Can an Apple lawsuit derail OpenAI’s hardware plans?
Can an Apple lawsuit derail OpenAI’s hardware plans?
苹果的诉讼会阻碍 OpenAI 的硬件计划吗？
Apple recently filed a trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the AI company of a pattern of misconduct aimed at getting current and former Apple employees to share confidential information. (In response, OpenAI said it is “not aware of any evidence that this complaint has merit.”)
苹果公司近日对 OpenAI 提起了一项商业机密诉讼，指控这家人工智能公司存在一系列不当行为，旨在诱导苹果现任及前任员工泄露机密信息。（对此，OpenAI 回应称：“目前没有任何证据表明该指控成立。”）
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I debated whether this lawsuit will cast a shadow over OpenAI’s much-discussed plans to get into the hardware business (starting with a mobile smart speaker) and go public.
在 TechCrunch 的《Equity》播客最新一期节目中，Kirsten Korosec、Sean O’Kane 和我共同探讨了这起诉讼是否会给 OpenAI 备受关注的硬件业务计划（从移动智能音箱开始）及上市进程蒙上阴影。
“Even setting aside whether or not the court grants any kind of injunctive relief or any kind of restraining order over what OpenAI is doing, it just naturally can lead to that sort of situation where it’s going to cause some delays in what OpenAI is working on,” Sean suggested. “Which I’m sure was probably part of the reasoning behind Apple doing this. They don’t do this stuff willy nilly.”
“即便不考虑法院是否会针对 OpenAI 的行为发布任何禁令或限制令，这自然也会导致 OpenAI 目前的工作进度受到延误，” Sean 表示，“我相信这很可能也是苹果采取行动的原因之一。他们做事从不随心所欲。”
With all those plans on the line, will OpenAI try to settle this as quickly as possible, or did it learn from its recent courtroom victory against Elon Musk that it can endure the cost and embarrassment of a trial? Kirsten, at least, predicts the latter. Keep reading for a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
面对这些计划，OpenAI 是会选择尽快和解，还是从近期与埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）的法庭胜利中吸取经验，认为自己能够承受审判带来的成本与尴尬？至少 Kirsten 预测是后者。以下是我们对话的节选，为篇幅和清晰度进行了编辑。
Kirsten Korosec: Sean, how do you feel about Sam Altman listening to you with a little device maybe in your pocket?
Kirsten Korosec： Sean，如果 Sam Altman 可能通过你口袋里的小设备监听你，你感觉如何？
Sean O’Kane: I’m good. Maybe that’s predictable, but I’m good. No thanks. We’ll get into it, I’m sure, but this is allegedly the first product that OpenAI has been working on in its hardware division with Jony Ive and company. They’ve been really coy ever since that weird video they put out last year of them sitting at that coffee shop or bar in San Francisco and sort of talking very vaguely about hardware and legacy devices, meaning laptops and phones. And so if this is the direction they’re headed in, all power to people who want to have somebody like that always listening to them. This is not going to be for me.
Sean O’Kane： 我拒绝。这可能在预料之中，但我拒绝。谢谢，不用了。我相信我们稍后会深入讨论，但这据称是 OpenAI 硬件部门与 Jony Ive 团队合作的首款产品。自从去年他们发布那段奇怪的视频以来，他们一直遮遮掩掩——视频里他们坐在旧金山的一家咖啡馆或酒吧里，含糊其辞地谈论硬件和传统设备（指笔记本电脑和手机）。如果这就是他们的发展方向，那么对于那些愿意让别人随时监听自己的人，我表示尊重。但这不适合我。
Anthony Ha: Part of what we have to remember about those kinds of devices is also that, depending on how mobile it is, it’s not just listening to you, it’s listening to the people around you. I might be fine with it — I’m not fine with it, but let’s say I was — but then if we met up in-person at Disrupt, then suddenly it might be listening to all of us. There’s all kinds of social norms that are going to have to be renegotiated if these things become widespread. I think we should make fun of and criticize people who record other people without consent.
Anthony Ha： 我们必须记住，这类设备取决于其移动性，它不仅是在监听你，还在监听你周围的人。我可能对此无所谓——其实我并不接受，但假设我接受了——那么如果我们在线下 Disrupt 大会上见面，它可能突然就在监听我们所有人。如果这些设备普及，各种社会规范都将不得不重新协商。我认为我们应该嘲笑并批评那些未经同意就录制他人的人。
Kirsten: Well, I bring up the device that has been speculated about for a really long time, and we’ll see what it really ends up being once it’s officially introduced, but it’s important in the context of this lawsuit that Apple filed last Friday. It was the biggest news of the week, certainly, and this is a trade secret lawsuit. It has some pretty wild allegations and we should very much emphasize these are allegations that have been filed in a complaint by Apple. But what it is accusing OpenAI of is a pattern of misconduct at the highest levels, specifically directed towards OpenAI employees who used to work at Apple. And in fact they’ve named the chief hardware officer Tang Tan in this lawsuit. This is all important because Apple is accusing OpenAI of essentially stealing their trade secrets, but in the context of that, this could be then used for a competing hardware product. I’m wondering if maybe we don’t get into whether this lawsuit has merits, because we haven’t gone through full discovery, but what are your initial impressions of the lawsuit aside from the fact that wow, this is going to be entertaining?
Kirsten： 我提到这个被猜测已久的设备，是因为它在苹果上周五提起的这起诉讼背景下显得尤为重要。这无疑是本周最大的新闻，这是一起商业机密诉讼。其中包含了一些相当惊人的指控，我们必须强调，这些只是苹果在诉状中提出的指控。但它指控 OpenAI 在最高层存在一系列不当行为，专门针对那些曾在苹果工作过的 OpenAI 员工。事实上，他们还在诉讼中点名了硬件主管 Tang Tan。这一切都很重要，因为苹果指控 OpenAI 本质上是在窃取其商业机密，而这些机密可能被用于开发竞争性的硬件产品。我不想讨论这起诉讼是否有理，因为我们还没有进行全面的证据开示，但除了“这会很有看头”之外，你对这起诉讼的初步印象是什么？
Sean: Two things. One, this is a pretty big risk potentially to whatever it is OpenAI is working on. Even setting aside whether or not the court grants any kind of injunctive relief or any kind of restraining order over what OpenAI is doing, it just naturally can lead to that sort of situation where it’s going to cause some delays in what OpenAI is working on, which I’m sure was probably part of the reasoning behind Apple doing this. They don’t do this stuff willy nilly. The other is that we think that OpenAI is — we know that they’ve filed confidentially for an IPO. We think it might happen as early as the end of this year, or early next year, if you believe Sam Altman’s cautious language around the IPO. And this just raises a whole bunch of questions around that because, on the one hand, we think their business right now is probably overwhelmingly the software; they’re not really factoring in any hardware business into that picture at the moment. They’re about to go to the markets and they’re going to be pitching bankers and investors on where they think their addressable market should be, and if they have a big amount of that pegged to a potential hardware division and hardware products, this could be a huge risk to that and changes a lot of the calculus of sort of how the IPO gets priced. So that’s where my head’s at.
Sean： 两点。第一，这对 OpenAI 正在进行的任何项目都构成了巨大的潜在风险。即便不考虑法院是否会发布禁令或限制令，这自然也会导致 OpenAI 的工作进度延误，我相信这正是苹果采取行动的原因之一。他们做事从不随心所欲。第二，我们知道 OpenAI 已经秘密提交了 IPO 申请。如果相信 Sam Altman 关于 IPO 的谨慎措辞，我们认为这最早可能在今年年底或明年年初发生。这引发了一系列问题：一方面，我们认为他们目前的业务绝大部分是软件；他们目前并没有将任何硬件业务纳入考量。他们即将进入市场，向银行家和投资者推销他们的潜在市场规模，如果他们将很大一部分估值押注在潜在的硬件部门和产品上，这可能会带来巨大风险，并改变 IPO 定价的逻辑。这就是我的看法。
Anthony: One [allegation] that I assume that Apple must have pretty solid like numbers on is, they said more than 400 Apple employees now work at OpenAI. Granted, both of them are very large companies with many thousands or tens of thousands of employees. So as a percentage, it’s not necessarily huge. But that seems like a lot of people and a pretty serious talent drain. And the other thing I’m wondering is related to Sean’s point. With the context of the potential IPO, how much damage did OpenAI ultimately take from a marketing and brand perspective from the trial it already went through? That it seemed to basically win, but there was a lot of not-terrible-but-kind-of-embarrassing dirty laundry that came out in the testimony. To what extent are they just like, “We do not want to go through that again”? Or did they take the lesson of, “Hey, we went through it and we survived and we’ll be o
Anthony： 我认为苹果掌握了相当确凿的数据，即他们声称现在有超过 400 名苹果员工在 OpenAI 工作。诚然，这两家都是拥有数千甚至数万名员工的大公司，所以从比例上看，这未必很大。但 400 人看起来确实不少，这是一种相当严重的人才流失。我担心的另一件事与 Sean 的观点有关。在潜在 IPO 的背景下，OpenAI 从之前的审判中在营销和品牌层面受到了多大的损害？虽然他们似乎基本赢了，但在证词中暴露出了许多虽然不致命但相当尴尬的“丑闻”。他们会在多大程度上觉得“我们不想再经历一次了”？还是他们吸取了教训，认为“嘿，我们经历过并活了下来，我们会……”