Tim Cook says Apple will weave AI into products as researchers work on solving bias

cointelegraph.com:

CEO Tim Cook gave a rare, if guarded, glimpse into Apple’s walled garden during the Q&A portion of a recent earnings call when asked his thoughts on generative artificial intelligence (AI) and where he “sees it going.” 

Cook refrained from revealing Apple’s plans, stating upfront, “We don’t comment on product roadmaps.” However, he did intimate that the company was interested in the space:

The CEO later added the company views “AI as huge” and would “continue weaving it in our products on a very thoughtful basis.”

Cook’s comments on taking a “deliberate and thoughtful” approach could explain the company’s absence in the generative AI space. However, there are some indications that Apple is conducting its own research into related models.

A research paper scheduled to be published at the Interaction Design and Children conference this June details a novel system for combating bias in the development of machine learning datasets.

Bias — the tendency for an AI model to make unfair or inaccurate predictions based on incorrect or incomplete data — is oft-cited as one of the most pressing concerns for the safe and ethical development of generative AI models.

So glad OpenAI is keeping its bias in check. pic.twitter.com/y4a7FUochR

The paper, which can currently be read in preprint, details a system by which multiple users would contribute to developing an AI system’s dataset with equal input.

Status quo generative AI development doesn’t add in human feedback until later stages, when models have typically already gained training bias.

The new Apple research integrates human feedback at the very early stages of model development in order to essentially democratize the data selection process. The result, according to the researchers, is