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OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

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Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#121

OpenAI announcement: https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/

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?

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Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#122
post #68

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 t…

What is it about that picture that's so icky? I had the exact same reaction.

It's a Hall and Oates album cover featuring two idea guys hellbent on putting artists out of work.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#123
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is they AR/VR part in the Ray Bans? It’s cameras, speakers, microphones but no display.

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.

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

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#124

OpenAI announcement: https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/

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.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#126

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 a…

> 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.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#128

OpenAI announcement: https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/

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.

Reads and looks like an obituary, lol

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#129
post #65

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.

> 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.

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.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#130

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.

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

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