Apple AI Chief Retiring After Siri Failure 21
Apple's longtime AI chief John Giannandrea is retiring, with former Microsoft and Google AI leader Amar Subramanya stepping in to take over. MacRumors notes the retirement comes after the company's repeated delays in delivering its revamped Siri and internal turmoil that led to an AI team exodus. From the report: Giannandrea will serve as an advisor between now and 2026, with former Microsoft AI researcher Amar Subramanya set to take over as vice president of AI. Subramanya will report to Apple engineering chief Craig Federighi, and will lead Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation. Subramanya was previously corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft, and before that, he spent 16 years at Google. He was head of engineering for Google's Gemini Assistant, and Apple says that he has "deep expertise" in both AI and ML research that will be important to "Apple's ongoing innovation and future Apple Intelligence features."
Some of the teams that Giannandrea oversaw will move to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue, such as AI Infrastructure and Search and Knowledge. Khan is Apple's new Chief Operating Officer who took over for Jeff Williams earlier this year. Cue has long overseen Apple services. [...] Apple said that it is "poised to accelerate its work in delivering intelligent, trusted, and profoundly personal experiences" with the new AI team. "We are thankful for the role John played in building and advancing our AI work, helping Apple continue to innovate and enrich the lives of our users," said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a statement. "AI has long been central to Apple's strategy, and we are pleased to welcome Amar to Craig's leadership team and to bring his extraordinary AI expertise to Apple. In addition to growing his leadership team and AI responsibilities with Amar's joining, Craig has been instrumental in driving our AI efforts, including overseeing our work to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year."
Some of the teams that Giannandrea oversaw will move to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue, such as AI Infrastructure and Search and Knowledge. Khan is Apple's new Chief Operating Officer who took over for Jeff Williams earlier this year. Cue has long overseen Apple services. [...] Apple said that it is "poised to accelerate its work in delivering intelligent, trusted, and profoundly personal experiences" with the new AI team. "We are thankful for the role John played in building and advancing our AI work, helping Apple continue to innovate and enrich the lives of our users," said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a statement. "AI has long been central to Apple's strategy, and we are pleased to welcome Amar to Craig's leadership team and to bring his extraordinary AI expertise to Apple. In addition to growing his leadership team and AI responsibilities with Amar's joining, Craig has been instrumental in driving our AI efforts, including overseeing our work to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year."
Siri is so frustrating (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like they spent all their time on cutesy little behaviors versus doing the hard work of building an actual functional digital assistant.
Anyone other than me get annoyed when you try to ask Siri something and, midway through while you're still talking, Siri decides to interject "Uh huh?" It's incredibly irritating and distracting. And then, 75% of the time, Siri either does the wrong thing or silently just goes away without doing anything.
This guy put together and managed a crappy team that probably should be let go in its entirety. I'm sure he's got a nice retirement package though, nice work if you can get it.
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty much.
My son says Apple does this every year around Christmastime, to get people to think they need to buy new, faster, "better" phones.
In this case perhaps I can answer, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Re: (Score:2)
My latest pet peeve is when Siri violates basic privacy standards by compelling data collection that isn't necessary.
A couple of days ago, I asked it for a list of restaurants near a particular town where I would be in a couple of hours. Siri immediately told me I had to enable location services for that query. What? Why? My query didn't ask for a list of restaurants near me. I asked for a list of restaurants near a different town, and more to the point, I gave both the name of the town and the state.
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My husband and I took a 12 day, 4 state, 21st anniversary road trip in July. I knew we'd be hitting lots of places without cell signals, so I downloaded the entire 16 GB trip, in regional segments, to offline Apple Maps, and loaded up my iPhone with over 25GB of music in Apple Music.
Using CarPlay it turns out there's no way to access any of those things via Siri without an active internet connection! Every time I'd ask Siri to "Take us to [location]," it would come back, "You have to be onli
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I turn it off and don't use it. Same response I would have if it were completely awesome (and it may be for all I know).
No frustration here.
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The project was doomed to fail from the very beginning.
Apple is too privacy focused. To make AI competitive, you have to be willing to share private data with it.
Right now, Gemini Live on Android sucks terribly, but I am more hopeful for it..
Re: (Score:2)
(highway exit coming up in about a mile) "Siri, give me directions to the nearest Arby's"
I FOUND FOUR DIFFERENT ARBY'S IN YOUR AREA, THE CLOSEST ONE IS ON WEST 2ND STREET, APPROXIMATELY 2.8 MILES AWAY TO YOUR WEST. IT GETS 3 STARS ON YELP AND
"Siri just give me the fucking directions"
I'M SORRY I CAN'T DO THAT RIGHT NOW
(highway exit goes by)
Google to Apple? (Score:3)
Why would someone go from Google to Apple nowadays? That's like jumping from the Carpathia to the Titanic.
Re:Google to Apple? (Score:5, Informative)
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They probably find its offerings more attractive.
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Why would someone go from Google to Apple nowadays? That's like jumping from the Carpathia to the Titanic.
Money. There was that AI guy who went to Meta and got something like a $100million sign on bonus a few months back.
I would imagine the payout this guy is getting is absolutely stratospheric.
The one guy who got it right! (Score:3, Interesting)
Giannandrea is the one nerd in the AI world who tried to build a product around a SLM running on-device. An AI that actually considers user privacy. Apple started designing chips for on-device AI processing in the 2010s and has been shipping them in its hardware since at least 2020. This stands in stark contrast to everybody else’s plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on datacenters. Did he pull it off? Well, no. But he did try to find Apple an alternative to getting totally in bed with that weirdo Sam Altman. Or handing all of our texts and emails and photos over to Google. Giannandrea had a dream, and while that dream failed, maybe it will inspire a future AI boffin to make it work.
Re: The one guy who got it right! (Score:3)
Re: The one guy who got it right! (Score:2)
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You're absolutely right, but the reality is that most people really don't care. I mean, I'm in the tech world, and I gave up caring about privacy a long time ago. I don't do anything particularly dodgy, so if Google wants to know what I had for lunch good for them.
I'm not saying this should be acceptable, but the writing was on the wall for privacy a decade ago when we all started readily carrying around personal trackers and giving our data to Google in exchange for not having to pay.
I admire Apple for hol
Re: The one guy who got it right! (Score:1)
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Stunned (Score:2)
I don't know what to say. I have so many feelings about this. Where do I start?
Oh wait....I need to go take a dump. Give me a minute please.
Old news... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't even use Siri much, she can't tell a good joke !
Can't take one either. Ten minutes ago, after Siri bungled a request, I just chuckled and said "Siri you're funny". It responded with "If you think it could be serious, ask me to call Emergency Services or someone you trust."
still the best (Score:2)
Apples' AI might not be able to do much, but it still has the best styling.