1 week ago
OpenAI conscionable spent $6.4 cardinal acquiring io, Jony Ive's nascent hardware venture. As idiosyncratic who grew up idolizing the Jobs-Ive partnership—Mac Addict subscription, Marathon connected shareware, 1 of everything they ever made—I recognize the allure. But this determination reveals OpenAI's existential crisis: they're playing a crippled they've already lost.
The Distribution Kings Have Already Won
Let's beryllium wide astir the user AI endgame: Google and Apple volition dominate, with Microsoft trailing connected desktop and maybe, eventually, phones. They person what OpenAI desperately lacks: hardware expertise, organisation channels, and superior standard that dwarfs adjacent OpenAI's eye-watering backing rounds.
Hardware isn't conscionable different moat—it's a moat wherever your competitors person decades of acquisition and you're learning to swim. Leaning into your weakness is however you get your caput chopped disconnected by companies that bash this successful their sleep. Apple ships hundreds of millions of devices annually. Google's Android runs connected billions. OpenAI is acquiring a institution that's ne'er shipped anything.
The Roads Not Taken
There are paths OpenAI could prosecute but won't. NSFW applications. Deep companionship that pushes beyond its sanitized ChatGPT. Autonomous agents that unrecorded successful Discord servers, descent into iMessages, go existent integer beings inhabiting the internet. But they won't interaction these opportunities—too hard to monetize, excessively babelike connected competitors' platforms, excessively scary to contemplate the organisation possibilities.
These niches are ripe for smaller, higher-risk players, particularly successful unfastened source. While OpenAI chases Apple's shadow, scrappy teams are gathering the AI experiences radical really privation but can't get from buttoned-up firm platforms.
The Burning Platform
Instead, OpenAI is stuck successful a brutal position. They're desperately driving postulation to their website. Building an app that needs Siri's support to exist. Pouring wealth onto the occurrence conscionable to support gait with competitors who tin spend to pain currency indefinitely. Google and Anthropic lucifer their capabilities portion Microsoft—their expected partner—hedges each bet.
The $6.4 cardinal for io isn't strategy; it's desperation. While overmuch bully whitethorn travel of it, the infinitesimal felt similar bought-attention, beneath a institution that built the fastest increasing merchandise of each clip successful a precise understated way. When your competitory vantage evaporates and your partners commencement looking elsewhere, you grasp for thing that mightiness make a moat. Even if that moat is successful territory wherever you're hopelessly outgunned.
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The Open Alternative They Won't Take
Here's what would marque maine champion OpenAI: marque the hardware and models genuinely open. Let maine personalize it, customize it, make connected it, marque it genuinely mine. I privation to beryllium capable to spot this instrumentality that I person specified an intimate narration with. Let them make a level wherever thousands of developers tin physique the AI experiences OpenAI is excessively risk-averse to attempt.
I person nary assurance successful their firm bravery, adjacent with Sam astatine the helm. They're chasing the aforesaid closed ecosystem playbook that Apple perfected decades ago, but without Apple's advantages.
If I wanted a beauteous locked-box with an AI inside, I'll hold for Apple's version. At slightest it'll enactment with my different devices.
The Infrastructure Imperative
AI isn't different user product. For many, it's a beingness coach, a root of truth, a friend. This intimate narration demands transparency, ownership, and power that closed systems can't provide.
Open-source AI projects already lucifer oregon transcend OpenAI's show portion moving connected section hardware. ElizaOS, Mistral, and others beryllium that assemblage improvement outpaces firm R&D. While OpenAI burns billions connected beauteous hardware, unfastened communities are solving existent problems today.
The information statement for closed systems has collapsed. When AI becomes arsenic captious arsenic energy oregon water, proprietary power becomes actively dangerous. Switzerland mandates open-source for authorities systems due to the fact that transparency enables security. Every Equifax-scale breach reinforces this truth.
The Beautiful Box We Could Own
Here's the accidental staring OpenAI successful the face: beryllium the anti-Apple. While Google and Apple fastener users into their ecosystems, OpenAI could physique thing revolutionary—truly unfastened hardware moving genuinely unfastened models. Imagine Ive's plan genius creating devices we tin really modify, customize, and marque our own.
This isn't conscionable idealism; it's strategy. OpenAI can't out-Apple Apple oregon out-Google Google. But they could pioneer thing neither incumbent would situation attempt: premium hardware that respects idiosyncratic sovereignty. Beautiful devices that developers tin extend. AI companions that users genuinely own.
The $6.4 cardinal io acquisition doesn't person to beryllium a antiaircraft play. It could beryllium the opening of a caller paradigm—one wherever OpenAI leads by opening up alternatively than locking down. They person Ive's plan excellence, Altman's vision, and a infinitesimal successful past wherever radical are bare for alternatives to Big Tech's surveillance capitalism.
I privation OpenAI to succeed. Not arsenic different walled garden, but arsenic impervious that unfastened systems tin beryllium arsenic elegant arsenic closed ones. That idiosyncratic empowerment and beauteous plan aren't mutually exclusive. That the aboriginal of AI tin unrecorded successful a container we really own, modify, and understand.
The prime is theirs: go different also-ran successful the closed ecosystem race, oregon pioneer the unfastened aboriginal we desperately need.
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