Tim Cook Controls the iPhone, So He’s the New AI Kingmaker
Apple’s deal with OpenAI acknowledges the company is behind on artificial intelligence, but make no mistake, it’s temporary outsourcing.
Sam Altman, interested observer.
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Over the past year and a half, many have been desperate to share a stage with artificial intelligence wunderkind Sam Altman. Microsoft Corp. couldn’t wait to wheel out the OpenAI co-founder to show how ahead of the game it was; world leaders stood beside him to show how they were in the loop on the future; and conference organizers contorted their schedules to accommodate the most powerful man in the world of AI.
Yet, while Altman was in attendance at Apple’s developer conference on Monday, he was a spectator like almost everyone else. It was disappointing for him, you might think, because it was arguably the most significant public moment so far in OpenAI’s short history: ChatGPT is on the cusp of gaining hundreds of millions of new users through the world’s most popular devices. Beginning later this year, iPhone, iPad and Mac users — if they own a sufficiently up-to-date model — will be directed to ChatGPT to answer complex queries that need “world context.”