Those of us who use iPhones may have more to welcome this week than Apple’s event to unveil the latest devices.
The computer maker’s stance on guarding customer privacy may be slowing its push to stay ahead of rivals in the race to to develop digital assistants, Reuters reports. If correct, that means the company is upholding its pledge to respect customers’ personal privacy, but more on that in a minute.
At issue is a race by Apple, Google and other tech companies to recruit experts in machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence that allows computers to anticipate what users want without being explicitly programmed.
The larger the set of data that software can analyze, the more precise those predictions can become. But with a self-imposed privacy policy that causes iPhones and other devices to refresh every 15 minutes, Apple forgoes the opportunity to send the data to the cloud, where the information could be combined with other data, analyzed and, possibly, sold to advertisers.
That benefits users by protecting their personal privacy but can slow the evolution of services such as Siri to anticipate users’ needs. “They want to make a phone that responds to you very quickly without knowledge of the rest of the world,” Joseph Gonzalez, co-founder of Dato, a machine learning startup, told Reuters, referring to Apple. “It’s harder to do that.”
Or not. If any company can reconcile the imperatives of privacy and technological progress in a way that advances both it may be Apple.
The next generation of Apple’s services will depend heavily on artificial intelligence, AppleInsider reports. At the same time, digital assistants developed by Google and Microsoft reportedly are getting better at learning users’ routines.
Apple currently aims to recruit at least 86 more experts in machine learning, according to an analysis by Reuters of the computer maker’s jobs postings.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said in June that his company won’t be a party to the exchange that defines the relationship of many tech companies and their customers, in which customers accept free services in return for companies’ selling information about consumer’ searches, shopping, health and more to advertisers.
“They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it,” Cook told a gathering in Washington sponsored by privacy advocates. “We think that’s wrong.”
Edward Snowden, the former government subcontractor who revealed the magnitude of the National Security Agency’s spying on Americans in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, said Apple’s stance deserved consumers’ support.
“Regardless of whether it’s honest or dishonest, for the moment, now, that’s something we should… incentivize, and it’s actually something we should emulate,” Snowden told an audience in Spain about two weeks after Cook outlined the company’s policy.
Apple is slated to introduce enhancements to Siri this Wednesday as part of the rollout of iOS 9, the latest version of the company’s operating system for the iPhone and iPad.