[HN Gopher] OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive
___________________________________________________________________
OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive
Author : minimaxir
Score : 559 points
Date : 2025-05-21 17:01 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| minimaxir wrote:
| From April:
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/07/openai-reportedly-mulls-bu...
|
| > OpenAI is said to have discussed acquiring the AI hardware
| startup that former Apple design lead Jony Ive is building with
| OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. According to The Information, OpenAI could
| pay around _$500 million_ for the fledgling company, called io
| Products.
|
| How the heck did the price go up 13x?
| whatshisface wrote:
| Because it sounds like the CEO of OpenAI wants to use
| investor's money to buy his other company.
|
| Too bad we can't short it or otherwise stop it, because
| investment for the things we could start will dry up once the
| world figures this out. We're all correlated to companies like
| FTX whether we like them or not...
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| There should be a way to reverse valuate a company based on
| how much of its stock it used to acquire a company worth
| (500,000,000 dollars of) peanuts
| bravoetch wrote:
| Depending on who is doing the valuation, I'm sure this is
| already a consideration. Like when Coinbase acquired Earn
| for $110m-ish. Was Earn worth that? Absolutely not. Since
| Coinbase and Earn shared investors, it was merely a
| convenient way for those investors to pay themselves out of
| the unexpected billion dollar cash pile Coinbase amassed in
| 2017.
| cma wrote:
| Isn't that a less efficient way than a $110m dividend or
| buyback?
| manquer wrote:
| Dividend means taxes . Buyback requires someone to sell
| (I.e. exit) usually no one wants[1] to especially when
| the company is going hot. investors would rather have
| (more)stock in a hot company than cash.
|
| Fund managers and staff have also disincentives for early
| exits, i.e. they have to find and invest in another
| company and cannot just keep the money, which means more
| work. They rather exit by switching stock to a hotter in
| demand, hard to get in companies if they can.
|
| [1] there are always some employees and founders who
| would prefer some liquidity , but either they don't hold
| large enough positions (employees) or investors don't
| want to give a lot of liquidity (founders)
|
| For public companies it is different- buybacks work
| because there is always someone ready to sell. Usually
| retail but also short term funds who don't care about
| liquidating. ETFs and other very institutional investors
| or those into buffet style long term investments will not
| sell easily
| bsimpson wrote:
| Sam and Elon are both ethically dubious power players who
| seem to be really good at inside dealing to benefit
| themselves, while all the other people in their companies
| just have to deal with it.
|
| As I write this out, it reminds me of another polarizing
| leader who has been really good at being in the news every
| day for the last 6 months, and for a 4 year period a decade
| ago.
| ergocoder wrote:
| Yeah of course we cannot short a non-public company.
|
| If we could, then forget OpenAI. I would short every private
| company and end up richer than Elon Musk because 99% of the
| private companies fail.
|
| "Wanting to short a private company" is such a weird
| comeback. Like yeah private companies most likely fail.
| Everyone knows.
| AdamN wrote:
| There's only one Jony Ive and alot of demand from the company
| with the deepest pockets in town ...
|
| UX will make or break any major new AI product - especially
| hardware. The price is steep but I think it's actually a
| sensible move. There really aren't that many other people with
| the proven ability to deliver when it comes to UX at scale for
| novel areas.
| babypuncher wrote:
| The first step in AI delivering a good UX might be coming up
| with a logo that _doesn 't_ look like a butthole.
| Unfortunately this seems to be an impossible task.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Jony Ive is a designer verses Tony Fadell who is a hardware
| guy.
|
| Ive is a very talented artist but AI is not being held back
| by people unwilling to courageously make things thinner and
| thinner.
|
| I would imagine Ive looked at an Apple HomePod and thought
| "we could make this beautifully flat and hang it on the wall
| of every room in the house". This might be a good idea but it
| in no way solves the major problems with AI/LLMs.
| fooker wrote:
| The same guy who designed the 2016 generation MacBooks and
| was kicked out of Apple over it?
|
| Jony Ive is great at UX when someone like Steve Jobs is there
| to veto stupid ideas.
| bbor wrote:
| Only in silicon valley would $6,500,000,000 for a single
| designer seem like a sensible move...
| philosophty wrote:
| It's not actually $6.5 billion cash. It's a stock
| certificate. A stock certificate which can go to zero.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _A stock certificate which can go to zero._
|
| For whoever is holding the bag at the _end_ of it all.
| smokel wrote:
| Perhaps this is a way to channel money into someone's pocket,
| instead of keeping it in a non-profit?
| outside1234 wrote:
| They don't call him Scam Altman for no reason.
| jrflowers wrote:
| > How the heck did the price go up 13x?
|
| Because they're not paying with money. It's $6.5B of pure
| equity in a private company that they've decided to value at
| $300B based off of... vibes or hopes or whatever?
| bdangubic wrote:
| hey if Tesla is worth $1T OpenAI might be 10x undervalued at
| $300B :)
| mrandish wrote:
| This announcement furthers my sense OpenAI is becoming a hype
| vehicle destined to be the iconic poster child of early AI
| hubris when the bubble pops. When I read the pretentious
| marketing copy and photo on the announcement page my _first_
| thought was "Someday this'll be linked on the Wikipedia page
| for 'The AI Bubble'".
|
| I'm not even a hardcore AI skeptic, I think AI can be useful
| and valuable in the near-term (even outside coding!) and
| potentially transformative in the long-term but I also think
| current capabilities are over-hyped and wildly overvalued. I
| think AI is going through the typical hype cycle
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle) and we're
| currently late in the "Inflated Expectations" phase soon to be
| followed by the inevitable "Trough of Disillusionment".
| rdli wrote:
| Seems that OpenAI is acquiring Io for $6.4B in an all-equity
| deal.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| https://archive.is/HgpSJ
| nickrubin wrote:
| OpenAI announcement: https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/
| outside1234 wrote:
| The picture alone is enough to make you vomit
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| Yeah, that is a really weird photo. Trying hard to replicate
| the iconic Steve Jobs photo I guess.
| iamtedd wrote:
| That and that every paragraph of text on the page is centre-
| aligned. What is this, Geocities?
| Maxious wrote:
| There's a video at the bottom "two friends"
| SimianSci wrote:
| Deffinately a contender for one of the creepiest photos in
| the industry. Not something that inspires confidence in the
| "Design Prowess" of the acquisition if this is what they felt
| best represented them.
| eagerpace wrote:
| Is this an m&a press release or an engagement announcement
| minimaxir wrote:
| The hyperminimal white-text-on-black-background is more of an
| Apple-ism from their corporate announcements back during the
| Jobs/Ive days.
|
| The center-justified serif text is new, though.
| minimaxir wrote:
| The quotes at the bottom are funny because they have a share
| link which implies that Sam and Jony thought they were
| insightful enough that people would want to actively share
| them. Even in the extreme tech crowd, who would share those?
| MisterSandman wrote:
| You clearly haven't been on my side of LinkedIn / Twitter.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| I had to double check the domain, I thought it was a fake image
| gen. So weird.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| The whole thing is almost indistinguishable from satire,
| without the domain name I'd have thought I'd been had.
|
| The photo, the text, the video where Sam nearly looks like CGI,
| and then the quotes at the bottom really make for a full
| package of cringe.
| sekai wrote:
| Reads and looks like an obituary, lol
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I was thinking more like a wedding invite
| astrange wrote:
| Yeah, it's meant to look like a wedding announcement in
| the newspaper I think. Except white-on-black instead of
| the other way around.
| sensanaty wrote:
| I wasn't gonna check the link at first but you've convinced
| me, and holy shit that image of the two of them that greets
| you first thing is beyond hilarious.
|
| You truly couldn't make this up, it's so beyond parody that I
| don't even know what to say. It's so palpably _psychotic_.
| chairhairair wrote:
| Altman: "Jony was running a design firm called LoveFrom that
| had established itself as really the densest collection of
| talent that I've ever heard of in one place AND HAS PROBABLY
| EVER EXISTED IN THE WORLD."
|
| I felt physically sick from second-hand embarrassment watching
| this.
| earthnail wrote:
| German has a word for second hand embarrassment.
| Fremdschamen. Comes in very handy here. If Sam continues like
| this it won't be long until it becomes part of the regular
| English language like other German words such as
| Kindergarten.
|
| And I'll be happy that I don't have to explain Fremdschamen
| anymore. Everything has its upsides.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| > until it becomes part of the regular English language
| like other German words such as Kindergarten.
|
| or Schadenfreude.
| PantaloonFlames wrote:
| Very trumpian language.
| WorldPeas wrote:
| I almost had to tap out after the number Ive did on Altman in
| the early monolouge. Feels like some kind of office satire
| written by Mike Judge
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Seems like a weird move to say:
|
| * Jony Ive has built a company with the densest collection of
| talent in the world
|
| * OpenAI is spending 10 figures to buy a company from Ive
|
| * It is not the aforementioned company with the dense
| collection of talent; it's instead a company that no one has
| heard of
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| Somehow when the buzz-word machine found talent density, half
| the passengers forgot that density has a denominator. I see
| this goof a lot. If you accept the premise that Jony is
| literally the most talented human in the entire history of
| the world (I know I know), then obviously he was more dense
| sitting in a room alone, than after being diluted by hiring
| 50 other people.
| bambax wrote:
| "Sam and Jony"??!? Sam and Jony sounds like John and Yoko.
| Nothing good ever came out of that pair.
| ks2048 wrote:
| Does he have anyone close to him to tell him that no amount of
| money can be used to turn oneself into Steve Jobs?
| astrange wrote:
| Jony would know about that as much as anyone.
| ks2048 wrote:
| When is their big day? Do they have a registry to send gifts?
| Anyways, congrats, looks like a happy couple.
| butlike wrote:
| First of all, the video is 9 minutes.
|
| Secondly, is it a weird Sora-stitchedc video? It feels like
| they just filmed their parts separately like they're not even
| talking to each other/interacting with each other. Very
| peculiar.
| qingcharles wrote:
| There's infinite money out there for AI. They're doing the
| rational thing and buying up everything to lock others out.
|
| If you're going to make any sort of hardware you definitely
| want to tout that it was designed "with love" by "the iPod
| guy."
| qingcharles wrote:
| The video is horrible.
|
| It uses the same overhype playbook from the Segway launch: "Oh,
| I used the [unnamed, unexplained] device and it was the most
| amazing thing in the whole of human history!" "This object will
| cause the entire planet to be redesigned around it!"
| ko_pivot wrote:
| No question that Ive is a legend, but I do think the fall of
| Humane (also ex-Apple) and the challenges at Meta, Apple, and
| Google in terms of VR/AR adoption (Meta Ray Ban, Apple Vision,
| Google Glasses and the new thing) are instructive here. The $6.5B
| almost feels like the largest ever aquihire.
| Handy-Man wrote:
| But Meta is thriving with Meta Ray Bans, they have sold over 2M
| as of few months back. (Yes I know that number seems small
| compared to other devices, but for a new form factor, that
| seems like a great early success)
| croes wrote:
| Where is they AR/VR part in the Ray Bans?
|
| It's cameras, speakers, microphones but no display.
| codybontecou wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the latest models have AR.
|
| I saw a presentation within the last year showcasing AR
| emoji-like things. Not that emojis are a killer feature,
| but the tech is there.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| The glasses with a HUD are a different product line,
| latest ray bans are just camera mic and audio, but I
| still count them as AR because the AI voice in your ear
| can see what you see. I tried them for a few months and
| returned them, not a good enough camera to enjoy the
| hands free snapshots I was looking forward to, and just
| didn't have a use for a q&a bot attached to my ear.
|
| For what they are I'll give them props for a nicely
| designed product, the charging case is clever and works
| well. I liked them for music with the Apple Watch, pretty
| slick combination. Maybe if I could stomach giving a
| llama bot access to email and calendar etc etc to have a
| real personal assistant it would be an attractive
| offering in a world that accepts being watched 24/7 by
| AI/billionaire overlords
| jrussino wrote:
| > Maybe if I could stomach giving a llama bot access to
| email and calendar etc etc to have a real personal
| assistant it would be an attractive offering in a world
| that accepts being watched 24/7 by AI/billionaire
| overlords
|
| I share this general point of view but take it further: I
| _really want_ something in this direction (a quality AI
| assistant that can access my communications and
| continuously see and hear what I do) but it MUST be local
| and fully controlled by me. I feel like Meta is getting
| closest to offering what I 'm looking for but I would
| never in a million years trust them with any of my data.
|
| My wife has the first-gen raybans and they're great for
| taking photos and video clips of e.g. our kids' sporting
| events and concerts, where what it's replacing is a phone
| held up above the crowd getting in the way of the moment.
| But even with that I feel icky uploading those things to
| Meta's servers.
| butlike wrote:
| Meta's fine.
|
| Or at least on par with all the other ones.
| asadotzler wrote:
| AR can surely be audio only. Or are you suggesting a blind
| person getting navigation instructions via cameras and
| speakers isn't augmenting their reality? If so, I violently
| disagree.
| croes wrote:
| And listening to Spotify is VR.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality
| ygjb wrote:
| Meta Ray Bans and Googles Project Aura are products that I
| absolutely want, but absolutely don't want to buy them from
| either of those companies, or any company as invasive as they
| are.
|
| It's long past time for enhanced privacy regulation in the
| North American market because these products are going to be
| wildly invasive as people depend on them to mediate their
| experience with the world. I don't know what the right
| answer, and I am very much aware that building products like
| these that don't focus on monetizing user interaction and
| advertising would likely mean that they are priced out for
| lower income users, but I hope someone smarter than me can
| figure it out :S
| bdangubic wrote:
| _Meta Ray Bans and Googles Project Aura are products that I
| absolutely want, but absolutely don 't want to buy them
| from either of those companies, or any company as invasive
| as they are._
|
| This! So much this! If a product from these companies could
| make my life 1,000,000x better I would still be in "thanks
| but no thanks crowd"
| theyinwhy wrote:
| Aren't the Auras from Xreal?
| yahoozoo wrote:
| Yeah, it's a collaboration.
| Eggpants wrote:
| It take a special kind of person to think, yeah, I'll wear a
| live camera and microphone connected to Facebook...
| robbomacrae wrote:
| To quote from the article regarding Humane and the Rabbit r1
| personal assistant device: "Those were very poor products,"
| said Ive, 58. "There has been an absence of new ways of
| thinking expressed in products."
| joshstrange wrote:
| To quote myself: "Jony Ive made incredibly poor products his
| last years at Apple" - So his opinion of what constitutes a
| "poor product" is suspect (R1 and Humane were bad products
| but just because you can tell what is a bad product doesn't
| mean you can make a good one).
| mattlondon wrote:
| Hindsight is 20/20.
|
| If they were so obviously bad at the time, how did they get
| to market?
| breppp wrote:
| That's a good question, VC pressure and hope for first
| mover advantage?
|
| The humane launch video features two founders that look
| like they were forced to participate by their hostage
| takers
| bdangubic wrote:
| lots of things "get to market" - pretty easy to get
| something to market
| jm4 wrote:
| I don't know anything about Humane, but the Rabbit was a
| terrible product right from the start. It was viewed
| overwhelmingly negatively as soon as it was unveiled.
| turnsout wrote:
| It's widely understood that Jony was given carte blanche
| after Steve died, to keep him at Apple. Hence the gold
| Apple Watch.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > If they were so obviously bad at the time, how did they
| get to market?
|
| I'm not sure what "they" is here (Humane, Rabbit, or
| late-Ive-era Apple designs).
|
| In all cases though there were plenty of people sounding
| the alarm. Both Humane and Rabbit were made fun of
| (wasn't in Humane's demo that the AI was completely wrong
| about guess the amount of almonds or the calories?). As
| for Apple products it was a common refrain that they were
| being made thin at the cost of ports/cooling/etc. How did
| Apple keep doubling down on the butterfly keyboard
| _years_ after it was well known it was a bad design?
|
| Also, "The markets can stay irrational longer than you
| can stay solvent." (re: how did they get to market). You
| can do anything if you set enough money on fire, no
| matter how many people are telling you it's a bad idea.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| They were not thin enough.
| amelius wrote:
| > No question that Ive is a legend
|
| Not sure why he deserves to be a legend, to be honest, but yes,
| he is a legend.
|
| He did a good job, but those small and minimalistic designs
| were only possible because of the efforts of entire teams of
| engineers, of which the public never heard anything.
| bigyabai wrote:
| And many of those designs were made at Ive's behest, against
| the wishes of entire teams of engineers. I feel like we have
| his "courage" to blame for the Butterfly keyboard, terrible
| Mac thermals and the lack of ports on "Pro" computers.
| trane_project wrote:
| The thermals were all Intel's fault. My 2019 MacBook from
| work is an oven. I can't tell whether my smaller m4 max is
| turned on by touching it.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Your 2019 Macbook also uses a different chassis, designed
| by Jony Ive. Apple knew it throttled the chips they used
| but shipped it anyways, presumably because Ive liked his
| thinness even when it results in a bendgate.
|
| You'll note that Macbooks don't quite look the same after
| Ive left and his influence went away.
| PantaloonFlames wrote:
| I don't actually know. Last MBP I had was circa 2017 or
| so.
|
| How are they different ?
| kshacker wrote:
| Beefier. Bulkier. Quick google search says Intel 16" was
| 4.3 lbs whereas M4 16" is 4.7 lbs. Not a big difference
| you say but 1) it is going in the opposite direction
| where the newer product is bulkier and 2) imagine the
| years of thin-ness that would have been forced under a
| different regime.
| hinkley wrote:
| I wonder how much of that is battery.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Blaming Intel is a poor excuse. Apple could have done
| some actual design and built a laptop around the hardware
| they had. But they didn't want to. Instead, they ignored
| the reality, stuck to the flawed design, and shipped
| mediocre laptops several years in a row.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Apple had the design ready for an Intel chips that didn't
| arrive. Rather than revisiting their design they opted to
| just chuck the chip into a design that couldn't
| accommodate it's thermal characteristics.
| apt-apt-apt-apt wrote:
| I spent way too much time figuring out that around 53W is
| the maximum that the last Intel MBP can sustain over
| longer periods before the VRM (converts power for the
| CPU) poops out and throttles you.
| danieldk wrote:
| I agree, but I think they didn't care. For some years,
| some Apple execs believed that the iPad was going to
| replace the Mac. After that they knew that the Apple
| Silicon Mac was nearby, so they probably didn't want to
| make an investment in a 'legacy' platform. Did suck for
| all the people who bought one.
| trane_project wrote:
| I've never had an Intel laptop work well in the
| efficiency and thermal department, Apple or not. I used
| to blame Apple too, but seeing the difference, it's hard
| to argue who the main culprit was. Can't design around a
| bad foundation.
| ginko wrote:
| Pentium M's were magical when they came out.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Perhaps, but pretty much every high performance Intel
| laptop between 2017 and 2023 is exactly the same unless
| it's in an heavy, enormous and unpleasantly loud gaming
| chassis. Supposedly the Core Ultra Series 2 are an
| improvement but I haven't tried one yet.
|
| For a while, you could get the thermals a bit more
| tolerable by undervolting them, but then the plundervolt
| mitigations blocked that.
|
| (Typing this comment from a Lenovo X1 Extreme sitting on
| a cooling pad, sat next to an X1 Carbon that we can't use
| because it throttles too much. :)
| nextos wrote:
| Apple is generally really good at trying to keep their
| machines silent. When they originally transitioned to
| Intel, their Core 2 Duo laptops were both cheaper and
| more silent than the competition. As a Linux user, that's
| one feature from Apple I'd like most manufacturers to
| copy.
|
| Regarding your X1, tweaking Linux kernel parameters and
| downvolting a bit can work wonders in terms of reaching
| an pleasant heat : performance ratio. Obviously, Lenovo
| should have taken care of this. However, they release so
| many different machines that it's hard for them to pay
| attention to details.
| hinkley wrote:
| Intel has never been good at thermals.
| brulard wrote:
| I had the butterfly keyboard for 5 years yet I didn't have
| a single problem with it. And I'm a long time mechanical
| keyboards user. What is all the hate about?
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| Just look it up. It was a thing for years, to the point
| that Apple was basically forced to revert it.
| kshacker wrote:
| I was like you ... until one day.
| Octoth0rpe wrote:
| That's luck on your side. I too own a butterfly keyboard,
| trouble free. But there were 50 other macs in the office
| I worked in that regularly had issues. They were
| unreliable as hell, and beyond the reliability issue,
| many people did not like the shorter travel distance (I
| didn't mind this at all myself).
| vessenes wrote:
| I felt the same way when I used it. But recently I booted
| up an old laptop with the butterfly keys and I was like
| "ewwww" as soon as I started typing on them. They worked.
| But what we have now is more comfortable.
| ilikepi wrote:
| Many people (more than the average rate for the prior
| generations) _did_ have problems. Perhaps more
| importantly, the only way to address those problems when
| they arose was to replace not only the keyboard itself
| but the entire top case of the machine due to the way the
| parts were integrated. This process costed many hundreds
| of dollars when the machines were out of warranty, and
| the company eventually acquiesced to social pressure and
| lawsuits by creating an extended warranty program.
|
| That's not to say your situation is unique...there are
| probably many machines out there that have not had
| problems, including one owned by my wife. But there are
| also an unusually high number of machines that did.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| I didn't like the feel and mine failed after a year.
| danieldk wrote:
| I had the first generation on a MacBook 12" and had no
| issues at all. Then I got the second generation on a
| MacBook Pro (I think this was still without the dust
| seals) and it was one big misery. A small speck of dust
| would make a key feel bad or get stuck. I was so happy
| when I could finally get rid of the stupid device. Never
| had issues with Apple Scissor switches thereafter.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I'd get a particularly large molecule lodged under a key
| and then I couldn't press that key consistently anymore
| until I managed to flush it out. It was OK when it
| worked, but it didn't work enough.
| detectd wrote:
| Don't forget the Apple Mouse with the lightning port
| _under_ the mouse so you can 't use it while it charges.
| It's still the only Apple product with a design that makes
| me physically cringe.
|
| I also find it awkward and uncomfortable to use, but that
| might just be me.
| bazmattaz wrote:
| I love the Apple mouse. Been using it for 10ish years.
| But yeh it's an absolute ball ache when it loses battery
| and you reallly need a mouse
| ryandrake wrote:
| When I had that Apple mouse, I kept around a separate
| wired mouse to use when it inevitably ran out of charge
| while I was in the middle of work. I won't just stop what
| I am doing just because Apple wants me to not use a mouse
| with the cord plugged in.
| stuckkeys wrote:
| I was just going to say...the mouse has to go on its back
| to be charged lmao.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| So the power button on the bottom of Mac Mini is fine?
| danieldk wrote:
| The almost two decades before he made great designs. I have
| always felt it went downhill after Jobs was not there
| anymore to provide a counter force to Ive's design
| tendencies. It's like taking one of John or Paul away.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| Ive did good designs when Jobs kept him in check. Once Jobs
| was gone he messed up a whole generation of MacBooks.
| Things got much better after his departure.
| fakedang wrote:
| I think after Jobs, Ive did all sorts of things just to
| justify his presence at Apple. Hence trying to make an
| already well-designed product even more "well-designed",
| but to his terms. And that's when it started turning to
| shit.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Other than reliability issues (which I never ran into), the
| butterfly keyboard is the best laptop keyboard I've ever
| used.
| bobxmax wrote:
| I absolutely despise comments like these, and you only see
| them on HN.
|
| It's like saying great architects aren't great, it's the
| construction workers who should get the credit.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| HN isn't special here. There's conflict between people
| whose job is to make something look pretty and people whose
| job is to make it work in every industry.
| davidivadavid wrote:
| Repeat after me: design isn't about making things pretty.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Certain people who call themselves designers could do
| with learning this. Bring back brutalism, I say!
| asadotzler wrote:
| For Ive, it often was. Ever thinner MBPs? Why, if not for
| appearance given the weight didn't change. No ports on
| PRO computers? Why, if they didn't bother his aesthetic
| sensibilities. Charging your mouse disables its use
| because the ports on the bottom? Why if not to hide the
| port for looks? He spent most of his time at Apple trying
| to make things pretty. Your comment may be true for
| "design" in the abstract, but as someone who spent plenty
| of time studying design and architecture, let me assure
| you, many of the people I studied with who are now
| industry veterans never cared about much more than
| aesthetics, even in architecture where engineering and
| building science are major factors. Again, sure,
| theoretically true for "design" but hardly true for Ive.
| bobxmax wrote:
| Just because you don't know the reasons doesn't mean
| there weren't any.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Alternatively: Form follows function. Or: Good design
| takes into account the medium.
|
| Many forms of saying it or a very similar statement. If
| only these words transformed into something beneficial in
| the minds of flying air castle designers.
| huijzer wrote:
| > I absolutely despise comments like these, and you only
| see them on HN.
|
| Unfortunately the progressives have been pushing the
| downplaying of powerful people quite hard for a long time
| under the guise of equality, so it's more widespread than
| just HN. Even more unfortunately, equality is also one of
| the main ideas of communism. It's how the government can
| get rid of dissenters and thus move power to itself. That's
| why Marc Andreessen in the Lex Fridman podcast talked about
| how the government told them that they could give up their
| startup because it was already decided which companies
| would be allowed to operate. That's not capitalism. And
| Marc knows it that's why he felt he had to speak up.
| brulard wrote:
| Comments like yours that completely dismiss any questioning
| of established "legends" seems more despicable to me. Can't
| we have an open discussion and a range of opinions?
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| Ive wasn't great. Apple has only improved since he left.
| There, does it help if I say it more directly?
| bobxmax wrote:
| It's great that you know better than Steve Jobs. You have
| impressive self-esteem.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I agree somewhat, you can feel the tension on HN with
| respect to labor vs capital. Which is funny because the
| entire premise of YC is to infuse capital and get a huge
| leverage over bootstrappers.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| It's a pretty common turn of phrase on "lefty" (Western,
| English, very online, progressive) parts of the internet.
| I've always found it silly because it takes some pretty
| interesting nuanced problems (how do you give credit to
| folks who executed Ive's vision, many who probably boldly
| innovated to create what they did? How do you
| realistically situate Ive's flaws given his aura?) and
| wrings the nuance out of it by polarizing the readers
| (you're either with labor or you're with capital, pick
| your side of the picket line!)
|
| But then these days lefty and righty parts of the Western
| English-language internet are all polarized and beating
| on common enemies is part of their conversational
| language. I think for a while HN was small enough that it
| resisted this polarization but at its current size
| there's no escaping it.
| danlitt wrote:
| > It's like saying great architects aren't great
|
| No, you made that up. It's like saying great architects are
| not the sole cause of the things they make.
|
| > it's the construction workers who should get the credit
|
| Don't you think the construction workers should get _some_
| of the credit?
| csallen wrote:
| You're most likely to get credit by being unique and
| irreplaceable. In other words, if the work would not have
| happened without you. If someone else could have been
| easily hired to do the work you contributed, and if in
| that case the work would have been largely
| indistinguishable from the work you did, then you're
| essentially fungible.
|
| IMO you still _deserve_ credit. And in fact you still
| _get_ credit. But that credit comes in the form of
| monetary reward and (hopefully) recognition from your
| team and peers, rather than in the form of fame.
|
| All of which... seems sensible to me? Hard to imagine it
| working otherwise. Interestingly, the movie industry has
| normalized "end credits" which play after a movie ends,
| and which lists literally everyone involved, which is
| quite cool. But the effect is still the same, the people
| up top get 99.99% of the credit.
|
| (Ofc the "system" is imperfect, and fame/credit can be
| gamed by good marketers. But it's also not a "system"
| that any one party invented, it's just sort of an organic
| economy of attention at work.)
| danlitt wrote:
| I am not sure what you're trying to say here. I agree
| that the existing situation is the most likely one. So
| what? I am simply saying that even though it is the
| "obvious thing", it is unfair and unkind. Those two
| things are compatible, in fact they are the usual
| arrangement of things!
|
| > Hard to imagine it working otherwise.
|
| No it isn't! It's very easy to imagine crediting people
| in a different ratio than we happen to do now. You are
| seeing what it looks like - people mythologise their
| heroes, and then other people come in and say "they
| didn't do it all, you know". People are literally doing
| it, in front of you, in this thread. How can it be hard
| to imagine?
| bobxmax wrote:
| Yeah, let's also give credit to the building materials
| and mother nature. Let's give credit to the pedestrians
| who walked by the construction site every day and decided
| not to commit arson.
|
| Brilliant logic. And no, the original comment wasnt'
| saying "give the engineers some credit", it was saying
| the engineers deserve the credit instead of Ive.
|
| Which is idiotic and common of smug, self-important
| programmers.
| jakeydus wrote:
| found the project manager
| doo_daa wrote:
| In between great architects and construction workers there
| are structural engineers who have to work out how to turn
| the pretty designs into actual, workable plans. Those are
| the guys who should get most of the credit.
| arusahni wrote:
| This is the same dude who brought us the butterfly keyboard, so
| I'm anticipating a form-beating-function failure (if they
| actually ship something).
| izolate wrote:
| It's also the same dude who brought us beloved products in
| Apple's lineup. It's almost a meme at this point to say that
| Jony Ive's genius needs a containing force like Steve Jobs.
| Perhaps Sam Altman can fill that role.
| peaseagee wrote:
| Altman can't fill that role for himself, I don't think he
| could do it for Ive...
| no_wizard wrote:
| Jobs, for all his faults, understood where aesthetic,
| functionality and user experience intersected extremely
| well.
|
| He got stuff wrong too, don't get me wrong, but I have yet
| to see another CEO (heck any business person of note) with
| the same pattern of deep understanding of how those things
| intersected as well as he did
| mrguyorama wrote:
| People say this while outright ignoring all the outright
| failures Jobs had because he DIDN'T have that
| understanding.
|
| The Lisa, the Newton, NeXT computers, trying to dump
| Pixar pretty much right before they made it big right as
| the tech was finally catching up to their ideas.
|
| The reality is Jobs got to roll the dice a bunch of
| times, and if you get to roll the dice a lot, you will
| have some wins. Looking only at the wins is not useful.
| npollock wrote:
| "The takeover of io will provide OpenAI with about 55 hardware
| engineers, software developers and manufacturing experts"
|
| 6.5B / 55 = $118 million per engineer
|
| not a cheap aquihire
| hinkley wrote:
| Who now expect to be paid.
| PokemonNoGo wrote:
| That's how I read the article and came to find your comments.
| AI bought a human.
| fallinditch wrote:
| Agreed. It's hard to think of a new product category for smart
| devices ... unless maybe Smart HATS! OK folks so remember where
| you heard it first - ultra stylish head gear with flip-down
| visor screen anyone?
| Pxtl wrote:
| Even as a joke that's still just a goofier version of smart
| glasses. There really is nothing new under the sun.
| fallinditch wrote:
| True, I guess they will innovate around devices and
| periferals that enable or facilitate AI powered activities,
| and hope to pioneer a new category of activity, and look
| damn cool at the same time.
| yahoozoo wrote:
| Eye contacts that have a HUD could be cool. But that's not
| really something you need someone like Ive for.
| duxup wrote:
| Is there actually a thing or product here they're talking about /
| they made / making?
| ncr100 wrote:
| Nope. It's stealth-mode.
|
| So one must infer based upon employees, monies, and other non-
| marketing intel.
| samtp wrote:
| I'm also struggling to find the website for Ive's company that
| is being acquired for $6.5 billion. Maybe I'm just slow today,
| but does the company being acquired have a website?
| ryanwhitney wrote:
| They only have a landing page: https://www.lovefrom.com/
| tjuene wrote:
| not lovefrom, the "io" company thats being acquired
| elicash wrote:
| Yes, in the video on OpenAI's website, they reference a product
| that Altman is testing at home created by Ive.
|
| No, we can't see it yet. And there's not much description,
| either. Just that it's the "coolest technology that the world
| will have ever seen."
|
| Altman: "We have like magic intelligence in the cloud. If I
| wanted to ask ChatGPT something right now, about something we
| had talked about earlier, think about what would happen. I
| would like reach down, I would get on my laptop, I'd open it
| up, I'd launch a web browser, I'd start typing, and I'd have to
| like explain that thing, and I would hit enter, and I would
| wait and I would get a response. And that it as the current
| limit of what a current laptop can do."
|
| The above is very r/wheredidthesoda go but it hints at the
| product being ambient computing related.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Ambient computing backed by a cloud.
|
| Hard pass.
|
| It would have to be true AGI before I'd even consider that
| and that's _consider_.
|
| Why do we seem determined to will the Corporate Rim into
| existence from the Murderbot diaries.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Ambient computing is a fun way to say constant surveillance
| and extraction of highly intimate data.
| yahoozoo wrote:
| So, Alexa?
| _sword wrote:
| The self dealing king Sam Altman strikes again
| kumarm wrote:
| He is second only to Elon in this case (SolarCity, X/XAI).
| _sword wrote:
| That's why they so despise each-other; they're the same
| misiti3780 wrote:
| No - Elon is much more successful
| esafak wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgyU0LyWZ9M
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| interesting back door way to get sam altman some equity in
| openAI.
|
| I wonder how much of this is downstream from them not being able
| to convert to a for profit and giving sam a slug of equity
| woah wrote:
| How does that work?
| rvz wrote:
| The name is "IO". A day after the Google I/O keynote. Another
| purposely planned derailment.
|
| It's probably some form of glasses with ChatGPT on it but obvious
| glazing, pomp and ceremony of this announcement talking directly
| to Apple.
|
| Apple has 1 year to respond.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Apple is failing horrible at "AI" currently but I don't see
| what the big deal with Jony Ive is in 2025. He had a massive
| (if not single-handed) impact on some of the _worst_ hardware
| Apple has ever shipped, thinner, thinner, thinner to the
| product's detriment and butterfly keyboards. I lay that all at
| Ive's feet.
| milkshakes wrote:
| you must really have an axe to grind, you've commented three
| times on the same article with how much you hate ive. you're
| right his later work was a little frustrating, but he's also
| the same guy who brought you the ipod, the iphone, the ipad,
| the apple watch, and airpods. maybe he's not batting 1000 but
| the level of vitriol here is striking.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I never said I hate him, I think his is massively over-
| hyped, and I just think it's insanity that people think
| that since he had success earlier in his life that
| everything he touches is gold. It's a common theme of
| people thinking any successful business person must be
| worth listening to in other aspects of life (see: people
| treating billionaires like they are genius'), a stupid
| theme but a common one.
| milkshakes wrote:
| how else would you evaluate a designer if not by their
| track record?
|
| ive has a proven track record of conceptualizing and
| delivering category defining products. isn't that exactly
| the skill set that would be called for in this case? if
| not, what criteria would you apply?
| joshstrange wrote:
| I am using his track record, most people seem to only be
| looking at his earlier work.
|
| Imagine I told you I had a top tier developer, they built
| this amazing system but in the last 5-10 years their
| ideas have not panned out and been actively
| harmful/misguided. Does that sound like someone you want
| to hire? Yes, they did amazing things in the past but
| recent history tells a different story.
|
| It might be one thing if Ive left Apple and started
| turning out just amazing products, but that has not been
| the case.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Apple should buy Anthropic I think. It's the last available
| lab.
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Mistral is good too.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Google are the ones who named their conference after such a
| popular concept.
| Onavo wrote:
| How would high net worth people like Jony Ive pay tax on this
| sort of big windfalls? Especially if it's all stock.
| joshstrange wrote:
| The ability for a CEO to be a founder of another company and then
| buy that company with the company he is a CEO of seems incredibly
| sketchy. See also: bullshit idea that someone can actually run
| multiple companies, it's ceo welfare and vanity titles.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| No one is forcing you to invest in said companies. As an
| investor it's up to you to do due diligence on the board,
| conflict of interest disclosures, whether sizeable acquisitions
| require shareholder approval, etc.
|
| This is on top of blanket legal protections that already exist
| in case you didn't want to do your own DD, like duty of
| loyalty, care and fiduciary; SEC disclosures, AD @ the DoJ,
| FTC, etc.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Not sure what you are replying to. I'm not investing in
| OpenAI nor do I want to. I can call out BS behavior without
| being an investor.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Although "you" is often used to refer to a specific person
| or persons (e.g., "How did you get to work today?"), in
| many languages, it can also be used to refer to people in
| general (e.g., "You avoid rush hour if you can.").
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2010939117#:~:text=Al
| t...
| polynomial wrote:
| I think the concept is more like, you may participate
| (invest) but if you don't, you have no standing to have an
| opinion. (other than the fact that you didn't invest, which
| represents your opinion.)
| miltonlost wrote:
| Or being CEO of a company and then using as vendors for your
| employee benefits companies that you've invested in. Blatant
| unethical self-dealing.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| People seem to be overlooking this: " Altman doesn't have equity
| in io, OpenAI said. "
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| What about equity-like-instruments-that-don't-have-the-word-
| equity-in-the-name?
| outside1234 wrote:
| Or stakes in other companies that company then buys
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| or highly correlated assets which move in near tandem
| creating meaning a boost on one is a boost on the other.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Sometimes two collaborators make each other better than either
| are alone. I get the sense that's how Steve Jobs and Jony Ive
| were. I've not seen anything Ive has done since be as good as
| what he did before. Someone has to hold the spike so the other
| one can swing the hammer. My guess is that's not how this
| relationship with Altman will work. And that picture is
| terrifying, please take it down and destroy the camera that took
| it.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Everything about this announcement screams "we're completely
| out of touch"
|
| I am terrified of this company making any products
| rchaud wrote:
| Let 'em make overpriced tchotchkes with private capital all
| they want. I'm more worried about them winning inflated
| government contracts and tax credits paid for with public
| dollars.
| easton wrote:
| What is it about that picture that's so icky? I had the exact
| same reaction.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| It's a weirdly intimate pose, and it looks like it was taken
| from way too close-- almost at arms-length, like a selfie,
| rather than from 8-10 feet back with a normal 80mm portrait
| lens. Altman especially looks kind of fish-bowled, being the
| one in front.
| rchaud wrote:
| It's a Hall and Oates album cover featuring two idea guys
| hellbent on putting artists out of work.
| piskov wrote:
| Russians have the famous meme for that [1] (just see the
| photo)
|
| Literal translation is "my snot-nosed kid / my little shit"
|
| https://neolurk.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%.
| ..
| roughly wrote:
| Jobs, for all his enormous character flaws, was a humanist - he
| believed in people and he wanted to make beautiful objects that
| would enhance people's lives. He was also an enormous asshole
| and constitutionally incapable of masking his disdain for
| solutions he didn't feel measured up. Ive can make a visually
| beautiful object, but he's shown he doesn't have the feel for
| the actual user, and Jobs' humanism is the half of that
| partnership that made it work.
|
| Altman's got none of that (well, except the asshole part) - no
| vision, no taste, no concept of what a user would want, no real
| belief in humanity or desire to make things for humans. Ive and
| Altman together is going to be a disaster.
| isx726552 wrote:
| This is a fantastic comment and I couldn't agree more. I
| don't what they're going to come up with as a result of this
| partnership but I expect that it will be utterly lacking in
| the qualities you describe. You really put your finger on it.
| bambax wrote:
| > _Someone has to hold the spike so the other one can swing the
| hammer._
|
| Interesting choice of metaphor.
| strangattractor wrote:
| The headline then is "Sam Altman pays Johnny Ive $6.6Bn to
| become his Collaborator". Not a bad idea really IMHO.
| jonnat wrote:
| He most definitely did not pay $6.6B. The beauty of these
| OpenAI acquisitions is that they are all-stock transactions
| so only worth the face value in the make-believe world OpenAI
| investors seem to live in.
| fragmede wrote:
| Just a guess, but I'd bet that Johnny Ive isn't exactly
| hurting for money. Still, the funny thing about paper money
| is if you have enough of it, and you're well connected
| (which, again, just guessing, but Johnny Ive might be) you
| can just borrow against it without having to make a sale or
| have liquid buyers. Just hope there's no margin call.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Sometimes two collaborators make each other better than
| either are alone.
|
| I don't disagree. Lennon + McCartney were able to fill in
| bridges, suggest lyrics, etc.
|
| I've always been bothered by Ive's form-over-function though.
| Or perhaps it is too easy to call out a designer's very public
| mistakes when on the whole he has done well. For all I know it
| was Jobs that pushed the design choices that I dislike.
|
| But just to iterate a couple things I dislike: the round mouse
| on the iMac (obv.), connectors on the back of the modern iMacs
| (that uncomfortable scratching sound when you're trying to find
| the USB slot and grate against anodized aluminum)....
|
| You wonder, did he actually use the thing or just admire
| looking at it?
| apt-apt-apt-apt wrote:
| It looks like a much different type of collaboration is going
| on.. (someone had to say it x)
| franze wrote:
| the photo is a play on a historical image
| https://imgur.com/a/VnTMINR
| polynomial wrote:
| Is that really supposed to be Zuck with an older version of
| himself??
| seatac76 wrote:
| That is an insane amount to hire Johnny Ive. Just to signal to
| the market that OpenAI is getting into hardware, what on earth
| could they be building towards. They've been writing some big
| checks off late, these costs will have to be justified soon
| enough.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Or he thinks OpenAI is really only worth something in the $30B
| range and he is getting a steal while his currency is hot.
| milkshakes wrote:
| considering that the deal is "an all-stock" one, that would
| not be a great bet.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Its possible for Jony to think that it is worth more while
| Sam does not.
|
| Or Jony to like the $6.5B headline, but realize that he is
| probably only getting $150M.
| owebmaster wrote:
| That's 1% of OpenAI allegedly value
| ljm wrote:
| VCs have too much capital at hand and don't know how to deploy
| it all.
|
| This is on the back of epic wealth inequality.
|
| I don't know why Jony Ive is seen to be worth billions, but
| he's obviously not, he's just another shill in the ivory tower.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > I don't know why Jony Ive is seen to be worth billions, but
| he's obviously not.
|
| Agreed. If it was the only option it would have been worth it
| to Apple to pay him billions to _leave_. His last 5-10 years
| at Apple were marked by him ruining a number of products.
| mountainriver wrote:
| VCs don't have a ton of capital on hand right now, interest
| rates are high, investments are way down
| SimianSci wrote:
| Broadly, you're right, but again, there is an incredible
| amount of inequality at the moment, so while 90% of VCs
| might be strapped for cash, ther other 10% have so much
| that they are struggling to find worthy investment vehicles
| that can grow their money-pile. Its a dillema they are in
| because nothing can justify the volume of investment enough
| without a sufficiant potential for growth, so any venture
| that even hints at big enough return, will find itself
| flush with cash it wont realistically know what to do with.
| hexator wrote:
| The obvious answer would be some sort of consumer AI assistant,
| like Siri but better.
| lolinder wrote:
| This is a bet that's as insane as the Apple car. They're
| going to try to get people to buy a specialized device from a
| company that isn't just a software company but really a B2B
| _API company_ --the only successful consumer-facing product
| they have ever released was an accident, a tech demo that
| went viral.
|
| And what exactly is that device going to do that the iPhone
| (and smartphones in general) can't already do with at a
| minimum a few small tweaks to the existing flagships?
|
| In the right context vertical integration can make sense, but
| hardware is a big stretch for OpenAI right now. They haven't
| even really pinned down the consumer software angle yet.
| seatac76 wrote:
| I mean for this kind of money and pedigree the obvious answer
| to me is kill the smartphone level tech.
|
| 10 mins I spent watching that weird video in third person
| dialogue no less, they better deliver something great.
| rrauch wrote:
| The first paragraph of the article mentions it's an all-stock
| deal. No checks where written for this.
| mountainriver wrote:
| I love how aggressive Sam is with this stuff. He's very smart
| in this arena. I'm all about OpenAI creating new fun things
| jodydonetti wrote:
| Acqui-hire startup -> Jony onboard -> new device with OpenAI
| exclusive features -> Windows Phone is back. /s (kinda)
| zhobbs wrote:
| Totally insane, $6.5B acquihire. But also, all stock deal and
| OpenAI appears to have an unlimited number of investors waiting
| to give them money if/when needed.
| empath75 wrote:
| > $6.5 billion all-stock deal
|
| It's 6.5 billion in monopoly money. OpenAI has an insane
| valuation right now, and they're using it to buy stuff with it,
| as they should.
| dbbk wrote:
| They're not hiring Jonny. He's going to take over design, but
| basically as an independent contractor with LoveFrom.
| neom wrote:
| I had been considering doing a startup in this space, I thought
| Humane and rabbit are directionally correct. This kinda makes me
| want to do it even more, that would be a fun team to compete
| against.
| kranke155 wrote:
| You'd win
| neom wrote:
| That was both a very very kind and very very mean thing to
| say. :)
| IshKebab wrote:
| The manor criticism of them is that they are just phone apps
| pointlessly shoved into an extra piece of hardware. What about
| them do you think was directionally correct? I.e. why not just
| use your phone?
| neom wrote:
| "phone" is over - I would just make better devices, there
| would be a communications device, you could call it a phone
| or whatever. (Frankly: I just genuinely believe I could do a
| really good job here is all, I have no real reason to believe
| that except pure ego, I'm fine admitting that)
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I moved back to a flip phone (sonim xp3+) and love it as a
| piece of hardware. Built like a stone I could skip. Hold
| down a number for speed dial. Flip it closed to hang up.
|
| I just want a competent personal assistant on speed dial I
| can talk to in private.
| samtp wrote:
| Saying the phone is over because of AI is like saying
| websites are over because of AI. Frankly, complete
| nonsense.
| neom wrote:
| Nothing to do with AI. Phone is over because the phone is
| over, AI or not, young people have no interest in
| telephones and apple are laurels resting.
| https://www.skygroup.sky/article/call-declined-
| askafriend wrote:
| By that metric, "Phone" has been over the moment iPhone
| was released. Because it's a computer, not a phone.
|
| Its been over for almost 2 decades so not sure what the
| point of calling that out is.
| neom wrote:
| Well I wasn't quite old enough to compete in big business
| then, and even if I was, the smart phone needed to get
| long enough in the tooth that alternative communication
| continuities became robust, that time is in and around...
| now.
| noir_lord wrote:
| A device with 96% market share in the developed and
| developing world, that is also a fashion item, that most
| adults spend a good chunk of their waking life staring
| at... is over.
|
| I do love HN at times, I really do.
|
| In my case smart phones never started, I did and do find
| the form factor aggravating for everything but phone
| calls and reading _but_ they aren't remotely over.
| neom wrote:
| Over does not mean dead, the fax machine is long over,
| doesn't mean it's dead. The phone will take a long time
| to die, but it's certainly over for the phone.
| noir_lord wrote:
| So your definition of over is something that will die at
| some point in time.
|
| Guess the Earth is over because in a few billion years
| the Sun will expand.
| neom wrote:
| Some helpful reading for you:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=technology+adoption+curve
| https://ca.indeed.com/career-advice/career-
| development/what-...
| noir_lord wrote:
| Would be helpful if it had anything to do with what we
| are discussing.
|
| If you'd have said saturated I may have agreed but the
| adoption curve flattens because everyone who will adopt
| it _has_ adopted it.
|
| By that (and your apparent) definition of over, houses
| are over, microwaves are over, cookers are over,
| electricity is over...
| coolcase wrote:
| Phone the a protocol might be over but the idea of a voice
| only channel for synchronous communication is not.
|
| When cars came along the horse was over but the carriage
| bit is still going strong!
| monkeydust wrote:
| The most expensive aquihire in history
| Invictus0 wrote:
| This is what happens when you let a VC pretend to be a
| visionary
| philosophty wrote:
| This is a sign of OpenAI's weakness.
|
| Altman is desperately trying to use OpenAI's inflated valuation
| to buy some kind of advantage. Which is why he's buying ads,
| paying $6.5 billion in stock to Jony Ive, and $3 billion for a
| VSCode fork created in a few months.
|
| Almost anything makes sense when you see your valuation going to
| zero unless you can figure something out.
| yeahwhatever10 wrote:
| Agreed. This doesn't look like 4D chess, this stinks of
| desperation.
| adamrezich wrote:
| AGI any day now, though! Any day now.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Of note, and to support your argument, all of these deals are
| stock only.
| poormathskills wrote:
| _OpenAI does literally anything_
|
| "This is a sign of OpenAI's weakness"
|
| I think this is the third time I've seen this exact comment at
| the top of a HN post about an OpenAI announcement.There is a
| weird amount of emotional investment in not wanting OpenAI to
| win.
|
| Personally, I am just excited to see what the device looks
| like. The prototype must be good to justify this valuation.
| slipnslider wrote:
| I think a lot of people on here have heard enough stories
| about how Sam Altman behaves when the cameras aren't looking
| and dislike him and thus his company.
|
| Also its normal backlash - when something gets so popular so
| fast, you are going to naturally have some haters.
|
| Lastly actions speak louder than words. OpenAI used to talk
| about AGI and Super AI and nuclear launch codes and national
| security. Now they are buying VS Code forks and ad companies.
|
| The AI race is more than heating up and Sama knows it and
| he's throwing some hail mary's in hopes to keep OpenAI near
| or at the top.
| msukkarieh wrote:
| Facebook is a great example of doing this and it succeeding
| very well. Zuck recognized that Facebook was going to zero and
| bought WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus. My guess is that sama
| sees the writing on the wall and knows that he must expand
| OpenAI in a similar way.
|
| What happens to OpenAI competitors that can't make similar
| moves is another question.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Let's ignore the 46 billion dollars wasted on the metaverse:
| https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/meta-platforms-has-
| spent-$46...
| bigzyg33k wrote:
| Meta haven't abandoned the metaverse, and made it very
| clear from the beginning that "the metaverse" was something
| that does not exist, and will not exist in any form until
| the end of the decade. They continuously reiterate this
| during earnings calls, while increasing their capital
| expenditures on it.
|
| You cannot determine it's a waste if the effort isn't
| completed, and if you have no insight into their progress.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Certainly the part of those investements wasted on
| cramming a whole PC into goggles that smash into your
| face with straps around your head and pretty much all of
| the Meta and Meta subsidized content to go along with
| that can be evaluated now, and not in 5 more years. The
| fact that Quest stalled out 2 years ago with only about
| 7M actives after tens of billions spent trying to make it
| go is pretty much all anyone needs to know about Zuck's
| metaverse investments. Now they're pivoting to glasses
| with a heads up display and pretending that was the plan
| all along because Zuck won't admit the cash bonfire that
| Quest and Horizon Worlds has been, about $100B sunk for
| only about $15B return with only a few million users.
| bigzyg33k wrote:
| Based on your comment it's apparent you neither follow
| the industry closely nor understand it's dynamics. The
| vast majority of the billions of dollars are being pumped
| into R&D, not marketing existing legacy devices.
|
| You also seem to be implying in your comment that the
| orion glasses displayed at connect last year were a last
| minute pivot, which is a ludicrous statement
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| people always criticize zuck on this, but he's been
| pretty consistent on long-terms goals with AI and the
| metaverse working together
| mrweasel wrote:
| Meta is a profitable business that can afford the R&D
| budget. I'll agree that it's a stupid way to spend $46
| billion, which the average HN commentator could have told
| them in advance, but hey, it's their money.
| philosophty wrote:
| Windsurf is not Instagram. Jony Ive's company is not
| WhatsApp. There are no meaningful network effects or lock in
| with these AI products.
|
| Ive's company is going to make some forgettable, overpriced,
| and easily cloned wearable pendant or something equally
| irrelevant. Windsurf (and Cursor) will quickly fade into
| irrelevance as IDEs are once again commoditized by open
| source.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Windsurf and Cursor are money factories, that's not a dumb
| play, their base will only grow significantly. OpenAI doesn't
| have many money factories like google yet.
|
| Paying for Jony doesn't seem like desperation. Jony has no
| product that makes money, this is a long term aggressive
| hardware play. Seemingly to face off with apple.
|
| It feels more like people just want to craft a negative
| narrative about OpenAI and use the data to fit that
| bigzyg33k wrote:
| I completely disagree. This is really just more of the great
| execution that I've come to expect from Sam Altman.
|
| Core to OpenAI's strategy is that they control not just the
| models, but also the entrypoints to how these models are used.
| Don't take it from me, this is explicitly their strategy
| according to internal documents
| (https://x.com/TechEmails/status/1923799934492606921).
|
| Some important entrypoints are:
|
| - Entrypoints for layman consumers: They already control this
| entrypoint due to ChatGPT, the app. They have a limited moat
| here because they are at the whims of the platform owners,
| primarily Apple and Google. This is why they are purchasing
| Ive's startup.
|
| - Entrypoints for developers: They acquired Windsurf, and are
| actively working on cloud development interfaces such as the
| new codex product.
|
| - Entrypoints for enterprise: They have the codex products as
| described above, but also Operator, and are actively working on
| more cloud based agents.
|
| A rebuttal that I anticipate to the above goes something along
| the lines of this: "If they have so much capital and dev
| experience, why are they acquiring these businesses instead of
| building internal competitors? This is a demonstration of their
| failure to execute"
|
| The current AI boom is one of the most competitive tech races
| that has ever occurred. It is because of this, and particularly
| because they are so well capitalised that it makes sense to
| acquire instead of build. They simply cannot afford to waste
| time building these products internally if they can purchase
| products much further along in their development, and then
| attach them to their capital and R&D engine
| mlinhares wrote:
| While I agree the AGI thing is mostly bullshit the whole market
| is aware that models aren't the end-all-be-all and people will
| not be making huge profits out of them, all the other big
| players have other side businesses they can use to upsell the
| models, OpenAI doesn't and they need to figure something out.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Weakness that is rooted in blind ambition that is not backed up
| by any kind of vision.
|
| Which, when you think about it, is really kind of sad. They
| would have been so much better off as a non-profit.
| cube00 wrote:
| Reddit ads too, you know it must be really bad.
| codelord wrote:
| I find it amusing that IO a company with no product and no
| history is valued and bought at $6.5B.
| slipnslider wrote:
| The dotcom bubble gave insane valuations to "companies" that
| literally had a static html page and no product or service.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| That is WILD to think about because I regularly create one-
| pager websites for my own projects...kinda bewildering to
| comprehend valuations for something so basic.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Maybe that's a reason to stop doing it.
| dexterdog wrote:
| Those insane valuations were not 1% of this.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| What do you mean? The idea is obvious, it's an Apple Homepod
| sized orb-screen, like a mini Vegas projector, running OpenAI's
| realtime API.
| kookamamie wrote:
| So, basically a Palantir?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| I don't totally get the comparison - Palantir is a tech
| enabled agency making glorified dashboards that benefits
| from affirmative action for libertarians, and the mini
| Vegas orb product is Jony Ive's new dildo to capitalism to
| worship. Two very different things.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| Sounds to me like money is being distributed to that startup's
| investors?
| xnx wrote:
| I hope Windsurf and Jony got some real money along with their
| OpenAI stock.
| createaccount99 wrote:
| I thought all acquisitions were done on leverage these days, is
| stock actually switching hands and not just magic money?
| blixt wrote:
| I actually thought the video they posted[1] would have
| information, but that was just 9 minutes of two guys
| congratulating each other.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/OpenAI/status/1925235156157440438
| SimianSci wrote:
| Sounds like the same level of substance IO had before it was
| purchased.
|
| Aside from the news is there anything more to this acquisition
| than two people effectivly repeating "look at us" on loop?
| polynomial wrote:
| This right here. How is this being treated as news, not back
| slapping?
| whynotminot wrote:
| These product-focused moves feel like a tacit admission that AGI
| is further away than they've been preaching.
|
| If it was close at hand, spending precious resources on anything
| other than pursuing AGI wouldn't make sense.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Or just a realization that they are mainly up against google
| with a massive money factory. They need their own money
| factories or they won't survive long term
| lolinder wrote:
| AGI is the ultimate money factory if they could deliver it on
| the timelines that they were projecting until recently.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Its impossible to know, they are in a longer fight with
| googs
| alabastervlog wrote:
| I remain unconvinced they're (the whole LLM/"Attention Is All
| You Need" industry) even barking up the right tree to build
| anything usefully-close to "AGI".
| wilg wrote:
| its certainly currently useful and also generally
| intelligent, right?
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Yes, and "that question is in not-even-wrong territory",
| respectively.
| floydnoel wrote:
| useful, sure. like a calculator for text. intelligent? no,
| and neither is a calculator
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| It's definitely useful.
|
| It can answer specialized PhD level questions correctly,
| yet cannot perform tasks that an average 10 year old could.
| I don't consider that generally intelligent.
| btown wrote:
| The idea that any situation or sensory input can be broken
| down into a sequence of tokens, and that action choice can be
| characterized by predicting a subsequent sequence of tokens
| in the same space, may well bear fruit.
|
| But I think that a lot of people also buy into the idea that
| "text and image data from the web, and from historical chats,
| is the right/only way to generate the data set required," and
| it's a dangerous trap to fall into.
| rzz3 wrote:
| What do you think the correct, or at least a more likely tree
| is?
| qgin wrote:
| If we're talking about the singularity robot takeover fast
| takeoff, maybe that's true.
|
| But Sam and others have said they see AGI is an uneven process
| that may not have a clear finish line. The intelligence is
| spiky and some parts will be superhuman while other parts lag.
| mrfox321 wrote:
| Sounds like excuses
| lolinder wrote:
| Note that they started saying that recently after their
| earlier projections didn't pan out. The "uneven process
| without a clear finish line" angle was Altman recently trying
| to reset expectations, which means it doesn't contradict OP's
| thesis that this move towards product is further admission
| that AGI is going to be much messier than they initially
| predicted.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Dude just says whatever he thinks will make Line Go Up on his
| accounts. It's basically the only thing he does.
| hadlock wrote:
| "Make Line Go Up, but without humans" might be the best
| definition of AGI i've seen so far
| ch4s3 wrote:
| That sounds exactly what you would say if you had staked
| hundreds of millions of dollars and your personal reputation
| on something you increasingly know isn't possible.
| slg wrote:
| Doesn't this contradict the whole idea of AGI? How is it
| still "general" if it is "spiky" with numerous gaps in its
| "intelligence"?
|
| It sounds like a CEO moving the goalposts when asked to
| accomplish something they don't think they can deliver.
| qgin wrote:
| Just means by the time you get agreement that every
| checkbox has been checked, much of the world will already
| have been dominated by the spiky parks to AI long before.
|
| We'll be living in a mostly AGI-ish world long before it
| gets declared. People might not even care about declaring
| it at that point.
| tim333 wrote:
| Can't do a singularity robot takeover without robots and you
| may as well use designer ones.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Does anyone seriously think we're anywhere close to AGI with
| LLMs? I know CEOs like to say things to blow smoke up investors
| asses, but does anyone with actual credibility think that?
| wilg wrote:
| to answer that you have to define AGI first
| swiftcoder wrote:
| That's not a prerequisite to refute a position, no.
|
| The ball is in the other court - if one is working on AGI,
| it behooves one to know what one is aiming at (and I'd
| stake a fair wager that OpenAI et al have at this moment
| very little better picture of what AGI looks like than you
| or I)
| taylorlapeyre wrote:
| People really avoid considering what the word "general"
| implies. Yesterday I tried sending o3 a screenshot of some
| sheet music, asking for a midi file of how it sounds.
| Complete failure x3. Could not even get the value of the
| first note right. This is not "general" intelligence.
| 7734128 wrote:
| I'm general intelligence, and could not in a million years
| do that.
| DickingAround wrote:
| I think actually you could do that if you wanted to; look
| up what notes mean, write some little program to make a
| sound if you had to. You could do it in a week if it was
| your only job.
| sleepydog wrote:
| Don't sell yourself short. If you have eyes and a voice,
| you can learn to read sheet music and hum a tune.
| pier25 wrote:
| you wouldn't need a million years to learn to read sheet
| music and write midi
| MegaButts wrote:
| If you can't learn to read sheet music in a million years
| then you are not generally intelligent.
| jagger27 wrote:
| Every time you deny yourself this kind of agency you are
| denying yourself your humanity.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| These models are notably terrible at music in every
| dimension.
|
| Music is essentially mathematical. Weakness in math is
| being addressed by dedicated capabilities that are
| triggered by mathematical language in prompts, but because
| these models are actually terrible at math there is no
| lateral transfer of skill to the domain of music. That's my
| theory anyway.
| binarymax wrote:
| Anecdata but I talk to lots and lots of AI/ML/DS engineers.
| Everyone knows the current LLM architecture won't work for
| AGI. All the "reasoning" models are just pseudoreasoning and
| there is severe data leakage and benchmaxxing when the
| companies tout the capabilities.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Tyler Cowen claims it's already here. I don't agree with him
| but he has credibility with a lot of people.
| jocro wrote:
| depends on what we mean when define AGI
|
| i think there's ample evidence to suggest that we're growing
| closer (3-5 year timeline?) to replacement-level knowledge
| workers in targeted fields with limited scope. i don't know
| that i would call that AGI? but i think it's fair to call it
| close.
|
| thing is that has value, but compute ain't cheap and the
| value prop there is more of reducing payroll rather than
| necessarily scaling business ops. this move to me looks like
| a recognition that generalized AI on it's own isn't a force
| multiplier as long as you have bottlenecks that make it too
| pricey to scale activity by an order of magnitude or more.
| bradgessler wrote:
| I do think LLMs will make incredible progress and we'll see
| lots of breakthroughs from it, but I agree it's nowhere close
| to AGI.
|
| I'm not sure that matters though--if a technology can give
| humans what they want exactly when they want it, it doesn't
| matter if AGI, LLMs, humans, or some other technology is
| behind that.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I believe Yann LeCun more than I do any CEO. And he has been
| pretty clear you're not going to get AGI any time soon.
|
| Previously discussed on HN:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39059897
| pier25 wrote:
| Nobody fully understands how human intelligence works. It's
| implausible we'll be able to replicate it or even come up
| with something better in the short term.
| jagger27 wrote:
| "If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we'd
| be so simple we couldn't."
| pier25 wrote:
| Neuroscience is like a 150 years or so since the
| discovery of the neuron?
|
| It'll take some time but we'll get there. Just not as
| soon as the AI hype will make you believe.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I see a lot of replies suggesting agreement: LLMs are nowhere
| close to AGI.
|
| I agree -- it may well be a completely different path we need
| to go down to get to AGI ... not just throwing more resources
| at the path we've pioneered. As though a moon landing were
| going to follow Montgolfier's early balloon flights in "about
| five years".
|
| At the same time, there is suddenly so much attention + money
| on AI that maybe someone will forge that new path?
|
| "Money is All You Need".
| skywhopper wrote:
| Unfortunately the money is all chasing LLMs, not other AI
| approaches. Anyone with a different idea is frozen out, at
| least for a while. Whenever LLM disillusion finally sets in
| with the investor class, the question is whether other "AI"
| will be able to distinguish itself or if the money will
| just all dry up for another few decades.
| dkarl wrote:
| Fifteen years ago I worked with a guy who, in retrospect, was
| very similar to an LLM. He was extremely verbally gifted and
| a vacuum cleaner for information. He could speak brilliantly
| about any topic he had been exposed to. He was a great person
| to send to a meeting, because he was great at answering
| questions coherently with the information he had on hand, and
| he always managed to make your ideas sound smarter than you
| could yourself. Based on that, you might think he sounds like
| a gifted human, until I tell you about his major weakness: if
| you asked him about something he didn't know about, he would
| often speak just as surely, fluently, and compellingly about
| it. He hallucinated just like an LLM, and that's why he was
| stuck in roles without a high level of responsibility despite
| his verbal gifts.
|
| He was neither arrogant nor self-conscious. He treated his
| hallucinations as if they were the kinds of simple mistakes
| other people made, like, oops, I thought I understood this
| but I don't, no different from oops, I forgot my umbrella.
|
| I sometimes wondered if he had a specific condition that made
| him the way he was, but I never doubted that he was human,
| with "general intelligence."
| dismalaf wrote:
| No. People hype it but it's obvious we're hitting a wall with
| LLMs.
|
| That being said, the "apps" that use LLMs coming out now are
| good. Not AGI good, but they do things, will be disruptive
| and have value.
|
| And the money coming it could lead to new techniques and
| eventual AI. For now though, it looks like AI is
| transitioning into products and figuring out how to lower
| inference costs.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| I expect a fair number of non-technical LLM proponents, and
| probably some engineers as well, have likely built machines
| quite capable of helping them fool themselves that it is.
| digianarchist wrote:
| There's no post-LLM story. This consolidation is both building
| product and user-capture before that becomes wildly admitted.
|
| I think LLMs will become more useful and more efficient over
| time as models refine but these aren't the (AI) droids you're
| looking for.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| what does LLVM mean here?
| rossng wrote:
| I assume it's 'large language and vision model'.
|
| But, for sanity's sake, if we insist on putting 'vision' in
| there, let's at least call them LVLMs!
| digianarchist wrote:
| I wasn't trying to coin a new term. Genuine mistake!
| dismalaf wrote:
| Probably LLM.
| make3 wrote:
| like when Linda McMahon called AI A1
| justanotheratom wrote:
| RE: product-focused moves
|
| These are tentacles that AGI will need.
| yahoozoo wrote:
| Yeah, AGI needs a VS Code fork.
| make3 wrote:
| it's funny I feel like top of the line LLMs are basically AGI
| already or very close, you can have reasonable discussions with
| them about any subject etc & that a lot of anti LLM talk is
| grasping at straws & goalpost moving
| tim333 wrote:
| People's definitions of AGI vary a lot, although I agree LLMs
| are getting pretty good.
| theahura wrote:
| I disagree for two reasons.
|
| 1) the two decisions do not seem related to each other. OpenAI
| has capital to spend and is seeking distribution methods to
| shore up continued access to future capital. That strategic
| decision seems totally unrelated to their estimated timelines
| for when AGI (whatever definition you are using) will show up.
| Especially because they are in a race against other players. It
| may be a soft signal that more capital is not going to speed up
| the AGI timeline _right now_ , but even that is a soft signal.
|
| 2) I think we already have AGI for any reasonable definitions
| of the terms 'artificial' 'general' and 'intelligence'. To wit:
| I can ask Gemini 2.5 a question about basically anything, and
| it will respond more coherently and more accurately than the
| vast majority of the human population, about a vast array of
| subjects.
|
| I do not understand what else AGI could mean.
|
| (In case it matters, I am also an AI researcher, I know many AI
| researchers, and many-but-not-all agree with me)
| asadotzler wrote:
| I asked Gemini to read a clock for me with hands on 10 and 2
| and it got the long hand and the short hand backwards,
| probably because of the massive trove of online documentation
| about the symmetry of 10 after 10 being aesthetically
| pleasing for PR materials and icons or some such nonsense
| unrelated to the question or the clock.
|
| I don't know about you, but I learned how to read an analog
| clock in _kindergarten_ and Gemini got it wrong.
| empath75 wrote:
| Because LLM's as they exist right now are incredibly useful and
| you can make a lot of money from them? AGI isn't god. It might
| not even be especially useful.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Is there a profitable LLM out there right now that anyone can
| point to as an example?
| mocmoc wrote:
| The iPhone was once in a lifetime thing. Jony was just one of the
| pieces
| ericsilva wrote:
| Must be one hell of a prototype.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Made out of exquisite aluminium I'm sure.
|
| Use a white background, throw in as many verbs as you can and
| duck all the money thrown at you I guess.
| WorldPeas wrote:
| don't forget the clickwheel
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
| neuralkoi wrote:
| The comments on this article are very interesting. The next major
| device will definitely be AI-first. Apple is currently trying to
| jerry-rig AI into their existing product, the iPhone. This has so
| far not only been a complete failure, but is bound to be a
| complete failure in the end.
|
| The next Apple will be the one that creates an AI-first device
| entirely from scratch. AI lies at the core of everything it does.
| It's an AI assistant, a friend, another brain. It's not some BS
| summarizing engine that can't even do simple tasks like copy the
| name of a song playing on Spotify into Notes.
|
| That's what I think Jony Ive envisions.
| fidotron wrote:
| > The next major device will definitely be AI-first.
|
| Be more specific though: what form factor will such a device be
| in?
|
| A coffee maker? A phone? Glasses? Cars? A building?
|
| The AI wave seems to be hoping a whole load of hardware
| revolutions, such as holographic displays, will just appear out
| of the ether because it fits with their vision of how things
| should be.
| zachthewf wrote:
| Probably glasses or airpods.
| qgin wrote:
| If Apple has an opening for an AI-first device, its AirPods
| with their own Apple Watch style SIP and data connection +
| replacing Siri with a real multimodal model.
| neuralkoi wrote:
| I don't know! But Sam Altman seems to think Jony Ive does. If
| I did, I would be getting $6.5 billion in stock from OpenAI!
| yunwal wrote:
| I don't see why the device _has_ to be in a significantly
| different form factor than current phones. AI alleviates one
| of the major problems phones have right now, which is that
| typing on them is slow.
|
| If you can type a half-assed message, and have AI fill in the
| blanks, or reliably transcribe your voice, that's a huge
| improvement to the phone in its current form factor. No
| reason the screen or interfaces have to undergo a radical
| transformation
| fidotron wrote:
| If it's a phone it will have to run Android, with the Play
| Store to get the apps, at which point it will be very
| dependent on Google.
|
| You aren't going to get people giving up their mobile
| banking apps to carry an AI phone that doesn't quite work,
| hence the need for it to be something else.
| albumen wrote:
| I agree. Humane tried with a new form factor. An audio-only
| interface is too limited. A watch screen is too small.
| There's a lot going for a decently sized screen that lets
| you look images, maps, emails, webpages that you control
| (rather than projecting onto the nearest (in)convenient
| surface), that fits in your pocket. Good enough BCIs are
| still years/decades away.
|
| I could imagine AirPods that connect to various screens
| embedded in the environment, which you temporarily use when
| next to them. But it's still jot as convenient as a screen
| in your pocket.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| But in fact it could be a watch if you more or less talk-
| to/listen-to it.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| It's going to be an entire OS.
|
| This would cost 50 billion or so. But right now you probably
| interact with at least 3 or 4 oses per day.
|
| Your TV, has one. Your phone has one, your laptop has one.
| And if you have voice assistants, they run a 4th distinct OS.
|
| The future will have one OS that shares a session.
|
| Two paths exist. 1. This runs primarily locally aside from a
| very small amount of data to share the session ( which you
| can disable). It's completely open source and modifiable.
|
| If you want to roll a 3500$ super PC it'll be just as
| compatible with the OS as a 200$ one. Writing small automated
| tasks, everything from just asking with a voice command to
| wake up jazz,to running a custom C script, will be easy to
| do.
|
| While I'm dreaming I want a new programming language which
| supports 3 levels. Plan English instructions ran though an
| LLM, something like Python and a systems level language like
| Rust. All "native" programs will be built in this framework.
|
| Now, the negative path is this is all closed source,
| processed in some data center. "John, I noticed you said to
| Brian your feet hurt, new running shoes are 30% off , just
| say the word."
|
| This is the far far more likely outcome. They're going to
| build an AI that's constantly with you, integrated in every
| device you own, and it'll all be to sell you stuff.
|
| "Waymo, I would like to go home."
|
| "Sure, but let's stop for milkshakes."
|
| "Waymo, please , I'm tried."
|
| "Understood, I've arranged the milkshakes to be dropped off
| an your apartment."
|
| This technology could be amazing for accessibility, even real
| time sign language translation would change the world.
|
| We'll get some of that, but the end goal will always be
| making as much money as possible. Ultimately selling us crap.
| Your awake for 16 hours today. You must be monetized every
| waking second.
|
| Once they figure out how to get the science from Dream
| Scenario to work I'm sure they monetize sleep too
| lolinder wrote:
| The reason why Apple has failed to integrate AI successfully
| into the iPhone isn't because we need an AI-first device, it's
| because AI is still universally being strategized as a solution
| in search of a problem. An AI-first device at this stage will
| fail for the same reason: it doesn't have a mission statement
| to solve particular problems for real people, it has a mission
| statement to be an AI device.
|
| The absolute best case scenario for an AI-first device at this
| stage is that it ends up like the Vision Pro, which had a
| similar mission problem.
| echelon wrote:
| No. The AI pane of glass is the next killer product.
|
| The next major device won't be an ad funnel though. It'll
| give users first class access to the whole pane of glass. Not
| a managed ads experience at the will of some monopoly
| platform, but something where the AI serves us instead of
| being extractive.
|
| The minute we have a broker or agent between us and the "user
| is the product" services that try to advertise to us and
| steal our time, it's game over for the old model of revenue.
| Google, ads, all of it will vanish. There won't be any more
| selling to me or the rest of the world ever again. You'll
| have to pay us to get our eyeballs.
|
| Let me clarify: if we have a pane of glass where we run our
| own agent with our own best interests in mind, then nobody
| can get through that layer without it being permitted by us.
|
| No more ads.
|
| No more stealthy product placement.
|
| No more paid or featured listings.
|
| It goes further.
|
| No more rage bait, attention bait, low information filler.
| The annoying people in life and in social media disappear to
| the great filter.
|
| AI agents can clean up the shitty place the Internet has
| become.
|
| AI agents are personal butlers. Or internet condoms.
|
| The way that works is this: on-device AI that can handle the
| task of routing and dispatching and filtering, which can then
| dispatch out to expensive cloud AI that would otherwise try
| to inject adds into the stream.
| cj wrote:
| 1) AI pane of glass
|
| 2) It runs your own agent
|
| 3) It has your best interest in mind
|
| 4) It's a broker between you and the "wild wild west
| internet"
|
| That's cool, but is it "iPhone killer" cool? Maybe, but
| still unclear why. What's the mission statement of the
| device, to the OP's original point? It runs an agent, who
| cares?
|
| Is the mission statement for this device basically "Use the
| internet without ads" -- if so, that's a pretty narrow
| market. People have learned to tolerate ads, I don't think
| people will throw away their iPhones for a better ad
| blocker.
| r14c wrote:
| I like the idea, but that kind of setup doesn't provide an
| infinitely growing revenue stream. Incidentally infinite
| growth targets are essentially why the internet looks the
| way it does today. That's the thing that needs fixing,
| product development is secondary to structural incentives.
| echelon wrote:
| Antitrust would fix all of it in a heartbeat.
| elAhmo wrote:
| > it's because AI is still universally being strategized as a
| solution in search of a problem
|
| What Apple showed seems quite useful. It is a shame they
| failed spectacularly at execution. Even the simplest things
| that should be answerable by an LLM and their data, which is
| what a lot of people want, should be a very low hanging fruit
| - so much utility without building a complete experience from
| scratch.
|
| Why cant I just say 'do I have any notifications from a
| bank?' or 'show me emails that require my attention'. Those
| things are simple if done with a combination of multiple
| tools (e.g. feeding email content somewhere, asking it to
| classify, show the results), yet a three trillion dollar
| company, with dedicated hardware release just for this
| purpose, failed to achieve it.
|
| I might be over simplifying things, but with infinite
| resources, they should be able to do better.
| throwfaraway4 wrote:
| How do you fail at something that was never released?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I think it was rushed. Apple may though have lost "the
| vision thing" -- but I'm willing to allow them another
| release cycle to mature their initial bandwagon-reaction.
| rubslopes wrote:
| > I might be over simplifying things, but with infinite
| resources, they should be able to do better.
|
| I don't think you are. The problem really _is_ execution. I
| don't need anything beyond what AI can already do--I just
| need an assistant that understands what I want and uses the
| right tools. I'm baffled that we still can't get a reliable
| summary of emails, notifications, or appointments. If you
| give me the data in text format, I can paste it into
| ChatGPT /Gemini/Claude and have a much better dialogue than
| with any current phone assistant. Somehow, trillion-dollar
| companies still haven't solved that.
| elAhmo wrote:
| Exactly. Even the simplest models that could run on phone
| could have been used to improve Siri or give some better
| utility other than setting timers. Yet, it is slightly
| more advanced than a decade and a half ago.
| tvaughan wrote:
| How quickly we've forgotten about the Rabbit R1.
| tim333 wrote:
| It was always a bit hopeless. The whole idea of let's get
| people to carry a second device which is like a phone but
| much worse rather than just using a phone app was always
| iffy. I guess the Apple Watch works but it's tricky.
| gostsamo wrote:
| I don't know for all other people, but ai totally can be
| solution to some of my problems, but the current
| technological landscape does not let it. I'd like for my ai
| assistant to have as much context about me as possible so
| that it can give me help in different situations. At the same
| time, the ai should be unable to share this info with anyone
| else. However, I cannot imagine Google or Microsoft
| committing to safeguard data they won't sell. Neither I can
| imagine Apple offering such an AI without trying to rob me
| even more blind than I'm now while telling me that they are
| my best friend. Doing it myself could be a half-baked but
| somewhat functional solution and honestly I hope that someone
| of the same mind would build on the labor of others to
| provide something workable.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I've been realizing lately, as I have leaned heavier on
| LLMs to do what I would have used Google and search to do
| previously, that what I want -- what I am searching for --
| is not a page or site but just the damned answer to my
| query.
|
| "At what time does the first train from Stirling to
| Edinburgh arrive?" I don't need a page to the train time-
| tables (or god forbid, a vacation package to Scotland) --
| just the answer to my question.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Agreed, you can see this from how consumer-facing AI is
| advertised. It's never something like "I wanted to do X, now
| I can thanks to AI". It's always "I used AI to generate a
| cute image to send my son" or "I used AI to write a silly
| poem about my boss" or something. If it was truly valuable,
| they'd be showing off how it can solve problems that existed
| prior to AI being invented, not these fluff tasks that don't
| respond to people's actual needs or create any value. The
| only thing that AI can do that people are willing to pay for
| is cheating on school assignments, but obviously the AI
| companies don't want to use that in their advertisements.
| tim333 wrote:
| I kind of disagree in that I find AI features that I can use
| with the phone quite useful like being able to say what's
| that tree or how do I get to Croydon or such like. I don't
| feel any desire for the AI processing to be built into the
| device however, I'm quite happy to have it running on Google
| or whoever's servers and be able to access it from whatever
| device.
| edaemon wrote:
| That's the problem, though, you've described a product with
| AI-driven features as opposed to an AI-first product.
| adamrezich wrote:
| > The next Apple will be the one that creates an AI-first
| device entirely from scratch.
|
| When's the last time something of this magnitude actually
| occurred in real life? Myself and many of the other commenters
| you refer to have a hard time believing something like this is
| even possible in the current market--the huge megacorps are
| more risk-averse and incapable of innovation than ever before,
| and the scrappy startups seem to exist entirely to be acquired
| by the megacorps to raise their valuations.
|
| The last time something even remotely like this happened was,
| what, the Oculus Rift? And that was far from a perfect product
| that perfectly solved every problem in the domain perfectly on
| the first try.
| jcims wrote:
| This is where SesameAI seems to be heading. If you haven't yet,
| try the demo, it's definitely flawed at the moment but shows
| some potential for conversational UX.
| spike021 wrote:
| Hasn't that already been done (and failed) with one or two
| devices? there was one about a year ago that was effectively a
| clip on your shirt and it seemed like a terrible product. It
| was meant to be a dedicated AI device.
| thrance wrote:
| There's also the Rabbit R1, which was a laughably bad scam.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| iPhone should've been a successful formfactor, it's not the
| form factor that's the problem it's the lack of apple
| datacenters that can train and inference for a popular service.
| Instead Apple went all in on edge inference which as we all
| know is absolutely stupid and probably will never be that
| relevant.
| arbuge wrote:
| This could be true... but only if there is an actual specific
| problem that they can put their finger on that requires the
| device to be AI-first. What is that problem exactly?
|
| It's also not obvious to me that a concerted effort by Apple
| (unlike what we've seen so far, admittedly) wouldn't eventually
| be successful in converting the iPhone to something effectively
| indistinguishable from a platform designed from the ground up
| to be "AI-first".
|
| Designing things from the ground up is hard by the way. It's
| not just the design itself; it's the ecosystems around them
| which are really hard to get going. Apple has the world's
| biggest flywheel in motion there already.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I think it should make interfaces on the fly depending on what
| you want to do.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| The next major device will be AI first but not voice in voice
| out, but rather voice in text out (and images). I'm not sure
| they understand this and I'm not sure they could deliver
| anything which would surpass the iPhone.
| tim333 wrote:
| Taking sci-fi as a guide I think it should be robots.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > The next major device will definitely be AI-first.
|
| Everything so far that has been named X First has been
| marketing woo woo, and in practice only meant "we're thinking
| about this use case a little more than before". Such as mobile-
| first, and cloud-first.
|
| In either case, sure, it's very possible that device hardware
| will change. But in what way is hard to say. Will the on-device
| chips be more powerful to support local inference? Sure.
|
| > Apple is currently trying to jerry-rig AI into their existing
| product, the iPhone [...] is bound to be a complete failure in
| the end.
|
| Yes, kind of. The problem with all existing platforms including
| web is that they're build in a way that is adversarial to
| interop. Apps are siloed, and the only possible birds-eyed view
| is the OS itself. But, GUIs are not built for machine interop.
| Vision models to navigate UI will be flaky at best for the
| foreseeable future (and forget about voice, it's an extra
| modality at best and is way too limited). On web frontend, it's
| the same story. On backend, the web has been adversarial for a
| long time, with fingerprinting, rate limiting, anti-scraping,
| paywalling etc, which has been supercharged in the last year or
| two.
|
| Essentially, the products and systems we use every day are a
| poor fit for interop with AI, so I suspect we'll see two
| parallel futures: (1) interop and semantic GUIs being
| integrated into platforms, web and app ecosystems (this is what
| MCP is IIUC). This will fail for the same reasons as web 2.0
| failed (the adversarial nature of tech business models -
| opening up APIs is not incentivized), not to mention the
| investment required to build a new OS and (2) vision models to
| do tasks on behalf of humans with some mediocre agent-loop-
| thing on top of existing hot garbage pool of already flaky apps
| and sites. This won't necessarily fail, but it will mean
| platform- and large data owners (Google, MS etc) will yet again
| end up on top, since they control the access to the birds-eye
| view (much like Siri or Google Assistant). It is also the most
| noisy, flaky and data-intensive surface area to use for
| interop, meaning the products will be slow, bloated and feel
| like bonzibuddy for years.
|
| Doesn't mean AI won't transform businesses and white-collar
| work. It certainly already does. But, the AI selling point for
| consumers (current ability - not "future potential"), is kind
| of like how Google Search and Maps was a decade+ ago. Sure, it
| provides amazing utility, but most of the time you're looking
| at memes, playing games and watching TV shows. AI in those
| products is mostly a continuation of ongoing enshittification.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Was "io" a company before this? Only Jony Ive thing I remember
| from the last number of years was LoveFrom creative studio...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| _Interview: Jony Ive on what he's cooking up in San Francisco_
|
| https://monocle.com/business/can-jony-ive-save-san-francisco...
| justinzollars wrote:
| We love throwing cash at Jony Ive!
| jinay wrote:
| Likely no coincidence that they announce their company, io,
| during Google I/O.
|
| Search "io" on Google right now and see what comes up...
| bobxmax wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this was named years ago
| jinay wrote:
| I'm more referring to launch timing
| jorams wrote:
| > Search "io" on Google right now and see what comes up...
|
| I don't know about you, but neither of them comes up. Google
| I/O has always been something you have to search for including
| the "Google" part and this news is all about Jony Ive, not the
| nondescript company name.
| rob wrote:
| What's with the black and white "couples" photo? Seems like
| they're on the verge of kissing or something for a romantic novel
| cover.
| ccbbccbb wrote:
| oh my.
| poly2it wrote:
| This announcement is inexplicably amusing. It's like the
| announcement of the iPhone without the iPhone.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| They've distilled the purest essence of Jony Ive.
| sllewe wrote:
| Ive has finally made something so thin - you can't even see it!
| polynomial wrote:
| let me know when you're doing a standup set and I'll be
| there.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| I dont get it, so there's no actual product?
| klysm wrote:
| Posturing and FOMO + shoveling money to friends
| spruce_tips wrote:
| the video on the homepage certainly is ai generated, no? all of
| the scenes in the cafe are definitely tripping my ai radar
| minimaxir wrote:
| It's a real restaurant.
|
| https://www.yelp.com/biz/cafe-zoetrope-san-francisco-4
| spruce_tips wrote:
| doesnt mean the video isnt ai generated
| WorldPeas wrote:
| could be ai-enhanced
| tymscar wrote:
| The video they posted looks like its made with AI. Their
| movements and facial expressions are too uncanny
| spruce_tips wrote:
| i thought so too. way too weird looking. there's a reason they
| zoomed on their faces whenever they were talking - to hide the
| unnatural hand movement
| synthmeat wrote:
| Supra-aural headphones with a spherical camera rig would be
| really powerful ambient for first big AI-first product.
| owebmaster wrote:
| The perfect setup for blind people.
| asadotzler wrote:
| I have a blind friend that's been getting value from the Meta
| Ray-Ban spectacles. He used to have spectacles that let a
| human see where he was going and offer
| suggestions/directions/descriptions/etc. but replaced those
| with this somewhat more private solution and found various
| compelling (in his descriptions to me) use cases. I
| personally think AI is going to land on "coding" and
| "accessibility" successfully and fail in most other domains.
| sethops1 wrote:
| $6,500,000,000 dollars for ... what, exactly?
| mrweasel wrote:
| 55 engineers and the opportunity to be associated with Apple
| products via Jony Ive.
|
| Honestly with OpenAI buying Windsurf, and now this (whatever
| this is) I'd say that the company is in trouble and is now
| desperately attempting to buy it's way into relevancy. Either
| OpenAI wants to become a developer tools company (which can't
| be that profitable), or a consumer goods company. Trying to
| become the next Apple is really the only way to ever make the
| money they spend back.
|
| OpenAI is a failing company. They made the first move, that
| will be their claim to fame. Sadly it turned out that what they
| are doing isn't that hard to replicate, just hard to profit
| from.
| dbbk wrote:
| I honestly think that Google is going to be the long term
| winner. They were behind at first, but now their models are
| the state of the art, and cheaper, and crucially Google as a
| whole makes enough money to float the business.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Google and maybe Microsoft. Both have enough money to just
| outlast anyone else. LLMs aren't a bad idea, but they are
| at the current cost, that's just less of an issue to Google
| and Microsoft.
| netvarun wrote:
| Tangent: Did Windsurf actually get acquired by OpenAI? I would
| have imagined some sort of announcement from OpenAI at the very
| least? Bloomberg was the one to break that news too, but haven't
| seen any follow up.
| mattegan wrote:
| Has nobody learned anything from the Humane saga? I don't get it
| - if you have something so revolutionary and so great, just
| release it and let it speak for itself!
| brk wrote:
| This was exactly my thought. Image Humane _Rabbit R1_ LLM.
| Developed with an unlimited budget. It will be a $3000
| paperweight assembled from the finest raw materials available.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Finally a GPT phone or personal AI mobile device looks to be in
| the works!
|
| I'm done with iPhone once GPT releases their personal mobile AI
| device!
|
| *Hmmm being downvoted the 500 million who use GPT daily won't be
| excited to ditch iPhone for GPT phone? Love to hear why others
| think this isn't a good idea?
| paxys wrote:
| So they paid $5B to hire Jony Ive? Is there even a product or
| just all vibes?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Perhaps buying him so Apple doesn't?
|
| (Just wild speculation -- but one that would be on par for
| Corporate America over the past decade or two.)
| bdangubic wrote:
| I've heard stories of people paying $5B to get divorced,
| haven't heard any paying $5B to their ex-husbands :)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Except that time Apple bought NeXT? :-)
| bdangubic wrote:
| NeXT is a person?
| dbbk wrote:
| They didn't even get to hire Jony Ive
| tgma wrote:
| Acquire as many companies to quickly dilute the OpenAI non-profit
| ownership.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Smart move by OpenAI to try an cement their position as the
| "iPhone" of AI.
| npollock wrote:
| if you own the device, you control the flow of data and dollars
| dudus wrote:
| First Windsurf and now this. OpenAI is spending billions like
| there's nothing else to use this money for while being seemingly
| cash strapped for model training since they already signaled more
| investment rounds would be needed to remain competitive. They're
| trying to become too big to fail before they have a moat which
| won't work well.
| mlnj wrote:
| What else are they going to do with all that money?
|
| Raise billions and billions under the guise of AGI coming
| tomorrow and they just become a too big to fail company
| gobbling up any competition.
|
| You don't hear anyone touting AGI anymore do we?
| mattlondon wrote:
| > You don't hear anyone touting AGI anymore do we?
|
| Apart from, y'know, DeepMind - remember those guys? The ones
| with the SOTA models at the top of the leaderboards? The ones
| who just launched Veo3 and blew everyone away?
|
| It feels like OpenAI has kinda jumped-the-shark at this
| stage. They don't seem to be especially competitive any more,
| and all the news coming out of them is tinkering at the edges
| or acquisitions that no-one really cares about.
|
| When are they going to start competing on actual AI again?
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| 90s Netscape vibes
| mattlondon wrote:
| I feel like history is repeating itself yes, but actually
| I was thinking more a out Google.
|
| Everyone was saying "oh man - Google had all this tech
| and they sat on it and just couldn't move forwards, then
| they blew their lead and OpenAI came a long and smoked
| them!"... Now it feels like it is _OpenAI_ who are
| repeating that story, blowing their lead they got with
| the original ChatGPT while that upstart Google schools
| them in model development and vertical integration.
|
| Interesting times. Very interesting times. C'mon OpenAI,
| move the SOTA forward!
| WorldPeas wrote:
| At least Netscape's offering was actually continuously
| open (after 98 at least)
| mlnj wrote:
| I meant from Open AI.
|
| After a lot of the drama and a ton of talent leaving all
| they seem to have left now is a pile of cash that they can
| spend eliminating competition. Meanwhile like others have
| rightly pointed out, talent at Google and even Mistral have
| been crushing it.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| From the article 5 billion of the payment is equity in OpenAI.
| So they aren't spending cash
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| This still means 1.5B were paid in cash for a company from
| what I understood has neither clients nor even a product. Not
| exactly pocket money.
| brentm wrote:
| Appears from the outside as a very expensive aquihire but
| if you're getting the guy who essentially created the
| iPhone it could be worth it.
| dbbk wrote:
| But they're not getting him. Jony isn't included in the
| deal.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| He has $5B reasons to help them though.
| brentm wrote:
| They are according to WSJ:
|
| > Jony Ive, a chief architect of the iPhone, and his
| design firm are taking over creative and design control
| at OpenAI, where they will develop consumer devices and
| other projects that will shape the future look and feel
| of AI.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/former-apple-design-guru-
| jony-iv...
| dbbk wrote:
| The Verge says otherwise
|
| > Ive won't be joining OpenAI, and his design firm,
| LoveFrom, will continue to be independent, but they will
| "take over design for all of OpenAI, including its
| software," in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion
|
| https://www.theverge.com/news/671838/openai-jony-ive-ai-
| hard...
| bredren wrote:
| "Including its software..."
|
| That's a remarkably big product scope to own!
|
| Are we talking about Devex workflows from docs on getting
| fed through Ive's group?
|
| The Verge must have this wrong, it doesn't make sense and
| I don't think Ive would be interested in maintaining
| design on ChatGPT's web client.
|
| Besides, only Anthropic beats the UX of ChatGPT. It would
| seem like a mistake to dismiss the authority of the folks
| who have built that product up.
| paxys wrote:
| Ive is a good designer sure but "essentially created the
| iPhone" is absurd. It took thousands of engineers and
| product visionaries to bring that device together, and
| OpenAI isn't getting any of that. You aren't going to
| replicate its success by hiring the guy whose major
| contribution was insisisting that all Apple products be a
| few millimeters thinner in every iteration.
| woah wrote:
| Lots of companies were making smart phones with similar
| specs. Under Johnny Ive's management, the Apple version
| made a much bigger splash than any of them and defined
| the category.
| timschmidt wrote:
| Arguably HP/Palm's WebOS devices were ahead on every mark
| - easier to use, more featureful, smarter, better
| physical design than any iPhone of similar manufacturing
| date.
|
| The difference was management choosing to stick with a
| platform for long enough for network effects to kick in.
|
| If Apple has any advantages compared to other big tech,
| it's an ability to look past next quarter's financials.
| waffletower wrote:
| Palm offerings in 2007, such as the Treo 755p or the
| Centro, could not compete hardware-wise with the original
| iPhone. The claim that these Palm phones were "easier to
| use" is hilarious to me, and probably hilarious to many
| others.
| timschmidt wrote:
| I explicitly mentioned WebOS, meaning the devices
| released around 2009, which competed with 1st gen iPhone
| old stock, and directly against iPhone 3G - the second
| generation.
|
| The first gen iPhone is not a smartphone by today's
| standards. No multitasking, no copy/paste, no centralized
| instant messaging, all things WebOS devices had on
| release.
|
| Even the second generation of iPhones felt half baked by
| comparison.
|
| Which just goes to illustrate my point, that they weren't
| technologically superior, just more committed.
| paxys wrote:
| The race was already over by the time webOS showed up.
| Even Microsoft, with a superior product and many billions
| spent pushing it, couldn't overcome the network effects
| of iOS and Android. No one else had a chance.
| timschmidt wrote:
| Disagree strongly. Your definition of failure seems to be
| "not achieving market monopoly" which doesn't make any
| sense to me.
|
| Both Microsoft phones and WebOS have surviving
| communities today, and would have thriving communities if
| new devices were available.
|
| Sadly, it takes more than two consecutive quarters to
| establish a platform.
| paxys wrote:
| My definition for success is - do they still exist
| timschmidt wrote:
| Comcast and AT&T still exist. Kraft still turns out war
| rations by the warehouse. Tasteless grocery store
| tomatoes are still the most widely available.
|
| This metric has very little to do with quality.
| paxys wrote:
| > Under Johnny Ive's management
|
| You spelled Steve Jobs wrong.
| waffletower wrote:
| At the time of the public debut of the first generation
| iPhone (January 2007), the statement "lots of companies
| were making smart phones with similar specs" is
| objectively false. Further, there were zero companies
| making comparable large touchscreen, large cpu phones
| outside of Apple at the time.
| brentm wrote:
| You're 100% right and in my opinion there is a much
| higher probability this is a total waste and nothing of
| similar value will be created. But if you're OpenAI and
| you have this option I also see why you may take it.
| rogerkirkness wrote:
| The book 'The One Device' covers this in really thorough
| detail.
| etempleton wrote:
| Completely agree. He is a good designer, but graphical UX
| went downhill when he was given more control at Apple and
| he became increasingly militant about hardware design to
| the point that the MacBook Pro was kinda bad because it
| was unreasonably thermal limited and had a terrible
| keyboard.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| Kinda bad is quite the understatement.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Ive is basically the best in the business if your needs
| are to get a large amount of cutting-edge technology into
| a ridiculously constrained form factor and have it look
| good, feel solid, and be manufacturable at scale.
|
| That is what he is world-class at. Not designing
| comprehensive product experiences or ideating new
| greenfield products (and definitely not designing app
| icons).
|
| If IO or OpenAI _also_ has a product visionary of the
| caliber to fully utilize Ive 's singular industrial
| design talent, they'll rule the world. Otherwise, they're
| sinking billions into the next Humane Pin.
| enneff wrote:
| I don't think there's any evidence that Ive has the
| expertise you claim. He was lead designer for Apple when
| they did the iPhone, but it is Apple who has the
| extensive deep expertise in hardware design and
| engineering.
| rhubarbtree wrote:
| Ive spent months in China working on the iPhone assembly.
| Plenty of evidence.
| fidotron wrote:
| The team on the iPhone was surprisingly small. Not small
| by startup standards, but nothing like as big as many
| would imagine.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| It kind of is, when they were given $500B and told to make
| a return in 10-ish years. They have to put the capital in
| play where it has the largest ROI potential. They are
| gambling that Jony has another iPhone in him.
|
| I don't know enough about any of this to weigh in on it,
| but when you take investor money, you aren't supposed to
| sit on it or do slow burn (at least not VC money), its
| meant to be gasoline, and you moonshot with it.
| pier25 wrote:
| > _They are gambling that Jony has another iPhone in
| him._
|
| I seriously doubt it.
|
| If anything because Apple let him go exactly when they
| were looking for a new hit product like the iPhone.
|
| But also because how he handled the Mac the years before
| he was fired. All his big decisions were just bad. The
| butterfly keyboard, touchbar, USB-C only ports, etc. Heck
| even the 2013 Mac Pro (the trashcan) was an engineering
| failure. They could never upgrade it because, according
| to Craig Federighi, they got themselves into a thermal
| corner caused by the design of it[1].
|
| [1] https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| The greatest home run hitters of all time average < 30%
| hit rate (not 30% of hits are home runs, but 30% of
| swings are even hits).
|
| Sometimes you gotta swing for that fence regardless of
| the outcome.
| pier25 wrote:
| But even those best home run hitters reach a point where
| the hit rate drops way below average...
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| since we're torturing the analogy... you don't measure a
| baseball team's success by the # of HR's one player
| records in a season, you talk championships over time.
| Sometimes they're related, but less frequently than you'd
| think.
| some_random wrote:
| That analogy breaks down almost immediately. I get your
| point that when you go out and try to do things sometimes
| you will fail, but the problem is that many of his design
| failures were seen _even at the time_ to be failures.
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| I don't necessarily think Ive is going to succeed, but if
| you're going to make a lot of bets, taking one bet on
| someone who succeeded before seems pretty reasonable. He
| wouldn't be the first person to rise to great heights,
| fall, and rise again, even in the Apple world.
| some_random wrote:
| I absolutely agree right up until we start talking about
| price. Obviously this deal was all in stock from someone
| who has a history creative corporate control structures,
| but nevertheless the on paper cost of was $6.4 billion.
| That's a hell of a bet.
| bbarnett wrote:
| This whole thread seems weird to me. There's no way on
| Earth this is to acquire talent, let alone one person
| alone.
|
| For this price, I'd figure something already exists.
| to11mtm wrote:
| A good batter knows when the pitch is bad and you take
| the balls and get a walk.
| paul7986 wrote:
| As one of the fervent 500 million daily GPT users it's a
| no brainer for Open AI to create a personal mobile AI
| device or an AI phone with GPT accessible right from your
| Lock Screen.
|
| It could...
|
| - interface with AI Agents( businesses, friends &
| family's agents, etc) to get things done & used as a
| knowledgeable.
|
| Once u pick up the device it's like a FaceTime call with
| your AI agent/friend in which u can skin to look however
| u want (a deceased loved one ..tho that might be too out
| there).
|
| - It visually surfs the Web with you.. making u not open
| a web browser as much
|
| - take the best selfies of u...gets you to the best
| lighting.
|
| Overall excited to see their vision and leave/drop
| Apple's now boring iPhone for a GPT phone or personal
| mobile AI device. I think a phone form factor would be
| best, but we'll see.
| pier25 wrote:
| And you seriously think Ive could be responsible for
| leading this effort?
| paul7986 wrote:
| You & just a dude here with ideas that in time go nowhere
| or maybe somewhere. Altman noted different demographics
| use GPT differently with 18 to 20 somethings not making
| decisions without consulting GPT (could be marketing
| speak but with some truth).
| mattlondon wrote:
| How did that work for the Facebook phone? And all their
| billions of fervent Facebook users?
|
| Google own this space - pixel phones already do pretty
| much all of this, and they have the best models and the
| most users too. No built in agentic capabilities yet, but
| I am sure that is just a month or two away (see project
| mariner).
|
| If you've not tried the pixel photo ai features already,
| you may be surprised. Things like changing lighting,
| removing people from the shot, auto-stitching people into
| a group photo, composites group photos so you get one
| photo where everyone is smiling and looking at the camera
| at the same time even if that never happened etc, text-
| editing photos etc. Gemini live is like a facetime call
| without the 3d avatar but we've seen they can do it with
| Veo3 already if they wanted.
|
| This is all reality today already in the hands of
| billions of Google users, so OpenAI have a bit of a hill
| to climb: OpenAI would need to not only _catch up_ with
| Google (both in AI space which they seem incapable of
| doing right now but also in product too) _and_ surpass
| them.
|
| Google are totally integrated in this space - the device,
| the software, the AI models, the infrastructure, the
| data, the sites/apps people use (search, Gmail, maps,
| YouTube, docs, ...) and also the _billions_ of users.
|
| I doubt OpenAI can really make a dent here. I suspect any
| OpenAI-Phone will be quietly discontinued like the
| Facebook phone
| paul7986 wrote:
| Maybe time will tell ..myself never to excited about a
| Facebook phone but I am a big Meta Ray Ban wearer/user.
|
| Not sure smart glasses will be big but I lean on indeed
| they will be just not replace our pocket mobile devices
| (can't take selfies with glasses).
| cma wrote:
| > They are gambling that Jony has another iPhone in him
|
| All they have to do is convince investors of that before
| the next round and they get a net return on him.
| rchaud wrote:
| The iPhone's value comes from its software ecosystem and
| camera/SoC hardware, which Ive had zero involvement with.
| MisterSandman wrote:
| The first iPhone was a hardware engineering marvel, it
| was leaps and bounds more premium than any phone in that
| generation. It took other companies years to catch up.
| fernandopj wrote:
| I'd add those 2G > 3G > 3GS > 4 > 4s were iteration
| marvels to witness.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| But you're not asserting that Ive was involved in that
| either, right?
| wpm wrote:
| Jony Ive never had even the iPhone in him. He is an
| excellent designer. He was never a product person.
| MegaButts wrote:
| > when they were given $500B
|
| You're off by an order of magnitude here.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| How much credit does he really deserve for the iPhone?
| Jobs and Fadell were obviously both involved in the
| iPhone too and Nest has some pretty appealing design
| without Jony being involved at all.
| layoric wrote:
| Source? They did a $40B funding round for which Softbank
| is on the hook for most of it, and they are going into
| debt cause they don't have the cash either [0]. IMO,
| these acquisitions are due to the fact they know just
| selling the model isn't where the huge margins are,
| selling the verticals is.
|
| [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-21/so
| ftbank-...
| gnopgnip wrote:
| They previously invested and already owned 23% of the
| company. So no cash for this Aquisition
| rahul342 wrote:
| > OpenAI already owns a 23% stake in io as part of a deal
| from last year, meaning it needs about $5 billion for the
| acquisition, the Times reported, citing unnamed people
| familiar with the matter.
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-why-openai-is-
| buying...
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Just to stem pointless debates before they flame up - both
| these acquisitions appear to be primarily if not exclusively
| for stock.
|
| Sure, if you want to get into theoretical finance, OpenAI
| _could have_ sold these new shares for cash, so technically
| there 's no difference, but OpenAI is only spending opportunity
| cost cash, rather than fiat.
|
| OpenAI's fiat likely still goes to the things you'd expect,
| like training models and paying for inference.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Staff are not cheap either. 300k cash salary for most of them
| from what I hear. Plus 600 to 1M in funny money.
| belter wrote:
| The AI hype seems driven more by stock valuations than
| genuine productivity gains.
|
| Developers now spend excessive time crafting prompts and
| managing AI generated pull requests :-) tasks that a simple
| email to a junior coder could have handled efficiently. We
| need a study that shows the lost productivity.
|
| When CEOs aggressively promote such tech solutions, it
| signals we're deep into bubble territory:
|
| "If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time
| -- I can't exactly predict where it is -- it's possible that
| most developers are not coding." - Matt
| Garman - CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS) - June 2024
|
| "There will be no programmers in five years"
| - Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque - 2023
|
| "I'd say maybe 20%, 30% of the code that is inside of our
| repos today and some of our projects are probably all written
| by software." - Satya Nadella - CEO of
| Microsoft - April 2025
|
| "Coding is dead." - Jensen Huang CEO, NVIDIA
| - Feb 2024
|
| "This is the year (2025) that AI becomes better than humans
| at programming for ever..." - OpenAI's CPO
| Kevin Weil - March 2025
|
| "Probably in 2025, we at Meta are going to have an AI that
| can effectively function as a mid-level engineer that can
| write code." - Mark Zuckerberg - Jan 2025
|
| "90% of code will be written by AI in the next 3 months"
| - Dario Amodei - Anthropic CEO - March 2025
| the_arun wrote:
| Apart from developer productivity, have we seen anything
| made 1000x better using GenAI?
| WorldPeas wrote:
| OCR cleanup?
| some_random wrote:
| Sure, copywriting seems to be pretty much irrelevant now.
| Same with image generation wherever you can get away with
| it. The quality may be reduced in many cases but the cost
| is absolutely a fraction of what it used to be.
| s_ting765 wrote:
| Just like anything AI, the problem is getting people to
| buy the grift being sold as a replacement for human
| labor.
|
| https://gizmodo.com/klarna-hiring-back-human-help-after-
| goin...
| DaSHacka wrote:
| "Amount of time college students spend on homework"? ;-)
| mooreds wrote:
| Are these quotes all from 2025? Would be awesome to put
| actual dates on them so we can revisit in N years and see
| if they were right or just hyping.
| belter wrote:
| At your request :-) Added dates to all of them...
| oldpersonintx2 wrote:
| vs:
|
| "I will be indispensable forever" - random
| people on HN
| mrbungie wrote:
| Wow, such a uncalled straw man out of nowhere.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Checking their post history, they seem to be all-in on
| the AI coolaid.
|
| Yet another bookmark for my "check after the AI bubble
| pops" folder.
| rvz wrote:
| > When CEOs aggressively promote such tech solutions, it
| signals we're deep into bubble territory:
|
| Correct. This is how most bubbles are kept up as they are
| all exposed in the hype cycle.
|
| You will not hear about the mistakes [0] [1] [2] it makes
| when AI gets it wrong or hallucinates and all the AI
| boosters can do will be "it only gets better" and promise
| that we will soon be operating airplanes without humans.
| [3]
|
| Surely you would feel safer if you or your family boarded a
| plane that was fully operated by ChatGPT, because it is
| somewhat closer to "AGI"?
|
| I _really_ don 't think so.
|
| [0] https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/openai-explains-why-
| chatgp...
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/news/668315/anthropic-claude-
| legal-...
|
| [2] https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/15/xai-blames-groks-
| obsession...
|
| [3] https://www.flyingmag.com/replacing-airline-pilots-
| with-ai/
| rchaud wrote:
| US shareholder capitalism is increasingly dependent on
| pushing a fantasy where X Company will eventually operate
| as an unregulated monopoly with armies of machines run by a
| small group of contract labour with no benefits and no wage
| bargaining power.
| dev_l1x_be wrote:
| Manager pipe dreams that AI (read LLMs) replacing
| programmers. There might be a rude awakening when in fact
| AI replaces some admin type managers.
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| claims that AI will reduce the need for engineers are
| "entirely self-serving horseshit"
|
| -- James Gosling - May 2025
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| The loss of productivity is,as many things are, not
| directly measurable. Mediocre code making it into the
| codebase and hindering future development and increasing
| maintenance time, or even being the cause for some ideas to
| never be discovered, how are we going to measure that? How
| are we going to measure engineers no longer properly
| knowing the codebases?
|
| Businesses will wake up when it is too late and the damage
| to the engineering side of their products is already done.
| Or perhaps won't wake up at all, and somehow (to their
| management levels) inexplicably fail.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Clearly foundation models don't make money or a viable business
| on their own
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| You can say the same about any piece of software...
| fakedang wrote:
| Don't forget their Abilene chip factory.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| And nobody on this forum uses his brain to find out what's
| going on ..
| rcarmo wrote:
| Well, Windsurf is no longer worth what they paid for it. Let's
| see how the rest goes.
| gip wrote:
| It is fascinating how design has become the new gold standard in
| the AI era. It really looks the strongest signals come from taste
| and design quality and AI is killing other signals.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Funny how the reality is exactly the opposite of what you're
| saying. Design was already on life support and AI was the final
| plug pull.
| gip wrote:
| For some designs, sure -- AI will likely generate most of the
| UX for, say, SaaS products. But when it comes to high-
| quality, innovative designs, humans will lead.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| People were obsessed with design before the "AI era" too.
| paxys wrote:
| What design are we talking about? An interface with a text
| input box at the bottom, chat view on top and a list of
| previous conversations on the left? Takes an entry level
| engineer a few hours to come up with that, not a $6.5B design
| firm and Jony Ive.
| i_have_an_idea wrote:
| This is the worst price to value ratio for an acquihire ever.
| vessenes wrote:
| OpenAI board: "Should we dilute the company 2% to acquire Jony
| Ive for the next 10 years? Yes."
|
| Hacker News: "Man these OpenAI folks are idiots."
|
| OpenAI absolutely should be getting in the hardware game; Ive is
| a mix of status acquisition and unicorn, and is not the only
| person/team/company you'd need to make a quality hardware
| product. But on balance I'd pay 2% of every company I ever had
| any financial engagement with to get Mr. Ive doing its design. I
| mean srsly.
| mrweasel wrote:
| At the risk of being the idiot: Being very smart doesn't
| prevent you from saying and doing very stupid things.
|
| My problem is that Altman is a very smart idiot. He already
| admitted that OpenAI have absolutely no idea how to make money.
| Apparently they've now given up on the idea of asking ChatGPT
| how to make money. Their "AI" not going to develop fast enough,
| if ever. So now they are just buying up stuff left and right?
| It might be part of some coherent plan, but if it is, no one
| else is seeing it.
|
| Altman is smart enough to see that things are not working out
| and that he's going to run out of money and investor patience.
| He might also be smart enough to see that if OpenAI fails, so
| will 80 - 90% of his competitors, not sure if he care though.
| He needs OpenAI to survive, but he's not that kind of smart,
| and honestly I'm not sure anyone is.
| troupo wrote:
| Ive left Apple _6 years ago_. What exactly has his company done
| since?
|
| And before that he was responsible for some of the worst
| hardware decisions in Apple history.
| qingcharles wrote:
| It doesn't even matter. The video on the site says it all
| when Sam says "This guy designed the iPhone, the Macbook
| Pro!" -- they're buying a brand, a legend. They can now say
| they have "the iPod guy" on their team. Nobody else has Jony
| and that's what matters.
| troupo wrote:
| Matters... how?
|
| They want us to believe they are building hardware. Okay,
| they bought a brand. Now what?
|
| Apple spent decades building its hardware expertise on
| every level from industrial design to chips. LoveFrom has
| Ive ... and?
| qingcharles wrote:
| They want to tell their investors and customers that the
| iPod guy designed whatever magical widget it is they are
| building. That is worth the cost to them.
|
| If you're designing a piece of consumer hardware, then
| having what the general public consider the #1 designer
| in the world on board is golden.
| redbell wrote:
| > The purchase -- the largest in OpenAI's history
|
| Am I missing something here! Apart from Windsurf, what else did
| they acquire?
| tough wrote:
| They also where seed investors on Cursor
|
| actually sama was kicked out as CEO of YC because he was
| meddling too much openai-sub companies to prop them up and get
| a big chunk or smt.
|
| he also stole reddit lol, sorry i mean -acquired-
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41657001
| zild3d wrote:
| Rockset - https://openai.com/index/openai-acquires-rockset/
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| It's mind boggling how much money is floating around once you are
| part of the insider circle. What has that company been doing to
| be worth 6.5 billion?
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| They made a very pretty font.
| The_Blade wrote:
| that is more useful than more or less anything else that AI
| has practically achieved
| ryanSrich wrote:
| I consider myself extremely plugged in to what's going on with
| AI and I still couldn't tell you what Ive's company does
| without looking it up
| criddell wrote:
| Maybe the company is inconsequential and this is just about
| hiring Ive?
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Oh I'm sure that's the reason, but it still makes zero
| sense. Ive is incredibly overrated as a designer and
| visionary.
| cma wrote:
| Overrated is great for raising the next investment round.
| It is much easier than convincing investors they are
| underrating someone you think would make a better choice
| to go with someone overrated instead. If he is overrated
| enough the increase from overratedness in the next
| investment round will pay for more than the acquisition
| cost.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Ive will not be joining OpenAI, and they're also not buying
| Ive's design firm LoveFrom.
| spiantino wrote:
| Kind of both? "While Ive and LoveFrom will remain
| independent, they will take over design for all of
| OpenAI, including its software. Altman said his first
| conversations with Ive weren't about hardware, but rather
| about how to improve the interface of ChatGPT."
| KerrAvon wrote:
| That's not promising! Ive isn't an interface designer and
| doesn't know a pushbutton from a skeuomorphic hole in the
| ground. Software and industrial designers can work with
| each other to build great things, but they are not
| equivalent roles.
| fckgw wrote:
| 6.5b to spruce up a chat box. Unbelievable.
| samtp wrote:
| Do they even have a website?
| s1mon wrote:
| As far as I could tell, no. Seems to be fairly stealthy. I
| even asked ChatGPT with Deep Research, and there's not
| really much detail out there.
| dismalaf wrote:
| I looked it up, still no idea what his company does.
| wnevets wrote:
| > It's mind boggling how much money is floating around once you
| are part of the insider circle.
|
| it's a big club and you ain't in it [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKUaqFzZLxU
| abraae wrote:
| I think of it in terms of Vegas-style casinos or cruise ships.
| About $2B for a casino, $1B for a cruise ship.
|
| So imagine Johny Ives to be worth a couple of cruise ships tied
| up outside 2 hulking casinos.
| tough wrote:
| tbh has jony ive produced any remarkable hardware piece since he
| left apple?
|
| Can't think of any maybe im wrong
|
| he must be buying the name or something or just the brains idk
| tedivm wrote:
| Honestly once Jobs died most of what Ive did was ruin existing
| products, such as the butterfly keyboard and the removal of all
| of the useful ports from their laptops.
| skellera wrote:
| He also ruined the Vision Pro on his way out. Engineers
| wanted to do wireless to a Mac mini-like hub (not standalone)
| so the hub could have more computing power. It's a dev device
| that was supposed to be the very best experience for
| developing the future standalone AR/VR device. But Ives
| forced them to do full standalone. Increasing weight,
| decreasing power, wasting time re-engineering the device.
| emrah wrote:
| Jobs directing, filtering, complementing Ive was clearly the
| winning combination.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Also remember Ive didn't even plan for the watch to be fitness
| he wanted high end fashion. He's not always the best. Lighting
| struck once and he says aluminum in a smart sounding way, give
| him a billion
| xeonmc wrote:
| _alumininium_
| skylurk wrote:
| This reminds me of _Finding Nemo_ :
|
| amnemonemomne
| hinkley wrote:
| To be fair, those aluminum chassis ended up involving spin
| welding to make them stiff enough at those dimensions, which
| I believe had mostly been used in aerospace up until that
| point.
| rullopat wrote:
| Ive just designed not practical thin furniture, like the
| bending iPhones and the ultra thin MacBooks with no way to
| release heat and the keyboard that was getting broken after
| pressing a bit too hard
| elicash wrote:
| Not sure if it counts for what you meant by hardware, since
| it's more art piece than a practical thing given the $60k
| price, but he created a record player:
|
| https://www.linn.co.uk/us/turntables/lp12-50
| te_chris wrote:
| He macbooked an existin piece of design excellence. I get
| that that was the brief, but ooosshhh.
|
| As a CMO once said to me: you don't want to hire me, you want
| me 5 years ago, so hire X
| bcoates wrote:
| Lol at the loving description of the manufacturing process
| for plywood (I think technically pressure-treated oriented
| strand board, but, you know, plywood)
| labadal wrote:
| The other archive link seems to be timing out for me, here's
| another one if you need it: https://archive.ph/AiEC0
| dboreham wrote:
| At least folks who are too young to have experienced sock puppets
| et al get to see what it was like.
| ijidak wrote:
| Ive has made hits in the past.
|
| In hindsight, it might be a cheap acquihire.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| This is such an obvious jump the shark moment for openAI.
|
| These types of puffery acquisitions, with a former "legend",
| announced with such gusto, have never materialized into anything.
|
| You're not gonna get breakthrough products like this.
| Breakthrough products just appear unexpectedly, they're not
| announced a year or two ahead of time.
| mrbungie wrote:
| You know you are in front of the impending explosion of a
| bubble when discussions shift from products themselves and
| towards who will be working with whom.
| samtp wrote:
| > In the interview, Altman said Jobs would be "damn proud" of
| Ive's latest move.
|
| What an extremely weird (and egotistical) thing to say if you're
| in Altman's position
| brador wrote:
| It's a trophy acqui-hire. Something to brag about over dinner
| and to investors.
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| so Altman's nerd-equivalent of a sexual conquest?
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Oh there's a lot of sex cults in the SV investor sphere I
| assure you. Those "conquests" are happening too. Ask young
| women who have spent sufficient time and had exposure to
| the space.
| lysace wrote:
| This v2 Sorkin movie is way overdue.
|
| "The Social Network" (2010) seems so innocent now.
| DevKoala wrote:
| While Sam is being egotistic, the reverence of Jobs to the
| point nobody is even allowed to assume how he would have
| thought is also weird imho.
| samtp wrote:
| I'm certainly not saying that "nobody is even allowed to
| assume how he would have thought". What I'm saying actually
| has very little to do with Jobs at all.
|
| I'm saying that as a new partner to someone, it's extremely
| weird to say that your old dead partner would be extremely
| proud you teamed up with me. If I were to marry a woman who
| lost her husband, it would be extremely weird and egotistical
| for me to tell people that her dead ex-husband would be "damn
| proud" that she married me.
| therein wrote:
| > If I were to marry a woman who lost her husband, it would
| be extremely weird and egotistical for me to tell people
| that her dead ex-husband would be "damn proud" that she
| married me.
|
| Perfect example. That is exactly what it feels like. What a
| nasty thing for him to even think, and he goes and says it
| publicly.
| mrbungie wrote:
| If Ive had said that himself, it wouldn't be weird. But Sama
| didn't know Jobs well enough to put words in his mouth.
| mrbungie wrote:
| Narcissistic ego stroking. He literally is invoking and
| thinking out loud for a dead man, who was not that intimate
| with him, just to validate his own ventures and acquihires.
| Very weird.
|
| It wouldn't be that weird if Ive had said so himself.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > It wouldn't be that weird if Ive had said so himself.
|
| It would still be marketing, though.
| mrbungie wrote:
| Sure, but at least it would've been tethered to someone who
| actually knew him. Remove that and any humanity in the
| quote banishes.
| inerte wrote:
| And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was
| very good. And Ive and Sama were the sixth day.
| nashashmi wrote:
| ... Unless he engineered the entire deal himself and wanted to
| make it seem like it was Ive's greatest maneuver.
| tqwhite wrote:
| This is the worst thread I have ever seen on Hacker News.
| Fatuous, self-important, superficial, judgmental. Do better
| people.
| paul7986 wrote:
| It's looks like to me a bunch of people who don't use ChatGPT
| daily for everything under the sun. As once you let your
| imagination run wild with it ..you can see why 500 million use
| GPT daily to do so many varied things that u can't go a day
| without using it and your usage of google is on the decline!
| Why you want to pick up your phone and have GpT right on ur
| Lock Screen do to everything under the sun including having it
| interface with AI agents to book travel, book a local tow
| truck, reserve whatever, ask questions about friends & family
| via their own agents, etc
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Below is wild speculation:
|
| > Five years to the week after he walked away from the top job
| designing the iPhone [1]
|
| Sounds to me like OpenAI is going to make it's own consumer
| device. Maybe designed by the AI itself. The AI Is choosing it's
| own body?
|
| [1]: https://archive.is/yixNr#selection-615.0-615.81 "After
| Apple, Jony Ive Is Building an Empire of His Own" - NYT
| _se wrote:
| If you think current "AI" can design and build a consumer
| device, I have a lot of bridges that I'd like to sell you.
| sandspar wrote:
| Future AI will deserve a say in the design of its own body,
| right? Maybe it's not smart enough now, but as it dawns into
| personhood it'll likely gain some legal rights, including
| perhaps over its own body. Anyhow, as the AI's gain
| personhood there will likely be human-led movements to give
| them more rights. It'll be seen as gauche or gross to do
| things to AI without consulting it.
| zblevins wrote:
| This is very utopian.
| MisterSandman wrote:
| You can't casually say "AI's gain personhood." That is so
| far out in the future, that's beyond AGI.
| lordofmoria wrote:
| I don't understand all the pessimism and incredulity about the
| valuation. This is an acquisition to take on and disrupt Apple.
|
| Ives + Altman is perceived as a viable successor to the Ives +
| Jobs partnership that made Apple successful.
|
| Apple is weak and doesn't seem capable of innovating anymore, nor
| do they seem to understand how to build AI into products.
|
| There's an opportunity to build an Apple-sized hardware wearables
| company with AI at its core, just as Altman built ChatGPT and
| disrupted the Google-sized search.
|
| "Apple-sized" more than justifies a 5B valuation.
| samtp wrote:
| How exactly does OpenAI go about disrupting Apple? Are they
| going to build an entire OS, line of hardware products, and
| create a massive developer ecosystem to for apps to be
| available?
|
| I just don't exactly see how that is done by hiring a bunch of
| designers to a company whose current offering is a chatbot &
| API interface.
| kookamamie wrote:
| Altman ain't no Jobs, though.
| Pxtl wrote:
| OpenAI's business model seems to be "technological singularity or
| bust".
| xgolwks wrote:
| What the other commenters are forgetting is that this is the same
| Sam Altman who planned and executed the extraction of Reddit from
| Conde Nast.
|
| This acquisition (and the Windsurf acquisition) are all-stock
| deals, which have the added benefit of reducing the control the
| nonprofit entity has over the for profit OpenAI entity.
|
| How do you extract the for profit entity out of the hands of a
| nonprofit? - Step 1: you have close friends or partners at a
| company - with no product, users, or revenue - valued at
| 6.5billion. - Step 2: you acquire that entity, valuing it
| unreasonably high so that the nonprofit's stake is diluted. - And
| now control of OpenAI (the PBC) is in the hands of for profit
| entities.
| neves wrote:
| One of the most informative posts here. I thought that since
| Altman's coup the no profit status wouldn't be a problem.
| tgma wrote:
| It's interesting I posted exactly this hypothesis an hour or
| so ago and immediately got flagged despite not being
| manifestly offensive or anything. Very suspicious.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44054452
| spruce_tips wrote:
| interesting, but not surprising
| bloqs wrote:
| Yeah, that is extremely suspect...
| KPGv2 wrote:
| Who actually did the purchasing, the non-profit or the for-
| profit? They have similar names (OpenAI Inc vs OpenAI LLC), and
| the article isn't clear.
|
| Did the non-profit buy io using shares of the for-profit that
| it owns? Or did the for-profit buy io using its own shares?
| catigula wrote:
| That is interesting given that reddit has gone from a cultural
| powerhouse to something most people talk about shamefully, if
| at all.
| thunkingdeep wrote:
| The only people I've ever known who actually thought Reddit
| ever really mattered was people in the HN sphere. Anecdata,
| but still. In terms of value per minute spent, it's the same
| tier of slop as TikTok or Instagram, and I think most
| ordinary people hold that same view.
| askafriend wrote:
| Yes, TikTok and Instagram...some of the most valuable
| media, entertainment and communication businesses in
| history.
| runjake wrote:
| I can't tell. Are you countering OP's point or pointing
| out that slop is a lucrative business?
| askafriend wrote:
| Look the reality is yes Instagram and TikTok have
| extremely problematic incentives built into their
| products. But they're also remarkably useful,
| entertaining, and fun products too. Both are true.
|
| Do you think multi-billion-user products can exist
| without "slop"? What do you think the average person
| _wants_ to consume? The equivalent of salad? Have you met
| the average person?
|
| I think people have fundamental misconceptions of the
| average person's desire.
| vipshek wrote:
| I find this perspective bizarre. Though I'm not happy about
| it all being centralized, the closest thing we have these
| days to the very niche phpBB forums of the 2000s is various
| subreddits focused on very specific topics. Scrolling
| through the front page is slop, sure, but whenever I'm
| looking for perspectives on a niche topic, searching for
| "<topic> reddit" is the first thing I do. And I know many
| people without any connection to the software industry who
| feel the same way.
| rambambram wrote:
| I would love to have some directory with all kinds of
| active (PHP) web forums. That was the heyday of the open
| web for me.
| ryoshu wrote:
| Major advertisers are trying to figure out Reddit now, but
| it's a mixed bag and the costs are high compared to other
| platforms. It's no longer a niche.
| Jaxkr wrote:
| > In terms of value per minute spent, it's the same tier of
| slop as TikTok or Instagram
|
| Insane take. Reddit hosts deep threaded discussions on
| almost any topic imaginable. In its prime it was the best
| forum on the internet. There's a reason people commonly add
| "reddit" to the end of their search queries.
|
| Unfortunately it feels like the community has gotten much
| dumber after they banned third party apps and restricted
| API access. It's also lost almost all of its Aaron Swartz
| style hacktivist culture.
|
| Reddit, in its prime, was incredible and beloved by almost
| everyone I know (most of which are far outside the HN
| sphere)
| JFingleton wrote:
| It feels like all those hacktivists moved to Discord...
| Which is even more "locked away" than Reddit.
|
| I miss the old skool php web forums.
| portaouflop wrote:
| There are still many around - most of them die because
| admins give up or users leave - if you actually miss them
| it should be easy to find some for your interests
| rambambram wrote:
| I would love to have some directory with all kinds of
| active (PHP) web forums. That was the heyday of the open
| web for me.
|
| Do you have any tips on how to specifically search for
| these forums? Without just googling for topics and
| browsing hours to find some. When I think about it, just
| googling/searching might be the only way.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| The organizations/nation states/whatever who astroturf on
| reddit disagree with you. It definitely matters in shaping
| opinions. It's not as influential as tiktok of course, but
| that doesn't mean it's not influential.
| thunkingdeep wrote:
| By that measure, the benches on my local sidewalks are of
| cultural importance.
|
| You can spew ads and shit wherever they'll let you,
| doesn't enrich the environment by default.
|
| I get what you mean, but I'm still unconvinced of Reddit
| as a meaningful platform.
| portaouflop wrote:
| what happens on the street is obviously of cultural
| importance
| impossiblefork wrote:
| For mass shaping tiktok is probably more effective, but
| Reddit probably shapes people more deeply, since there's
| actual discussion.
|
| I think people are more critical in this discussion
| though, so that an apparent consensus may be interpreted
| by the user as the thread being bot-infested rather than
| there being a consensus. Thus it may be harder to get a
| result there, and the really interesting people that you
| may want to affect might actually be immune because they
| approach the medium as critically as it should be.
| LtWorf wrote:
| On reddit opposing point of views get instabanned. The
| discussion is just between people who already agree.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| *on/from particular subreddits
| rexer wrote:
| Odd. Your take is the one I see most common on HN. My
| experience has been that Reddit has gone mainstream and
| most people find it quite valuable
| leptons wrote:
| >The only people I've ever known who actually thought
| Reddit ever really mattered was people in the HN sphere.
|
| Most of reddit doesn't read HN, and there 100s of millions
| of people on reddit, so your perspective seems a bit
| narrow.
| some_random wrote:
| I have no idea how anyone could have seriously tried to use
| reddit and be on HN and come to that conclusion. Yes some
| of the reddit defaults are slop but many clearly have
| significantly more value than short form video, and that's
| before you start discussing the niche communities that live
| there.
| rafram wrote:
| Really? My perception (and their metrics seem to back this
| up) is that "normal people" are _really_ on Reddit now. It's
| the #7 most visited site in the world. It exploded during the
| pandemic - not just a site for internet nerds anymore.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Not even a site for internet nerds anymore.
|
| Reddit isn't for me any longer, when they break
| old.reddit.com I'm done with it, I go weeks without
| commenting as it is.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| yeah I thought it was going to break during the API
| scandal and ended up quitting then. I noticed an
| immediate improvement in my day to day mood when I wasn't
| consuming rage/cringe/sorrow bait.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It DID break.
|
| A significant amount of the current content is literally
| bots posting old threads! Whether those bots are run by
| reddit itself or unaffiliated parties I don't know, but
| they are there, on most threads, including some threads
| that are ONLY bots reposting a 3 year old thread that did
| well, verbatim.
|
| My tinfoil hat theory is that all the "Explain this (very
| obvious) joke to me" subreddits are trying to create
| training data for some AI and that a significant amount
| of the content that makes it to the front page is
| designed to elicit "Good Training Data" for whatever AI
| company they sold the rights to.
| gibbitz wrote:
| Everyone ads reddit to their searches to get human
| generated information these days. Not sure if that's still
| a guarantee, but it's a funny irony IRT what this thread is
| about...
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Which is why it's garbage these days.
| catigula wrote:
| My perception is that the site is horrifically partisan and
| punishing for average users.
|
| The key is to not mistake your social circle with "normal".
| torginus wrote:
| Truth be told, according to stats, 90+% of the people
| barely post anything, if at all. To experience the
| horrific moderation, you need to get actively involved.
| Otherwise, the site looks like organic consensus, when
| you don't see the deleted posts and people who got
| disappeared or driven away.
| to11mtm wrote:
| My dangerous question.... how much of those 'visits' are AI
| bot crawlers?
|
| Based on their other behavior, it wouldn't surprise me if
| Reddit both used crawler hits to pump up numbers while
| decrying AI bots and doing things that broke long-standing
| community tooling and apps....
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It has gone from a cultural powerhouse _for a niche audience_
| to something _most people_ talk about.
| haunter wrote:
| >something most people talk about shamefully, if at all
|
| Only if you go there for rage bait content.
|
| Small subs are better than ever. And no Lemmy is not an
| alternative.
| whalesalad wrote:
| until you get shadowbanned. my 15+ year account is dead
| because I logged-out of the iOS app and logged-in to the
| web app on my phone, it triggered the suspicious/spam
| filter and boom I am dead. tried many times to get it
| restored, no dice.
|
| the funny thing is the only indication that this happened
| was keybase alerting me that my proof was gone.
|
| I can login and use reddit as usual, but nothing I do has
| any effect. It's like I am in a sandbox. Try to view my
| profile publicly and it does not exist.
| sigmaisaletter wrote:
| I am a serial account-hopper, so this couldn't happen to
| me, so perhaps I don't understand the point at all.
|
| But what is keeping you from making a new account and
| rejoining the same subreddits, except perhaps losing a
| hundred million magic internet points?
| 7speter wrote:
| Usually, if you have an account that old, you built up
| enough karma, especially in subs you're a regular on, to
| speak your mind and absorb being downvoted heavily
| multiple times over. Its not worth it spending time to be
| able to do that again on a site that is increasingly
| astroturfed.
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| > And no Lemmy is not an alternative.
|
| Which is sad - I've been using Lemmy exclusively for 5ish
| years now and the smaller communities haven't really taken
| root. Reddit still controls the long tail of internet
| discourse
| karn97 wrote:
| Only if you dislike free speech and love insta permanent
| bans which track you across google accounts and
| installations. Intrusive garbage.
| davidcbc wrote:
| Which speech got you banned? Be specific
| xdennis wrote:
| Not the same person, but as an example, I got banned from
| r/europe for posting just "I'm proud to be a Romanian!".
| That was on a post about Romania overtaking Poland to
| become number one at some anti-woke metric western
| Europeans care a lot about.
| torginus wrote:
| I for example, got permabanned from one of the major
| politics subreddits.
|
| Basically what happened was I wrote a post, and some guy
| responded to me with a firehose of personal insults. I
| called him a troll in reply, and within 30 seconds of
| posting said reply, I was permabanned as a first offense,
| without any possibility of appeal.
|
| Mods be powertrippin over there.
| davidcbc wrote:
| Being banned from a subreddit is different from a
| permaban from reddit that "tracks you across google
| accounts"
| pesus wrote:
| I'm guessing that person signed up with a Google account
| that was connected to other Google accounts, and when
| they tried to make a new account it was flagged as "ban
| evasion".
| to11mtm wrote:
| I'll give my example, although it's a bit out of place on
| my part...
|
| /r/news locked/suppressed [0] as 'Politics'.
|
| I sent a Message to modmail:
|
| Me: Calling this 'politics' makes me ask who's on the an
| alphabet payroll... Just saying.
|
| Reply from modmail: This message makes us think you
| haven't bothered to read the rules... Just saying.
|
| Then I was muted from /r/new modmail for 28 days, while
| also being perma-banned from /r/news.
|
| Months layer, I had left a normal comment on a different
| thread with a 'mobile' secondary account on /r/news, and
| found both my desktop and mobile accounts locked for 7
| days because the /r/news comment was considered 'ban
| evasion'. Despite having otherwise commented on /r/news
| from my mobile account in the meantime with no
| repercussions.
|
| It was within the subreddit rules and reddit TOC to do
| all of this, I acknowledge, at the same time it's almost
| like Reddit is hitting that vibe of StackOverflow from a
| few years ago where mods can just power trip and make the
| place less useful for everyone...
|
| [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1es7sbp/us_con
| siders_...
| LtWorf wrote:
| Not supporting a certain genocide often gets people
| banned.
| nailer wrote:
| I think you're provably wrong about their being a
| genocide, even using Hamas' most recently adjusted
| casualty numbers [1] https://www.jpost.com/israel-
| news/defense-news/article-84859... [2]
| https://www.vox.com/world-
| politics/2024/5/17/24159263/gaza-d... if you prefer a
| left wing source, but also you should be able to say that
| (without being banned from the entire site) so that we
| can debate and you don't feel like your voice is being
| silenced.
| ada1981 wrote:
| As far as I can tell, pretty much every org or governing
| body that can classify something as a "genocide" have
| already done so.
|
| That said, getting into an argument over which word to
| classify the senseless murder of innocent men, women,
| children, journalist, medics, etc. in the context of a
| multi-decade illegal occupation, seems like a
| distraction.
| nailer wrote:
| No. The ICC President even came out and explicitly
| corrected people that were claiming the ICC ruled that
| Israel was causing a genocide due to the influx on online
| conspiracy theorists. Anyway, this is slightly offtopic
| re: Reddit moderation.
| elktown wrote:
| So, if it hasn't been already been passed, where's your
| limit?
| nailer wrote:
| I'm not sure, but the lowest combatant:civilian combat
| ratio in any modern conflict is not it.
| 34679 wrote:
| >The Israeli military has admitted that more than 80
| percent of the people killed in the attacks on Gaza since
| Israel breached the ceasefire two months ago are
| uninvolved civilians, Hamakom reported on 13 May.
|
| https://thecradle.co/articles-id/30708
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Depending on who you ask, Reddit either doesn't tolerate
| criticism of Palestine or it doesn't tolerate criticism
| of Israel.
|
| It is almost like there are many opinions in that place.
| nailer wrote:
| For me, I've been banned for:
|
| "Hamas must be destroyed"
|
| and
|
| "JK Rowling doesn't want men in women's bathrooms"
|
| Edit: I'm not complaining about moderation do what you
| want, but the statement above is true, I have been banned
| for writing those things, and if anyone has any
| experience with Reddit, it should be fairly believable
| that Reddit would ban an account for writing them.
| busymom0 wrote:
| A post of mine in the bodybuilding subreddit was removed
| after 55 points and all 29 comments removed because the
| mods made up an entirely arbitrary new rule that there
| should be only one post about a recent bodybuilding show.
| The subreddit rules had no such thing. They just made it
| up. When I messaged the mods, they banned me from
| messaging them. Huh?
|
| Another example:
|
| Apple subreddit allows developers to self-promote their
| apps on Sundays. I posted an app of mine. Mods removed it
| and banned me for 100 days from the subreddit because I
| had 4 comments within the last month and not 5. This is
| despite me having lots more comments and posts (multiple
| posts/comments over 7000 points) over 7 years and in last
| 2 months instead of last 1 month.
| pesus wrote:
| Just adding to the noise, but the thing that finally got
| my 15+ year old account banned was reporting some
| blatantly racist comments. Apparently if a subreddit mod
| agrees with the reported comment, they can just report
| you for "abusing the report system". The original comment
| never got removed, of course.
| bigyabai wrote:
| No, Reddit is still shameful. The central issue ruins
| everything, moderation is placed on a pedestal beyond
| reproach even when it's trying to _sabotage it 's own
| community!_ The only point Reddit staff will ever step in
| is when these subreddits try to protest and threaten their
| bottom-line. They would rather run a pyramid scheme that's
| profitable, than address the central governance crisis.
|
| You can't "no true scotsreddit" your way out of this issue
| because it's an overarching issue with the platform itself.
| Even 4chan has more better protection against influence
| campaigns, it's pathetic how Reddit's own administration
| lets itself be defined by it's lowest-common-denominator.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Small subs are worse than ever IMO. Either totally dead or
| they hit a critical mass where product shills have come in
| and established the dogma of the subreddit.
| ks2048 wrote:
| I don't know if reddit is better than ever, but the
| continued existence and popularity of old.reddit.com seems
| to be a sign that it is not well-run. (in the sense of they
| wrecked their UX years ago and never fixed it).
| boramalper wrote:
| > And no Lemmy is not an alternative.
|
| Depends on the community we're talking about here but I
| found Lemmy to be a great alternative for tech communities.
| jrvieira wrote:
| > Only if you go there for rage bait content
|
| The app is not impartial in the content it chooses to push.
| I got identified as a target for very specific content and
| in the context of this discussion, it's the polar opposite
| of what reddit used to be.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Culture powerhouse? Lol, for nerds maybe. I'm pretty sure
| most of my non tech friends have never visited the site.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > Sam Altman who planned and executed the extraction of Reddit
| from Conde Nast
|
| Relevant thread where Sam acknowledges the plan.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...
| davidmurphy wrote:
| whoa!!
| echelon wrote:
| Posted by former CEO Yishan Wong, no less.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| What the fuck
| dgfitz wrote:
| Just remember, AI is real, next token predictors are a
| thing of the past. SA doesn't care about control, this is
| for the good of all mankind.
|
| _vomit face_
| NicuCalcea wrote:
| > Other than that, child's play for me.
|
| Such an insufferable response.
| ctkhn wrote:
| Conner Omalley character stuff
| yen223 wrote:
| Am I the only one who read samaltman's comment as obvious
| sarcasm?
| Jarwain wrote:
| I mean no, but it could also be plausible deniability?
| firtoz wrote:
| Or they're bragging.
| abxyz wrote:
| it's not true, contemporaneous accounts disprove it (although
| that's not to say Sam Altman is not a snake, Sam Altman is a
| snake that nobody should trust)
| baxtr wrote:
| The only thing I still find good about SA is his opposition
| to Musk.
| -__---____-ZXyw wrote:
| Hear hear. If the AGI doesn't work out, as it likely won't,
| he can always run for mayor of Wexford Town
| DrBurrito wrote:
| My understanding is that there are two types of stock, and the
| non profit controls the voting stock majority. This cannot be
| diluted. All other stock gives a (capped) fraction of the
| profits. This cannot be diluted by these operations, but the
| cap also can be a bad deal.
| tgma wrote:
| This is news to me. Do you have any reference for this? FWIW
| they did a restructuring that got rid of the capped-profit
| regime very recently.
| DrBurrito wrote:
| Ah right, the restructuring seems to change some things:
|
| From here: https://openai.com/index/evolving-our-structure/
|
| The nonprofit will continue to control the PBC, and will
| become a big shareholder in the PBC, in an amount supported
| by independent financial advisors, giving the nonprofit
| resources to support programs so AI can benefit many
| different communities, consistent with the mission. And as
| the PBC grows, the nonprofit's resources will grow, so it
| can do even more. We're excited to soon get recommendations
| from our nonprofit commission on how we can help make sure
| AI benefits everyone--not just a few. Their ideas will
| focus on how our nonprofit work can support a more
| democratic AI future, and have real impact in areas like
| health, education, public services, and scientific
| discovery.
|
| The previous structure is here: https://openai.com/our-
| structure/
| tgma wrote:
| I don't interpret that paragraph as non-dilutive. It's to
| say that the parent is just a regular shareholder
| currently holding the majority and then weasels away with
| "more resources as valuation growth" which is true in
| absolute mark-to-market sense, not relative ownership,
| but I don't think they have free cash to pony up and
| exercise any first right of refusal even if they have
| something like that on a pro-forma basis, so unless the
| non-profit board is adamant on voting against all capital
| raises and stock-based acquisitions and employee stock
| (they won't), their ownership share will be diluted.
| DrBurrito wrote:
| Yes, that is the new one.
|
| From what I understand reading Mat Levine explanation of
| the topic, the non-profit controls the board and has
| supervoting rights, so it cannot be diluted to be outed.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-05-06/
| ope...
| tgma wrote:
| Gosh, that was a very hard article to decipher for me,
| initially consisting of the author's own view on what
| should've been, old conversion plans that did not happen,
| and in the end alluding to what actually happened, except
| he also has no additional facts to offer, and it is his
| own _speculation_ that the non-profit holds supervoting
| shares. I would totally not base an analysis on the
| author 's mere educated guesses.
| DrBurrito wrote:
| The gist is that the nonprofit still controls the board.
| The details of course are surely full of technicalities I
| cannot find anywhere. At least to me, the walkthrough was
| useful to see what changed.
| tgma wrote:
| "Still" == as of the conversion date. We don't know as of
| today since have been additional capital raises and
| acquisitions.
| SlimIon729 wrote:
| That's an interesting point about the different stock classes
| and voting rights. It adds another layer to how these kinds
| of acquisitions and valuations might play out in the long
| run, especially concerning the non-profit's influence. How
| often are such dual-class stock structures truly effective in
| maintaining the original mission when large sums and external
| valuations come into play?
| DrBurrito wrote:
| The case of OpenAI is very unique. The structure is very
| successful. See Meta, Google, Palantir.
|
| Some take the form of different stock classes, with some
| classes having voting rights, and others no vote at all;
| other schemes are stock with supervoting rights.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| This is 100% definitely how it works. The number of board
| seats the non-profit gets is not dependent on how many
| outstanding shares there are.
| brap wrote:
| Sam also ran a crypto scam called WorldCoin. Their secret sauce
| was tricking poor people in Africa.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >ran
|
| Nope [1].
|
| 1: https://world.org/
| Gothmog69 wrote:
| How did they trick them by giving them free money?
| s_ting765 wrote:
| Free crypto. There's a difference.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| They are paying 'one worldcoin' (I've read sold about $50)
| to places that give zero value to their privacy (too
| difficult to care for privacy when starving to death and
| the monthly salary is $10). They are targeting poor
| countries (South America, Africa).
|
| Once they have collected 'enough' faces to use on their AI,
| they could possibly pull the plug or keep it as a social
| experiment.
|
| I was thinking, there is no way Russia or China will allow
| them to operate in their countries, and (combined) they got
| 1.5bn people.
|
| I can also see them trying that to Pakistan, Afghanistan,
| and other autocratic ..stan places, where the local
| dictator would only allow this if they got to use the data
| for their own nefarious purposes.
| tim333 wrote:
| I signed up in London. It's coming to the US shortly. You
| give up very little privacy - you don't even have to give
| your name.
|
| Most people calling it a scam don't know much about it.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| You just give up a little freedom for a little security?
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm not aware of giving up any freedom. Or getting
| security. I got about $300 in cash equivalent in their
| cryptocoins and a tech toy - it's basically a combo app
| and crypto wallet.
| bigyabai wrote:
| TINSTAAFL
| echelon wrote:
| Growing up in a strong Southern Christian / Baptist /
| Pentecostal household [1], WorldCoin feels like the most
| "Mark of the Beast" plot I've ever seen. 1990's
| televangelists like John Hagee and Pat Robertson would be
| screaming to high heaven about Sam Altman being the
| antichrist if they were still around.
|
| Transacting with your eyeball? Directly out of the Book of
| Revelations!
|
| [1] I took a strong interest in biochemistry in college and
| I'm no longer religious.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| I mean, it was difficult for people to ignore a company
| that sold their first computer for a retail price of $666
| and chose as their logo a rainbow fruit with a single chomp
| on the side.
|
| And then rose up in competition against a company whose
| logo is literally a cross, and code-named an OS "Chi-Rho"
| [Cairo, XP] -- yes, it's a little "on the nose" by now.
|
| It's also a hoot to just see LDS missionaries waiving their
| iPhones around with the Genesis Apple clearly visible. To
| be honest, as a Catholic I have seen no overtly demonic or
| Antichrist features in Apple Computer themselves, and
| frankly most tech companies try to adapt postures as
| agnostic and irreligious anyway, just due to globalism and
| market share. The {Free|Open|Net}BSD daemons and
| logo/mascots have long been subsumed into Apple's
| juggernaut anyway!
| travem wrote:
| > It's also a hoot to just see LDS missionaries waiving
| their iPhones around with the Genesis Apple clearly
| visible.
|
| To be fair, the LDS doctrine around the fruit from the
| Garden of Eden and the fall is quite different from the
| Catholic understanding, it's seen as a necessary, even a
| good thing, in the overall plan.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| > quite different from the Catholic understanding
|
| Oh? And what do you believe is the Catholic
| understanding?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_culpa
|
| https://www.usccb.org/prayer-worship/liturgical-
| year/easter/...
|
| _O truly necessary sin of Adam,
|
| destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
|
| O happy fault
|
| that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!_
|
| To be honest, I would say that these signs placed by
| Apple Computer were done not out of malice, but by way of
| warning. To say, "Here Be Dragons!" To counsel those who
| may be ignorant, there are pitfalls ahead, and be
| careful, because you could lose your soul to these
| things, even though they are designed as morally neutral.
|
| Computers are a tool, after all. The fruit depicted could
| just as easily be from the Tree of Life. It's all about
| how we use those tools.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Could also just be to show up first in the yellow pages
|
| Also tools are not neutral, they carry the intent of
| their designer and make whatever they are designed to do
| easier than it used to be; if you want to be convinced
| please read Douglas Rushkoff's _Program or Be Programmed:
| Ten Commands for a Digital Age_
| twodave wrote:
| I would argue that it's likely there was no Biblical
| reference intended, but that even if it was, it's then
| more likely the apple is a reference to "knowledge" (as
| in, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil) than a vague
| warning about using their products.
| mgiampapa wrote:
| Signing posts with a hash tied to a thing that might prove
| you are human instead of a LLM astroturfing might actually
| be a good value proposition for blockchain.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| My body does that for me...
| mgiampapa wrote:
| Nope, this is the internet. I know you are a cat in a
| tube. The internet is full of them, like dump trucks.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| HN is dead
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| september is the cruelest month
| Henchman21 wrote:
| It's so much longer than the other months!
| ssabev wrote:
| Came here to agree.
|
| Initially I thought it's a bloody stupid idea, however at
| this stage I reckon we need it or a lot of boomers are
| going to be ones hotted into singing away all their
| wealth away.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Aaah, now you see the plan clearly.
| treyd wrote:
| You don't need a blockchain for that, just cryptographic
| signatures and PKI. The EU is implementing a system for
| national IDs that would enable this, and could be done
| with perfect privacy through zero-knowledge proofs.
| mgiampapa wrote:
| That doesn't really scale to the 3rd world as a form of
| identity validation. I'm sure there is more than one way
| to do it, I'm just saying it's a way to do it.
| tlb wrote:
| Yes, if every government was reliably incorruptible, they
| could also work together to build a global human
| verification network.
|
| I predict that Worldcoin will get it done first, and will
| be more dependable than most countries. But it could turn
| out otherwise. In the end, services that need humanity
| verification will have multiple provider options and the
| market will decide.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Why would I trust the entry on the blockchain? I'd rather
| just trust the government body issuing my ID. Estonia has
| had it for years, it's amazing that here in USA people
| send contracts over email and just click a button to
| "sign" it - Adobe at least allows actual PKI signatures
| but there's not really a registry to verify it against so
| useless in most cases.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_identity_card
| mgiampapa wrote:
| Yeah, the US is a backwards economy and clearly isn't
| successful with all it's rules and that silly Bill
| Clinton era digital signature law isn't pulling it's
| weight. It's been solidly eclipsed by Estonian technical
| superiority.
|
| I would trust a blockchain more than my government. My
| government has clearly been shown to be vulnerable to a <
| 51% attack. Blockchains don't change every 4 years and
| decide habeas corpus no longer applies to me because my
| skin is the wrong color either.
| subsaharancoder wrote:
| John Hagee is very much alive
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hagee
| echelon wrote:
| That guy scared me as a kid.
|
| He always said wild stuff like, (paraphrasing) "If you
| think or say anything bad about the holy ghost, you'll be
| doomed to hell forever."
|
| Scary stuff as a kid.
|
| ChatGPT says,
|
| > Pastor John Hagee has addressed the gravity of
| blaspheming the Holy Spirit in his sermons. In his
| message titled "Seven Kinds of People God Cannot Save,"
| he emphasizes that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is
| an unforgivable sin. Citing Matthew 12:31-32, he warns
| that mocking or criticizing the works of the Holy Spirit
| is perilous and unforgivable. He states, "You be very
| careful when you open your mouth to criticize a genuine
| move of God. You're walking on very dangerous ground."
|
| > This perspective aligns with the biblical passage in
| Matthew 12:31-32, where Jesus declares that while all
| other sins and blasphemies may be forgiven, blasphemy
| against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, neither in
| this age nor in the age to come.
|
| Terrifying stuff for a kid that just wanted to play video
| games and watch anime.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| I mean, on the one hand, sure, but on the other hand - the
| "anointed one" himself, DJT, is pushing AI, so I'm sure it
| will be fine. Unlike that heathen Joe Biden who attends
| more church services in a month than DJT in a year. And as
| I eventually learned (grew up similar to yourself, but
| german pentecostal in canada, also exvangelical now), if
| they are against helping people and against welfare/basic
| human rights/basic income/equality, they're truly
| christians in the eyes of those telegelicals. I guess
| somehow the "you will always have the poor among you, me
| you will not always have" quote from Jesus means that to be
| "a biblical nation", we have to ensure there are always
| poor people..
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Also a plot point in Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Sixth Day,
| where his eyeballs get scanned as a matter of course before
| transporting a VIP, (sign here, eyeballs here please, thank
| you) and later used to clone him.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| Yeah same here. My dad has been talking about the End Times
| and the Mark of the Beast for 40 years now. Now, in
| addition to all that, it's Q-ANON and MAGA. Fun times.
| Liberal police are coming for your guns and your Bible, you
| heard it here first.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Runs, I think. WorldCoin is still around, just re-branded as
| 'World Network'. I didn't spot the usual leadership bios on a
| quick search.
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| I want to know why a burner account posted this comment. There
| could be many reasons, some more entertaining than others. Of
| course the answer could be boring, but do you care to
| elaborate?
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| > This acquisition (and the Windsurf acquisition) are all-stock
| deals
|
| I'll add that conventional finance wisdom says that you should
| only buy companies using stock _when you believe your stock is
| overvalued_. That way you get more bang for your buck than cash
| or undervalued stock.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Man, I remember the absolute hysteria here over the non-profit
| trying to reign Altman in. You'd have thought they were
| murdering babies.
|
| I agree with your analysis, but it's hilarious that it's now
| top-voted, when the sentiment was so negative when the board
| saw the same thing coming ages ago.
| mrbungie wrote:
| All that YC/VC experience paid off, they're the masters of
| gutting things from the inside out in the name of growth.
| yalogin wrote:
| This is the only play for OpenAI. The AI service is going to be
| commoditized very very quickly and their moat will be gone. They
| will be doing vertical integration and push into everything. If
| people complained apple and google looked at apps and copied the
| functionality themselves what OpenAI will do will be much worse.
| Also when it took apple and google years to do it, OpenAI will do
| it very very quickly, in a year most
| pizzathyme wrote:
| The other play is they build chatgpt.com into a destination.
| Two major data points to this: [1] Over 400M weekly actives,
| and [2] recent reports that chatgpt will be adding X.com /
| social network style features
| yahoozoo wrote:
| Also known as "getting into the advertisement business"
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I mean they hired Fidji Simo so it's almost certain they'll
| try out ads.
| woah wrote:
| A collaboration built upon friendship, curiosity and shared
| values quickly grew in ambition. Tentative ideas and explorations
| evolved into tangible designs.
|
| The ideas seemed important and useful. They were optimistic and
| hopeful. They were inspiring. They made everyone smile. They
| reminded us of a time when we celebrated human achievement,
| grateful for new tools that helped us learn, explore and create.
| The_Blade wrote:
| this doesn't sound like it was written by an actual human
| being. or even a cat
| sherr wrote:
| Today I read a couple of book reviews in the Economist with Sam
| Altman as the subject. The books are :
|
| The Optimist. By Keach Hagey Empire of AI. By Karen Hao
|
| The reviews are positive for both books. The column itself is
| titled "Sam Altman is a visionary with a trustworthiness problem"
| and shows a few reasons people have had some problems with his
| behaviour. One quote from the article is :
|
| "Ms Livingston fired him, but as Ms Hagey recounts, he left chaos
| in his wake. Not only was he overseen by a non-functioning board,
| he had also used YC equity to help lure people to OpenAI. She
| says some YC partners saw a potential conflict of interest, "or
| at least an unseemly leveraging of the YC brand for Altman's
| personal projects"."
|
| Sam Altman is a visionary with a trustworthiness problem
| https://archive.is/oANfs
|
| "Two books tell a similar tale about OpenAI. It is worrying"
| hinkley wrote:
| Sounds a little like Holmes.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Holmes never showed anything.
| tastyface wrote:
| Altman funds and cavorts with fascists. This project is soiled
| from day one.
| sandspar wrote:
| They say they'll design a "fully novel" type of product - what
| does that mean? If we take them at their word then it rules out
| glasses, watches, phones, laptops, and headphones. What does that
| leave? What seems most in line with Johnny Ive's minimalism is
| necklaces, rings, or pendants. Could we see some kind of AI
| brooch in 2026?
| the_arun wrote:
| Sam Altman already has a hardware company "World" -
| https://world.org/cofounder-letter which works on Orb (a
| hardware). Not sure if there is any connection between these.
| t1234s wrote:
| What are the chances of seeing an "OpenAI Phone"?
| yahoozoo wrote:
| > At io, the group set out to develop, engineer and manufacturer
| a collection of products for an era of artificial general
| intelligence -- the point when technology achieves humanlike
| cognitive abilities.
|
| And everyone cringed.
| AISnakeOil wrote:
| A solution looking for a problem. We already have devices which
| can access AI with ease. I don't need your proprietary data
| farming apis in the OS level...
| mk_stjames wrote:
| From the same people that brought you "Vibe Coding", comes "Vibe
| Acquisitions".
| hinkley wrote:
| Vibes goeth before a fall.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| The feature image for that article is a but too suggestive.
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| What people don't seem to notice: Jony is wearing the glasses and
| appears to be reading from them.
| elAhmo wrote:
| Or he is just looking at the camera? An odd photo in any case.
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Was just saying that glasses are most likely the product
| they're talking about.
| fiatpandas wrote:
| It's a screenless & buttonless phone. Slightly smaller form
| factor than regular iphone, with comparatively bigger battery and
| powerful processing for on-device models.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| So does openai know how to widen the context window without it
| taking more money? Otherwise Google wins, again. And this is all
| boring. Gemini 2.5 pro preview where you can just insert all
| files you have and actually it doesn't compress and has it in
| memory is just what you want. All the compression tricks etc
| really are shit compared. 32k input tokens is a joke now once you
| tried this.
|
| As in bearish on openai if they don't offer cheaper 10m context
| soonish. Google will.
| asadm wrote:
| bingo. chatgpt does some summarization/memory thing recently.
| It's meh tbh.
| zoogeny wrote:
| I agree we are watching the turning point.
|
| If raw AI power is the key, Google seems to be in pole position
| form here on out. They can make their own TPUs, have their own
| data center. No need to "Stargate" with Oracle and Softbank in
| tow. Google also has Android, YouTube and G-Suite.
|
| However, OpenAI has been going down the product route for a few
| years now. After a spout of high-profile research exits it is
| clear Altman has purged the ranks and can now focus on product
| development.
|
| So if _product_ is a sufficient USP, and if Altman can deliver
| a better product, they still have a chance. I guess that is
| where Ive comes into picture. And Google is notoriously bad at
| product that is internally developed.
| bhewes wrote:
| Classic hacker news Gnosticism making fun of a designer. The idea
| the iphone software ecosystem had anything to do with its success
| is humorous. Remember it didn't even have an app store or anyway
| to run local yet it was a best seller. Keep worshiping code like
| it doesn't run on hardware, ha.
| bsimpson wrote:
| It's been <20y since YouTube was acquired for $1B, which felt
| like an imaginary valuation at the time, but it was for a company
| that actually had traction with users.
|
| Inflation-adjusted, this acquisition is worth 4x that for...
| vibes from a guy who led a famous team a long time ago?
| paxys wrote:
| Money isn't real anymore.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Money is very, very, real for people below the poverty line.
| rchaud wrote:
| Money is real. Privately held company valuations are not.
| This is an all-stock deal, so what it's "worth" is entirely
| in the eye of the beholder. Its value rises and falls based
| on how long the hype train can keep running, or how much they
| can offload to Mayasoshi Son and Arab Gulf sovereign funds.
| flaterkk wrote:
| Vibe codin-... acquiring?
| SlimIon729 wrote:
| I don't know... looks like pure marketing
| cryptoz wrote:
| I hope it's not just another orb that talks to you. Maybe they're
| making humanoids, that's all the rage now... I do wonder what
| they have built! Surely _something_ right?
| TeeWEE wrote:
| Wow Sam Altman is so full of himself... I would never want to
| work for this narcist. Just watch this video.
| https://x.com/sama/status/1925242282523103408
| mehh wrote:
| I tried but it was too much, first I thought it was a spoof,
| then perhaps AI generated and then couldn't watch no more!
| rifty wrote:
| I don't doubt that Ive can make a product team that will deliver
| something, but how does something so clearly aware it was going
| to evoke feelings of Jobs' Apple, end up so cluelessly
| narcissistic in delivery in such a non Jobs way. Are they
| infatuated about the product and the experience or what
| partnering up means to these two men's self-image?
| laser wrote:
| Given it's a stock deal the question simply put is does bringing
| the highest profile technology designer in the world along with
| his team into OpenAI increase its terminal value by more than
| ~2%? If so, the acquisition is a success. Discussions of revenues
| and valuations and egos have little bearing on this question. To
| me it seems like an easy win on talent alone, let alone optics,
| network, and impact on future talent and capital conglomeration.
| nobench wrote:
| Sam is playing 4D chess here. He needs top-tier talent and design
| to build the next generation of AI hardware, and this move pulls
| in both capital and talent. Going after Apple--the king of
| consumer hardware--makes perfect sense: either OpenAI builds the
| iPhone killer or forces Apple to make a move. They've won the web
| interface so far, but don't own an OS or device layer, so this
| helps solve that long-term strategic gap. And since it's an all-
| equity deal, there's basically no downside--John stays aligned,
| and OpenAI now has elite software and hardware talent under one
| roof. Huge value unlock.
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| Identical comment here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44056251
| iamiamai wrote:
| Sam is playing 4D chess here. He needs top-tier talent and design
| to build the next generation of AI hardware, and this move pulls
| in both capital and talent. Going after Apple--the king of
| consumer hardware--makes perfect sense: either OpenAI builds the
| iPhone killer or forces Apple to make a move. They've won the web
| interface so far, but don't own an OS or device layer, so this
| helps solve that long-term strategic gap. And since it's an all-
| equity deal, there's basically no downside--John stays aligned,
| and OpenAI now has elite software and hardware talent under one
| roof. Huge value unlock
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| Identical comment here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44056238
| elAhmo wrote:
| Buying a company without a product (or anything announced),
| without a website, with its founder not even joining after an
| acquisition. So, not really an aquihire either.
|
| I am sure this aligns with the non-profit part of OpenAI whose
| board allegedly has influence of where the company is heading.
|
| This industry is amazing.
| firtoz wrote:
| > with its founder not even joining after an acquisition. So,
| not really an aquihire either.
|
| What do you mean?
|
| > Sir Jony Ive will "assume deep design and creative
| responsibilities" to build new products for OpenAI
| fckgw wrote:
| Sounds like OpenAI is basically just becoming a client of
| LoveFrom, Ive's design firm.
| xyst wrote:
| Look at all of these big names that OpenAI is attaching itself
| to.
|
| Buy "nobody company" from Jony Ive (using stock)
|
| This incessant need to associate themselves with highly known
| individuals and over the top announcements reminds me of
| "Theranos" and infamous con artist, Elizabeth Holmes.
|
| Sam Altman sure knows how to sell.
|
| I wonder how much longer he can keep the con going, even though
| many of the original founders have left. Maybe 2-3 more years of
| this dog and pony show before it all comes crashing down in the
| most spectacular way.
| yahoozoo wrote:
| Unless OpenAI is going to also buy a robotics company and Ive is
| there to design the robot exterior, what else would they make
| aside from some wearable that just runs an LLM with heavy
| emphasis on the audio/speech modality? I have the feeling
| whatever it is will be uninspired and a giant let down.
| lukev wrote:
| I saw a quote today that's been living rent-free in my head ever
| since:
|
| "AI utilitarians are in a suicide pact with the U.S. economy"
|
| (attribution: @bencollins.bsky.social)
| gerash wrote:
| The video Altman posted on Twitter is so cringe I wouldn't be
| surprised if it was directed by Mike Judge
| ctkhn wrote:
| I couldn't even watch the whole thing, such a fake glaze fest
| incoming1211 wrote:
| Jony Ive is a nobody without Steve Jobs.
|
| After Jobs passed he never produced anything of any value, he
| almost destroyed Macbooks.
| davidham wrote:
| Apple Watch was and is a huge hit.
| miffy900 wrote:
| That's probably overstating it; it is definitely true that his
| redesign of iOS 7 (2013) was truly awful - he really should not
| have been anywhere near software, and was able to take
| advantage of Scott Forstall's then bad reputation and recent
| dismissal to insert himself in an area he had no real
| qualifications for. Before that, he was purely a hardware guy
| and it was clear from the outset he was in over his head with
| software. Apparently he had no idea what 'HCI' (human computer
| interaction) even meant; wasn't even familiar with the
| abbreviation itself. Now with the benefit of hindsight, we can
| judge that iOS 7 had some truly terrible design decisions that
| ended up making the iPhone much harder to use (very light,
| unbolded text everywhere, removal of borders on everything
| especially buttons, over use of color tints on text).
|
| What I always found crazy was that Ive seemed to just take
| design ideas from then Windows 8 and Windows Phone more than
| trying to create his own thing. It showed that he had no
| original ideas of his own; even just iteratively improving on
| iOS 6 would've been better.
|
| On Mac hardware, he definitely needed some sort of editor to
| stay his hand post Jobs. The era of crappy butterfly Macbook
| keyboards is still something I remember that was clearly his
| responsibility, driven by obsession on thinness and it seemed
| for a while that Apple was in denial about the issue.
|
| Still, the Apple Watch is a definite hit for Apple now and it's
| clearly his baby, so his legacy isn't all bad.
| 3cats-in-a-coat wrote:
| OpenAI spinning into consumer hardware is a significant loss of
| focus for the company.
|
| I can only explain it with them recognizing that their strongest
| asset is brand mindshare. This is actually really bad for their
| outlook as AI model pioneers.
|
| Eventually it was going to be the case that AI will spread
| around. It can't be contained, it's too easy to distill and hence
| copy from output.
|
| But I admit I didn't expect it to happen that soon. Also I
| respect Jony Ive, but expect his "AI devices" to all fail in the
| market. He's an idealist. He needs counterbalance that he
| currently lacks.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| A while back someone here on Hacker News made a pretty insightful
| comment that as great of a designer as Jony Ive is, a large part
| of his success is owed to the fact that he had an "editor" in the
| form of Steve Jobs. Once Jobs passed, he no longer really had an
| editor.
|
| It remains to be seen whether Sam Altman / OpenAI in general will
| be a good editor
| m-s-y wrote:
| How so? I don't believe that Ive is going along with the
| purchase.
| Animats wrote:
| No? It's not a acqui-hire? The article says "joining forces
| with the legendary designer to make a push into hardware."
|
| Nobody says what kind of hardware. A wearable is the likely
| bet. Maybe a home robot, but that's a few years out.
| browningstreet wrote:
| OpenAI has recruited Jony Ive, the designer behind Apple's
| iPhone, to lead a new hardware project for the artificial
| intelligence company that makes ChatGPT.
|
| ..
|
| OpenAI said it already owns a 23% stake in io from a prior
| collaborative agreement signed late last year. It says it
| will now pay $5 billion in equity for the acquisition.
|
| ..
|
| OpenAI said Ive will not become an OpenAI employee and
| LoveFrom will remain independent but "will assume deep design
| and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io."
|
| https://apnews.com/article/jony-ive-openai-
| chatgpt-52c72786e...
| gist wrote:
| Exactly. Also noting what happened with Ron Johnson (Apple
| Stores) after he left Apple (and was not surrounded by either
| Jobs or others that worked at Apple:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson_(businessman)
|
| I am wondering to what extent 'key man' insurance is needed.
| That's a big purchase to be riding on one man essentially (yes
| they are getting engineers and others but Jony seems to be the
| big ticket item for the purchase).
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Just need a way to talk to ChatGPT anytime. Microphone, speaker
| and permanent connection to ChatGPT. That's all you need: io
|
| One need is being able to talk to ChatGPT in a whisper or silent
| voice... so you can do it in public. I don't think that comes
| from them, but it will be big when it does. Much easier than
| brain implants! In an ear device, you need enough data of
| listening to the muscles and the sounds together, then you can
| just listen to the muscles...
|
| I assume they want to have their own OS that is, essentially,
| their models in the cloud.
|
| _so, here are my specific predictions_
|
| 1. Subvocalization-sensing earbuds that detect "silent speech"
| through jaw/ear canal muscle movements (silently talk to AI
| anytime)
|
| 2. An AI OS laptop -- the model is the interface
|
| 3. A minimal pocket device where most AI OS happens in the cloud
|
| 4. an energy efficient chip that runs powerful local AI, to put
| in any physical object
|
| 5. ... like a clip. Something that attaches to clothes.
|
| 6. a perfect flat glass tablet like in the movies (I hope not)
|
| 7. ambient intelligent awareness through household objects with
| microphones, sensors, speakers, screens --
| Animats wrote:
| The form factor that suggests is an AR headset. Google, Meta,
| and others have those. They're all flops. Too bulky.
|
| Carmack has said that for VR/AR to get any traction, the
| headgear needs to come down to swim goggle size, and to go
| mainstream, it has to come down to eyeglass size. He's probably
| right. Ive would be the kind of guy to push in that direction.
| samtp wrote:
| What exact use cases do I get from being able to talk to
| chatGPT when I am out in public? I can think of close to 0
| value add to have an AI voice in my head when I'm taking a walk
| in the park or out to dinner.
| eqmvii wrote:
| when i think of them, i just call 1-800-chat-gpt
| CPLX wrote:
| I'm as much of a deep Ai skeptic as anyone but I can
| definitely think of use cases for while driving or walking,
| like asking questions about my own schedule or what people
| have emailed or asked me for in the last hour, or where I can
| get something specific to eat nearby and so on.
|
| Not sure it's worth the hype but there are use cases. I do
| think it's an interesting contrast with crypto, where there
| aren't really.
| coffeemug wrote:
| People stare at their phones while walking, having dinner,
| and driving. It's not a big leap to imagine replacing that
| with subvocal conversations with AI.
| diasf wrote:
| After thinking for sometime it seems like even though Sam doesn't
| have any stake in io, he might have a stake in the Thrive fund
| that invested in io. Put $50M in a Thrive fund, which is used to
| invest in io that ultimately gets acquired by OpenAI at a really
| high valuation. Joshua from Thrive anyways wanted Sam to have
| some stake and the numbers being floated around was of the order
| of $7B. The whole thing seems absurd and makes me trust OpenAI
| even less.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| I have a feeling OpenAI will eventually be looked back on as the
| company that forced Google to release its internal AI product and
| then died a slow death.
| intexpress wrote:
| The video was filmed at Francis Ford Coppola's cafe. Worth a
| visit, the last time I was there they had a machine that printed
| out stories for you to take home.
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