Altman: OpenAI’s AI gadget now has a prototype
Don’t get too excited — the actual product could be nearly two years away.
Remember the mysterious AI gadget that OpenAI is cooking up in its labs under the direction of former Apple design guru Jony Ive? According to CEO Sam Altman, the product is now in the prototype phase, and he vaguely disclosed some of the details.
At the Emerson Collective’s Demo Day conference with Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, sitting alongside Jony Ive, Altman reflected on the progress the company has made since buying Ive’s company.
On the unusual partnership between himself and Ive, Altman said:
“...finally, we have the first prototypes. I can’t believe how jaw-droppingly good the work is and how exciting it is, but also now getting to have like — the benefit of hindsight and looking at the progress, the process backwards, how much it’s all in there and how it wouldn’t have worked any other way.”
When Jobs pushed on the pair to reveal some detail about the gadget, Altman said:
“An early thing we talked about with the devices we hope to build is if you have this really smart AI that you trust to do things for you over long periods of time, filter things out. Be able to be contextually aware of when it should not only not really bother you, but when it should present information to you or ask for your input or not.”
Altman said he and Ive agreed that today’s devices offer so many stimuli that it can be overwhelming for users, so they are trying to move past that:
“You trust it over time. And when it does have just this incredible contextual awareness of your whole life, you can then go for a vibe that is not like, you know, walking through Times Square and getting bumped into and having all this stuff compete for your attention, but like sitting in the most beautiful cabin by a lake and in the mountains and sort of just enjoying the peace and calm.”
In the only vague reference to the form of the gadget, Altman said:
“And there was an earlier prototype that we were like, quite excited about, but I did not have any feeling of like, I want to pick up that thing and take a bite out of it. And then finally we got there all of a sudden, yeah.”
The product is expected to be ready in less than two years.
