I guess I’ll have to write about it, but that ludicrous and doomed Jony Ive / Sam Altman thing finally makes sense to me: they want to get acquired by Apple, NeXT-style, oust Tim Cook, fix Apple / get revenge on Cook / get Apple competing better in AI / etc. I’d assume Altman would be CEO and Ive would have some dorky title he makes up.

There’s really no other reason to overpay old Ive for a quixotic attempt at Humane 2.0, but pressure has been mounting on Tim Cook, OpenAI is facing margin problems due to commodification and actually could use an immense exit of the scale only Apple could provide, and “King of the Cannibals” Sam has maneuvered around shareholder / governance issues like this before. It’s really the sort of outcome that almost wills itself into existence as a variation on themes from Silicon Valley’s past!

The correct way to understand this (completely insane) photograph is as the two of them looking at Tim Cook, and this also explains why they made a vague, embarrassing, splashy announcement rather than remembering what Jobs said: “Real artists ship.” These two have no intention of making some doohickey that costs too much, overheats, and gets mocked on Twitter. They want to run Apple. Maybe they will!