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Apple Purchases Machine Learning Startup Laserlike
Apple last year acquired Laserlike, a machine learning startup located in Silicon Valley, reports The Information. Apple's purchase of the four-year-old company was confirmed by an Apple spokesperson with a standard acquisition statement: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."
Laserlike's website says that its core mission is to deliver "high quality information and diverse perspectives on any topic from the entire web to you."
The company built a search app that used discovery and personalization machine learning techniques to build a Laserlike app described as an "interest search engine" that provided news, web, video, and local content relevant to each user. The Laserlike app is no longer available following the acquisition, but the company's website continues to cover what it was focused on:
Giannandrea has been tasked with improving Apple's machine learning initiatives and bolstering Siri, the company's voice assistant. Laserlike's technology could potentially allow Siri to learn more about Apple users to provide more tailored, personalized content.
Laserlike's website says that its core mission is to deliver "high quality information and diverse perspectives on any topic from the entire web to you."
The company built a search app that used discovery and personalization machine learning techniques to build a Laserlike app described as an "interest search engine" that provided news, web, video, and local content relevant to each user. The Laserlike app is no longer available following the acquisition, but the company's website continues to cover what it was focused on:
We live in a world of information abundance, where the main problem is sifting through the noise and discovering the stuff you actually care about. For instance, if you care about knowing when the next SpaceX livestream launch is because you like to watch it with your kids, or if the car you bought two years ago has had a recall, or if a company you're interested in announces it's opening a new office where you live, or if there's a music festival coming to your town, you don't know when to look for these things, and there's no product that informs you automatically.The Information suggests that Apple will use the Laserlike acquisition to strengthen its artificial intelligence efforts, including Siri. The Laserlike team has joined the Apple AI group led by new Apple AI chief John Giannandrea, who came to Apple from Google last year.
This is one of the things we want to fix on the Internet. Laserlike's core mission is to deliver high quality information and diverse perspectives on any topic from the entire web. We are passionate about helping people follow their interests and engage with new perspectives.
Giannandrea has been tasked with improving Apple's machine learning initiatives and bolstering Siri, the company's voice assistant. Laserlike's technology could potentially allow Siri to learn more about Apple users to provide more tailored, personalized content.
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5 days ago at 01:23 pm
Red Hat Linux:
https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux
Also:
* On November 15, 1999, Red Hat acquired Cygnus Solutions ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions').
* Later Red Hat acquired WireSpeed, C2Net ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C2Net') and Hell's Kitchen Systems.
* Red Hat acquired Planning Technologies, Inc in 2001 and AOL ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL')'s iPlanet ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPlanet') directory and certificate-server software in 2004.
* Red Hat acquired open-source middleware provider JBoss ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBoss_(company)') on June 5, 2006, and JBoss became a division of Red Hat.
* In 2007 Red Hat acquired MetaMatrix ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaMatrix') and made an agreement with Exadel ('https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Exadel&action=edit&redlink=1') to distribute its software.
* On March 15, 2007, Red Hat released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and in June acquired Mobicents ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobicents'). On March 13, 2008, Red Hat acquired Amentra, a provider of systems integration services for service-oriented architecture ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_architecture'), business process management ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_management'), systems development ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development') and enterprise data services.
* On October 16, 2015, Red Hat announced its acquisition of IT automation startup Ansible ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansible_(software)'), rumored for an estimated $100 million USD.
* In May 2018, Red Hat acquired CoreOS ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoreOS').
and
On October 28, 2018, IBM ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM') announced its intent to acquire Red Hat for US$34 billion, in one of its largest-ever acquisitions. The company will operate out of IBM's Hybrid Cloud division.
5 days ago at 12:37 pm
I wonder if this could help out with improving Siri's knowledge of general topics, rather than defaulting to suggesting a web search.
5 days ago at 12:43 pm
[Laserlike's website says that its core mission is to deliver "high quality information and diverse perspectives on any topic from the entire web to you."]
Hmm, that description is so generic it could have come out of a buzzword generator.
Hmm, that description is so generic it could have come out of a buzzword generator.
5 days ago at 01:01 pm
Laserlike's website says that its core mission is to deliver "high quality information...."
I hope Apple learns to stop delivering information via low-contrast text on blinding white backgrounds with a virtual minimum of context-defining borders/zones/buttons but a maximum of space-wasting screen arrangements.
5 days ago at 12:45 pm
Please, Apple, I hope this doesn't mean that you will start collecting more data from us than necessary. These things need a lot of data to effectively deliver what they promise.
Collection is fine as long as it is processed and remains on device like many of their initiatives currently do.
5 days ago at 02:07 pm
Joke: How many acquisitions does it take Apple to make Siri competent?
Answer: Here's what I found on the web for Imagine Dragons.
Answer: Here's what I found on the web for Imagine Dragons.
5 days ago at 03:34 pm
Joke: How many acquisitions does it take Apple to make Siri competent?
Answer: Here's what I found on the web for Imagine Dragons.
2.5 years of dating Erin (and 3,478 manual correction of iMessage voice dictation) and Siri still thinks I’m dating some dude named Aaron.
5 days ago at 12:51 pm
This sounds like a great idea, Siri can use all the help she can get. I typically just receive a web search suggestion. Although a truly helpful assistant would need to collect much more personal information about me. That would seem to fly in the face of Apples privacy standards.
5 days ago at 01:47 pm
Any news potentially connected to making Siri smarter makes me happy.
5 days ago at 08:56 pm
another Apple acquisition targeting the collection and abuse of user data
I have not seen anything from Apple to make me think they are abusing my data. They purposely collect as little as possible, leave as much of that as they can on device, and anonymize collected data where ever possible to the best of their ability. They have had a couple of bugs recently that created privacy vulnerabilities but they quickly addressed them and I would put a bug in a completely different category from targeting the collection of data. Unless Apple gives me a reason to doubt them, I will give them the benefit of doubt that they are sticking to their core principals and trying their best to protect user privacy.[ Read All Comments ]
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