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Apple No Longer in Talks to Join OpenAI Investment Round
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoThe future will be local models. Let these investors burn the money.
- samuelstros 2y agoAgree. What’s your reasoning?
- d13 2y agoApple is already doing this: https://www.apple.com/uk/apple-intelligence/ https://www.apple.com/uk/apple-intelligence/
- poincaredisk 2y agoI wish, but why do you think so? Last decade the flow was from local compute to the server, not the other way around.
- samuelstros 2y agoWhile building lix change control I figured out that collaboration was/is the driver behind local to cloud. A secondary reason is compute. If a system exists that enables (distributed) collaboration on files, the appeal of cloud-based software vanishes. Remote compute becomes possible as well. At least, that’s the bet we are taking with lix https://lix.opral.com/ https://lix.opral.com/
- terribleperson 2y agoI think a short-term driver towards local models is tooling. As difficult as reliably getting useful output can be, and as fragile as the resulting product can be, you want assurances of stability that don't exist with a model in someone else's cloud. I'm not an expert on anything, though.
- wseqyrku 2y agoYeah but you have to acknowledge the distance between local compute and a gazillion dollar data center, and even past that the hardware for a local setup is premium tier so it's not gonna quite catch up considering the cost.
- tylerchilds 2y agoi can’t imagine being a a trillion dollar company doing any serious business with a company where the entire executive suite has vacated except the ceo that’s clearly doing things. at this phase, it would be disastrous for apple to bank their reputation on sam.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoIs this actually related to the recent exodus? Apple is paying OpenAI nothing for use of their model on iPhones. Maybe they just realized being able to get away with paying nothing is a sign of how commoditized models will be.
- gwern 2y agoAt the time, I read the Apple deal as OA strategically finding an alternative to MS as the sugar-daddy, in terms of free cash flow and datacenter capabilities: it didn't need to be true, it just needed to be a compelling negotiation point with MS. The fact that Apple was outright investing in OA was in line with this view: if OA was just going to be some pluggable commodity, why invest in them? Apple doesn't do random VC for the hell of it. So Apple withdrawing would seem to be bad news for OA, even if the rationale was something like "the valuation is now too high for our taste" rather than "we are losing faith in them as an organization" or "we think they are completely replaceable".
- Overpower0416 2y agoI am disappointment in the AI advancements in the recent years. It turns out progress is made not for the sake of the technology and the good for humankind, but for money. Just another pump and dump...
- bob1029 2y agoApple is on track to own everything in the vertical except chip manufacturing. It would make sense for them to invest in their products and services over something with more varied interests.
- incognition 2y agoThey aren’t doing that either. Over 80Bn in cash, they’re doing their best Smaug impression.
- rvz 2y agoMaybe Apple just realized that they would have bought the top of a massive pump and dump scheme with the huge risk of the researchers leaving the company whilst the training and inference costs suffocates OpenAI. Sometimes, FOMOing into a pump and dump is not worth it and they were just too late.
- redserk 2y agoI don’t think Apple was too late at all. In all the hype, nobody asks “how does this help $family_member in their day to day”. I’ve used generative AI to help with writing documents and code. I think it’s fun for creating and modifying images. As someone with no creative talent, Photoshop has been quite fun to use. But frankly, AI is completely useless in almost every way I see it implemented. I cannot see my grandparents, my mom, or my brother use it for anything practical. Everyone’s rushing to flesh out an investor slide deck without taking a moment to think: “but how can this actually be used in someone’s day-to-day” I’ve enjoyed Apple’s extremely conservative approach so far — they’ve kept it mostly practical. For example, let’s take the photos app. Just being able to search for “(dogs name) lake” and having images of my dog near a lake is day-to-day useful. Another example is their introduction of writing tools to proofread blocks of text. My parents already use Spellcheck and Grammar check, this feels like the next step up. Compare this to Samsung who took the SV Venture-Fund-appeal-style route and blasted “AI” everywhere they can call a function or put a button. Or Microsoft, who’s Copilot story is focused on imprinting keys on keyboards without answering “how does this help the end user” This hype around AI is gaudy. Nearly every implementation feels cheap, half-baked, and obnoxious. If Apple’s skepticism of implementing AI so far is “late”, late is not a bad thing at all as an end user. (All that said, Genmoji looks incredibly stupid and I’m wondering what they were thinking with this…)
- thejazzman 2y agoI suspect we don't want it in our day to day, removing human interaction? But it is being used in day to regardless. Eg picking the next song to play. It seems to excel at helping people do their jobs, double checking their work, etc. It's maddening since it makes constant mistakes. But Apple should be utilizing this to make HomeKit as magical as promised -- rather than automating email, which is basically the lowest hanging copy and paste able fruit available
- deafpolygon 2y agoAI in its current state is a bubble. It's going to pop soon, and then we'll get back to business as usual.
- anonzzzies 2y agoSoon is what timeline? It's still getting better; as long as that happens, no one is stopping.
- menzoic 2y agoLLMs will continue to be used by increasingly more developers
- wetpaws 2y ago[dead]
- mjhagen 2y agoI take it you mean that like the dotcom bubble? As in The Internet didn't go away, but the investors returned to a little more sensible thinking.
- futureshock 2y agoI don’t disagree about a bubble. A bubble for promising technology is probably inevitable. But what is this about going back to “business as usual”? Now that GenAI exists it has fundamentally changed what tasks a computer is good at and which use cases are expensive vs. cheap. So there’s no going back. Even if all models stopped improving tomorrow, we’ll be adapting our products for 10 years to take advantage of this fundamental change in capabilities. Now all that is a long way away from creating an AI god which is what the peak hypers are selling.
- cubefox 2y agoA few years ago saying that there will be soon AI that perfectly understands human natural language was viewed as unrealistic science fiction. Today the possibility of an AI god is regarded as unrealistic science fiction.
- savolai 2y agoWhat makes openai special in comparison to its competitors that apple wants to integrate their service?
- jamil7 2y agoJust a guess but I think Apple was just scrambling to have a foot in the door and is likely working on gradually integrating their own Apple Intelligence services as replacements.
- lokimedes 2y agoApple is the most brand-aware IT company in the world. It is likely they simply recognized the synergy of partnering with the creators of “ChatGPT” that holds the mind space equivalently to “googling” but for AI among their customers.
- tim333 2y agoAlso being brand aware would probably put it off the recent goings on at Open/ClosedAI.
- snapcaster 2y agoThat's only to weirdos like us. the general public has _maybe_ heard of openai but otherwise "ChatGPT" is 100% of their knowledge on AI and the industry
- dagmx 2y agoIn Apple’s presentation they specifically say that the OpenAI integration is akin to a plugin and they may have other providers, especially for domain specific knowledge in the future. The third party providers is smart imho. Apple take on little risk, and it allows them to avoid being reliant on any one provider.
- threeseed 2y agoGoogle is a major investor in Anthropic. Musk is too much of a loose cannon for Apple so Grok is out. Mistral is in the EU which doesn't have a stable regulatory regime. Leaving OpenAI which at least has the full support of Microsoft i.e. it will always have access to the best compute resources and endless money.
- fldskfjdslkfj 2y ago[flagged]
- sigmoid10 2y agoSo Nvidia and Microsoft are not big tech companies? Don't mistake Apple's actions as some industry sentiment. They've always done things different. Time will tell who was right.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ryankrage77 2y ago> Apple reportedly believes that the exposure the iOS 18 integration is giving OpenAI is “of equal or greater value” than cash. So it's not just gig workers who get offered exposure to pay the bills.
- Topfi 2y agoFunny, though let's not forget, Google and Microsoft are willing to pay merely for default placement on Apples devices. Here, users don't even get the choice to use an alternative.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoAlternative for what? I don’t use default Microsoft for anything on Apple, or recall seeing anything Microsoft as a default choice. Google was default search engine in Safari, but I changed that to DDG.
- daghamm 2y agoI think you mean artists. Gig workers are paid in peanuts and dreams.
- mertbio 2y agoThis is good news. When I read the news that Apple is going to invest into OpenAI, I was a bit sad because Apple always tries to avoid to jump into the hype trains like blockchain, NFTs, metaverse etc. Yes, there is Apple Intelligence but it is mostly writing tools, Xcode code completion, an emoji generator and so on. Nothing like something that is going to replace jobs, AGI and so on how OpenAI is marketing their products.
- redleader55 2y ago> Apple always tries to avoid to jump into the hype trains like blockchain, NFTs, metaverse etc. What do you mean by "avoid ..metaverse"? They released a premium headset for AR/VR.
- Nevermark 2y agoThat isn’t the metaverse. No dancing Zucks. “Killer app” (as far as there is one) is focus. Being able to surround yourself with a large Mac screen & several Safari & iOS-type app screens, in a beautiful natural environment, and get real work done.
- eastbound 2y agoThose features are often assumed, but are NOT present in the Vision Pro. There is only one display for apps. It’s not large. Rather tiny compared to your field of view. The features are restricted around what an iPhone can do: View photos, view movies, view your browser one tab at a time. Immersively, yes, but anything actually productive is excluded from the Vision Pro. There is no killer app in the Vision Pro. My 32” screen can display more windows than the Vision Pro.
- kalleboo 2y agoWhere are you getting this from? It's not correct. You can absolutely have multiple browser windows open with different pages in them and put them all around you
- daft_pink 2y agoYou have to feel that apple is missing out on buying into this investment as it will clearly become very valuable.
- onion2k 2y agoThat isn't useful to Apple though. Apple has a lot of money. What Apple needs more than anything else is market differentiation. They need products, patents, ideas, etc that set their products apart from their competitors. Buying into OpenAI doesn't get them that (unless they outbid everyone else). Apple will be better off using their capital to invent AI of their own, or buying/investing in an OpenAI alternative. Apple can use their market leverage to get OpenAI integration. They don't need to spend money.
- tim333 2y agoThe alternative is to invest the money into their own AI which will probably also become valuable.
- daft_pink 2y agoI think they have enough money to do both
- deepfriedchokes 2y agoIf there is no moat on this stuff, what’s the point of buying it? Just build your own. They’re better off investing in people.
- SebFender 2y agoAs this is certainly not a money issue it may be in relation to privacy issues found by the Apple due diligence team at some point. Fixable - let's do it. Not fixable - let's move on to something else. I was part of a few due diligence teams and the things we found sometimes broke the potential investment in less than a day in... Nobody's perfect - but I think it's safe to say Apple makes a significant effort when it comes to privacy.
- spking 2y agohttps://archive.ph/Dc6jS https://archive.ph/Dc6jS
- mgh2 2y agoIf AMD can do it, they can as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41674382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41674382
- bg24 2y agoApple realized that 1/OpenAI is no longer the ONLY game in town, and 2/Models != Platform. Maybe, maybe Apple can achieve what they need (Apple Intelligence), while keeping the doors open for multiple models.
- MuffinFlavored 2y ago> Apple realized that 1/OpenAI is no longer the ONLY game in town Who is the other game in town for them?... Meta? Google?
- rgrmrts 2y agoAnthropic as well
- mrbungie 2y agoNo one from the list (also add Anthropic to that list) is SOTA right now, but maybe Apple wants to keep its options open as the gap closes between OAI and the others.
- xnx 2y ago> No one from the list (also add Anthropic to that list) is SOTA right now I don't use OpenAI's products. Is there an area where they are clearly ahead? I thought it was at least a tie in all categories.
- mrbungie 2y agoLast time I checked, o1 did much better in PlanBench that models from other providers indicating better perf in that area [1][2]. Probably that lead will rapidly decay as other players implement similar approaches to "reasoning"/LRMs. [1] https://www.arxiv.org/abs/2409.13373 https://www.arxiv.org/abs/2409.13373 [2] https://x.com/omarsar0/status/1838353480672563581 https://x.com/omarsar0/status/1838353480672563581
- maeil 2y agoo1, which you seem to be referring to, is at best slightly better at specific tasks than Sonnet 3.5 while being completely unviable economically for production use, despite the amount of subsidizing OpenAI has been doing to make them lose a cool $5 billion this year. GPT has barely improved over the last 1.5 years [1]. [1] https://aider.chat/assets/models-over-time.svg https://aider.chat/assets/models-over-time.svg
- hintymad 2y agoMy hunch is that OAI's models do not not really offer visible advantages over other open models for Apple's use cases. Even if OAI's models are more advanced, Apple can resort to cheaper post-processing to fill the gap. In Apple's scale, Apple should just host its own models to lower the long-term cost, as well as to have full control to iteratively improve the quality of the AI offerings.