Apple’s Phil Schiller may join OpenAI’s board

Apple Fellow and App Store head Phil Schiller may have something else to fill his time, taking an observer role on the OpenAI board, a Financial Times report claims. It’s yet another signal of the importance Big Tech now attaches to generative AI.

Schiller hasn’t attended a meeting yet but is expected to take the role as ChatGPT support is rolled into Apple devices. There is a precedent to this. The firm’s other Big Tech partner, Microsoft, also holds an observer’s seat on the board.

Some might say

Some might say the decision to bring Apple more fully inside the tent means OpenAI hopes to persuade Apple to integrate its tech more deeply into Apple products. It seems unlikely that Apple will easily be convinced to move beyond a certain point, in part because it is expected to work with other AI suppliers (principally Google Gemini), but also on strength of its own investments in Apple Intelligence and future fee-based AI services. It seems far more likely to reflect the need to ensure good governance.

Think back and you’ll remember that Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, gained its own observer’s seat after the November 2023 boardroom battle at OpenAI during which co-founder Sam Altman was fired and then rehired as CEO. 

The truth is neither Apple nor Microsoft will want to countenance poor governance or flawed results as they make the tech available to the world’s population of Windows, Mac, Surface, iPad, and iPhone users. 

Wonderwall

Holding positions, even nonvoting observer positions, on the OpenAI board may help them protect against that, and those roles may expand should Altman’s board have a second meltdown, or in the event the company becomes an acquisition target for either, both, or another big firm.

Microsoft and Apple may also recognize the need to both partner and support AI firms while also developing their own tech, particularly in light of increased regulatory interest in the sector. The US Federal Trade Commission earlier this year launched an inquiry into the partnerships between Big Tech firms and genAI companies. 

“Our study will shed light on whether investments and partnerships pursued by dominant companies risk distorting innovation and undermining fair competition,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan in a statement at that time.

Definitely maybe

Competitive concerns aside, the swift evolution of these technologies has thrown a very large brick into the middle of the tech industry pond. Not only does server-based AI generate problems around energy and water supply, but hardware manufacturers are hustling to make or deploy devices with enough computational horsepower to handle this form of AI. Even Apple appears to have been forced to accelerate progress along its processor road map — the M4 MacBook Air was a huge surprise, and with additional M4 models set to ship this year and expectation now that all iPhone models will gain their own higher-end chip, it’s crystal clear the hardware is being tooled up to handle genAI.

There is, however, a limit to what is possible, so it makes sense for Apple — and Microsoft — to gain insight into OpenAI’s future plans, which will both inform their own product development and help guide OpenAI’s. 

Standing on the shoulder of giants

In Apple’s case, the company is also developing its own Apple Intelligence strategy with the introduction of on-device and self-hosted AI models to handle some common tasks, and an anticipated intention to monetize that work somewhere down the line.

Along the way, the company will also be exposing ChatGPT tech to hundreds of millions of people who may never have experienced it before — after all, even though most of the planet now has a smartphone, they may never have experienced artificial intelligence at this level before.  

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More by Jonny Evans:

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