Comment: Jony, oh Jony, why have you left us?

Contents

Sir Jonathan Paul Ive, known as Jony, likes to talk about his philosophical and creative ideals. In a recent hour-long interview, he once again emphasized how important it is to him that people in Silicon Valley are not primarily concerned with money and power, but with making the world a better place. He also frequently mentions the long design tradition in which he sees himself. Or how he has learned from many talented people and how proud he is to work with his highly talented team at his design company, LoveFrom, which incidentally consists largely of former (and apparently frustrated) Apple designers. Every day he looks forward to entering the company premises, he says, it is a privilege.

So Ive celebrates human creativity and, according to his statements, still knows how much work it takes to nurture an idea until it grows into a strong product. However, one question must be allowed: Why in the name of three devils is he then teaming up with Sam Altman from OpenAI, a company that is potentially taking jobs away from creatives and idea people? To put it bluntly, it is ultimately a form of betrayal of Ive's ideals. Because: the creative industry is likely to experience an acceleration of its decline in the coming years “thanks” to AI and Ive and team are now at the forefront of this.

Airbnb, King Charles, Ferrari

You might have known it, though: What Ive done with LoveFrom so far is anything but revolutionary. In part, it seems like an expensive hobby for the 58-year-old: He redesigned the Airbnb app (a company hated by city dwellers for its negative rental market influence), designed a logo for the British king (which British democracy activists didn't like), helped design Ferrari (for the 1 percent of the 1 percent) and created buttons (for luxury brands unaffordable by many people). Now the AI gadget. Somehow it fits.

Anyway, it all appears very weird. Even the video of the sealed partnership, which did the rounds last week, is pretty crazy. We see the two friends, Ive and Altman (the friendship between the two is communicated via a text overlay) walking alone through the Jackson Square district in San Francisco, as if they weren't both always out and about with a squad of security guards. The film crew commissioned by OpenAI, of course, worked with extras who crossed Altman and Ives' paths in response to an “action” from the director. It's an amazingly artificial world that opens up here, especially when you know that Ive personally bought up half the neighborhood.

Coffee at the bar

Then Altman and Ive reach a bar, where they first have coffee – and a voiceover asks them about their plans. Information content of the clip: close to zero. All that is ultimately clear is that OpenAI believes it needs a “third category” of device between MacBook and iPhone (the brand names are mentioned) and that ChatGPT is still stuck in the “terminal phase”. Altman even says that he currently has to take out his notebook to ask ChatGPT questions and then wait for an answer. Does the man not know his voice mode in the ChatGPT mobile app? But no, that will be done later by Ive's “io” gadget, as the joint company is called.

It's surprising that Ive doesn't seem to notice what kind of company he's working with here. After all, it is a company that profits from the enormous creativity of mankind without having much to gain from it. At the same time, artists, authors and other creatives are potentially being forced out of their jobs – and OpenAI would prefer not to pay a penny for the use of copyrighted material because it is all just “training”.

AI between a tree and a bark

Of course, AI is unstoppable. And it is also enormously helpful, fun and enriching. But it would only work socially if the industry adhered to rules, which in fact it simply does not. This includes ensuring that training data is adequately remunerated and that the creatives responsible share in the output. Companies must not make promises that they cannot keep. If AI systems are only trained on benchmarks, reasoning models are ultimately just a power-hungry show and the issue of hallucination simply cannot be adequately tackled, this should be acknowledged. The entire industry is currently running in one direction because that's where the money is: big voice models.

But maybe it's not so smart to brute-force AI into people's brains? Does it really make sense to consume 43 times more electricity so that an AI model can solve a simple arithmetic task that could be done by calculator to save energy? And Jony Ive stands for all this now? Why is he doing this for billions in the form of OpenAI shares? But maybe that's the case: The iPhone already had massive negative consequences. It was so beautiful and elegant that we are almost all addicted to smartphones today. Should the same thing now happen with an AI gadget? Do we really want that?

Empfohlener redaktioneller Inhalt

Mit Ihrer Zustimmung wird hier ein externer Preisvergleich (heise Preisvergleich) geladen.

Preisvergleiche immer laden Preisvergleich jetzt laden

Ich bin damit einverstanden, dass mir externe Inhalte angezeigt werden. Damit können personenbezogene Daten an Drittplattformen (heise Preisvergleich) übermittelt werden. Mehr dazu in unserer Datenschutzerklärung.

(bsc)