Apple is not that open and it doesn't like to talk about openness either. But for the sake of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the company is putting its famous secrecy aside.
Its early attempt to be more open in terms of AI started in December 2016 when the Cupertino tech giant quietly published its first AI research paper. In January 27th, 2017, the company continues that effort by joining the Partnership on AI, a non-profit organization founded by some of its biggest rivals in the industry, including Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
With Apple joining the partnership, Apple's head of advanced development for Siri, Tom Gruber, is joining its board. Gruber has been working for Apple since 2010 when the company acquired Siri, the company he co-founded where he was its CTO.
Gruber statement on the non-profit organization is as follows:
The Partnership on AI was formally announced in September 2016 with board members that include Greg Corrado from Google's DeepMind, Ralf Herbrich from Amazon, Eric Horvitz from Microsoft, Yann Lecun from Facebook, and Francesca Rossi from IBM.
The group believes that there are a lot of companies that can do a lot together on issues and challenges in the realms of AI and society. Although the companies that are members are rivals in business, on the partnership, they don't see each other has competition.
The partnership is all about getting thoughts together so they could start working to discuss emerging challenges and opportunities in AI.
From developing best practices and educate the public around AI. Horvitz that is a board member from Microsoft, said that the group aims to tackle, for example, critical areas like health care and transportation. The group will also seek deep into the potential for biases in AI.
The nonprofit will also have its members to develop the standards on human-machine collaboration, like for example, to deal with questions about self-driving cars with drivers not at all involved.
"I think there's a realization that AI will touch society quite deeply in the coming years in powerful and nuanced ways," said Horitz. "We think it's really important to involve the public as well as experts. Some of these directions has no simple answer. It can't come from a company. We need to have multiple constituents checking in."
In the partnership, openness is a prize, and Apple's secrecy has hurt the company's ability in recruiting AI talents. The company has been lacking in some major advancements in AI, especially as intelligent voice assistants from Amazon and Google have started talking with consumers.
But now as a member of the partnership and also its board, things are about to change. Apple can now help the advancements of AI. In a broader term, it can be involved in computer science from academia and other collaborations. And because the partnership will provide Apple good insights into research and to recruit experts, Apple is also helping itself.
Apple has been in discussions to join since September 2016. But at that time, the company wasn't ready to formally join the partnership.
Besides Apple, the partnership also announced new members from the American Civil Liberties Union, OpenAI, MacArthur Foundation, Peterson Institute of International Economics, Arizona State University and the University of California, Berkeley.