{"id":671286,"date":"2025-05-25T04:32:38","date_gmt":"2025-05-25T01:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-real-reason-the-openai-jony-ive-partnership-is-so-strange\/"},"modified":"2025-05-25T04:32:38","modified_gmt":"2025-05-25T01:32:38","slug":"the-real-reason-the-openai-jony-ive-partnership-is-so-strange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-real-reason-the-openai-jony-ive-partnership-is-so-strange\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Reason the OpenAI-Jony Ive Partnership Is So Strange"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tOver three decades working in Silicon Valley, Jony Ive has shaped the shell of the iMac, designed the look of the iPod and come up with the form factor for the iPhone. Pretty much every major piece of App<\/a>le technology<\/a> we touch, from the heyday of Alta Vista to today, went through Ive\u2019s hands first.<\/p>\n

\n\tNo doubt such a legacy enticed Sam Altman to recruit Ive, with the OpenAI founder this week buying the former Apple designer\u2019s startup io for $6.5 billion (that\u2019s at least 130 million\u00a0vintage iPod shuffles<\/a>) \u2014 then announcing, in a cringey Davis Guggenheim video, the two would be working together to create an undisclosed \u201cfamily of devices\u201d to run the apps based on OpenAI\u2019s models. io, io, it\u2019s off to Ive we go.<\/p>\n

\n\tAltman has been trying to convince investors and the public that he will change the course of civilization pretty much since he released\u00a0ChatGPT thirty months ago (and really for a while before that). What do you do if you\u2019re Jobs-ishly hoping to introduce technology that everyone will use? You hire the man whose technology everyone uses.<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, that\u2019s one thing you do. The other thing you can do is create programs that people can\u2019t resist. On that score, Altman has a much shakier track record. ChatGPT garnered<\/a> 100 million sign-ups in its first two months but the momentum has slowed; these days about 5%<\/a> of people on the planet are active users. New \u201creasoning\u201d iterations like 4o have yet to catch on, while the programmer-oriented o1 has shown no lack of problems<\/a>. Meanwhile the quest for AGI slogs on, with little scientific evidence we are close to a machine intelligence matching a human\u2019s full reasoning ability anytime soon.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe main factor in these systems not yet fully weaving themselves into our hourly fabric seem to have little to do with the form they take. It\u2019s true that device porn is an inevitable part of any new consumer adoption. But far more important, most industrial psychologists believe, is what they enable us to do. And for all the nibbling-around-life\u2019s-edges of the apps based on OpenAI\u2019s models (which, critically, the company mostly relies on others to develop), very little here has truly revolutionized our existence so far. There\u2019s only so many thank-you notes and wacky images you can ask an AI program to create.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe evidence that it\u2019s the app not the machine is that past attempts at AI-specific devices, from the R1 Rabbit to the Humane AI Pin, have thus far flopped<\/a> or gotten really bad reviews<\/a>. But I think even more problematic here is that Altman is making a philosophical pivot undigestible even by his own rhetoric. AI is different than previous technological revolutions, Altman has said (correctly), because it doesn\u2019t simply change what we can do but what and how we think (or, more precisely, don\u2019t need to think).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe personal-computer brought digital technology to everyday people and the Internet connected us to communities and information we otherwise wouldn\u2019t have access to. But if AI delivers on its promise \u2014 and it remains a big if \u2014 it will make an even more fundamental change than that, introducing a whole new intelligence to live aside us humans; it\u2019s far more akin to an alien landing on this planet than a product launch or even scientific breakthrough.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Altman himself wrote earlier this year (about AGI), this \u201cis the beginning of something for which it\u2019s hard not to say \u2018this time it\u2019s different\u2019; the economic growth in front of us looks astonishing, and we can now imagine a world where we cure all diseases, have much more time to enjoy with our families and can fully realize our creative potential.\u201d Something so pervasively existential doesn\u2019t rise or fall based on how cool your device is, and spending $6.5 billion to ensure that it comes in great packaging only makes us wonder if you lack the goods for that pervasive existentialism.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou could almost feel Altman and Ive themselves grappling with this contradiction, writing in their blog post <\/a>announcing the partnership, \u201cThis is an extraordinary moment. Computers are now seeing, thinking and\u00a0understanding. Despite this unprecedented capability, our experience remains shaped by traditional products and interfaces.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso and on an unrelated note, it\u2019s a little<\/em> weird that Microsoft didn\u2019t come up in all this. I mean, OpenAI is primarily backed by a company that makes tablets and other devices. You\u2019d think Altman might have given Satya Nadella a call about anyone in-house he could borrow before going out and writing a check for $6.5 billion to the Apple guy.<\/p>\n

\n\tAI Agents are where Altman envisions this all going, and he may be on to something \u2014 a kind of merging of Siri and a CAA assistant to accompany us on all of life\u2019s little journeys. The one thing he said in the Guggenheim video that landed is that an indispensably helpful application like an AI Agent requires something less clunky than a laptop, though he conveniently seemed to forget about a phone. Google hasn\u2019t, and its ChatGPT competitor Gemini, which is designed for both Androids and iPhones, seems to be making plenty of strides<\/a> by integrating with the tech we already have instead of selling us one we didn\u2019t know we wanted. (In fact I almost wonder if envy that Google can bundle itself so easily with its own phones isn\u2019t a primary driver for Altman here.)<\/p>\n

\n\tNow we should be wary, in all our caution about the hype, not to fall into a kind of future-myopia on the other hand either; not many people foresaw a device in our pockets that can help us shop, date, job-hunt and gamble before Steve Jobs announced the iPhone in January 2007 either. But you could understand the appeal of making those activities, the building blocks of modern existence, a lot more portable. We\u2019ve yet to figure out if a companion machine intelligence is nearly as useful or safe in the first place, let alone what packaging we want to stuff it into if it is.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat isn\u2019t all to say new interfaces won\u2019t be a part of our digital future. The idea that a phone \u2014 a bulky rectangle we read and touch \u2014 is how we conduct our digital lives is an accident of technology or at the very least the result of just one of its many historical moments.\u00a0 As the world gets more multimodal \u2014 Silicon Valley-speak for how you can talk, look or gesture instead of type \u2014 the idea of fingers and screens will become more antiquated.<\/p>\n

\n\tAltman stands in good company with this belief. Meta\u2019s newly relaunched Ray-Ban smartglasses are an attempt to merge the cloud-based power of AI chatbots with the concrete appeal of a fashion accessory, while Apple Vision Pro similarly aims to give us immersiveness by wrapping itself around our faces instead of dropping into our hands. The quirkiest but weirdly most promising of this crop may be Samsung\u2019s \u201cBallie.\u201d The long-awaited robotic sphere that is finally set to hit the market this summer is a kind of home assistant\u00a0that\u2019s pitched somewhere between a pet and a butler<\/a> \u2014 a personalized BB-8 to help you feed the dog, conduct your yoga session and translate your video call.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut while all these help-offering non-phone products rely on AI in some form or another, they\u2019re not driven by a need to recalibrate how humanity thinks. Because those two propositions, while potentially linked, exist separately. We may or may not soon interact with technology more intimately and differently than we do now (requiring a new Ive-like design) AND AI may or may not soon assist us in ways we\u2019ve never been assisted before. Even if both turn out to be true, the idea that the same company would lead both charges hardly fits with the history of the past three tech decades. IBM made computers and Microsoft gave us desktop programs for them; Apple devices are everywhere and we get on them to use Google.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, it\u2019s possible<\/em> that one company can do both, like it\u2019s also possible I can become an award-winning chef. Nothing technically is stopping OpenAI. It\u2019s just that a company whose entire resources and raison d\u2019etre<\/em> are oriented to how machines will think for us doesn\u2019t seem best suited to crack a post-phone future that no one else has solved to date. OpenAI makes models, new ways computers can think, and needs developers to build apps on them. That\u2019s what the firm\u2019s success hinges on, not whether it can design a machine as addictive as the iPhone.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou could be forgiven, given how many announcements OpenAI makes, for wondering about Altman\u2019s motivations; like a vintage Terrell Owens, who often seemed to play football to support his press-conference habit,\u00a0 Altman can sometimes seem to run a tech company to feed his blog-post addiction. The reality lags behind the promise.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Ive announcement fits the trend. An AI device as sleek and irresistible in 2030 as the iPhone was in 2010 sounds like a great idea, as great as astonishing economic growth and all that free time. But the machine models aren\u2019t able to give us any of that, and there\u2019s scarce evidence Sam Altman or anyone else has yet figured out how to build them so they can.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Over three decades working in Silicon Valley, Jony Ive has shaped the shell of the iMac, designed the look of the iPod and come up with the form factor for the iPhone. Pretty much every major piece of Apple technology we touch, from the heyday of Alta Vista to today, went through Ive\u2019s hands first….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":671288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/GettyImages-1153508104_ce5e93.jpg?w=1440&h=810&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[156615,5029,141199,4965],"class_list":["post-671286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-acquisitions","tag-apple","tag-openai","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}