Monologue: Jony Ive and OpenAI's New BS Machine

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to this week's Better Offline Monologue.
I'm your host ed Ze Trunk, and I am going
a little insane. You've likely seen the news that open
ai is buying and that's in air quotes. By the way,

(00:22):
famed Apple designer Jony I've startup io. You may think
that I'm about to explain to you what this company
does other than build devices, or why it was acquired,
and I cannot tell you. Oh and by the way,
the air quotes of are buying it because they bought
the entire company in six point five billion dollars of
open Ai stock stock in a company that is unprofitable.
These aren't even real stock units. I'll get to that later.

(00:45):
By the way, Joni, I've he worked Apple. He worked
on designing products at the iPod, the iMac and iPhone,
worked closely with Steve Jobs, dined out on that for
many years. He left Apple in twenty nineteen. Now, this
announcement came in the form of a nine minute long
video that does not explain anything about the company. And
there's been some reporting, if you could call it them. Now,
let's quote the Wall Street Journal's Burberjean, who I generally

(01:08):
really like, but there is a piss take happening here.
Ortmand and I have offered a few hints at the
secret project they've been working on. The product will be
capable of being aware of the user's surroundings in life,
will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one's pocket and
on one's desk, and will be a third core device
a person would put on a desk after a MacBook
Pro and an iPhone. Now that wood and will those

(01:28):
are load bearing, by the way, I continue, though the
journal earlier reported that the device won't be a phone
and the ivan Aortmand's intent is to help ween users
from screens. Aortmand said that the device isn't a pair
of glasses and that I've have been skeptical about building
something to wear on the body. Ortmand and I have
offered details about how the collaboration grew over the past
few years. Eighteen months ago, open AIE vice president of
product Peter Wellender began working with ives team. The two

(01:51):
sides became excited about a specific device last four What
device is that? Who the fuck knows? Printed baby. There's
also a thing in this art about this effectively tripling
or caadrupling the value of open Ai. It's complete bullshit.
In fact, all of this sounds like complete bollocks to me.
Why are you announcing this now? What is it you're buying?
Who knows? The journal also claims that Aortmand believes that

(02:13):
they will ship one hundred million of these theoretical devices
by late twenty twenty six, the magical year when everything
from Agi to powerful agents are meant to work, the
bullshit year. I can't wait anyway. Jony I've also gets
to keep his independent design studio love From, which has
already been working with open Ai, and will, according to Bloomberg,

(02:34):
takeover design for all of open Ai, including its software,
and apparently Joni and Sammy initially met up to improve
the interface of chat GPT. When did that fucking happen?
Bloomberg also reports that Altman and I have yet to
work out a user interface for the new hardware product,
which is a big deal considering it's meant to be
out in like a year and a half. What are
we doing here? Why? I understand the objective reporting requires

(02:58):
you to just say to things that, but I feel
like I feel like at some point you have to
just say all of this is theoretical. It's complete wank,
and all signs point to this venture being a load
of bollocks. It's a smoke screen, a desperate moved by
open Ai, a desperate company. All stock deals are quite
common in large public corporations that are quite liquid, but

(03:20):
they have stock that has value that they can then
be solved right, But open Ai is neither public nor
a corporation. It's the for profit arm of a nonprofit
desperate to convert it's for profit arm into a public
benefit corporation. They don't have stock, they don't have stock.
They have these goddamn profit participation units. It's it's so silly.
It's all very silly. And Jony Ivan is team of

(03:42):
fifty five people. They're working on a very real thing,
and they were required with six point five billion dollars
of very real paper profit participation units and a company
that burns billions of dollars and has never turned any profit.
To be clear, the company i Owe is somehow different
to Love from his design firm. Fifty five people work

(04:03):
at IO I think like that many work at Love
from really not clear what they work on Io, though
no one seems to know. No one seems to have
a single detail other than the fact that they can't
tell you what they're working on, which sounds a lot
like they have no idea. Now. You may also wonder
what Joni I has been up to since he left
Apple in twenty nineteen. The answer is extremely vague. In

(04:26):
twenty twenty, he founded love From in twenty nineteen, the
design firm, and in twenty twenty they signed a non
specific multi year partnership to design the future of Airbnb.
Apple has apparently kept working with love From in some
way that I can really not find any information about.
Love From also worked on some sort of seal for
King Charles of England to give away to and I

(04:47):
quote recognize private sector companies that are leading the way
and creating sustainable markets. They also designed an entirely new
font for it, which does not matter in the slightest
to anyone, but led to some reporters writing entire stories
about it because John fucking Ive was involved. In twenty
twenty three, I've in his team redesigned Linn Sondeck's LP
twelve turntable in and I quote a respectful and gentle way,

(05:10):
and in twenty twenty four, he teamed up with fashion
brand Montclair to make an out to wear a lion,
and his work appears to involve some kind of magnetic
button that can click together different pieces, which is kind
of cool. I'd have loved to actually read about that,
but that you can't. It's just people just put what
he says in the thing. They don't go and find
the clothes I'd have actually been interested in, and that

(05:30):
can't find shit about it because no one actually holds
any of these people accountable. They just go, oh, it's Jony.
I've all listened to whatever shit he's anyway. I'm very sorry. Okay,
I'm very sorry, but reading about this really frustrated me.
And ives also working with Ferrari apparently on a new
electric vehicle. Can we see it? Do we know when

(05:51):
it will be released? What? Kid? What's the range? What
will look like? No? Done for you? None for you?
You silly little you, silly little freak. How dare you
ask Jonny I've to tell you what he's doing? So
in summery Since twenty nineteen, Jony I've has redesigned Airbnb
in some way, made a new font, made a new
system for putting on clothing. Made a medal for the
King of England to give companies that recycle, and made

(06:12):
some nonspecific contribution to creating an electric Ferrari while also
designing a non specific device that open Ai intends to
ship hundreds of millions of people. And to be clear,
like they are designing a product that another company run
by Jony i've Io will manufacture. I've has not, from
what I can tell, worked on the consumer electronics product

(06:33):
since he left Apple, And let's be really clear, Apple
has not really been cooking since Steve Jobs died, and
their coolest shit in recent history came after I've left,
specifically the new generation of M series laptops, Imax and
the like, but in the middle of twenty twenty four all
of his designers left the company, And really, I like
the Imax and MacBook Air is way more now and
I know whatever like Hindsight's twenty twenty Like I'm sure

(06:55):
like the original MacBook Air was kind of cool, but
it's like, how much did j Only I've actually work
on them, And it's actually really difficult to find out
what it is that Jony I've did it app or
other than be associated with things what you can see, however,
is how good Jony ive is deals getting people to
pay to be associated with Jony. I've the guy who
worked with Steve Jobs on big produgs that people like.

(07:17):
Has he built anything people like recently? Who knows? But
because people are lacking an object permanence, they believe i'ves
still got it, even if it doesn't really mean anything.
In any case, this deal is ridiculous. A mere week ago,
Sam Mortman announced that Instacart's CEO Fijisimo, who was already
on the open Ai board, would become the CEO of
Applications open Ai and is and I quote the Wall
Street Journal, charged with helping that the chat GPT maker

(07:40):
become a profitable global business while remaking an internal culture
that has been mired and executive in fighting in high
profile departures. Yet as part of the acquisition, Jony if
will take over all design and open Ai, along with
his team of fifty five people from io. I think
love from will be as well. It's just this whole
deal is such a fucking mess. And see when she
joins in the summer, will now oversee a company that

(08:02):
has fundamentally changed since she took the position, and be
left to deal with the fallout because her whole fucking
job will be to take responsibility for the mess that
Sam Altman's made, and ma'am, what a mess. Open Ai
burned five billion dollars in twenty twenty four and is
on course to burn over ten billion dollars this year.
Acquiring another company in an all stock deal at this
stage isn't a victory. It's a sign that something is

(08:24):
financially rotten at America's dampest ai startup. As I've discussed
on previous episodes, open Ai is maybe fifteen billion dollars
of liquidity at any given time, and has promised nineteen
billion dollars to complete the Stargate data centers, as well
as allegedly offering three billion dollars, though it's not obvious
if this will be in cash or stock to by
the coding startup windsurf. And when I say, by the way,

(08:44):
they have fifteen billion dollars of liquidity, I mean that
at max It's it could be way less, because that
is just the combination that they're funding and in and
out revenue, and also putting aside the fact that neither
I own nor open Ai have actually settled on a product.
Hardware is hard, research and development is expensive. Apple spends
tens of billions of dollars a year on it, and

(09:04):
so it's manufacturing, especially if this device is meant to
be smaller than the smartphone, and especially in the era
of tariffs, unless they assume that those will be gone
by them, which they won't. Worse still, the margins on
hardware are much lower, about ten to twenty percent, and
there isn't a chance in hell that using this device
won't require you to subscribe to chat GPT, which means
users will have to pay the subscription fee on top
of this theoretical device and also be pinging chat GPT servers,

(09:27):
which are expensive and unsustainable and up unprofitable to run.
Even I swear I should be able to say unprofitable
by now I say it enough fucking times. I should
also add that if there's one thing that Sam Mortman
has proven, it's that he's fundamentally bad at product Well.
Chat GPT might be popular, it's hard to say what
it really does, which you can get away with when
your free software is hoped by every media out there

(09:49):
in the world, but can't with a device that will
likely cost hundreds of dollars. Open Eye has also proven
that it's not very good at making the kind of
seamless and effortless product that companies like Apple are known for.
And let's be real, with what money are they building
this crap? You can't pay factories in stock In any case,
this is a desperate move made by open Ai to
try and bolster the valuation of a company that's lost

(10:10):
the plot if they ever found it. If anything, this
device suggests a fundamental lack in chat GPT as a product,
and while boosters may frame this as the next generation
of open Ai, it feels more like a smokescreen to
convince people that this company isn't washed. Members of the
media treat this company with suspicion and demand that they
actually show you something before claiming this is the biggest,
most hugest move in Silicon Valley history. Don't embarrass yourself

(10:32):
by humoring these twerps.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Ed Zitron

Popular Podcasts

Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial

Betrayal: Season 4

Crime Junkie

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Monologue: Jony Ive and OpenAI's New BS Machine