Microsoft's Satya Nadella Worried About an OpenAI-Apple Deal, Report Says

Microsoft seems to be concerned about some of OpenAI's business dealings. From a report: Satya Nadella recently met with Sam Altman to discuss an apparent deal between OpenAI and Apple, The Information reported [hard-paywalled]. According to the outlet, the OpenAI CEO recently reached an agreement with the iPhone maker to incorporate some OpenAI services into Apple products. Nadella was reportedly concerned about the potential impact of a deal on Microsoft's product ambitions, per the report. Apple was said to be considering both Google and OpenAI for the deal, which could be worth billions.

If OpenAI has indeed reached an agreement with Apple, it would be a much-needed win for Altman. The tech boss has faced heightened scrutiny after former employees and board members publicly criticized him. Helen Toner, a former OpenAI director, recently accused Altman of lying to the board "multiple" times and "withholding information."

Re:

[Z00L00K]

Nadella should be more concerned about the crappification and privacy intrusion by recent Windows versions.

Re:

[Tablizer]

Then it wouldn't be Microsoft.

Decline the risk, decline the reward

[omnichad]

Microsoft didn't want to be financially liable for the mass copyright infringement that OpenAI is involved with. They would rather invest and use them as a service provider. That's fine. But they aren't going to be the only customer. It's not like they didn't have a chance to make an offer to buy.

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[Tablizer]

Why would Apple accept such risk then? Or do they just want to partner on projects?

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[ACForever]

apple has more lawyers than programmers, OpenAI has no idea what its in for if its made a deal with apple.

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[omnichad]

They're just licensing from OpenAI. Still leaving all the risks with OpenAI.

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[omnichad]

OpenAI's only selling point is their trained model. The code to run an LLM is pretty standard. Apple doesn't need access to anything to copy that. Apple would still have to go to the effort and expense of training their own model.

Siri

[LazarusQLong]

Ya know, if Apple had hired the original developers of Siri to constantly upgrade that software, perhaps they wouldn't be seeking to ink a deal with Altman. I mean $150K/per year for the last 15 years times however many developers were involved with the original Siri has got to be at least a few dozen Olympic swimming pools worth of $100 bills less than they are talking about paying Altman

Re:

[Tablizer]

Did the Siri team bet on the wrong tech, or did they just not get funding for needed incremental improvements?

Siri AI had an early-mover advantage, and somehow squandered it.

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[NoMoreACs]

Did the Siri team bet on the wrong tech, or did they just not get funding for needed incremental improvements?

Siri AI had an early-mover advantage, and somehow squandered it.

Siri turned out to be nearly impossible to update spaghetti code; that's why it fell behind.

Apple is quietly working on a ground-up redesign.

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[LazarusQLong]

thanks for sharing that, I knew it before Apple bought it, as a new product from a startup, but was not aware that they weren't following best practices in designing it and coding it

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[NoMoreACs]

thanks for sharing that, I knew it before Apple bought it, as a new product from a startup, but was not aware that they weren't following best practices in designing it and coding it

Apparently, it was a cute Parlor-Trick, and for its time, pretty good at text2speech; but also apparently, Apple didn't check under the hood enough...

No wonder the original Developers took the money and (eventually) ran...

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[LazarusQLong]

yeah, I bought it back when it was a private product/not owned by Apple as well. It wasn't very useful, but it could do some things, then Apple bought them out and improved it a little bit, and that was that as far as I can tell.

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[NoMoreACs]

yeah, I bought it back when it was a private product/not owned by Apple as well. It wasn't very useful, but it could do some things, then Apple bought them out and improved it a little bit, and that was that as far as I can tell.

I think Apple didn't look too closely partly because St. Jobs liked that it was essentially "Done", and because Apple thought they were safe; because they were getting the main Developers, too. . .

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[LazarusQLong]

I like to pretend that there was a plan Apple had to update it regularly, but other projects came along that, "Saint' Jobs wanted to push, feeling his mortality and all, and so some of those projects got dropped by the wayside, and the guy running Apple these days (I forget his name) has other priorities he wants to push.

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[LazarusQLong]

Apple has updated it, once or twice in the past 14 or so years. Just not with any consistent frequency.

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[timeOday]

It's surprising that neither Siri, Alexa, nor Google Assistant rode the wave of LLM progress to become steadily smarter and more useful. It would be interesting to get the inside story on that.

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[93 Escort Wagon]

I think Siri is pretty terrible; but I have to say she's never told me to eat one small rock a day or use glue on my pizza.

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[ACForever]

No she would just find that on the web for you.

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[93 Escort Wagon]

Well, assuming she didn't pick that time to randomly decide she was offline...

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[LazarusQLong]

yeah, I find her not bad, and like you she has never suggested that one should eat a rock, once a day for best health or that I should put glue on my pizza either. But, I ask her to text my wife while driving, and she seems about 50/50 for me in getting the text right

That makes me happy!

[jenningsthecat]

It's good to know that Satya is "worried". More of that, please!

Microsoft gave up on phones and web browsers

[xack]

Windows and Office, enforced by kernel anti cheat for games is the only thing keeping them going. They gave up Encarta too easily as well and Xbox is just a locked down pc. If Apple can use their silicon to make gpus that burst Nvidias bubble Microsoft is in trouble. We are still feeling the effects of the iphone and ipad on Microsoft to this day, Apple making a version of Siri that actually works will be another "chair throwing" moment for Microsoft.

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[drhamad]

Microsoft Cloud services are the largest generator of income in the company.

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[CapS]

It's a good thing Microsoft isn't forcibly expanding their customers' use of their cloud products by auto-installing services like Copilot and OneDrive into Windows and Office. Oh wait...

Re:Microsoft gave up on phones and web browsers

[Anubis IV]

Windows and Office, enforced by kernel anti cheat for games is the only thing keeping them going.

Not so. In reality, the two pieces you say are all they have left aren't even—together—as big as Azure [visualcapitalist.com].

A lot of nerds who operate outside cloud development don't realize how much Microsoft has transformed as a business in the last decade, since the parts that they see as consumers or power users or even as non-cloud developers have been dying off or becoming less relevant. But while that was happening, Satya Nadella was the head of an ascendant Azure before eventually taking the reins of the whole company. Microsoft could see the writing on the wall then and executed a successful pivot.

I do agree that this could be a chair throwing moment for them (were Nadella prone to such outbursts), however. Just like the Internet and smartphones disrupted how pretty much everything in the world works, AI seems poised to do the same. How that'll happen, no one seems to know, but Microsoft smells the opportunity and wants to win it. That said, an early head start didn't help them win the smartphone wars. Nor has throwing money at the problem helped them make significant headway with game consoles or search engines. Seems to me that it's still anyone's game.

it's in the name

[Kryptonut]

OPEN to deals that make a shitload of money....AI

Altman will be just fine

[timeOday]

If OpenAI has indeed reached an agreement with Apple, it would be a much-needed win for Altman. The tech boss has faced heightened scrutiny after former employees and board members publicly criticized him. Helen Toner, a former OpenAI director, recently accused Altman of lying to the board "multiple" times and "withholding information."

I don't see why the author thinks such comments are an actual problem for Altman.

I bet he is ..

[Mirnotoriety]

Doesn't OpenAI not realize that Microsoft's' ‘investment’ is but the first part of the strategy to gut it of it's intellectual property and then hire on the staff at MicrosoftAI.

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[bloodhawk]

To be fair that is far more likely to be what happens with Apple. Microsoft tend to just buy the whole company.

Oh noes! Now Bing will never dominate the world

[thesjaakspoiler]

This might actually be a good development.

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[nextTimeIsTheLast]

I've never been able to take Bing seriously, to me the name "bing" just sounds so fucking stupid it completely puts me off using it (and also that I hate every MS product with the exception of VSCode).

Satya Nadella

[RitchCraft]

Fucking clown.