Legendary Apple designer Jony Ive wants to fix our relationship with the phones he helped design, and he has up to 20 different OpenAI tools to do it

The 58-year-old designer was instrumental in creating the iPhone, iPod, and iPad, and now he’s helping OpenAI create AI-first devices after it acquired his AI hardware startup, Io, earlier this year for a great deal. $6.5 billion. But rather than repeating the work that made him famous, Ive said he wants to create devices that spark more joy and less anxiety. I mentioned.

“When I said we have an uncomfortable relationship with our technology, I mean that is the most outrageous understatement,” Ive said during his interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman this week at OpenAI’s DevDay conference.

Ive said his recent work at OpenAI represents an opportunity to completely change the situation the world finds itself in with regard to technology so that it “doesn’t accept the norm.” It is clear that he and his team have no shortage of ideas to realize this vision.

“This momentum has led us to create 15 to 20 really compelling product ideas. The challenge is focus,” Ive told Altman at the San Francisco event. “It would be easy if you knew there were three good things. That’s not the case. We design a range of products. We try to make sure we’re judicious and thoughtful about what we focus on and so we don’t get distracted.”

Build an AI-based device first

It’s unclear exactly what I’m building at OpenAI, but Altman in a staff preview earlier this year raised the question of “Device family“. the Financial Times I mentioned The secret device may be the size of a palm, without a screen. The device can also respond to voice prompts as well as audible and visual cues. However, OpenAI still needs to resolve critical issues that could delay the device’s launch foot I mentioned.

OpenAI did not immediately respond luckRequest for comment.

Ive said he hopes the devices he and his team are making will eventually address some of the biggest problems caused by smartphones and tablets, such as problems with focus, patience, and anxiety. The researchers also linkedDeath scrollNegative news on social media with deteriorating mental health.

In what could be interpreted as a veiled criticism of his former company, Apple, Ive said that OpenAI is moving in the opposite direction of the Singularity. Apple, with its $1,000-plus phones, its “walled garden” of apps, and its crisp blue iMessage bubbles, has for years clearly positioned itself as the exclusive brand in a world overflowing with technology.

“The consequences and consequences of not paying attention and not being careful are really horrific,” Ive said. “In terms of the facades that we design, if we can’t smile genuinely, if it’s just something that’s very exclusive and dangerous, I think that would do us all a huge disservice.”

He added that the new generation of AI devices first “must seem obvious, as if there is no other rational solution to the problem.”

Ive has previously spoken about how the tech industry has changed since he moved to the Bay Area in 1992. When he arrived, Ive said he felt that the smart people in Silicon Valley were driven by a mission to serve humanity — a calling that has recently been replaced in some cases by corporate agendas “driven by money and power.”

Returning to the central idea of ​​technology as a force for good and a tool to help the world, for him it is at the forefront of his priorities He said While talking to tape CEO Patrick Collison in May.

“I think there have to be core values ​​and an understanding of where we stand in all of this and have a clear sense of purpose, which is to empower and inspire people,” he said.

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