The core functions of the device form factor formerly known as the cellphone, whatever we want to call it — the pocket device — what would you say the core functions are five years out?
at the centerpiece of Ben's argument is lovely.
I don’t know.
The reason I don’t know is because I wouldn’t have thought that there would have been maps on it five years ago. But something comes along, gets really popular, people love it, get used to it, you want it on there. People are inventing things constantly and I think the art of it is balancing what’s on there and what’s not — it’s the editing function.
Contrast it with Bill Gates' answer to the same question:
How quickly all these things that have been somewhat specialized — the navigation device, the digital wallet, the phone, the camera, the video camera — how quickly those all come together, that’s hard to chart out, but eventually you’ll be able to make something that has the capability to do every one of those things. And yet given the small size, you still won’t want to edit your homework or edit a movie on a screen of that size, and so you’ll have something else that lets you do the reading and editing and those things. Now if we could ever get a screen that would just roll out like a scroll, then you might be able to have the device that did everything.
It makes me reflect on how important it is to remain humble about the possibilities of AI and what developers can create using it (and the tools that they will use to create it). "And we are just getting started".