Apple has announced that Amar Subramanya will become the new Vice President of Artificial Intelligence. This change is significant for the company, especially as it has encountered some difficulties with its AI projects. Subramanya will be taking over from John Giannandrea, who is stepping down from his executive role but will still offer advice to the company until spring. Giannandrea plans to retire in 2026.
Who is Amar Subramanya?
Amar Subramanya is a distinguished AI researcher with a strong background in both academia and industry:
- Education: He holds a degree in Electrical, Electronics, and Communication Engineering from Bangalore University. He completed his PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle, where his research focused on developing semi-supervised learning algorithms for speech and human activity recognition.
- Early Career: During his graduate studies, he worked at Microsoft Research on projects related to multi-sensory fusion, robust speech recognition, and speaker verification, and was a recipient of the Microsoft Research Graduate Fellowship in 2007.
- Industry Leadership: Subramanya spent 16 years at Google, notably heading Gemini as VP of Engineering. Most recently, he served as the Corporate Vice President of AI at Microsoft.
Apple announced that Subramanya will report directly to Craig Federighi, Apple's software chief, and will be "leading critical areas, including Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation".
Significance of the appointment
Subramanya’s appointment is highly significant as it occurs while Apple is struggling to deliver impactful AI features in its products.
- Siri Oversight: The outgoing executive, Giannandrea, had previously overseen Siri for years and was reportedly working on a more personalised, AI-centric version of the voice assistant.
- Recent Issues: The need for a leadership change was underscored by a March decision where CEO Tim Cook stripped Giannandrea of his oversight of Siri entirely and removed him from the secretive robotics division.
- Internal Failure: A Bloomberg investigation in May reported a high-profile failure when Craig Federighi tested the new Siri feature just weeks before its planned April launch, only to find that it did not work as expected.
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