OpenAI and Ive
Former Apple chief design officer Jony Ive has officially confirmed his involvement in an artificial intelligence hardware project with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The confirmation appeared in a profile of the designer by The New York Times, putting to rest speculation that began nearly a year ago about a potential collaboration between the two figures.
The AI hardware venture is reportedly being funded by Ive and the Emerson Collective, a company founded by Laurene Powell Jobs. According to the report, the project could secure up to $1 billion in funding by the end of the year, signaling significant investor interest in the endeavor.
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While specific details about the AI product and its release timeline remain under wraps, the team has already established a significant presence in San Francisco, working out of a 32,000-square-foot office building, part of a $90 million real estate acquisition by Ive on a single city block.
But an OpenAI-powered personal electronic device, with longtime Apple all-stars Evans Hankey and Tang Tan leading the small team? That’s interesting. That’s competing against Apple. That’s complicated given Ive’s legendary history with Apple. It’s further complicated by the fact that most of LoveFrom’s designers came with Ive from Apple. It’s complicated even further by Powell Jobs’s backing of the startup.
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And the whole thing is made even stranger given OpenAI’s partnership with Apple to provide “world knowledge” generative AI by the end of this year. Can’t help but think of then-Google-CEO Eric Schmidt being an Apple board member when the iPhone debuted — with built-in system apps for Google Maps and YouTube — while Google was simultaneously building Android to compete.
Ed Zitron (via Hacker News):
I ultimately believe that OpenAI in its current form is untenable. There is no path to profitability, the burn rate is too high, and generative AI as a technology requires too much energy for the power grid to sustain it, and training these models is equally untenable, both as a result of ongoing legal issues (as a result of theft) and the amount of training data necessary to develop them.
And, quite simply, any technology requiring hundreds of billions of dollars to prove itself is built upon bad architecture. There is no historical precedent for anything that OpenAI needs to happen. Nobody has ever raised the amount of money it will need, nor has a piece of technology required such an incredible financial and systemic force — such as rebuilding the American power grid — to survive, let alone prove itself as a technology worthy of such investment.
Sam is insane. He managed to seal a chatgpt distribution deal with Apple while collaborating on an iPhone killer with Apple’s top designers.
Previously:
- Safe Superintelligence Inc.
- Apple Intelligence Announced
- Can Anyone But a Tech Giant Build the Next Big Thing?
- Humane Ai Pin Reviews
- Jony Ive Is Leaving Apple
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Fair play to Jony's career and influence at Apple, but in my mind the top designers at Apple are the folks who rescued their laptops from the dysfunctional mess Ive's thinness obsession put them in.
Also, the problem with this year's crop of AI accessories (which is all they are) has not been their industrial design. Get the bag, Jony, but let's not pretend this matters.
