In an exclusive article titled “Intelligent machines: Making AI work in the real world” written by Eric Schmidt on BBC News, the Alphabet chairman (formerly Google) has discussed artificial intelligence and its applications, while somewhere along the way, he has also slammed Apple Music, the Cupertino giant’s music streaming service which debuted earlier this year. Here’s what he writes:
“To give just one example: a decade ago, to launch a digital music service, you probably would have enlisted a handful of elite tastemakers to pick the hottest new music.
Today, you’re much better off building a smart system that can learn from the real world – what actual listeners are most likely to like next – and help you predict who and where the next Adele might be.
As a bonus, it’s a much less elitist taste-making process – much more democratic – allowing everyone to discover the next big star through our own collective tastes and not through the individual preferences of a select few”.
While Schmidt has tried to make a certain point, that Apple has shunned artificial intelligence and is using “music experts” to come up with playlists and select the music they think you’ll like, he has completely ignored that fact that a number of features of Apple Music are specifically designed to help highlight and draw attention to independent artists. Also, the underlying Beats Music recommendation engine does use machine learning to try to discern which artists and music you’ll like in order to make suggestions.
In contrast, Google has always relied on artificial intelligence and machine learning to power and advance many of its own services, most notably its search engine.
You can read the complete article here.
Google has relied on artificial intelligence and machine learning to power and advance many of its own services, most notably its search engine.
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He’s not wrong
He has a valid point. Apple music failed to impress many including me and I’m going back to Spotify.
How’s google play music doing btw?
It’s not that he’s right or wrong it’s just two different ways of reaching the same objective. I think apple’s use of both AI and human curation is a good balance. For decades tastemakers have shaped the music landscape and have helped emerging artists get discovered and I would hate for that to go away.