Apple is looking to recruit another 86 artificial intelligence experts, according to an article on VentureBeat.

The recruitment drive is due to concerns that they are falling behind Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft in the area of machine learning. Competitors seem to be stealing a march on Apple by developing services that can anticipate users’ requirements—services that rely on sophisticated machine learning capabilities.

One of the challenges facing Apple is their privacy policy. Machine learning is data hungry and researchers crave lots of high quality data. As Apple leaves a substantial proportion of data on users’ devices—rather than storing it in the cloud—they have less data to play with than their peers. Less data means less effective machine learning solutions and, critically, also makes Apple a less attractive employer for ambitious PhDs.