内容来源：https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/01/apple-just-named-a-new-ai-chief-with-google-and-microsoft-expertise-as-john-giannandrea-steps-down/

内容总结：

苹果公司人工智能业务高层近日发生重大人事变动。自2018年起担任公司人工智能负责人的约翰·詹南德雷亚已确认离职，其职位将由来自微软、拥有16年谷歌工作经验的阿马尔·苏布拉马尼亚接任。此次换帅被视为苹果在人工智能领域的一次关键调整。

此次人事震荡背后，是苹果人工智能业务近期遭遇的一系列挑战。自2024年10月推出“苹果智能”系统以来，其市场反响未达预期。系统初期频现技术失误，例如通知摘要功能曾多次生成不实信息，错误报道社会事件及体育赛事结果，引发广泛争议。

原定于2025年4月推出的新版Siri也遭遇重大挫折。据彭博社调查，在计划发布前数周，公司软件负责人克雷格·费代里吉实测发现多项宣传功能无法正常运行，导致发布无限期推迟，并引发消费者集体诉讼。报道指出，詹南德雷亚早在今年3月就已失去对Siri及机器人部门的直接管理权。

内部报告进一步揭示了团队协作失调、预算错配及人才流失等问题，甚至有员工戏称其团队为“AI/无机器学习”。与此同时，多名人工智能研究员已转投OpenAI、谷歌等竞争对手。

值得注意的是，苹果据称将借助谷歌Gemini模型驱动下一代Siri，这一合作对长期处于竞争关系的两家公司而言颇具象征意义。新任负责人苏布拉马尼亚将直接向费代里吉汇报，肩负着加速苹果人工智能发展的重任。

当前苹果坚持的“设备端处理优先”技术路线面临现实考验。尽管该方案通过自研芯片保障用户隐私，但其模型能力受设备算力限制，且数据采集策略可能影响模型训练效果。在竞争对手持续投入云端大模型的背景下，苹果能否凭借差异化路径实现赶超，仍是悬而未决的课题。

中文翻译：

周一，苹果公司在一份措辞谨慎的公告中宣布，自2018年起担任公司人工智能负责人的约翰·詹南德雷亚即将"卸任"，实际上就是不再为苹果工作。他将在春季前以顾问身份留任。

接替他的是备受推崇的微软高管阿马尔·苏布拉马尼亚，他曾在谷歌工作16年，最近负责Gemini助理的工程开发。考虑到苏布拉马尼亚对竞争对手了如指掌，这无疑是一笔精明的招聘。

此举被定性为一次重大人事调整。回顾来看，这似乎不可避免。苹果公司为应对ChatGPT浪潮推出的"苹果智能"自2024年10月发布以来一直步履蹒跚，外界评价从"令人失望"到直言担忧不等。

其上线初期尤为艰难。一项旨在将多条通知浓缩为易读摘要的功能，在2024年底至2025年初生成了一系列令人尴尬的虚假标题。在其他失误中，BBC曾两次投诉：苹果智能错误报道被指控杀害联合健康集团CEO布莱恩·汤普森的嫌疑人路易吉·曼吉奥内已开枪自杀（实际并未发生），以及飞镖选手卢克·利特勒在决赛开始前就已夺冠。

此外，Siri承诺的全面改革也成为苹果的尴尬之处。

彭博社五月发布的调查揭示了苹果在人工智能领域的深层困境。例如，就在原定四月发布前几周，苹果软件主管克雷格·费德里吉在自己手机上测试新版Siri时，沮丧地发现公司大力宣传的许多功能都无法使用。发布被无限期推迟，引发了iPhone 16购买者的集体诉讼——他们曾被承诺获得人工智能助手。

据彭博社报道，彼时詹南德雷亚已被边缘化。该媒体称，蒂姆·库克早在三月就已将Siri完全移出詹南德雷亚的管辖范围，转交给Vision Pro创造者迈克·罗克韦尔负责。苹果还将其秘密机器人部门也从詹南德雷亚手中剥离。

彭博社的调查描绘出一幅组织失调的图景：人工智能团队与营销团队沟通不畅、预算错配、领导力危机严重到有员工戏称詹南德雷亚的团队为"AI/无机器学习"。报告还记录了人工智能研究人员大量流向OpenAI、谷歌和Meta等竞争对手的情况。

据报道，苹果目前正依赖谷歌的Gemini驱动下一代Siri，考虑到两家公司在移动操作系统、应用商店、浏览器、地图、云服务、智能家居设备乃至如今人工智能领域长达十五年的激烈竞争，这一转变既令人震惊，想必也让苹果感到屈辱。

詹南德雷亚原从谷歌加入苹果，在谷歌曾负责机器智能与搜索业务。在苹果，他主管人工智能战略、机器学习基础设施和Siri开发。

如今苏布拉马尼亚将继承这些职责，向费德里吉汇报，其明确使命是帮助苹果在人工智能领域迎头赶上。

这对苹果而言是个微妙时刻。当竞争对手斥资数百亿美元建设大型人工智能数据中心时，苹果专注于利用自研芯片在用户设备端直接处理人工智能任务，这种隐私优先的策略避免收集用户数据。（当更复杂的请求需要云端处理时，苹果会通过"私有云计算"服务器进行，该服务承诺仅临时处理数据并立即删除。）

这种理念能否奏效，抑或已使苹果永久落后，仍是一个悬而未决的问题。苹果的策略存在明显的权衡：设备端模型比竞争对手数据中心运行的庞大模型更小、能力更弱；苹果对收集用户数据的抵触，导致其研究人员只能使用授权数据和合成数据训练模型，而非支撑竞争对手系统的海量真实世界信息。

英文来源：

In a carefully worded announcement on Monday, Apple said John Giannandrea, who has been the company’s AI chief since 2018, is “stepping down” to, well, not work at Apple anymore. He’ll stick around through spring as an advisor.
His replacement is Amar Subramanya, a highly regarded Microsoft executive who spent 16 years at Google, most recently leading engineering for the Gemini Assistant. It’s a savvy hire, given that Subramanya knows the competition intimately.
The move is being characterized as a shake-up. It was seemingly inevitable in retrospect. Apple Intelligence, the company’s answer to the ChatGPT moment, has been stumbling since its October 2024 launch. Reviews have ranged from “underwhelming” to outright alarmed.
Its first months were some of the roughest. A notification summary feature meant to condense multiple alerts into digestible snippets generated a series of embarrassing, untrue headlines in late 2024 and early 2025. Among other missteps, the BBC complained twice after Apple Intelligence falsely reported that Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself (he hadn’t) and that a darts player, Luke Littler, won a championship before the final even began.
Then there was Siri’s promised overhaul, which became a black eye for Apple.
A Bloomberg investigation published in May revealed the depths of Apple’s AI struggles. For instance, when Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief, tested the new Siri on his own phone just weeks before its planned launch in April, he was dismayed to find that many of the features the company had been touting didn’t work. The launch was delayed indefinitely, triggering class-action lawsuits from iPhone 16 buyers who’d been promised an AI-powered assistant.
By that point, Giannandrea had already been sidelined, according to Bloomberg. The news organization reported that Tim Cook had stripped Siri from Giannandrea’s oversight entirely back in March, handing it to Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell. Apple removed its secretive robotics division from Giannandrea’s control, too.
Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist
Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector.
Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist
Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector.
Bloomberg’s investigation painted a picture of organizational dysfunction, with weak communication between AI and marketing teams, budget misalignments, and a leadership crisis severe enough that some employees had taken to mockingly calling Giannandrea’s group “AI/MLess.” The report also documented an exodus of AI researchers to competitors, including OpenAI, Google, and Meta.
Apple is reportedly now leaning on Google’s Gemini to power the next version of Siri, an astonishing and also, presumably, humbling twist considering the intense rivalry between the two companies that dates back more than 15 years, across mobile operating systems, app stores, browsers, maps, cloud services, smart home devices, and now AI.
Giannandrea came to Apple from Google, where he ran Machine Intelligence and Search. At Apple, he oversaw the AI strategy, machine learning infrastructure, and Siri development.
Now Subramanya inherits those responsibilities, reporting to Federighi with a clear mandate to help Apple catch up in AI.
It’s an interesting moment for the company. While competitors have been pouring billions of dollars into massive AI data centers, Apple has focused on processing AI tasks directly on users’ devices using its custom Apple Silicon chips, a privacy-first approach that avoids collecting user data. (When more complex requests require cloud processing, Apple routes them through Private Cloud Compute, servers that promise to process data temporarily and delete it immediately.)
Whether that philosophy pays off or whether it has permanently left Apple behind is an outstanding question. Apple’s approach comes with clear trade-offs. Among them, on-device models are smaller and less capable than the massive models running in competitors’ data centers, and Apple’s reluctance to collect user data has left its researchers training models on licensed and synthetic data rather than the giant troves of real-world information that fuel its rivals’ systems.