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OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

bloomberg.com

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Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#961

Post by palmotea »

Snuggly73 wrote: post #891
robertlagrant wrote: post #885

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

>> 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)

Define "working economy." Ultimately, "the economy" is the market and the market is about satisfying the desires of the people with the money to participate.

The economy will keep working if there's mass unemployment. You reconcile that by realizing the economy isn't a system for taking care of everyone, or optimizing for mass human flourishing. Unemployment just means the money-havers have no use for you anymore, and you can go FOAD.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#962

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

doubtit wrote: post #754
leoc wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ive doesn’t seem to have come from an especially privileged background (beyond the obvious good fortune of being a white guy in good health born in a developed English-speaking country in the post-war era etc.) Middle-class certainly, but not markedly upper-middle-class or a posh boy. Though I suppose I’m in danger of sounding like pg talking about the Collisons as if they were poor boys made good.

Relative to the sweatshop workers he relied on to avoid sewing his own shirts. For the same reason we don’t need 9,000 operating systems, it’s trivial to copy-paste, we don’t need Ive, Altman. The main audience is Millennials and younger and they know how this all works. There’s no generating hype when it’s more of the same; our brains normalize and simply cannot find novelty in it. SaaS competition was faked through…

> This forum doesn’t want to believe this because their identity is wrapped up in it. But I talk to people outside software, and very few feel they get real value out of all this technology. That ultimately it’s just been a big distraction from their lives.

Re: LLMs--this has been my experience as well. People aren't thrilled with adopting something that has been sold to them as a replacement for intellectual labor either, and don't see the immediate benefit (outside of the programmer types that seem to often have an almost masochistic relationship with software that's only viable use case is 'replacing' their skillset).

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#963

Post by jihadjihad »

agos wrote: post #939
gnatolf wrote: post #927

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reaction was just the same, but look at gruber: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/05/21/sam-and-jony-io and gruber is stirring up drama about why his links don't do well on hn.

> It conveys grand ambition, but without pretension. I wonder how it is possible that a human watches that video and will think they don't convey pretension

Indeed it may as well be an advert for pretension itself.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#964

Post by acuozzo »

samtp wrote: post #701
dr_dshiv wrote: post #674

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…

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.

Executive function assistance.

I'll set alerts, an alarm, write on my hand, etc. and still forget that e.g. my kids have a half-day tomorrow… even when medicated.

I'd love to have a little voice in my head periodically reminding me of these things.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#965

Post by killerstorm »

dudus wrote: post #268

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.

It doesn't look like they're cash-strapped, more like they want to raise stakes.

To play in the same league as Google and Microsoft you have to be big. So they need to increase enterprise value to be taken seriously.

That's what investors expect them to do.

The only other option is to close it down, as OpenAI would quickly become obsolete if they can no longer produce frontier models.

As for the moat, it's not something you can just conjure, right? Perhaps the whole point of these acquisition is to create a moat, but only time will tell if that worked.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#966

Post by nindalf »

hylaride wrote: post #949
asveikau wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does Ive need to be churning out continuous hits? There is no shame in quitting while ahead, or considering your previous success to be a tough act to follow. I feel similar about Zuckerberg. That guy should just let the government break up his empire, let some other people run the pieces, and retire. Otherwise he just faces humiliation and being in over his head. But I guess ego keeps these people going.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Ive probably had to compromise a lot with Steve at the helm. It is generally regarded that (laptops especially) Apple hardware went to form over function when Ive got total control and when Apple finally reverted his vision was sidelined. If he has an ego, he probably really wants to have something is a Magnus Opus he can claim. It'll be interesting because good design…

Apple laptops were good before and after his reign of mediocrity. The butterfly keyboard and the Touch Bar were both terrible and I'm glad they're gone.

The worst part about the butterfly keyboard was that keys would stop working and fixing it would cost the same as a new laptop. I guess that's what you sacrifice when you design the laptop as thin as Ive envisioned.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#967

Post by Aeolun »

asveikau wrote: post #843
quitit wrote: post #830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of a risk for Ive, as until now he is credited with Apple's lauded design. If he does not produce an immediate success it'll be brand damaging and wobble on his reputation. I also suspect it might go that way: post-Ive designs have been credited as being better, particularly around apple's laptops that were perceived as too heavily favouring form over function. More realistically Apple's design is good…

Why does Ive need to be churning out continuous hits? There is no shame in quitting while ahead, or considering your previous success to be a tough act to follow. I feel similar about Zuckerberg. That guy should just let the government break up his empire, let some other people run the pieces, and retire. Otherwise he just faces humiliation and being in over his head. But I guess ego keeps these people going.

> But I guess ego keeps these people going.

I mean, if it were my company I’d also reserve the right to run it straight into the ground.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#969

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

davedx wrote: post #897
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

An aside, but I feel pretty old, because I remember 30 years ago quite well, and no, I don't think people (at least people in tech) would be that surprised by the miniaturization and technological advancement that has occurred. Moore's law had already been churning along for decades in 1995, laptop computers had been out for a while, people (including lots of university students) were browsing the web, and heck, there were even PDAs that could do handwriting recognition in 95.

People were already saying "Isn't it amazing that this computer that you can carry around in your hand is more powerful than a giant room of computers that NASA built to send astronauts into space" in the mid 90s, so while people wouldn't necessarily guess the details, I think they fully expected the technological advancements to continue apace.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#970

Post by subspeakai »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #674

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…

Would love to chat more about this with you if you'd be interested!
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