Apple Exec Overseeing Siri Departs Role

[MacRumors]

Bill Stasior, who has been heading up Apple's Siri team since 2012, recently left his role as the leader of the voice assistant group, reports The Information.

Stasior was recruited from Amazon in 2012 to oversee Siri following the departure of Siri co-founders Adam Cheyer and Dag Kittlaus. Cheyer and Kittlaus had joined Apple when the company originally purchased Siri in 2010, but did not stay long.

According to The Information, Stasior has stepped down from his role as leader of Siri but has not left Apple. The change in leadership is part of a restructuring effort by John Giannandrea, Apple's senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, who has taken over the Siri team.

Giannandrea, who has been pushing the Siri team to "focus more on long-term research" rather than incremental improvements, will be looking for a replacement for Stasior.

Giannandrea joined Apple in April 2018 as chief of machine learning and AI strategy, and at the time, it was reported that he would be overseeing both the Core ML and Siri teams. Ginnandrea was later promoted to SVP in December 2018.

Prior to joining Apple, Giannandrea spent eight years at Google, and in the time before that, he founded two companies, Tellme Networks and Metaweb Technologies.

Giannandrea's hiring came amid widespread criticism of Siri, which has shortcomings in comparison to AI offerings from companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. Apple made serious strides improving Siri in 2018 under Giannandrea's leadership, building out the capabilities of the AI assistant with features like Siri Shortcuts in iOS 12.

Article Link: Apple Exec Overseeing Siri Departs Role

 

[Scottsoapbox]

The jokes for this are simply too easy.

 

[Andres Cantu]

Oh, here we go! Popcorn ready!

 

[hortod1]

Siri knows how to push my buttons without a doubt. And I can’t even return the favor anymore because of FaceID.

 

[PS8409]

Apple should hire Alexa’s Exec so Siri could actually become smart. And I’m an Apple fan.

 

[MallardDuck]

"Serious improvements?" Seriously? Shortcuts are workarounds because the engine is deficient.

Siri still can't even reliably place calls to contacts, instead you get, 'Here's what I found on the web for XXX'. Voice recognition is right up there with Dragon Dictate circa 1993. 'hey siri' invariably turns into 'hold the home button', and on and on.

Siri needs a new pair of ears, and a better brain.

 

[AngerDanger]

Oh, that's the best news I've heard all day! Hopefully, a new executive can bring about greater change than we've seen so far.

This should never happen when all you want Siri to do is "unpause the music":

 

[dominiongamma]

Apple should hire Alexa’s Exec so Siri could actually become smart. And I’m an Apple fan.

Apple should just use Alexia instead, Siri will never catch up it seems but I know probably would be an issue which sucks

 

[pat500000]

Yeah. It seems there are too many turnover in job sense.

 

[AustinIllini]

Apple should hire Alexa’s Exec so Siri could actually become smart. And I’m an Apple fan.

Apple should just dump Siri and allow you to choose between the actual voice assistants.
[doublepost=1549063446][/doublepost]

Apple should just use Alexia instead, Siri will never catch up it seems but I know probably would be an issue which sucks

Apple could also head up a consortium to develop a new assistant as a global, open source standard for AI in North America and beyond.

But they wouldn't do that.

 

[tbayrgs]

Apple should hire Alexa’s Exec so Siri could actually become smart. And I’m an Apple fan.

Alexa may be more versatile thanks to Amazon opening the door to developers to create ‘skills’ but I find her far from intelligent. I’m far more optimistic having Giannandrea and all of his experience from Google at the helm. The Google Assistant is miles ahead of everyone else and if he can bring even a portion of its performance to Siri, it’ll be a huge leap forward from where she stands now.

 

[McTool]

Siri knows how to push my buttons without a doubt. And I can’t even return the favor anymore because of FaceID.

Never heard of the side button?
Posting statements without knowledge is a thing now.

 

[antiprotest]

OK now put a hamster in his place, or a turtle, or anything that breathes will be an improvement.

 

[Act3]

Never heard of the side button?
Posting statements without knowledge is a thing now.

Not sure how can one can own a face ID device and not know about the side button.

 

[Col4bin]

Best to just abandon Siri’s old engine and start again fresh. Otherwise, Apple will be putting lipstick on an outdated 8-yr old pig.

 

[edwrap]

Can you even attribute Siri Shortcuts to Giannandrea if he joined Apple in April of 2018? Seems like that feature would’ve been well underway by that point.

Good move, though. Siri has been a joke for awhile now, even if not always deservedly so, and there needed to be a change in leadership there.

 

[genovelle]

Apple should just use Alexia instead, Siri will never catch up it seems but I know probably would be an issue which sucks

There nothing really useful alexa does better in my opinion. The things I’ve seen people use it for like playing songs, I’ve done on iPhone by voice long before Alexa or even Siri existed.

 

[chublet]

Siri is by far the worst thing I have ever encountered with Apple, and years ago we were issued Newtons at work!

I cannot believe that a 'personal assistant' would be released that cannot understand the most basic commands or questions, and has never once been able to identify music that I wanted it to play - it is now disabled on all my devices.

Alexa may not be perfect but at least she can play music and tell me the weather...

 

[AustinIllini]

There nothing really useful alexa does better in my opinion. The things I’ve seen people use it for like playing songs, I’ve done on iPhone by voice long before Alexa or even Siri existed.

I'm inclined to agree. There's no machine learning there. It's a bunch of skills which work well but the actual brain of the thing doesn't seem to be getting any smarter.

 

[HobbesInVA]

Please terminate Siri. I rather have silence than Siri.

 

[Adam Warlock]

Never heard of the side button?
Posting statements without knowledge is a thing now.

Geez, it was fairly obviously a joke. Posting statements without a sense of humour is also a thing now, it seems!

 

[m4mario]

Joy to the world, Bill Stasior down!!!
Instead of doubling down on secrecy (which has never worked), it time to octuple down on AI and customer communication.

 

[confusedpurple]

I'm inclined to agree. There's no machine learning there. It's a bunch of skills which work well but the actual brain of the thing doesn't seem to be getting any smarter.

I agree I don't find alexa to be 'smart' - it stumbles all the time.

But compared to Siri it's on a whole other level, mainly due to installable skills, but even more because it can learn and update without you needing to do anything. The weekly 'whats new with alexa' emails are full of new features. I can't remember the last time Siri added a feature.

One thing I have found is Alexa has got way better at predicting what you've said. If you mumble or mess up a word, its at the point where it can almost always figure out what you were trying to say. Siri can't do that at all and just feels very dated and 'dumb'.

Apple have no excuse for Siri, its just so far behind now that its not even funny.

The one thing Amazon has got so right is their attitude towards developers. They come across as very open. Apple come across as arrogant and afraid to open up to the outside world, which is mind bogglingly idiotic when its to freely provide your ai platform with more intelligence.

 

[AustinIllini]

Joy to the world, Bill Stasior down!!!
Instead of doubling down on secrecy (which has never worked), it time to octuple down on AI and customer communication.

This is simply a wiser approach. Privacy is great, but Apple is trustworthy enough users should be able to opt into contributing to a better digital assistant.

 

[itsmilo]

Shortcuts is probably the most complicated thing Apple has ever pushed out and instead of them trying to fix their stupid AI they want us to do it manually like what’s the point