BBC:
A company spokesman for Apple said that the letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was prompted by its “heavy investment in machine learning and autonomous systems” and that it wanted to help define best practices in the industry.
The five-page letter, written by Apple’s director of product integrity Steve Kenner, urges the regulator to not introduce too many rules on the testing of self-driving cars, saying that “established manufacturers and new entrants should be treated equally.”
In fact, Apple has “revealed” no such thing but this is the first comment they’ve made regarding automotive “autonomous systems”.
One thing I found interesting was their argument that crash data should be shared (and anonymized). It’s being interpreted over at ArsTechnica as the first salvo in an argument to be developed later, where they plan to ask for the driving data itself, so as to play catch-up. Personally, I didn’t read it that way. But I did read it as Apple planning to be on the receiving end of that anonymized crash data. You’re right that they carefully avoided any positive statements about their involvement in car projects… but that’s really the only adequate explanation for this letter.
I could see a potential explanation be for a dongle ala Automatic that then hooks into Carplay but that sounds incredibly non-Apple (although someone will no doubt suggest that a dongle sounds very Apple at the moment). So, I agree, it does feel like the only adequate explanation.
Everybody, who’s anybody, is into machine learning these days. I would be surprised if Apple didn’t research and develop machine learning.
god that term. the industry has to come up w/ new shit to sound impressive, doesnt it…