What Sam Altman told OpenAI about the device he's making with Jony Ive
wsj.com
wsj.com
1. Such a device will require significant local compute, generating a lot of heat. It cannot be too close to the body, and require efficient cooling. In the cowboy hat, the processing can be placed above the head in the bucket of the hat, and the cooling dispersed in a large surface area around the brim
2. Such a device requires 360 degree camera vision, thus cannot be a backpack or vest type design (which also bring heat too close to the body). It also must be close to eye level (cannot be shoes).
3. Has to be able to be worn in any environment, with any style. A cowboy hat is great for sun protection, and in the rain.
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"It combines the spirit of old Mexico with a little big city panache." - Elaine Benes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOsWfzzvlkU
Or was that an episode that I missed in the last ... 15 years... Oh man...
Simpsons really did do it first
We're all comfortable with phones with all sorts of sensors, but most of those are on or off in a way we understand.
I'm not a fan of the idea that someone else around me brings a device that is perpetually "fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life" around me and then now my privacy is gone ...
This is my primary concern about these things. I'd be very likely to avoid being around people that I know are using something like this to the greatest degree I can.
This is actually the sentiment I had about Google Glass - people (and tech) were not ready then, but I think that slowly the world is moving towards the acceptance that everything is being recorded and analyzed, by default. I just hope that we'll still be able to have some private spheres where there is no recording, but am concerned that this would have to be enforced by just not having any electronics there at all.
>just not having any electronics there at all
A few decades ago the company I worked for sent people out to a government contractor's site and the rule was ZERO electronics. Outside you and your clothing nothing that went in came out. Your car and keys were kept at the gate securely. You were blindfolded and lead to the location to do your work.
Blindfolds aside, I think that's the future.
No matter how many times I try, it never renders my third nipple correctly.
[0] https://civitai.com/models/15074 (obviously NSFW)
(Not an original idea, but I can't remember who I stole it from. Maybe it was David Brin).
Not that I think you're wrong, people put alexa in their houses, buy samsung smart tvs, etc.
That is going to be a hard no in so many contexts. Hospitals, gyms, many work environments, my house, the list is going to be long. We know the companies can’t keep their government from forcing access at some point or another. We also know at some point a zero day exploit will allow pin point targeting of who you want to spy on. We see this already on mobile phones.
Edit: When I read the archive link above I can’t actually see the quote referenced.
Which is totally fine.
What is not totally fine is people giving my privacy away for their convenience and/or status.
Because recording will be so very cheap and useful.
As an example, my car has at least 5 cameras that are constantly on. This is - or will be soon - true for all cars. So anytime you can see a car, you're being recorded.
The odds of there being no privacy laws perpetually into the future are probably 0. So we're just in a period that'll probably be thought of, in terms of privacy, of how we might think of the 'wild west' in terms of guns/violence. And I think the change will probably come fairly soon, especially if this idea isn't as DOA as wearable AR stuff was.
(Anyone hear read _We_?)
> will be capable of being fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one’s pocket or on one’s desk,
Sounds an awful lot like the phone. But it s not a phone. But people forget that a tool with the form factor of a phone has been man's best friend for millenia: it was a knife, a purse, a notebook, and now a phone. They are not going to beat that , is my bet. If it can be integrated in a phone, it's a phone
> a third core device a person would put on their desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone.
That's my car keys. now i will have to charge them too?
You’re going to love it!
And that had prior signals that we would accept that: basically every household in the US had a phone. Cordless phones gained popularity. Beepers were a thing. We knew people wanted phones with them, we just couldn't do it yet.
The odds of creating a brand new device that no one has ever heard of that people will carry everywhere with them is basically zero.
If there is enough utility in the device, and the form factor is well done, I think the odds are much higher than zero.
The reason mobile devices scaled so rapidly is that calling a specific person (wherever they are) is so much more useful than calling a physical location.
If OpenAI wants to create a successful device, it needs to have that utility delta over an existing smartphone.
(While Google and Apple throw not insignificant resources into competing, with the help of mature mobile ecosystems)
True, and then the next revolution was smartphones, with the iPhone being the first.
Steve Job's product launch highlighted the huge utility delta, which made all prior "feature phones" obsolete overnight.
"We're introducing THREE new products: a phone, a music player, and an internet communications device" ... which of course was 3-in-1 - the iPhone.
Raising the bar now becomes extremely difficult because the smartphone is a general purpose internet/wifi connected computer, chock full of sensors from cameras to microphone, etc. Now with local AI-acceleration as well.
What can a new device do that a general purpose computer in your pocket cannot?
https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/05/glass-redux-google-ai...
shouldn't statements like this be bearish for OpenAI? If what they had internally was so far ahead of everyone else then why would it matter if the physical hardware were cloned, the model would make the difference in the same way the iPhone software and focus on scroll fidelity made it leagues above the LG Prada.
This shit is gonna go nuclear, and probably soon. Valuation is utterly detached from reality for the mediocre products they've shipped and the only reason it's still going is the tech sector doesn't have anything else to show for itself. Purchasing user numbers must be absolutely pathetic what with the complete silence on them, and even their highest tier paying customers have them hemorrhaging money, let alone all the cheaper/free ones.
Microsoft clearly got tired of being the pay-pig and is scaling back datacenters. OpenAI is supposedly taking up that stock but the projects are stalling because OpenAI doesn't have any money. Softbank is supposedly funding them but it also doesn't have the money, which is a huge issue what with them being the only substantial investor. And that's JUST for THIS YEAR. By all accounts they'll need dozens more billions for 2026.
For what? Chat bots and boring pictures/video that nobody aside from AI hype people give the slightest damn about.
Like, to put this in perspective: OpenAI is supposedly worth a tenth of what APPLE is worth. Fucking APPLE. Love em or hate em, Apple is one of the most valuable companies on the fucking planet, for a reason. What on Earth is OpenAI shifting in terms of actual products-to-customers that deserves to be in the same ZIP code as the Mac, iPhone or iPad?
Ludicrous.
I shed a tear when I saw those Sora demos of people walking down a street. I'd never seen anything so beautiful in my life. No human has ever filmed anything so good. Just amazeballs.
Crazy part is there will be investors who will absolutely believe this. Nothing has shattered the illusion the rich are smarter than everyone else for me than the sagas of madoff, ftx, holmes and now the AI hype.
That video they posted was completely over the top and absurd (especially without announcing/shipping a product). Watching Sam and Jony fellate each other was nauseating. I don't SNL could have done a better (worse?) job.
Or build an AI-enabled device that replaces both. All you really need is local sensors, local emitters, and lots of local+remote processing+storage.
The laptop/desktop mostly goes away, when most people won't need desks, since most desk-requiring jobs will soon be done passably by "AI". (Whether the "AI" is actual intelligence, or just robo-plagiarism of training material.) Do you really need a keyboard, when there's nothing for you to type. Do you really need a bunch of screens, when you're not looking at and reasoning about lots of information.
If anyone is going to build a one-device for the idle and disaffected eloi, to be harvested of remaining value, by the weathly, who increasingly consolidate all of the wealth and power, it may well be OpenAI building that device.
Apple isn't the best candidate to nail this, because they have lingering whiffs of hippie counterculture in their self-image. And for a long time, Google thought of themselves as the good ones, with vestiges of that enduring, no matter how much DoubleClick metastasizes. But OpenAI staff was confronted unambiguously with its true self early on, so doesn't have the encumbrances that the others do.
It'll probably be some goofy 180/360 degree camera — phones aren't really designed to be omnipresent so the form factor isn't ideal for the always-on nature of AI they're trying to reach.
At the end of the day, essentially a phone with some AI-specific form factor. There's just not much else it can be.
* The second generation will be this opaqueAI ivePad.
* And when the third generation comes out, all phones will already have whatever makes this special.
I don't think Sama and Ive are smarter than everyone else, but even if they are, I don't see how this flies.
The WSJ article says this proposed device can either sit on your desk or go in your pocket, so it's basically either an Alexa in-home device or a bigger pocket-bound Humana pin, or some worse-than-either fits-in-your-pocket compromise.
Not sure what Altman was thinking in paying $6B for an idea that seems bound to fail, unless it is indeed part of a plan to help him cash in on OpenAI, even if that means throwing $6B of stock away.
I agree but for the sake of discussion: could smart glasses fill this role?
1) Battery size/life compromised by form factor (or have cumbersome wire to battery pack in pocket)
2) WiFi/5G connectivity - form factor seems to compromise antenna design, and anyways health impact of antenna on your head all day is unknown
3) Fashion - most people care more about appearance than any debatable benefit smart glasses might have (AR?) over a smart phone
4) Smart glasses AR displays are a cool piece of tech, but quality-wise nowhere near that of a phone screen, used for photos and videos - TikTok on smart glasses ?
5) Texting seems a very popular type of communication for all age groups, and much preferred (and more discreet) that having to voice dictate into smart glasses, or listen to incoming messages via smart glasses speakers
It just seems that a smartphone provides so much, checks so many boxes in terms of features and usability, that most people won't want to not have one, and if you do have one, then the incremental benefit of another device becomes minimal.
I think they’ll fail because they’re discounting how much energy it takes for people to change ecosystems, but it’s a great idea that the big boys will copy.
the whole pattern of usage for the slab phone medium is based on sucking up as much of our attention as possible.
That and doing anything with bluetooth makes one long for a simple life in the woods.
I can't understand why anyone thinks this wouldn't be. Software eats the world.
>"The product will be capable of being fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one’s pocket or on one’s desk, and would be a third core device a person would put on their desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone."
Why exactly would I want a "third" device for my desk or a second one for my pocket?
The only additional device I'd consider at this point would be an eyeglass sized VR/AR.
So the plan is to mine personal data from every user and sell it, then?
Not sure if he's high on his own supply or just lying through his teeth, but it's one of those. You're going to get value comparable to owning half of Google from acquiring a small hardware design team? Really?
Will we have another moment like this: https://youtu.be/MnrJzXM7a6o
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