- Altman and Ive say their AI gadget will be here in less than two years
- It will bring a calmer atmosphere than other current technologies
- It wants to know everything about you
Can a technical product be like a ‘cottage by a lake’? OpenAI CEO Sam Altman certainly thinks so. Altman and former Apple designer Jony Ive shared perhaps more than ever with Laurene Powell Jobs this week about the eagerly anticipated AI product coming from their joint venture: IO.
While we still don’t know much about the mysterious AI product, it’s clear that the new gadget will be different from most consumer electronics available today. Altman commented during a chat with Ive and Powell Jobs at the Emmerson Collective Demo Day that while the iPhone, which Ive designed, is the “crown of consumer products,” most of today’s devices and apps seem to fall under that label.
They make Altman feel “like I’m walking through Times Square in New York and all the time just dealing with all the little insults along the way, flashing lights in my face, tension going here, people bumping into me, like noise disappearing. And it’s an unsettling thing, you know, it’s like bright things, flashing messages coming in, like dopamine there and short attention spans here.”
In contrast, Altman said the device they’re building has enough contextual awareness not to bother you. Instead, it would know when to ask for information, when to present information. “And it just has this incredible contextual awareness of your whole life. You can then go for a vibe that’s not like walking through Times Square and getting bumped into and having all this stuff competing for your attention. But like sitting in the most beautiful cabin by a lake and in the mountains and kind of just enjoying the peace and quiet.”
The “vibe” that Altman. described it, coming soon-ish.
Powell Jobs pushed for the time frame for when we could finally see this mysterious device, asking if it could be in five years.
“Much earlier than that,” Ive started. Powell asked, “Two?” and I have followed, “I believe even less than that.”
Simple and portable?
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That’s surprising given recent reports that claimed the couple struggled with the device.
If there’s anything else to take away from this chat, it’s that this AI-rich product, which we expected to be loaded with the latest GPT models, will know everything about you, and it aims to be simple, possibly even simple.
Ive tried to make his intentions clear: “I can’t stand products that are like a dog wagging its tail in your face, or products that are so proud that they solve the complicated problem, they want to remind you how hard it was. I love solutions that tip to seem almost naive in their simplicity. And I also love incredibly intelligent, sophisticated products.”
Or carry. Most people believe that Altman and Ive are building a portable device that will be about the size of an old iPod shuffle. As Altman put it, to “know everything about you,” it certainly needs the situational awareness that comes with being attached to your clothes or your person and facing the world as you see it.
Alman added that early in their collaboration, Ive said that whatever the final product does, “we want to make people smile. We want to make people feel joy.”
For an AI product, that can be a big task. After all, most approach the advent of generative AI and chatbots with a mixture of happiness and terror. They love the quick, witty answers, summaries and artwork they can get from ChatGPT, but also worry about how the technology could take their jobs or, when it reaches Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), take over the world.
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