The designer of the iPhone, John Ive, and the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, have completely found each other. They are now looking for $1 billion in investments to create what will become the ultimate AI gadget. It is also called the iPhone of AI.
Oh Pin
We can fantasize about what such a device should look like, but that’s not really what it’s about. We have already seen a funny thing like the Rabbit, but also the fascinating Ai Pin from Humane. However, it doesn’t seem to be so much about the device, but about the AI itself. And to make that point, we refer to the Google Assistant.
The Google Assistant should be some kind of ultimate assistant for your life. The idea is that the Google Assistant will turn off the lights when you ask, set your alarm, tell you what the weather is and what’s in your calendar, in addition to even making calls to the hairdresser to make or reschedule an appointment. Although some of the things just mentioned are real, we hear very few people having a conversation with the Google Assistant, or giving it commands.
AI device
Some people do it occasionally, ask Google Assistant something or, for example, have set up a smart home routine. However, few people use Google Assistant for everything it is capable of. Not because they do not have that knowledge of what is possible, but because it simply does not always work well. Sometimes certain English options are not made available in Dutch, or sometimes Google Assistant does not understand you: it can sometimes be a somewhat difficult experience.
This also applies to AI so far. Ask ChatGPT for two sports that start with a v and it comes up with baseball and tennis. And don’t ask how to get from Utrecht to Rome by car, because that won’t get you to the Italian city. There is now a better version of ChatGPT, but it is behind a paywall and it still makes mistakes. Now that’s not so bad if you ask a question that you could otherwise just google yourself, but with more important matters you obviously want to be able to assume that everything will turn out fine and much AI is still a bit too much in its infancy for that.
AI that we don’t know yet
But that also means that you can invent the nicest devices for AI, but in the end it is really about the artificial intelligence that can make or break such an invention. On the other hand, AI can be much more than just a chatbot, so if Sam Altman and Jony Ive do their best, the gadget they come up with can still become a success. AI must then be used, which we as a general public are not yet familiar with. And it must be more than ‘the iPhone of AI’: it must be a much more unique, newer device than the iPhone was in its time. In themselves, these gentlemen should be able to do this, but at the same time Altman has taken some strange steps last year, so we have to see whether these two will actually make it.
