Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 1001 posts

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#271

Post by breppp »

mattlondon wrote: post #150
joshstrange wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Hindsight is 20/20. If they were so obviously bad at the time, how did they get to market?

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

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#272

Post by empath75 »

seatac76 wrote: post #35

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.

> $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.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#273

Post by ignoramous »

philosophty wrote: post #56
bbor wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in silicon valley would $6,500,000,000 for a single designer seem like a sensible move...

It's not actually $6.5 billion cash. It's a stock certificate. A stock certificate which can go to zero.

> A stock certificate which can go to zero.

For whoever is holding the bag at the end of it all.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#274

Post by bdangubic »

mattlondon wrote: post #150
joshstrange wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Hindsight is 20/20. If they were so obviously bad at the time, how did they get to market?

lots of things “get to market” - pretty easy to get something to market

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#275

Post by npollock »

ko_pivot wrote: post #10

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.

"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

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#276

Post by davidivadavid »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #174
bobxmax wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Repeat after me: design isn't about making things pretty.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#277

Post by skywhopper »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #238
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

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.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#278

Post by brulard »

bigyabai wrote: post #81
amelius wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

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?

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#279

Post by PantaloonFlames »

chairhairair wrote: post #124
nickrubin wrote: post #7

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.

Very trumpian language.
Post reply on HN