Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

bloomberg.com

891–900 of 1001 posts

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#891

I am utterly confused. If AGI is around the corner, this means that the economy is going to be destroyed and money are going to lose their meaning. Who is going to buy your AI gadget? Why spend money on that and Windsurf?

The economy isn't going to be destroyed even if AGI were round the corner.

Interesting - how do you reconcile mass unemployment with working economy? (And this is honest question from one that is invested and hopeful that their life savings won’t evaporate overnight)

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#892
post #537

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

this is designed to appeal directly to a certain kind of self-mythologizing Bay Area techie, the kind that was common in the early 2010s. It’s meant to signal continuity, “we’re just like you, we loved Steve Jobs” apparently it worked on some people: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/05/21/sam-and-jony-io

> It conveys grand ambition, but without pretension.

Indeed, "greatest in the world" lack of pretension

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#893

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 the…

Full attention to 1M context is nonsense. Yes, Gemini can do needle-in-haystack, but do you actually need to feed 1M tokens to find one thing? People who have a lot of experience with using LLM for code generation claim that performance degrades past certain point, even if all context is somewhat-relevant.

What we need is not "long context", we need memory: ability for LLM to address datasets of arbitrary size.

RAG has bad reputation but there's a myriad of different ways for doing RAG. Say, "agentic" tool calls which fetch specific data is essentially a form of RAG. But it's cool because it's not called RAG, right?

Anyway, this definitely requires some innovation, but I doubt "longer context" is exactly what we need.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#894

I am utterly confused. If AGI is around the corner, this means that the economy is going to be destroyed and money are going to lose their meaning. Who is going to buy your AI gadget? Why spend money on that and Windsurf?

I've made this point many times and the only possible answers are: 1. The people promising AGI are lying 2. The people promising AGI don't know what they're saying 3. The people promising AGI are hedging against AGI not eventuating but some intermediate value emerging. This is the most charitable read, but also totally at odds with getting people to invest, since the investment is predicated on AGI achievement The co…

And Honest Zuck talking how his AGI is going to specialize in ads and entertainment. To whom are you going to sell ads…

I dunno - I am rather thinking that they are hedging.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#895

> “I have a growing sense that everything I’ve learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place and to this moment,” Ive said in a joint interview with OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman Ah. What synergy, what serendipity. Right there. Nice photo by the way — https://d7bnjsbkcwmq2m.archive.is/HgpSJ/945183ffb15e984274fa...

That photo is hella creepy. Hopefully it was AI generated

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#896

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, t…

>Just need a way to talk to ChatGPT anytime. Microphone, speaker and permanent connection to ChatGPT. That’s all you need

So like a smartphone in your pocket connected to an earphone.

The whisper thing is nice. Sounds like a feature for next gen earphones.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#897

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. I agree with the first 2 sentences, but not the last. Everyone and their grandmother knows size and bulkiness are big blockers to VR/AR adoption. But the reason we don't have…

> it's an issue of physics

Engineering, not physics?

I doubt anyone would have believed you could have a phone with AI chips inside it that fit in your pocket 30 years ago.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#898

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?

Because there is no magical barrier that prevents all bad products from being sold?

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#899

I am utterly confused. If AGI is around the corner, this means that the economy is going to be destroyed and money are going to lose their meaning. Who is going to buy your AI gadget? Why spend money on that and Windsurf?

That's not really what AGI means. The economy will tremendously grow from AGI, it just won't necessarily involve people anymore.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#900
post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's the elusive trick of "leadership" that's so hard to measure - great leaders turn talented (and even not really talented) people into success stories. Bad "leaders" can manage the most talented team of the planet into the ground.

And even people that some people decry as bad and terrible people (for example Elon Musk) still can make amazing leaders that people will willingly drop everything to go work for and who leads them on to achieve great things.

> even people that some people decry as bad and terrible people (for example Elon Musk) still can make amazing leaders

None of the leaders in this conversation are good people. Elon's controversies are way past the point of "some people decry" (why even use a phrasing this convoluted unless you just want to signal that you don't agree with it?) and firmly in "lots of great people wouldn't touch it with a pole". Part of leadership is creating a safe work environment and shielding your companies/brands from unnecessary drama, and Elon has done an absolutely abysmal job at it lately.

Post reply on HN