[brap]

What the hell is an "AI device"?

Unless we're talking robotics, I don't see why you would need a separate device for AI. Seems like we already have all the right form factors (phones, speakers, etc).

This reminds me of when Facebook tried to make a Facebook phone. Turned out iPhones and Androids were significantly better as phones and they could do Facebook just fine.

[highwaylights]

The very real leaks that I’ve very really seen suggest it’s a bit like HAL-3000 with an upgraded bezel-less Retina display red orb that goes all the way to the diamond-cut chamfered edges, but when you ask it to do something instead of saying “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave” it starts playing latter-day U2 albums.

[HAL3000]

> it’s a bit like HAL-3000

Dave, there is only one HAL3000.

[stagger87]

> What the hell is an "AI device"?

A phrase used to extract a billion dollars from idiot investors.

[farco12]

I always love reading myopic technology takes on this site.

Based on the article, it sounds like they're in exploratory talks to figure out what that "AI device" could be. I agree that it's likely we've already figured out the right form factors for such a device, but it's not a leap to imagine a significantly better UX than what we have from today's computing devices.

The movie "Her" seems like a decent blueprint for a post-smartphone "AI device".

[f6v]

There was this device in Neeuromancer. Like a small stone, you touch it and can talk to AI in your head. That’d be awesome.

[mushufasa]

Ya. Even a limited use AirPod-as-language-translator-in-real-time could be a good use of technology (something like this was in Hitchhiker's Guide and many other sci-fi). The leap in AI skill to trust translations more could enable the leap from looking at a phone to just having a bug in your ear.

[BTinfinity]

Interestingly there's already an AI powered earbud [0] on the market that claims to do that; whether it's any good or if OpenAI can do better remains to be seen.

But how long before it's capturing audio from your conversations to use as training data?

[0] https://www.timekettle.co/

[eightnoneone]

The babel fish.

https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Babel_Fish

[lancesells]

If you reverse this you could have your offshore call center sound onshore in a matter of one OpenAI sign up.

[JumpCrisscross]

> What the hell is an "AI device"?

Puck and a pair of AirPods? (Maybe compute in the case?)

A device optimised to run a set of LLMs and not sacrifice battery for e.g. a screen seems like it would have a niche, if it just worked. Picture the AIs profiled in the later series of Westworld.

[mlnj]

Would it not make more sense to use OpenAI LLMs to be hosted away from these device. It would also align with Jony Ive's focus on design over everything else. Yet another data consumption device?

[JumpCrisscross]

> Would it not make more sense to use OpenAI LLMs to be hosted away from these device

The lag is annoying. I don’t remember Ive’s position on privacy, but shipping everything off to the cloud isn’t great for that.

There might be satisfaction in having a childlike AI running on device who can call grandma—or whatever-when it needs help. One could tune it to different levels of spontaneity (“that’s a Magpie, in case you’re interested”) and proactiveness (“I noticed a new restaurant nearby and you haven’t eaten all day, so I grabbed a placeholder reservation”) that shouldn’t require a lot of phoning home to the mothership.

[foobarian]

If they can come up with an Alexa/Siri kind of experience that doesn’t make me want to throw it out the window, I can see the separate device not being too hard of a sell, while at the same time avoiding being at the mercy of whichever device provider they would have to play along with otherwise.

[fnordpiglet]

Of course Alexa is getting a LLM as announced recently in the next few weeks. I don’t think Amazon and Apple are going to miss the bandwagon.

On the Apple front they added a very small LLM to the keyboard autocorrect that is better at semantically correcting and predicting what you’re writing in iOS 17. It’s a ducking lot better already, but I imagine over the years it’ll round out to be incredibly useful.

[belter]

Do know the margins to be made on a Prime Radiant? Bullish...

[zffr]

Maybe it will be something like Humane’s AI Pin