Apple Wins Top Computer Vision & Pattern Recognition Award for First AI Research Paper

Friday August 25, 2017 6:23 PM PDT by Juli Clover
Back in October, Apple published its first research paper related to artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The paper, titled "Learning from Simulated and Unsupervised Images through Adversarial Training," focused on advanced image recognition techniques and the use of both simulated and real images to train an advanced AI image program.

Apple's research paper was accepted to the 2017 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) back in July, and as it turns out, Apple's work won a "CVPR 2017 Best Paper Award," coveted in the machine learning field.

MacRumors reader Tom, who holds a PhD in the field, says that CVPR is the most influential AI/machine learning conference, and that winning the award is a rare achievement "even for the top people in the field."

The paper was written by Apple researchers Ashish Shrivastava, Tomas Pfister, Oncel Tuzel, Joshua Susskind, Wenda Wang, and Russell Webb.

In addition to publishing research papers, Apple's AI and machine learning teams now maintain a Machine Learning Journal, detailing the work of Apple's engineers. The blog was just updated this week with articles that were shared at Interspeech 2017 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Thanks, Tom!
37 comments


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Kaibelf
15 months ago
Congrats to the engineers for their innovative research being recognized! It’s not always the flashiest work, and they deserve kudos for their efforts.
Rating: 16 Votes
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djcerla
15 months ago

And ironically, Siri still sucks after all these years! Why is Google's AI still light years ahead with the brain power behind Apples AI?
Seriously, it is infuriating to no end when I ask Siri for some info and it comes back with the wrong info, doesn't record what I said correctly or just gives me a search page. Meanwhile, Google gets it right every time!


Google is not "light years ahead", by any stretch of imagination.

Google's AI sucks just as Apple's, they're both pathetic building blocks for way more intelligent systems.

For example, while Google's AI may have an edge in some scenarios, there's no such thing as a Google Assistant in Italian whereas I use Siri in that language every day since years.

And the fact that the first Apple's paper has won that all-important competition is a sign that the company is moving in the right direction, and will have the academic cachet to attract top talent in the field.
Rating: 13 Votes
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Lloydbm41
15 months ago
And ironically, Siri still sucks after all these years! Why is Google's AI still light years ahead with the brain power behind Apples AI?
Seriously, it is infuriating to no end when I ask Siri for some info and it comes back with the wrong info, doesn't record what I said correctly or just gives me a search page. Meanwhile, Google gets it right every time!
Rating: 9 Votes
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Zedcars
15 months ago
Research presentation by Ashish Shrivastava (July 2017):

[MEDIA=youtube]vDW8qvsBtmQ[/MEDIA]
Rating: 5 Votes
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Zirel
15 months ago

And ironically, Siri still sucks after all these years! Why is Google's AI still light years ahead with the brain power behind Apples AI?
Seriously, it is infuriating to no end when I ask Siri for some info and it comes back with the wrong info, doesn't record what I said correctly or just gives me a search page. Meanwhile, Google gets it right every time!



[doublepost=1503740813][/doublepost]

Because they buy technology when it comes to major changes instead of coming up with them in house. They have lots of great ideas and patches, but rarely seem to be able to bring a broad new idea to market as a complete product without some acquisitions.


Are you talking about Apple or Google?
Rating: 5 Votes
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pika2000
15 months ago

This is all well and good and I suppose of interest to anyone in the field, but the average Apple user wants to know how any new information or methods presented here will benefit them.

The average seemingly Apple "user" here only wants iPhones without bezels and how to get torrents on their iPads.

/s
Rating: 5 Votes
Avatar
lincolntran
15 months ago

And ironically, Siri still sucks after all these years! Why is Google's AI still light years ahead with the brain power behind Apples AI?
Seriously, it is infuriating to no end when I ask Siri for some info and it comes back with the wrong info, doesn't record what I said correctly or just gives me a search page. Meanwhile, Google gets it right every time!


What did you ask Siri? I can try on my end.
Rating: 4 Votes
Avatar
lunarworks
15 months ago

And ironically, Siri still sucks after all these years! Why is Google's AI still light years ahead with the brain power behind Apples AI?
Seriously, it is infuriating to no end when I ask Siri for some info and it comes back with the wrong info, doesn't record what I said correctly or just gives me a search page. Meanwhile, Google gets it right every time!

Google's key advantage isn't brain power, it may or may not be smarter than Siri, it's access to information. Apple doesn't have the vast data store that Google does, or the lack of concern for privacy.
Rating: 4 Votes
Avatar
FelixDerKater
15 months ago

And ironically, Siri still sucks after all these years! Why is Google's AI still light years ahead with the brain power behind Apples AI?
Seriously, it is infuriating to no end when I ask Siri for some info and it comes back with the wrong info, doesn't record what I said correctly or just gives me a search page. Meanwhile, Google gets it right every time!


Because they buy technology when it comes to major changes instead of coming up with them in house. They have lots of great ideas and patches, but rarely seem to be able to bring a broad new idea to market as a complete product without some acquisitions.
Rating: 3 Votes
Avatar
yanksfan114
15 months ago

Google is miles and miles ahead of Apple in AI. But really that should be expected as Google has been doing it a lot longer than Apple and spent way, way more money. Plus Google has so much more data than Apple.

It is not close. But hopefully Apple will really get serious and close the gap over the next couple of year.

Think the biggest reason Apple fell so far behind is they really did not focus on AI like Google did and now sounds like Apple is getting more serious about it.

In comparisons Apple has done very poorly to Google. It is both sides. Siri gets things wrong far more often than Google.

https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2017/6/19553521_14966208754961_rId9.png

But then Siri struggles to even answer questions.

https://infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_9580_how_smart_are_smart_assistants_n.jpg

As you can see it is not close. Apple has a large gap.

BTW, if you really want to see the difference try Google Photos. It is just incredible and feels from a a different era when comparing to Apple Photos.

My wife will click her shutter button on her iPhone and without touching an additional button will walk into our family room and ask for crazy detail in photos and the TV will turn itself on, input sets and the photo in 4k and HDR appears on the largest screen in the house.

So using this has zero friction as they just clicked the shutter button as she always has. But setting up friction also matters. She simply purchased, plugged in and logged in and that was it!

No hard configuration or anything like that. The 4k Chromecast is also the only way to see iPhone photos in 4K with HDR on the largest screen in the house.

My wife already was using Google Photos. Google does it's magic by using your Google account to hold it all together.


It's not that Apple isn't serious or didn't invest as much money, it's that they have a high wall to climb called privacy. They want to make sure people have control of their data and what it may be used for. Google just barreled through that wall and said give me all your data (like the Kool-Aid man). This is a MAJOR roadblock when it comes to creating AI for individuals.
Rating: 3 Votes
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