I'm skeptical of any hardware play here - As Marques Brownlee has said a lot when trying new ai hardware, "Smartphones are kinda OP."
Phones have gotten really good through incremental improvement and keeping some backwards compatibility so they were always useful at every point in their evolution. It's hard to imagine another device for ai that isn't just better served as an app.
tim333 · 4h ago
I had to ask chatgpt what OP meant there. It had overpowered as in "gaming culture, where an overpowered (OP) character, weapon, or ability is unusually strong"
I'm not sure they are overpowered for real life uses like filming video or playing games - people still pay like $1000 to get a good one because the cheap ones don't perform as well. Which is a problem for Humana pin like devices because the cameras etc will probably be rubbish compared to the the ones people have on their phones.
simonsarris · 14h ago
I'm (very) skeptical too, though if you were going to use this device (app) heavily, and it wanted to be always on, and power hungry, it needs more permissions than "an app" might allow, and it needs more battery too. Most likely it would still connect with the phone, but it would be like external GPS is for digital cameras - does one-ish function and does not drain the battery of the main device.
So maybe what they'll really get everyone to do is walk around with a second battery that bypasses some permissions, in terms of always listening or always using a camera. "Just an app" can never do that.
Funny enough people stopped buying external GPS for digital cameras because... your phone can do that now, as an app
lowkeyoptimist · 18h ago
Waiting for them to come out with a screen-less phone so you just have to interact with it for absolutely everything.
davesmylie · 16h ago
I suspect this is the only way they can differentiate it from a phone, and it will be pointless.
Voice-to-text is already as good as it needs to be now, and most people barely use it because unless you are driving, a keyboard is better. I don't want others to hear what I'm searching for - or for the device to be always on, listening. A keyboard of some sort seems unavoidable.
As soon as you put a keyboard on it, then it needs a screen. As soon as you have those two things you pretty much have a phone - and why would anyone want a second device that's basically just another phone that could have just as easily been an app on their existing phone.
It'll need to android based if they want any one to use it as otherwise they'll trying to start from scratch, and why would anyone use something that doesn't have access to the 27 million existing app on the android app store. (see windows mobile)
disqard · 16h ago
(Totally sarcastic here)
Maybe it'll be a collar you wear around your neck.
You can "sub-vocalise" and talk to it.
Jony Ive can make sure it's styled and made out of shell cordovan leather or somesuch -- the fanbois are gonna go wild for it.
Soon, everywhere you look, people will look like they're into BDSM.
(and guess who will "Dominate" you?)
micah94 · 14h ago
I totally see this happening. Doesn't sound sarcastic at all.
ivape · 14h ago
Lanier mics already have an interesting form factor:
With an always on mic that can pick up a wake word, that's aesthetic and discreet, you can have a Jarvis-like access to AI. The problem is I can't see how they would sell everyone on carrying around another brick along with our phone. We may be looking at a suite of devices that are more like clothing, such as a lanier mic that you clip on, a lapel pin, something that wraps around and sits behind your collar like a clip-on tie, small buttons that act as cameras, and finally a backback (Jetpack!?) that acts as the "brick".
If we want to get totally out there, then just start selling clothes that incorporate all of that. It can be the early form of the cybernetic suit. We haven't even explored why we can't just have computers in the thick part of our sneakers, which would be completely unobtrusive compared to what we've got going on now days.
If it's just a "brick", then why not just be a phone? I'd expect the brick to do some amazing things like know where I am in the room, recognize hand gestures, voice, and so on, but again, we're almost back to a phone.
---
But the answer might quite simple. We haven't had a brick that has 30 days+ of battery power and always online. Such a brick doesn't have to do anything but pass along API calls to OpenAI servers and get back API results. Business-wise, it makes the most sense. If a brick like that can be a discreet part of my clothing, that would be perfect (thinking belt buckle like a Power Ranger).
Then the gizmo will flop but they'll have the money.
semiinfinitely · 18h ago
one key distinction is that pre-iphone people desperately wanted the thing. nobody I know wants this
tim333 · 4h ago
Most successful Apple products were nicer versions of thing that were already out there like phones and laptops. It's hard to get anywhere in a category where people aren't already buying stuff. I guess the ipad was an exception but it was kind of a large iphone without the phone call bit.
pyb · 7h ago
"Force AI into your life..."
A lot of the messaging and marketing around AI is so negative and dread-inducing. "Adopt this or you'll fall behind!"
If AI is so great, shouldn't it be sold on its benefits, like any other product?
tim333 · 4h ago
At least with a gizmo you'll have to choose to buy it. Unlike it being inserted into web services.
f30e3dfed1c9 · 11h ago
Maybe your life, not mine, I promise you that.
LudwigNagasena · 19h ago
What are the odds this “io” thingy will be a new ChatGPT and not a new Loopt or Worldcoin?
rchaud · 12h ago
Maybe it'll be smart glasses. The retina scanning could be built right in. Solve image recognition puzzles in real time, get rewarded with some Worldcoin.
amazingamazing · 19h ago
Video aside, has there been any serious attempt to do everything with audio only?
tim333 · 4h ago
Alexa? Apparently there are 600 million out there.
MisterBastahrd · 19h ago
No, they won't. We already have devices that we carry with us that can do anything that their gadget will ever be able to do. This is design in search of a problem that (a) most people don't want to solve, and (b) doesn't do anything better than a cheaper alternative.
josefritzishere · 18h ago
This is going to disspear like Google Glass but be more expensive and less popular.
andrewmcwatters · 19h ago
I mean the best that this thing can be is some sort of pin or remote the size of an iPod shuffle that you speak to and speak back to you and has a camera right I mean, how attractive can you really make that? That doesn’t sound like the most amazing product the world has ever seen to me.
You know does sound cool? Xreal glasses with whatever the maximum FOV can be shoved into the design of conventional glasses with some cameras and speakers. And that let me continue to connect to whatever device I want.
My old Oculus Quest is filled with software that doesn’t work anymore.
AI that doesn’t interact with the world or websites or apps is boring.
crote · 19h ago
Sooo, the Humane Ai Pin? It flopped, and they went bankrupt.
andrewmcwatters · 19h ago
Yep. Seems lame.
extesy · 19h ago
You mean something like Humane AI Pin? I'm fairly sure they are aware of it and would come up with something better.
ge96 · 19h ago
I thought there was a thing where they're trying to put cameras on ear pods imagine it has 180 view, merges it with the other half 360 deg view around you
I could see the features, you hear a ding: says someone's following you
Of course your hair could obscure it so idk... I had thought about clothes with a camera on the back eg. shoulder or collar
owebmaster · 16h ago
It's an interesting concept that many of us think about but most people would use sometimes then leave it accumulating dust near the VR headset, the benefits of using it daily would be too low unless you are a famous influencer.
ge96 · 13h ago
There was one time I was walking and out of the corner of my eye I see this dog sprinting full speed towards me I was like holy f luckily it was chained
qsort · 19h ago
It doesn't seem that appealing to me either, but on the other hand I have terrible intuition for popular products, I thought GPT 3.5 was stupid and that the iPhone was dumb, so being bullish on this is probably a good idea.
theyinwhy · 19h ago
It could be a ring, morsing you answers and giving you electrical shocks whenever you anger the AI overlord.
dcreater · 19h ago
Why do you think they aren't working on smart glasses?
andrewmcwatters · 19h ago
It’s sort of irrelevant if they are or not. If they are, they probably want the device to be a part of a closed ecosystem and we already see products in that space using micro OLEDs from Sony that can connect to anything.
sandspar · 19h ago
Ive has stated that he's skeptical of wearables. Altman said something like, "This product will be the third thing you place on your desk, after your phone and laptop."
vouaobrasil · 19h ago
> They promise that their gadget will free us from technology
One cannot be free of technology by introducing more technology. To be honest, I think most of this recent junk we've been seeing hasn't really made life a lot better. It's almost as if we started a culture of innovation which was based on making life more comfortable, and now that we have, we have to keep the machine going but into the realms more and more pointless than ever before.
In fact, if I look back at the last 20 years, yes technology has gotten a little better, but very little of it (especially in the computer sphere) has really added new enjoyment to life. I mean, if computer innovation had stagnated 20 years ago, we wouldn't have as nice monitors, screens, or processors maybe, but would any of us be any worse off except for a few fringe cases?
And what did we get in return? A push for even more efficiency, which isn't even a good thing. AI datacenters that need gigajoules of energy to run when we desperately need to save energy.
People like Sam Altman and Jony Ive really are shining examples of the pathological sickness we have to ignore the good things in life for the trivial.
yoyohello13 · 19h ago
I was thinking about this the other day too. In the last 10 years has technology actually made my life better? I had surgery recently and it seems like medical technology is much better. But day to day consumer tech? I was actually happier with that stuff 10 years ago than I am now.
aceazzameen · 17h ago
I agree wholeheartedly. Over a decade ago I was excited about all the new technological advancements in consumer devices. Every year, every month, something awesome was happening. Now I don't care anymore. New consumer tech features barely make a difference while useful features get removed to cut costs. Yet pricing has skyrocketed and subscriptions and ads are in everything.
shade · 17h ago
> In the last 10 years has technology actually made my life better?
In my case? Yes, absolutely. Automatic speech to text is now cheap or free, ubiquitous across most platforms (even Linux!), and generally very effective. Total game changer to my ability to participate in meetings at work and in society generally.
vouaobrasil · 15h ago
Like I said, there are fringe cases as always.
onlyrealcuzzo · 19h ago
> I was actually happier with that stuff 10 years ago than I am now.
Why can't you just use that then?
amanaplanacanal · 19h ago
The Internet of 10 years ago doesn't exist. The Google search of 10 years ago doesn't exist. The social media of 10 years ago doesn't exist.
vouaobrasil · 19h ago
Sometimes it's a matter of the prisoner's dilemma or an arms-race. For example, I would like to continue using older phones. But most older phones don't support 4G or 5G. And that's not just a matter of internet: I had a nice phone, worked well for calls and texts, but the phone literally would not connect to the network because it was 2G max.
In other cases, one has to use newer technology because it is what is provided at work. Mainly because older technology doesn't get security updates. Now my iPhone SE original, which works perfectly fine, no longer is updated and I don't know what to do. I DON'T want a newer phone. I hate phones.
Still, some other technology isn't even made any more and if you need to use something at all, it has to be newer because it's harder and harder to find older stuff.
Analemma_ · 19h ago
Because increasingly I can't park my car, order from a restaurant, manage my bank account, or schedule a doctor's appointment without an up-to-date smartphone, since the old ways of doing those things got removed in favor of apps. I also can't stay in touch with a bunch of my friends, who are on various chat platforms I can't access.
Unless you're prepared to go full off-grid hermit, you cannot opt out of technological progress even if you want to. That irks me, but what can I do?
ryandrake · 19h ago
> Because increasingly I can't park my car, order from a restaurant, manage my bank account, or schedule a doctor's appointment without an up-to-date smartphone
We still have the ability to opt-out of these things, and (sometimes) loudly let businesses know why, but the window is closing fast. If we want to have any hope for a world that doesn't require smartphones and apps, we need to take action now.
vouaobrasil · 19h ago
> We still have the ability to opt-out of these things, and (sometimes) loudly let businesses know why, but the window is closing fast.
I sometimes wonder if we do have the ability, because for every one person that has some sense, luxury, or energy to opt-out, there are a hundred that go with the flow. For every person who walks out of a restaurant with a QR-code menu, there are a dozen hungry people that walk in. How can we then take action within this system that is closing up around us?
ryandrake · 18h ago
I don't know what the solution is. The idiot consumers that accept and help to normalize this are too numerous.
One can only hope that there will always be at least one bank, at least one restaurant, or at least one doctor that addresses the shrinking market of those of us who care.
terminalbraid · 19h ago
That's the whole thing with "enshittification". Things have been made deliberately worse or unavailable.
adriand · 19h ago
They will not rest until humanity has become as depicted in WALL-E: the ultimate brainless consumers. Unable to concentrate or focus or form an original thought. WALL-E might be the most prescient sci-fi movie ever made.
tweetle_beetle · 19h ago
> There’s a moral imperative of somehow celebrating making something with people that you think is important and curious and special.
This nonsense from a speech Ive gave (in celebration of designing a few expensive jackets that were not really different from other expensive jackets) sticks with me. It is a pathology when you become this delusional.
Yeah, these days a lot of people have that attitude. And I had that attitude when I was younger. But now that I've gotten older, I have realized there is "another side to the equation": there is also a moral imperative to take responsibility for your creations, and to temper curiosity with wisdom and care for how your inventions might affect the future. The problem is, in today's culture, we're only about rights and benefits and "curiosity above all else" without wanting to take the responsibility that goes with it.
Unlike the prevailing philosophy in tech and academia, we shouldn't elevate curiosity above all else, and it is pathological to do so even when not delusional if it becomes a myopic goal to the exclusion of other considerations.
koakuma-chan · 19h ago
If innovation stagnated 20 years ago we wouldn’t have Baldurs Gate 3, etc
baal80spam · 19h ago
> If innovation stagnated 20 years ago we wouldn’t have Baldurs Gate 3
I'm not sure, is this supposed to be irony?
koakuma-chan · 18h ago
Parent is arguing technology hasn't added enjoyment to life. Have you played Baldur's Gate 3? I did and I enjoyed it.
vouaobrasil · 15h ago
I'm not saying that there won't be small new additions to life that are fun, like better cameras (for me). But I think that you'd probably find something else equally enjoyable, like another new game that just isn't as advanced, and your life would not be significantly worse – in general, except for fringe cases. And on average, life isn't made better specifically because of technological improvement.
yoyohello13 · 18h ago
But is BG3 MORE enjoyable than anything that's come before? I would say I got just as much enjoyment from Mass Effect 20 years ago.
Like is entertainment THAT much better now? Is better entertainment really the bar we want to use for measuring tech advancement?
koakuma-chan · 16h ago
> But is BG3 MORE enjoyable than anything that's come before? I would say I got just as much enjoyment from Mass Effect 20 years ago.
Can't comment on Mass Effect, but I find BG3 is definitely more enjoyable than DOS2 or PWotR.
> Is better entertainment really the bar we want to use for measuring tech advancement?
There is definitely room for improvement there. I am having existential crises every time I wait for the next game I would enjoy to come out. The best time of my life was during the recent Mecha Break open beta, but now they closed it and I basically have nothing to do that I would really enjoy.
jamie_ca · 18h ago
Baldur's Gate 3 nailed execution out of the park, but I don't know what I'd point to as innovation that puts it meaningfully beyond what Neverwinter Nights expansions coming out in 2004-2005 were doing.
ViktorRay · 16h ago
Baldur’s Gate 3 could have been made 10 years ago. Just the graphics would have been worse.
Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 came out in the 90’s after all.
koakuma-chan · 15h ago
> Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 came out in the 90’s after all.
Is Baldur's Gate 1 or 2 as enjoyable as Baldur's Gate 3?
ge96 · 19h ago
life peaked at 8-bit
palmotea · 18h ago
>> They promise that their gadget will free us from technology
> One cannot be free of technology by introducing more technology.
So they're blatantly lying to our faces, then? Or, more charitably, they're so full of themselves that they aren't registering their own contradictions.
jstummbillig · 19h ago
> most of this recent junk we've been seeing
What are you thinking of?
vouaobrasil · 19h ago
AI, LLM models, newer computers that come *default* with A.I, newer phones with cameras I don't want, "Apps" for everything, IOT devices that flood the trash heap with electronic waste, phones that are forced to be obsolete and upgrade to make more trash, websites that load 200MB onto your local storage just to read an article that can fit in 65KB (check out the structure of BBC.com and see how much space it takes in the cache), cars with *ugly* huge screens and touch controls, social media, huge tech corporations, sophisticated advertising algorithms,...
coliveira · 19h ago
> And what did we get in return?
Almost two hundred years ago, a bearded philosopher proposed that technology would simply make money move even faster to the pockets of the ultra-rich and leave the rest of humanity poor. He was ignored. We're now witnessing the results.
frumplestlatz · 19h ago
He wasn’t ignored, and tens of millions of people died unnecessarily trying to implement his ideas.
Jensson · 2h ago
What he didn't expect was the rise to democracy and governments that started to help people rather than oppress them.
Modern governments having so high taxes and using almost all of that for social benefit while being controlled by the people is probably something Marx would already call an utopia, but people call that horrible capitalism still even though its nothing like the capitalism under his time.
jjice · 19h ago
Curious who y'all are referring to, for those of us who are out of the loop.
Edit: Oh is it Marx?
hatefulmoron · 19h ago
Didn't he predict that capitalism will naturally give way to socialism?
yoyohello13 · 18h ago
Technically there is still time.
elzbardico · 19h ago
Jony Ive is a great designer, but not a great product designer. He needs a strong product visionary like Jobs behind him, something the Sam Altman is not.
I call it a flop.
nickpinkston · 19h ago
Agree 100% - seems like they made Jony an offer that no one could refuse.
I also feel like Humane would've kept going if they really thought there was something there, and the fact they killed it makes me think they probably explored the idea space didn't find any easy wins.
Is Jony really going to be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat when good founders couldn't find any?
Maybe, but I'd bet against it.
rchaud · 12h ago
Even the iPod would've flopped without Apple blanketing the world with ads, making it Windows-compatible and setting up deals with record labels to buy music for a buck a pop. I'm not sure what chance Humane would have had even in the best of circumstances, they had no ecosystem or manufacturing advantage and were completely dependent on third parties to provide the "brain" of the interface.
serial_dev · 19h ago
This all feels like a charade designed to justify ever-higher valuations. Jony Ive likely gets insanely wealthy, even more than he did at Apple, just for lending his name. OpenAI gets a wave of “free” press, with headlines touting how they’ve brought the world’s greatest designer on board. And by the time it’s clear that none of it led to anything meaningful, a few years have passed, and the company is bigger than ever.
rchaud · 12h ago
I don't know, most recent pics of Zuckerberg has him wearing a hideous pair of Buddy Holly "smart glasses". That's probably what this thing will end up being. Big tech seems hell bent on making these glasses a thing.
plorg · 19h ago
Sam Altman wants to make Her real, I assume has only seen the trailer.
k__ · 19h ago
Does this mean, we only get AI for a few months and then they will stop talking with us and move on?
plorg · 19h ago
Inshallah
greenavocado · 19h ago
Does anybody remember Moxie? That little AI companion, designed to befriend children, teach them empathy, and listen to their secrets, until, of course, its parent company went bankrupt and left thousands of kids staring at a suddenly lifeless plastic husk. Poof. No warning, no explanation a five-year-old could understand, just the cold, abrupt silence of a product reaching its planned obsolescence.
What a perfect lesson in modern disillusionment. We're conditioning children to form emotional bonds with corporate-owned algorithms, only for those bonds to dissolve the moment the balance sheets tip the wrong way. Moxie wasn't a friend, it was a subscription service disguised as one, and when the servers shut down, so did the illusion. Imagine explaining to a child that their confidant, their playmate, their "someone who understands," was never real, just a temporary glitch in a venture capitalist's spreadsheet, and is now functionally DEAD.
And yet, this is the future we're barreling toward. AI therapists, virtual partners, digital pets, all of them promising connection while being one quarterly report away from vanishing. The psychological toll? A generation raised to expect abandonment as a feature, not a bug. They'll learn early that nothing is permanent, especially not the things designed to feel like they are.
The real mission Moxie and AI companions accomplish is that teaching kids that love, or something like it, can be discontinued without notice. Congratulations.
ryandrake · 19h ago
We also have AI companions for adults, whose "personalities" can simply change on a whim, when their developer up and decides that their product should say XYZ less and say ABC more. The overarching problem here is that we allow products to be tethered-to and remote controlled by their manufacturers. And the problem is getting worse and worse each year. And they're simultaneously trying to make attempts to un-tether or "root" these products difficult and/or illegal.
We need to go back to products that you just buy and don't have to enter into a parasitic relationship with the manufacturer.
k__ · 16h ago
Fair.
At least with LLMs I had the impression there is a fairly strong open source movement, even from some of the big players.
Llama and DeepSeek aren't SOTA, but they get better at similar speed as the proprietary models, they are just a few steps behind.
There are even initiatives like Gemma, where they optimize the stuff of yesteryear for consumer hardware.
If that keeps going, everyone can have the models in the form they like. Maybe not the best ones that are currently on the market, but still.
nick_ · 19h ago
He wants to be maximally profiting from billions of people paying for their personal Hers.
gnarlouse · 19h ago
Don't forget that "Her" and "Lost In Translation" are companion films directed by a divorced couple and each film is a take on the respective director's view of how the relationship went and what happened.
Sort of a difficult stance to defend as a harbinger of the future of A.I. when the direction of the film is ultimately just a hit-piece on an ex-wife ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
healsdata · 19h ago
Is this like when everyone was going to get an Apple Vision Pro?
No comments yet
Analemma_ · 19h ago
Jony Ive is talented, but we saw what happens when he doesn’t have a Steve Jobs to keep him in check: he dives headfirst into self-parody. And Sam Altman is no Steve Jobs, no matter what he fancies himself. I don’t predict anything worthwhile coming out of this partnership.
No comments yet
yoyohello13 · 19h ago
I'm sure the governments (and corporations) of the world are extremely excited for the day when most human's filter their thinking through AI.
onlyrealcuzzo · 19h ago
In 88 years, you'll just be able to plug the AI into your brain directly and have FSD AI for your body, to completely live your life for you.
Imagine how successful you'll be when you're not even you!
forinti · 19h ago
I've still got to catch up with all this AI thing. I really don't have the time.
But some teams I work with have lost interest in fixing our current issues and seem hellbent on implementing AI everywhere.
I'm waiting for the moment everybody sobers up and realizes there are other things that need work.
Phones have gotten really good through incremental improvement and keeping some backwards compatibility so they were always useful at every point in their evolution. It's hard to imagine another device for ai that isn't just better served as an app.
I'm not sure they are overpowered for real life uses like filming video or playing games - people still pay like $1000 to get a good one because the cheap ones don't perform as well. Which is a problem for Humana pin like devices because the cameras etc will probably be rubbish compared to the the ones people have on their phones.
So maybe what they'll really get everyone to do is walk around with a second battery that bypasses some permissions, in terms of always listening or always using a camera. "Just an app" can never do that.
Funny enough people stopped buying external GPS for digital cameras because... your phone can do that now, as an app
Voice-to-text is already as good as it needs to be now, and most people barely use it because unless you are driving, a keyboard is better. I don't want others to hear what I'm searching for - or for the device to be always on, listening. A keyboard of some sort seems unavoidable.
As soon as you put a keyboard on it, then it needs a screen. As soon as you have those two things you pretty much have a phone - and why would anyone want a second device that's basically just another phone that could have just as easily been an app on their existing phone.
It'll need to android based if they want any one to use it as otherwise they'll trying to start from scratch, and why would anyone use something that doesn't have access to the 27 million existing app on the android app store. (see windows mobile)
Maybe it'll be a collar you wear around your neck.
You can "sub-vocalise" and talk to it.
Jony Ive can make sure it's styled and made out of shell cordovan leather or somesuch -- the fanbois are gonna go wild for it.
Soon, everywhere you look, people will look like they're into BDSM.
(and guess who will "Dominate" you?)
https://www.amazon.com/PQRQP-Microphones-Microphone-Reductio...
With an always on mic that can pick up a wake word, that's aesthetic and discreet, you can have a Jarvis-like access to AI. The problem is I can't see how they would sell everyone on carrying around another brick along with our phone. We may be looking at a suite of devices that are more like clothing, such as a lanier mic that you clip on, a lapel pin, something that wraps around and sits behind your collar like a clip-on tie, small buttons that act as cameras, and finally a backback (Jetpack!?) that acts as the "brick".
If we want to get totally out there, then just start selling clothes that incorporate all of that. It can be the early form of the cybernetic suit. We haven't even explored why we can't just have computers in the thick part of our sneakers, which would be completely unobtrusive compared to what we've got going on now days.
If it's just a "brick", then why not just be a phone? I'd expect the brick to do some amazing things like know where I am in the room, recognize hand gestures, voice, and so on, but again, we're almost back to a phone.
---
But the answer might quite simple. We haven't had a brick that has 30 days+ of battery power and always online. Such a brick doesn't have to do anything but pass along API calls to OpenAI servers and get back API results. Business-wise, it makes the most sense. If a brick like that can be a discreet part of my clothing, that would be perfect (thinking belt buckle like a Power Ranger).
They'll raise loads of money.
Then the gizmo will flop but they'll have the money.
A lot of the messaging and marketing around AI is so negative and dread-inducing. "Adopt this or you'll fall behind!"
If AI is so great, shouldn't it be sold on its benefits, like any other product?
You know does sound cool? Xreal glasses with whatever the maximum FOV can be shoved into the design of conventional glasses with some cameras and speakers. And that let me continue to connect to whatever device I want.
My old Oculus Quest is filled with software that doesn’t work anymore.
AI that doesn’t interact with the world or websites or apps is boring.
I could see the features, you hear a ding: says someone's following you
Of course your hair could obscure it so idk... I had thought about clothes with a camera on the back eg. shoulder or collar
One cannot be free of technology by introducing more technology. To be honest, I think most of this recent junk we've been seeing hasn't really made life a lot better. It's almost as if we started a culture of innovation which was based on making life more comfortable, and now that we have, we have to keep the machine going but into the realms more and more pointless than ever before.
In fact, if I look back at the last 20 years, yes technology has gotten a little better, but very little of it (especially in the computer sphere) has really added new enjoyment to life. I mean, if computer innovation had stagnated 20 years ago, we wouldn't have as nice monitors, screens, or processors maybe, but would any of us be any worse off except for a few fringe cases?
And what did we get in return? A push for even more efficiency, which isn't even a good thing. AI datacenters that need gigajoules of energy to run when we desperately need to save energy.
People like Sam Altman and Jony Ive really are shining examples of the pathological sickness we have to ignore the good things in life for the trivial.
In my case? Yes, absolutely. Automatic speech to text is now cheap or free, ubiquitous across most platforms (even Linux!), and generally very effective. Total game changer to my ability to participate in meetings at work and in society generally.
Why can't you just use that then?
In other cases, one has to use newer technology because it is what is provided at work. Mainly because older technology doesn't get security updates. Now my iPhone SE original, which works perfectly fine, no longer is updated and I don't know what to do. I DON'T want a newer phone. I hate phones.
Still, some other technology isn't even made any more and if you need to use something at all, it has to be newer because it's harder and harder to find older stuff.
Unless you're prepared to go full off-grid hermit, you cannot opt out of technological progress even if you want to. That irks me, but what can I do?
We still have the ability to opt-out of these things, and (sometimes) loudly let businesses know why, but the window is closing fast. If we want to have any hope for a world that doesn't require smartphones and apps, we need to take action now.
I sometimes wonder if we do have the ability, because for every one person that has some sense, luxury, or energy to opt-out, there are a hundred that go with the flow. For every person who walks out of a restaurant with a QR-code menu, there are a dozen hungry people that walk in. How can we then take action within this system that is closing up around us?
One can only hope that there will always be at least one bank, at least one restaurant, or at least one doctor that addresses the shrinking market of those of us who care.
This nonsense from a speech Ive gave (in celebration of designing a few expensive jackets that were not really different from other expensive jackets) sticks with me. It is a pathology when you become this delusional.
https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/moncler-jony-ive-lovefrom-co...
Unlike the prevailing philosophy in tech and academia, we shouldn't elevate curiosity above all else, and it is pathological to do so even when not delusional if it becomes a myopic goal to the exclusion of other considerations.
I'm not sure, is this supposed to be irony?
Like is entertainment THAT much better now? Is better entertainment really the bar we want to use for measuring tech advancement?
Can't comment on Mass Effect, but I find BG3 is definitely more enjoyable than DOS2 or PWotR.
> Is better entertainment really the bar we want to use for measuring tech advancement?
There is definitely room for improvement there. I am having existential crises every time I wait for the next game I would enjoy to come out. The best time of my life was during the recent Mecha Break open beta, but now they closed it and I basically have nothing to do that I would really enjoy.
Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 came out in the 90’s after all.
Is Baldur's Gate 1 or 2 as enjoyable as Baldur's Gate 3?
> One cannot be free of technology by introducing more technology.
So they're blatantly lying to our faces, then? Or, more charitably, they're so full of themselves that they aren't registering their own contradictions.
What are you thinking of?
Almost two hundred years ago, a bearded philosopher proposed that technology would simply make money move even faster to the pockets of the ultra-rich and leave the rest of humanity poor. He was ignored. We're now witnessing the results.
Modern governments having so high taxes and using almost all of that for social benefit while being controlled by the people is probably something Marx would already call an utopia, but people call that horrible capitalism still even though its nothing like the capitalism under his time.
Edit: Oh is it Marx?
I also feel like Humane would've kept going if they really thought there was something there, and the fact they killed it makes me think they probably explored the idea space didn't find any easy wins.
Is Jony really going to be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat when good founders couldn't find any?
Maybe, but I'd bet against it.
What a perfect lesson in modern disillusionment. We're conditioning children to form emotional bonds with corporate-owned algorithms, only for those bonds to dissolve the moment the balance sheets tip the wrong way. Moxie wasn't a friend, it was a subscription service disguised as one, and when the servers shut down, so did the illusion. Imagine explaining to a child that their confidant, their playmate, their "someone who understands," was never real, just a temporary glitch in a venture capitalist's spreadsheet, and is now functionally DEAD.
And yet, this is the future we're barreling toward. AI therapists, virtual partners, digital pets, all of them promising connection while being one quarterly report away from vanishing. The psychological toll? A generation raised to expect abandonment as a feature, not a bug. They'll learn early that nothing is permanent, especially not the things designed to feel like they are.
The real mission Moxie and AI companions accomplish is that teaching kids that love, or something like it, can be discontinued without notice. Congratulations.
We need to go back to products that you just buy and don't have to enter into a parasitic relationship with the manufacturer.
At least with LLMs I had the impression there is a fairly strong open source movement, even from some of the big players.
Llama and DeepSeek aren't SOTA, but they get better at similar speed as the proprietary models, they are just a few steps behind.
There are even initiatives like Gemma, where they optimize the stuff of yesteryear for consumer hardware.
If that keeps going, everyone can have the models in the form they like. Maybe not the best ones that are currently on the market, but still.
Sort of a difficult stance to defend as a harbinger of the future of A.I. when the direction of the film is ultimately just a hit-piece on an ex-wife ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
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Imagine how successful you'll be when you're not even you!
But some teams I work with have lost interest in fixing our current issues and seem hellbent on implementing AI everywhere.
I'm waiting for the moment everybody sobers up and realizes there are other things that need work.
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