[brandonb]

As context, this is Apple's first published AI research paper. After Russ Salakhutdinov was hired, he promised that Apple would start publishing AI papers in peer-reviewed conferences... and this is them making good on that promise.

I work in AI (using HealthKit data, not as part of Apple), and my quick read is that although this particular paper isn't especially groundbreaking, it's a good omen for things to come. The idea they propose is a good twist on Generative Adversarial Networks—which have been around either since 2014 or the 1990's depending on who you ask—but you might see dozens of similar papers at a conference like NIPS.

That said, Apple is using state-of-the-art techniques, submitting to peer-reviewed conferences, publishing results on well-known baselines, AND publishing openly, none of which were true of them even a couple of years ago. This is real research.

So kudos to them. I'm really curious to see how they publish in core product areas like Health or Siri -- they could make some major contributions to research in addition to products.