Apple No Longer in Talks to Invest in ChatGPT Maker OpenAI

[9081094]

Think Different. A very smart move and expected. Hat tip to Apple for going their own way, putting a premium on user privacy.

All of the inane negative comments above are also expected.

Why do you think Apple stepped out because of privacy issues? Is that a statement from Apple?

If Apple cared more about privacy than money they would have made DuckDuckGo the default search engine instead of google. Oh wait… Apple receives 20 billion a year by doing so.

 

[citysnaps]

Why do you think Apple stepped out because of privacy issues? Is that a statement from Apple?

If Apple cared more about privacy than money they would have made DuckDuckGo the default search engine instead of google. Oh wait… Apple receives 20 billion a year by doing so.

No... it's conjecture on my part after Apple making statements their entry into AI will put a high premium on privacy.

 

[GrantNeufeld]

Good. OpenAI is looking quite bad these days, especially now that they are moving to abandon the safety and security priorities that they were originally supposed to be based on—moving to pure profit motive by eliminating the non-profit governance.

And the generative-AI/LLM folks have still not been held to account for the mass abuse of private and copyright materials.

 

[tgwaste]

Is that all you think Apple Intelligence is? A summarizer?

Ive seen nothing at all impressive or revolutionary about it.

 

[tgwaste]

No... it's conjecture on my part after Apple making statements their entry into AI will put a high premium on privacy.

Apple stepped out because they had a long list of demands that were not met. Apples intentions and the way they do business should be a no brainer at this point.

 

[citysnaps]

Apple stepped out because they had a long list of demands that were not met. Apples intentions and the way they do business should be a no brainer at this point.

I suspect a lot of those demands ultimately related to insisting on Apple customer privacy. And could not be met partnering with others.

 

[VulchR]

As an Apple stockholder (via index funds), this seems foolish as the value of their investment in OpenAI is almost guaranteed to print significant sums of money over time. Even if they sold their stake after just a couple of years.

And FWIW, I think AI will be as ubiquitous as the internet in 20 years, and this current aversion to AI will be laughable when everyone is using it daily.

I wonder if Apple looked at the astronomically staggering energy costs of LLM's (see for instance https://futurism.com/the-byte/environment-openai-chatgpt), both in terms of money (the costs would be as volatile as energy prices presumably) and in terms of carbon footprint, and balked at the deal.

 

[roar08]

They've seen behind the curtain ... gonna Sherlock ChatGPT.

 

[Cameront9]

I mean you're not wrong but that's kind of ironic considering the history of Apple, Microsoft, and Xerox.

Apple didn't steal anything from Xerox. They paid for it.

 

[Blue Nova]

Apple is stepping away for investing in ChatGPT because they are falling behind. It’s not gonna work across all their devices. ChatGPT requires operating system iOS 18.1 which has not been released yet. Many phones are obsolete. Many iPads are obsolete and that will be a big issue for them it might take another year or two more recent device so he will With the ChatGPT AI that they are promising

 

[Fraserpatty]

Been running 18.1 Siri can rewrite and summarize but can’t do complex searches or answer complex series of questions which is a huge bummer. ChatGPT does however so I can see the desire to integrate giving a quick answer to androids that somehow have been doing this for 5 years.

Can Siri finally search your photos again like she was able to a couple of iOS versions ago, or do you still have to manually search it?

 

[CarAnalogy]

Apple didn't steal anything from Xerox. They paid for it.

Yeah maybe not the best example, I was thinking of the Bill Gates tale of "we both had a neighbor named Xerox and I broke in to steal his TV and found you had already stolen it." Good artists copy, great artists steal, etc. Xerox also wasn't commercializing it.

I don't like the way they did it but the AI companies for better or worse are doing a lot of the same thing the early tech companies did. Taking advantage of what they can while they can without asking permission.

Google did it first by indexing the internet and using all that to their advantage. This is the next stage of the same idea.

 

[fullauto]

If Sam’s in bed with Jonny Ive to make a device that could potentially compete with Apple, I’m not surprised.

 

[wigby]

AI is the biggest con going. They're about to roll out to bloatware on all the new phones.

We can add this to their pile of recent failures such as Airpower, VisionPro, Apple Car. They just seem to sit in Apple HQ and think 'I just came up with a great idea' and they throw billions at it and then realise later on it wasn't a good idea.

So far VisionPro is a success because it met Apple's expectations in terms of shipping units. Maybe it didn't meet yours and some other users but like AI, it's very early days for spatial computing. AirPower was never released and Apple Car didn't even hit a drivable prototype stage so those are not failures. Like any engineering and design company, Apple probably has dozens of products you never heard of that didn't make the cut. It's a success to not release those because they are saving billions and avoiding unhappy customers.

AI is not a con. It's just a tool which can be used for many things good and bad. But it's very real and very powerful in the hands of people that do not dismiss it so fast. We are still the hype stages of investment so huge numbers are being thrown around because everyone wants a seat at the table. That doesn't make it a con.

 

[wigby]

ChatGPT is 1 out of like 20 Apple Intelligence features announced.
I don't know why people think Apple Intelligence IS ChatGPT & OpenAI.

I think people are assuming that the only good AI worth using in Apple devices will be ChatGPT because Siri has been so disappointing for over 10 years now. It's a branding problem that Apple will hopefully sort out starting with Apple Intelligence.

 

[Seoras]

AI is the worst thing that has happened to Tech the past 2 years. Apple should had just focused solely on Siri. That alone would had been significantly better than using tech that is very dangerous for the masses.
We need iOS 6 style of refinement 🥺 but perfected even more. Instead of this iOS 18 mess.

I'm a professional software engineer with 35 years experience.
It's the best thing that's happened to me, in my entire career, in my opinion.
Not only is it (Open AI models that I subscribe to) enabling me to complete work 5-10x faster than I ever have but it also educates me in programming languages I've never used before and, even though can be wrong, allows me to sound off ideas on "someone" quickly.
On top of that I'm selling OpenAI's product through my own software services at a sweet markup thus making more money than I've made in years.

Care to explain to me, and everyone else, why you think it's the "the worst thing that has happened to Tech the past 2 years." ?
Cause I just don't see it...

As for Apple pulling out. Who cares?
Apple are expert investors and Sam has a track record of being "careless with the truth".

PS o1 is just phenominal. (I'm a Tier 5, been using it since launch)

 

[svish]

Good to know about this.

 

[timber]

So the iPhone screens, laptops etc. the Samsung panels are what? Just curious what you mean by that

Tech they consider commodities or for some reason still aren't able to do by themselves (radio modems for exemple).

 

[bayportbob]

wonder if all the turmoil in the chatgpt management team made them rethink things there.

Open AI is just smoke & mirrors, I could say a lot worse about Sam Altman....
Apple have simply seen through it all and will go their own way, once they recruit some top engineers again, because their current recruitment strategy is definitely not working

some of AI is "just smoke and mirrors", in the mid 90's we were doing neural nets and fuzzy logic successfully but never made a product because the computing horsepower was not there to make it worthwhile. if we had the horsepower of an M4 chip and "high speed" wireless then we would be celebrating over 25 years of "AI" today...

 

[dylanw]

It really does all look pretty dubious: https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/

 

[BigBellyBelcher]

Can Siri finally search your photos again like she was able to a couple of iOS versions ago, or do you still have to manually search it?

Yes, and pretty well but maybe not as well as it should as an ai feature but rn if you ask Siri what ai features are available she mentions voice changes and notification summary. Hopefully more is added sooner than later.

 

[VulchR]

wonder if all the turmoil in the chatgpt management team made them rethink things there.



some of AI is "just smoke and mirrors", in the mid 90's we were doing neural nets and fuzzy logic successfully but never made a product because the computing horsepower was not there to make it worthwhile. if we had the horsepower of an M4 chip and "high speed" wireless then we would be celebrating over 25 years of "AI" today...

We don't really have the technology now to use these large AI systems economically. One chip sure won't be enough when the models are representing trillions of free parameters. What is happening now seems to be akin to proof of concept, and the price of using LLM's will escalate as companies count the true cost in terms of energy and required hardware. Commercialisation through optimisation might take decades. Just my two cents...