Apple is falling behind in the race to create ‘predictive’ services for smartphones because its privacy policies are too protective of the end-user, according to a new report from Reuters. Researchers are able to access only a tiny fraction of the data generated by users of Apple devices, with some services — like Maps — flushing data after as little as 15 minutes.
Reuters’ report has crunched numbers on Apple job openings and talked to various industry insiders, many of whom agree that Apple lacks the best conditions to attract the very limited supply of data scientists necessary to leverage cloud-based services and anticipate the most minute demands of smartphone users.
Artificial intelligence is at the heart of Apple’s next generation of services, and the fruits of the company’s labor are already beginning to appear in iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan. Both operating systems bring with them enhanced spotlight search functionality, but iOS 9’s improvements to Siri and new Proactive features clearly illustrate the path forward.
In iOS 9, Siri has at least some contextual awareness — saying “remind me about this later” while writing an email will set a reminder to follow up on that message, for example.
Proactive, meanwhile, analyzes a number of variables to surface information the user may want at that particular moment, before they request it. iOS 9 will notify users when they should leave for their next appointment based on local traffic conditions, for instance, and can use data from emails to automatically create calendar entries or identify unknown phone numbers.
However University of Washington professor and CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence Oren Etzioni claims that Apple is determined to make up the shortfall, a fact that the piece contends is demonstrated by its recent spate of ads for data scientists and analysts: “In the past,” says Prof. Etzioni “Apple has not been at the vanguard of machine learning and cutting edge artificial intelligence work, but that is rapidly changing. They are after the best and the brightest, just like everybody else.”
If Apple succeeds without compromising privacy, Google may face questions about its approach to analyzing users’ data. Microsoft is currently in a similar legal battle with the DOJ.