The gizmo comes from OpenAI’s cosy partnership with the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple’s former design supremo Sir Jony Ive and is rumoured to be a pocketable, screenless lump of cleverness.
OpenAI picked up Ive’s design outfit io earlier this year to shove AI into the pockets of the masses through some form of physical gadget. Altman and Ive pushed their grand vision at Emerson Collective’s ninth Demo Day in San Francisco, though they still refused to offer specifics beyond describing the prototype’s “vibe.”
Altman compared the concept to the iPhone, calling the Job’s Mob handset the “crowning achievement of consumer products” to date, and even claimed he could split his life into the era before the iPhone and the era after.
He moaned that modern tech is drowning users in distractions.
“When I use current devices or most applications, I feel like I am walking through Times Square in New York and constantly just dealing with all the little indignities along the way, flashing lights in my face…people bumping into me, like noise is going off, and it’s an unsettling thing,” Altman said.
Altman argued that the barrage of alerts and dopamine-chasing apps has made today’s kit anything but calming. “I don’t think it’s making any of our lives peaceful and calm and just letting us focus on our stuff,” he said.
He described the new AI gadget’s vibe as “sitting in the most beautiful cabin by a lake and in the mountains and sort of just enjoying the peace and calm,” presenting it as a filter that quietly handles tasks as users learn to trust it.
“You trust it over time, and it does have just this incredible contextual awareness of your whole life,” Altman added.
Ive chipped in that the device should land in less than two years. “I love solutions that teeter on appearing almost naive in their simplicity,”
He added that he favours “incredibly intelligent, sophisticated products that you want to touch, and you feel no intimidation, and you want to use them almost carelessly, that you use them almost without thought that they’re just tools.”
