Altman describes OpenAI’s upcoming AI device as more peaceful and quiet than an iPhone

“When people see it, they say, ‘Is that it?’… It’s very simple.”

That’s how OpenAI CEO Sam Altman describes how he thinks people will respond to seeing the company’s upcoming AI device for the first time.

The device is the result of a collaboration between OpenAI and former Apple chief designer Jony Ive. Not much is known yet about the product except that… It is rumored to be “screenless”.“And Pocket sized.

Earlier this year, OpenAI has acquired Ive’s design startup, ioto bring artificial intelligence to the masses through some type of technical tool. This weekend, Altman and I talked more about their vision for their AI machine in an interview with Laurene Powell Jobs at the ninth annual Emerson Collective Gala. Show day In San Francisco.

Although OpenAI isn’t sharing details about the device, which is now a prototype, Ive and Altman were careful to describe the product in terms of its “ambience.”

Notably, Altman compared the device to the iPhone, calling Apple’s smartphone “the crowning achievement of consumer products” to date. He said he can define his life as those times before and after the iPhone.

However, Altman complained that new technologies are full of distractions.

“When I use current devices or most apps, I feel like I’m walking through Times Square in New York and I’m constantly dealing with all the little indignities along the way — lights flashing in my face… people bumping into me, as if the noise is emanating, and that’s unsettling,” he said. Altman believes that bright, flashing notifications and dopamine-chasing social media apps are the reasons why today’s devices go bad.

“I don’t think it makes our lives peaceful and quiet and just allows us to focus on our things,” he said.

Altman noted that the ambiance of the AI ​​device will be like “sitting in the most beautiful cabin by the lake and in the mountains and kind of enjoying the peace and quiet.”

The device he described should be able to filter things to the user, as the user will trust the AI ​​to do things for them over long periods of time. It must also be aware of the context of when this is the best time to present information to the user and ask for input.

“You trust it over time, and it has this amazing contextual awareness of your entire life,” Altman added.

She confirmed at the event that the device should be available in less than two years.

“I like solutions that flinch when they seem almost naive in their simplicity,” Ive told Powell Jobs in the interview. “And I also love incredibly smart, sophisticated products that you want to touch, that you don’t feel intimidated by, that you want to use almost carelessly — that you use almost without thinking — they’re just tools,” he said.