Apple’s machine learning researchers are now free to publish their findings

iBrain Tom Gruber Alex Acero Eddy Cue Craig Federighi Backchannel image 001

Apple demands that its machine learning (ML) experts and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers do no publish their findings in research papers or share results of their work with fellow ML/AI experts, which scientists think is preventing the company from recruiting the brightest minds in the field. Realizing its mistake, Apple is changing its stance.

As announced by Russ Salakhutd, Apple’s director of AI research, the company’s machine-learning researchers are now free to publish some of their breakthroughs in and confer with colleagues.

Representing a major departure from Apple’s earlier stance of barring its machine-learning PhDs from doing open research, which is publishing their work, artificial intelligence and machine learning researchers at Apple are now going to start publishing some of their work and engage more with the wider academic community.

Machine learning at Apple image 001
A slide from the recent Neural Information Processing Systems conference in Barcelona.

In addition to strengthening its ties to academia, the iPhone maker recently began attending more industry conferences and discussing its use of tools emerging from university labs, according to academics familiar with the matter.

Apple does not divulge the number of people working on its machine learning efforts, but one former employee estimated their number had tripled or quadrupled in the past few years.

Top photo courtesy of Backchannel, a Wired Media Group property.

Source: Business Insider