Sam Altman is done using a keyboard and screen. All of this is sliding, typing and scrolling, which is a lot of potential friction between you and Chatgpt.
Earlier today, Openai announced its intention to address this obvious problem. The company is working with longtime Apple design leader Jony Ive, who has done groundbreaking work on products like the iMac G3, iPod and most famous iPhones. Altman and Ive said they wanted to create hardware built specifically for AI software. Altman suggested in a highly production announcement video that everyone might soon be able to access the "team of talent" (presumably a chatgpt-style assistant" in the "device family." He believes that the technology is "better than today's laptops." It's exactly what he didn't say, what it would look like, and Openai declined my request for comment. However, the company will pay about $5 billion to acquire IO, IVE's startup IO, to determine that Ive's "better" to take on "deep design and creative responsibilities" in Openai. (Emerson collective, most owners Atlanticis an investor in IO and Openai. Openai and Atlantic last year. )
By far, entering hardware could be the most technically disruptive and economically profitable extension for Openai. The AI assistant should help everything, so it's natural to try to replace everything people do. If the company succeeds, you might read (or listen to) a news roundup generated on an OpenAI device within a decade, rather than reading an article on an iPhone, or ask the device to submit taxes instead of logging into TurboTax.
In Altman's view, the current device only provides a clumsy way to use AI products: you have to open an app or website, upload relevant information, keep prompting the AI robot, and then transfer any useful output to somewhere else. Ive agreed in the promotional video, which shows that the era of personal computers and smartphones (which he helped define) needs a refresh: "At least think about it, of course, of course, there's something beyond these traditional products," he told Altman. Although OpenAI and IO have not specified what they are building yet, many of the wearable AI pins, smart mirrors, and other devices announced over the past year have alluded to the AI assistant that always attaches to your body (as Altman calls it, an "external brain").
So far, these products have evenly gotten rid of them. To give just one example, Humane, a $700 AI “PIN” attached to user’s clothing, closed down unreviewed products less than a year after its launch. I'm in an interview today Bloombergcalling these early AI gadgets "very poor products." Apple and Openai have their own distributions, even embarrassing product releases. Still, if any pair had a lens in designing legitimate and useful AI devices, the people who freed Chatgpt worked with the people who led the design of Apple smartphones, tablets and laptops that defined American life and technology for decades.
Of course, customized equipment will also quickly accelerate Openai's business ambitions. The company, once a small research lab, is now worth $300 billion, growing rapidly and reported in March that one billion people use Chatgpt each week. Openai has already tended to replace every major technology company: ChatGpt is an internet search tool as powerful as Google, which can help you shop online and remove the need to enter Amazon, which can be your work software instead of Microsoft Office Suite. According to reports, Openai is even building a social media platform. Currently, OpenAI relies on smartphones and web browsers that people use to access Chatgpt, which are made by commercial competitors. Altman tries to cut the middleman and condensed digital life into a unified hardware and software. The promise is this: your life can live through devices like this, turning Openai’s products into a repository of uses and personal data that may not be left, just like, if everyone in your family has an iPhone, MacBook, and Icloud Storage Plan, it’s very enjoyable and challenging to switch to Android’s iPhone, MacBook, and Icloud Storage Plan.
Several other major tech companies are also trying to integrate generative AI into their traditional devices and software. Amazon has incorporated Generative AI into the Alexa voice assistant, Google goes to its Android phone and search bar, and then goes to the iPhone. Meta has built an AI assistant in its app and sold smart mirrors. Products and platforms that ruined work, social life, education and more in the early 2000s are showing their age: Google has been packed with search-optimized websites and AI-generated content that may make it harder for users to find good information; Amazon is full of junk. Facebook is a sludge; smartphones are often seen as attracting attention, if not a complete brain fusion. Technology behemoths are bringing AI capabilities into their products to avoid being destroyed, but these launches, especially Apple’s disastrous, offer dangerous health advice, massacre news digests, often crowding and slowing down the user experience.
"Every time, revolutionary products come with each other," Steve Jobs said about 20 years ago when Apple launched the iPhone. "It seems to be in pursuit of similar magic, today's video announced that Openai's entry into hardware began with Altman, saying, "I think we have the opportunity to completely reimagine what it means to use a computer." But Jobs has an actual product that can be shared and sold. Currently, Altman is marketing his imagination.