A lengthy new article at Backchannel takes an in-depth look at Apple’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. It reveals for the first time that on July 30, 2014, Apple upgraded its Siri personal assistant to a neural net-based system for customers in the U.S. The company says the improvements were dramatic. “This was one of those things where the jump was so significant that you do the test again to make sure that somebody didn’t drop a decimal place,” says Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services.
The piece explains that AI technology underlies many of the core capabilities of the iPhone. AI also helps the company detect fraud, to identify useful user feedback, to extend battery life on Apple devices, to choose news stories for users to read and much more. “We’ve been seeing over the last five years a growth of this inside Apple,” says Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior worldwide marketing vice president. “Our devices are getting so much smarter at a quicker rate, especially with our Apple design A series chips. The back ends are getting so much smarter, faster, and everything we do finds some reason to be connected. This enables more and more machine learning techniques, because there is so much stuff to learn, and it’s available to [us].”
The full article is well worth the read at the link below.
