How Apple Fell Behind in the AI Arms Race
苹果如何在人工智能军备竞赛中落后

Yet a competing project won out in an internal contest ahead of the 10-year anniversary of Siri’s launch. Known as Siri X, the more-modest upgrade involved moving more existing Siri software onto iPhones from remote servers to improve the voice assistant’s speed and privacy. The Siri X enhancement was unveiled in 2021.
然而，在 Siri 推出 10 周年之际的内部竞赛中，另一个竞争项目获胜。被称为 Siri X 的较为谦逊的升级涉及将更多现有的 Siri 软件从远程服务器移至 iPhone，以提高语音助手的速度和隐私。Siri X 增强版于 2021 年发布。

Next week, at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, the company is set to join an AI arms race that many think will define the future of technology. The iPhone maker is trying to catch up with Microsoft, Alphabet’s Google and other rivals that have begun to integrate generative AI into their core products.
下周，在苹果公司的年度全球开发者大会上，该公司将加入一场人工智能竞赛，许多人认为这将决定技术的未来。这家 iPhone 制造商正试图赶上微软、Alphabet 的谷歌和其他已经开始将生成式人工智能整合到其核心产品中的竞争对手。

Apple’s caution and characteristic secrecy, as well as the care it takes in upgrading devices—where hardware and software are seamlessly integrated—have hobbled its early efforts in the AI arena, the people said. It now finds itself in the unusual position of having to take risks.
苹果的谨慎和特有的保密性，以及在升级设备时所付出的关注——硬件和软件无缝集成——这些因素阻碍了其在人工智能领域的早期努力，这些人说。现在，它发现自己处于不寻常的位置，必须冒风险。

The company is set to announce an array of generative-AI upgrades to its software products, including Siri, said people familiar with its plans. The AI features include assistance in message writing, photo editing and summarizing texts.
据熟悉该公司计划的人士透露，该公司将宣布一系列生成式人工智能升级其软件产品，包括 Siri。人工智能功能包括协助撰写消息、编辑照片和总结文本。

While Apple isn’t expected to catch up with leading AI innovators soon, the company is preparing to unveil AI features with impressive capabilities that also maximize privacy for users—a concern that will be central to unlocking the full potential of AI assistants. Apple is also expected to unveil one or more potential partnerships with major AI developers after holding talks with OpenAI, Google and Cohere, the people said. 
尽管预计苹果不会很快赶上领先的人工智能创新者，但该公司正在准备推出具有令人印象深刻的功能的人工智能功能，同时最大限度地保护用户的隐私——这是解锁人工智能助手的全部潜力的核心问题。据称，苹果还将在与 OpenAI、谷歌和 Cohere 进行会谈后，公布与主要人工智能开发者之一或多个潜在合作伙伴关系。

Apple has long prided itself on perfection in its product rollouts, a near impossibility with emerging AI models. While OpenAI systems have dazzled more than 180 million users with their generation of writing, images and video, they are prone to occasional errors, often called hallucinations. Apple has had limited tolerance for such issues.
苹果长期以来一直以其产品发布的完美为傲，这在新兴的人工智能模型中几乎是不可能的。虽然 OpenAI 系统以其生成的写作、图像和视频让超过 1.8 亿用户赞叹不已，但它们往往容易出现偶发错误，通常被称为幻觉。苹果对这类问题的容忍度有限。

“There’s no such thing as 100% accuracy with AI, that’s the fundamental reality,” said Pedro Domingos, a professor emeritus of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. “Apple is not compatible with that. They won’t release something until it’s perfect.”
“AI 并非百分之百准确，这是基本事实，” 华盛顿大学计算机科学与工程荣誉教授佩德罗·多明戈斯表示。“苹果不兼容这一点。他们不会发布不完美的东西。”

Integrating AI 整合人工智能

Apple has weighed whether to allow users to choose a third-party AI provider that could supplant or help power Siri, one of the people said. It is unclear in what way Siri could be powered, augmented or replaced by third-party AI providers, or whether Apple will move forward with a version of that idea. 
苹果公司正在权衡是否允许用户选择第三方人工智能提供商，这些提供商可能取代或帮助强化 Siri，一位知情人士表示。目前尚不清楚 Siri 将以何种方式由第三方人工智能提供商提供动力、增强或替代，以及苹果是否会推进这一想法的版本。

Bloomberg earlier reported on an OpenAI partnership, and The Information reported on efforts to overhaul Siri.
彭博社早前报道了 OpenAI 的合作伙伴关系，而 The Information 报道了改进 Siri 的努力。

Google, Microsoft and Samsung Electronics have begun rapidly integrating generative AI into their devices and services. While Apple finds itself behind in a generational shift taking place in the tech industry, many investors and AI experts have said the company will find a way to bring generative AI to the masses.
谷歌、微软和三星电子已经开始迅速将生成式人工智能整合到他们的设备和服务中。尽管苹果发现自己在科技行业正在发生的一次世代转变中落后，许多投资者和人工智能专家表示，该公司将找到一种方式将生成式人工智能带给大众。

“Apple can do pretty much anything they set their minds to,” said Vineet Khosla, a former engineering manager on the Siri team who is currently chief technology officer at the Washington Post. “There is a consumer focus that exists at the company. The focus of their AI is to make it work in a very privacy-sensitive manner.” 
“苹果可以做任何他们下定决心要做的事情，” Siri 团队前工程经理、现任《华盛顿邮报》首席技术官 Vineet Khosla 说道。“公司存在着消费者关注。他们的人工智能的重点是以非常注重隐私的方式运作。”

Over the years, Apple has made improvements to Siri and incorporated smaller AI features throughout all of its products. In the recently released headset Vision Pro, AI is extensively used for tracking eyes and hand positions.
多年来，苹果改进了 Siri，并在其所有产品中加入了更小的人工智能功能。在最近发布的头戴式设备 Vision Pro 中，人工智能被广泛用于跟踪眼睛和手部位置。

When Siri launched in 2011, Apple was ahead of rivals in seeking to establish the first AI assistant. Jobs, who spearheaded the acquisition in 2010 that led to Siri, encouraged the team to keep the assistant’s dry wit and sense of humor. The early launch demonstrated the company’s willingness to take risks.
当 Siri 于 2011 年推出时，苹果在寻求建立第一个人工智能助手方面领先于竞争对手。乔布斯在 2010 年主导了导致 Siri 的收购，并鼓励团队保持助手的幽默和幽默感。早期推出显示了公司愿意承担风险的态度。

“Siri was the last thing Apple was first on,” said Dag Kittlaus, co-founder of the Siri startup that Apple bought, who left Apple soon after the product’s launch. 
“Siri 是苹果最后一件首创的东西，” Siri 创业公司的联合创始人 Dag Kittlaus 说道，他在产品推出后不久就离开了苹果。

Tensions with ex-Googlers
与前谷歌员工的紧张关系

As Apple struggled to keep advancing Siri, the company hired one of Google’s top engineering executives to run its AI strategy: John Giannandrea. In 2018, he was elevated to the role of senior vice president, reporting directly to Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook.
随着苹果努力推进 Siri 的发展，该公司聘请了谷歌的一位顶级工程执行官来负责其人工智能战略：John Giannandrea。2018 年，他晋升为高级副总裁，直接向苹果首席执行官 Tim Cook 汇报。

In early team meetings, Giannandrea made it clear that improving Siri was a main focus. He was also tasked with centralizing much of Apple’s fragmented efforts regarding AI. He began building up his AI team by recruiting Google employees and through startup acquisitions, but his team had difficulty fitting in with the rest of Apple, according to people familiar with their work.
在早期团队会议上，詹安德里亚明确表示改进 Siri 是主要焦点。他还被委托将苹果关于人工智能的许多零散努力集中起来。据熟悉他们工作的人士称，他开始通过招募谷歌员工和收购初创公司来建立他的人工智能团队，但他的团队很难融入苹果的其他部门。

The new AI group operated much like parts of Google, where deadlines are more loosely defined. Teams inside Apple need to maintain rigorous deadlines to have products ready for major release events every fall. Efforts to collaborate between other parts of Apple that were building products and the AI team at times fell apart because they couldn’t agree on deadlines, the people said.
新的人工智能团队的运作方式很像谷歌的某些部分，那里的截止日期定义得更加宽松。苹果内部的团队需要严格遵守截止日期，以确保产品能够在每年秋季的重大发布活动中准备就绪。有人表示，由于无法就截止日期达成一致意见，苹果其他部门正在开发产品的努力与人工智能团队之间的合作有时会破裂。

Instead of working with the AI team, other parts of Apple busy building software products maintained their own, separate AI capabilities. For example, the software group run by Senior Vice President Craig Federighi continued to invest in and build up the AI behind its image- and video-recognition capabilities, said former Apple employees.
与 AI 团队合作不同，苹果的其他部门忙于构建维护自己独立的软件产品，例如，由高级副总裁克雷格·费德里吉领导的软件组继续投资并加强其图像和视频识别能力背后的人工智能，前苹果员工表示。

Another big limiting factor for Giannandrea’s AI team was the lack of access to computing resources, said former executives and engineers. Compared with rivals, Apple in recent years has secured fewer chips known as graphical-processing units that are essential for training AI models, said people familiar with Apple’s internal infrastructure.
Giannandrea 的 AI 团队的另一个重要限制因素是前任高管和工程师表示，他们缺乏对计算资源的访问。熟悉苹果内部基础设施的人士表示，与竞争对手相比，近年来苹果获得的用于训练 AI 模型的图形处理单元较少。

Much of the AI team had to rely on external cloud services—Google’s cloud was preferred by many of the former Google employees on Giannandrea’s team—to train their AI models, the people said.
AI 团队中的许多人不得不依赖外部云服务——许多前 Google 员工更喜欢 Giannandrea 团队中的 Google 云——来训练他们的 AI 模型，这些人说。

The ChatGPT effect ChatGPT 效应

When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, everything changed. Federighi, the software chief, became a convert that Christmas break after he began playing around with the Microsoft-owned GitHub AI coding tool called Copilot, which is powered by OpenAI’s technology, said people familiar with his experience.
当 ChatGPT 于 2022 年底推出时，一切都发生了变化。据熟悉他经历的人士称，软件主管费德里吉在圣诞假期开始尝试微软旗下的 GitHub AI 编码工具 Copilot 后，成为了一名信徒，该工具由 OpenAI 技术驱动。

After that moment, across Federighi’s software-engineering organization, employees were tasked with coming up with new ways of incorporating generative AI into products and given resources to pursue these projects, said former executives and engineers. At internal meetings, Federighi said that he had come to appreciate generative AI technology and that it would be incorporated into all aspects of Apple’s software.
在那一刻之后，据前任高管和工程师称，费德里吉的软件工程组织要求员工想出将生成式人工智能融入产品的新方法，并提供资源来推动这些项目。费德里吉在内部会议上表示，他已经开始欣赏生成式人工智能技术，并将其融入到苹果软件的各个方面。

Apple stepped up efforts to build its own internal generative AI. In February, the company canceled its decadeslong effort to build its own electric car. Some of the employees had been redeployed into these generative AI projects.
苹果加大了建设自己内部生成式人工智能的力度。公司在二月份取消了数十年来努力打造自己电动汽车的计划。一些员工已经被重新调配到这些生成式人工智能项目中。

Some of the new features and updates Apple is expected to announce this year will be powered by Apple’s internally built generative AI models, but Apple has been looking at potential external partnerships for more advanced AI. Giannandrea and Federighi have met with Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive officer, said people familiar with the discussions.
一些苹果预计今年将宣布的新功能和更新将由苹果内部构建的生成式人工智能模型驱动，但苹果一直在寻找更先进的人工智能潜在外部合作伙伴。熟悉讨论的人士表示，Giannandrea 和 Federighi 已与 OpenAI 首席执行官 Sam Altman 会面。

With a new urgency on AI technology, Kittlaus, the Siri co-founder, said this year could be an important one for Siri as the company plans to incorporate thoughtful AI features into the iPhone. “Siri has been stuck in the mud for years,” he said. “But I absolutely see a renaissance coming.”
随着对人工智能技术的新紧迫性，Siri 的联合创始人基特劳斯表示，今年可能是 Siri 的重要一年，因为公司计划将周到的人工智能功能整合到 iPhone 中。“Siri 多年来一直停滞不前，”他说。“但我绝对看到了一次复兴的到来。”

Write to Aaron Tilley at aaron.tilley@wsj.com
写信给 Aaron Tilley，邮箱地址为 aaron.tilley@wsj.com

The Global AI Race 全球人工智能竞赛

Coverage of ChatGPT and other advancements in artificial intelligence, selected by the editors
ChatGPT 和其他人工智能进展的报道，由编辑精选

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