well on them [2]. And the less said about the tenured professors who are now becoming company mouthpieces saying things like "we create products which cannot make profit but which is meant purely for data collection" the better [3]. And lastly, if these companies had such a sincere desire to "improve AI for the sake of humanity", how about they start by letting OpenAI (or a similar company) do a data audit of all the information they share so that we can actually be certain it is not just a data brokerage masquerading as a public service?<p>I wanted to say that I wish the AI community will boycott this effort completely. I find it a bit worrying that this community now resides almost entirely within the walls of corporate America.<p>[1] Interestingly, the only company which is even <i>making</i> noises about user privacy is Apple. Is it possible they saw something in this partnership that they didn't like?<p>[2] <a href="https://twitter.com/OpenAI/status/781243032582578177" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/OpenAI/status/781243032582578177</a><p>[3] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12428883" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12428883</a>
>>"As of today’s launch, companies like Apple, Twitter, Intel and Baidu are missing from the group. Though Apple is said to be enthusiastic about the project, their absence is still notable because the company has fallen behind in artificial intelligence when compared to its rivals — many of which are part of this new group."<p>It seems Apple's lack of engagement in the community [1] is really starting to hurt it. Did anyone else take away from this that the other big players are not including them at the table/considering them real competition?<p>[1] <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-29/apple-s-secrecy-hurts-its-ai-software-development" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-29/apple-s-se...</a>
What's the purpose of this initiative? Sharing technology? Hardly. The goal is probably to shape the discourse on AI and its implications on society and the individual in a way that's favorable for these companies. In other words, they will try to preempt, counter, and suppress criticism of their business models, i.e. the AI exploitation of user data in the service of advertisers and others. It's pretty obvious why Apple is not on board. They have previously taken the position that user data should be left alone and therefore pose a threat to Google, Facebook et al. whose financial success is solely built on the extraction of information from users. This has nothing to do with Apple falling behind technologically.
Are LeCun, Corrado, etc. actually running this? They're pretty busy, and the website doesn't sound like them:<p>"We believe that by taking a multi-party stakeholder approach to identifying and addressing challenges and opportunities in an open and inclusive manner, we can have the greatest benefit and positive impact for the users of AI technologies. While the Partnership on AI was founded by five major IT companies, the organization will be overseen and directed by a diverse board that balances members from the founding companies with leaders in academia, policy, law, and representatives from the non-profit sector. By bringing together these different groups, we will also seek to bring open dialogue internationally, bringing parties from around the world to discuss these topics."<p>This sounds like it was written by some PR person. Google and Facebook are "IT companies"?
To quote Pedro Domingos in "The Master Algorithm" [1]:<p>> But everyone has only a sliver of it [information about you]. Google sees your searches, Amazon your online purchases, AT&T your phone calls, Apple your music downloads, Safeway your groceries, Capital One your credit-card transactions. Companies like Acxiom collate and sell infor- mation about you, but if you inspect it (which in Acxiom’s case you can, at aboutthedata.com), it’s not much, and some of it is wrong. No one has anything even approaching a complete picture of you. That’s both good and bad. Good because if someone did, they’d have far too much power. Bad because as long as that’s the case there can be no 360-degree model of you. What you really want is a digital you that you’re the sole owner of and that others can access only on your terms.<p>Does this mean that effectively all of Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft will have the whole picture? That makes me worried.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Master-Algorithm-Ultimate-Learning-Machine/dp/0465065708" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Master-Algorithm-Ultimate-Learning-Ma...</a>
Who gives a sh!t that Apple was not at the meeting. I think the main takeaway is that 4-5 companies might control one of the most powerful technologies/ideas of the last 5 years. Its already hard enough competing with these companies how is this good for everybody else?
<i>The organizational structure has been designed to allow non-corporate groups to have equal leadership side-by-side with large tech companies.</i><p>Anybody know more details? As non-corporate entity the opportunity is very interesting due to the potential of having access to their infrastructure. The cost of running AI projects on the cloud is currently prohibitive and am forced to run on performance limited machines.
As usual Apple is missing. Pleasantly surprised to find Amazon on the list of collaborators. They usually take from open source/communities and rarely give back. This is a good change.
There's more information on their website: <a href="http://www.partnershiponai.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.partnershiponai.org/</a>
> “We want to involve people impacted by AI as well,” said Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder and head of applied AI at DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet.<p>Who believes that this is to favor users, believes in everything.
Five companies that collectively have more data on US residents' online behaviours than all the world's governments, working in partnership on AI.<p>What could possibly go wrong ?
If you are working for any of these companies, you should really consider if it is worth it, and possibly stop or switch to more meaningful and less evil endevours.
Calling simple statistical clustering algorithms that are tweaked by lots of trial-and-error heuristics "AI" feels like calling those slow two-wheeled electric self-balancing skateboards "hoverboards". Sometimes marketing can be too dramatic.
I remember learning about oligopolies and cartels in high school economics. Pretty sure this is at its core, a form of collusion meant to undermine the competitive spirit of the market. Ethical implications of this strategy are quite dire at best. No one stood up to the robber barons then and likelt no can now.
The moment I saw the headline, I noticed Apple missing from the list, and it felt right! Facebook, Amazon, Google...Microsoft...IBM...all coming together to promote (sell) AI? This sounds like the coming together of the evil powers.<p>Apple, however successful it may continue to be financially, needs to focus on a wider penetration of its devices and services if there is to be any meaningful dent on the privacy front around the world. Being a market leader in one country (or a few) doesn't help much when billions of people around the world use Android phones where the default is "ask for any permission and it shall be given." For this to change, I believe Apple must go lower on the price front, even if that means lower margins. It also needs to push forward quicker on things that other companies don't consider, like differential privacy, and look for markedly different ways of doing things compared to the personal data hungry parasites like the ones in the title.
Wow that's really sad that they have refuesed to use the OpenAi operating syestem which shows exactly how much the really care about there jobs reflections
At the risk of ad hominem, this is typical techcrunch reporting:<p>>> "Though Apple is said to be enthusiastic about the project, their absence is still notable because the company has fallen behind in artificial intelligence when compared to its rivals — many of whom are part of this new group."<p>How exactly is it that TC knows that Apple has indeed fallen behind? Are they privy to the Apple ML roadmap? Are they using lack of open source activity as a metric to make this claim? Is there an unidentified source who can objectively measure the ML progress across these organizations, and using this objective metric, conclude that Apple is behind?<p>It's a claim without much substance, and paints Apple in a negative light. You could say that this is a marketing failure on the part of Apple, and you might be correct. For example, see the article floating a few weeks ago on Medium (I think) on how Apple was embedding ML in everything.<p>In the days of price performance wars in CPUs (and GPUs), there were more or less objective (err, almost objective) benchmarks that people could point to. This is not the case with ML/DL. It would be great if we could say: "Across image classification, the precision / recall is X, vs. Facebook's Y. Clearly, Apple has more work todo in image classification. But in Machine Translation, Apple is ahead, with metrics A vs. B from Facebook..<p>What is happening with ML/DL/AI/whatever is that all companies are using the same bag of words to describe what they do, but the popular press is not discerning enough to make heads or tales out of what they report on, and they end up mis-educating the public.<p></soapbox>
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Oh, great. So all the companies that have recently had the most problems with ethics issues and user privacy issues are now collaborating in order to more effectively address those issues? Pardon me if my scoffing is audible.
1. These companies have been collecting our information for years now. Some have acces to what we write in are emails, but of course, they never read them, they just scan them for marketing purposes?<p>2. Why do I feel certain people's information has been looked at, scrutinized, cross checked, collated, etc. by certain savvy insiders. Warren buffet, George Sorrows, any of the financial movers and shakers, information is sitting on a server somewhere, unless you're a Clinton. If I had access, I could help but look at it.<p>Before you made an investment, bought a stock, bought realeste, took over a company; wouldn't you be tempted to peak at some of that information?.<p>3. I feel certain individual information has been used as research for financial gain.<p>3. I belive it's basically insider trading without the other guy knowing he/she gave away any information.<p>4. I believe it will be exposed, and will be the next huge Financial scandal.<p>5. I believe this move might be a smoke screen. "We know some of us have already abused private information for personal/financial gain. Let's combine the data. It might put some reigns on what we all know some of our insiders have been doing. Let the people think we are doing this to better society.<p>6. I don't have any evidence, I just have a hard time believing no one is looking at juicy date pouring in from some high profile people.<p>7. I believe it will be on the front page of Forbes in less than a year.
Okay, which AI are they talking about? The term can mean various things. I mean if this were merely heuristic neural networks, one would think that Tesla would be included.