Jony Ive and Laurene Powell Jobs – founder and president of the Emerson Collective, and Steve’s widow – have acknowledged that the iPhone played a role in the “dark” side of technology.
Ive has also said that his mysterious hardware AI device would not be happening without the support and investment of Powell Jobs …
We heard more than a year ago that Jony Ive and Sam Altman were seeking a billion dollars in funding for the device, and that they were in investment talks with Powell Jobs. We noted at the time that then entrepreneur and philanthropist was close friends with both Ive and Altman, having known each of them for decades.
It appears those talks were successful, given that they participated in a joint Financial Times interview to at least allude to it. Ive said that his entire company LoveFrom would not have happened without her support.
Powell Jobs, whose Emerson Collective owns The Atlantic magazine and has a philanthropy arm alongside investments in health, education and fintech companies, backed LoveFrom after Ive left Apple in 2019. “If it wasn’t for Laurene,” he says, “there wouldn’t be LoveFrom.”
The pair admit that technology like smartphones has a “dark” side to it.
Powell Jobs believes “people are still animated” by the idea that technology can be a force for good but adds a caveat. “We now know, unambiguously, that there are dark uses for certain types of technology. You can only look at the studies being done on teenage girls and on anxiety in young people, and the rise of mental health needs, to understand that we’ve gone sideways. Certainly, technology wasn’t designed to have that result. But that is the sideways result.”
Ive agrees. “If you make something new, if you innovate, there will be consequences unforeseen, and some will be wonderful and some will be harmful.” He acknowledges his own role in the products that have changed our relationship with technology. “While some of the less positive consequences were unintentional, I still feel responsibility. And the manifestation of that is a determination to try and be useful.”
While neither is giving anything away about the nature of the new hardware, Powell Jobs implies that it won’t compete directly with Apple’s current product line-up – or at least, that she doesn’t want it to.
“I’m still very close to the leadership team in Apple. They’re really good people and I want them to succeed also.”
Ive said that the new project had reignited his optimism about technology.
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