Plan is to reinvent the smartphone with AI, in the same way the touchscreen on the iPhone reinvented the smartphone.
Particularly interesting given ChatGPTs latest move to have voice recognition and an AI voice respond. If you haven’t tried it, it’s kind of neat. This morning I had a conversation with ChatGPT with my phone in my pocket, all done overy Bluetooth headphones like I was on a call. It was actually a lot more natural then I expected. I wonder what it would look like if that kind of tech was front and center in a smartphone.
I’ve included a few snippets from the article below, but the TLDR is, big names and big money are behind brainstorming plans to make an AI first centered smartphone, a plan to reinvent the form factor. The article also points to declining smartphone sails as evidence that the public is tired of the same old slab every year, so this could be an interesting time for this to come out.
I guess it’s relevant to mention whatever the fuck the Humane AI pin is: The Humane Ai Pin makes its debut on the runway at Paris Fashion Week https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/30/23897065/humane-ai-pin-coperni-paris-fashion-week
From the article: After rumors began to swirl that Apple alum Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman were having collaborative talks on a mysterious piece of AI hardware, it appears that the pair are indeed trying to corner the smartphone market. The two are reportedly discussing a collaboration on a new kind of smartphone device with $1 billion in backing from Masayoshi Son’s Softbank.
…according to the outlet, the duo are looking to create a device that provides a more “natural and intuitive way” to interact with AI. The nascent idea is to take a ground-up approach to redesigning the smartphone in the same way that Ive did with touchscreens so many years ago. One source told the Financial Times that the plan is to make the “iPhone of artificial intelligence.” Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son is also involved in the venture, with the financial holding group putting up a massive $1 billion toward the effort. Son has also reportedly pitched Arm, a chip designer in which SoftBank has a 90% stake, for involvement.
While it’s still not clear what the end goal of the product talks will be (or if anything will come of them at all, really), it does seem like the general public has become fatigued with the same-y rollout of a slightly better smartphone slab year after year. Tech market analysis firm Canalys revealed in a report earlier this month that smartphone sales have experienced a significant decline in North America. The report indicates that iPhone sales have fallen 22% year-over-year, with an expected decline of 12% in 2023. The numbers are pretty staggering, especially fresh off the release of the iPhone 15, and could be an indicator that people are getting fatigued of the hottest new tech gadgets.
I don’t think that is big - no one buys tower PCs anymore where you already can do that sort of thing, because there actually isn’t a benefit to upgrading most parts anymore. I am still using my android phone from 2019 because it literally does everything I could want a phone to do. I may be lacking vision, but I also don’t really see what AI is going to do here to change the form factor. The reason the slab has endured IMO is that it is a swiss army knife of the pocket computing device. You don’t want to go back toa phone with a tiny screen and just talk at AI because that’s a terrible web browser ui. It’s a terrible book or comic reading ui. It’s a terrible gaming ui. It’s bad for displaying chat, pictures, videos etc.
AI will probably help voice to text and vice versa so we can talk text instead of making a phone call better. I can see it helping anytime you don’t want to go into your phone, but I also see it as a new interface roughly like Siri. And no one thought that Siri was the iPhone of anything.
I just don’t think AI first makes sense. Everyone wants the Star Trek computer until they actually try and use it by talking at a computer. It’s just not efficient imo.
I think it might be good for older people or people who struggle with technology, depending on its complexity and integration with other stuff. I absolutely hate talking to my phone, but a lot of older people I know do almost everything via google assistant. I could see a lot of use for accessability, but I personally probably wouldn’t use it.
Maybe because you haven’t seen an AI first designed ‘anything’. I doubt they really have a sense of what it is either, but if they actually did take what is incorrectly, but popularly, phrased as ‘AI’ and built a personal communication platform from it, I think it would be different enough that you saying ‘it’s not worth it’ before having any sense of what it is, is premature in the most literal sense.
I mean, the claim is it’s going to revolutionize the cell phone like the iPhone did. I’m not saying how “worth it” it’ll be. I’m saying I don’t see it changing the form factor much, or the general way you might interact with your phone much. Maybe I’m reading too much into the iPhone part - the change from ever smaller flip phones or slide phones to kind of ever larger slab touchscreens.
It was obvious when you pulled out an iPhone in 2008 you had the new hotness. AI is mostly invisible - how do you make that a status symbol? People already voice interact with their phones, or type interact with their phones. Unless this AI is mind reading and mind writing, I’m not seeing how it’s going to be that interface sea change or visual style change. All the things I can see current AI helping with are entirely incremental in terms of using an interface.
no one buys tower PCs anymore
Is this correct? Literally typing this from a ‘tower PC’. I would never buy anything else (I use my PC for writing music, a little animating, a lot of gaming). Almost every entry on the site I’ve bought my last 3 PCs & laptops from is a ‘tower PC’. I know not every PC user is a ‘power user’ but the idea that people don’t want to upgrade their PCs anymore is surely not correct? ‘There isn’t a benefit to upgrading most parts’ what, like a GPU? Or a CPU? Or RAM? Or going from an HDD to SSD? Or adding thunderbolt capability? I’d be surprised to find a majority of PC users weren’t upgrading any parts in a 3-year cycle.
Interested what phone you have. I persevered with a Samsung Galaxy S9 for many years but it was just feeling so slow & clunky even after a refresh & new battery. Got a Pixel 7a this year, blocked all the intrusive tracking, swapped the loader for a custom, it’s brilliant.
https://windowsreport.com/desktop-vs-laptop-market-share/ implies that desktops market share is shrinking, but it’s not as low as I thought it was. That said, many desktops I see out there in business (and at work) are “tiny” ones that you can’t upgrade either, they’re a laptop without the screen built in.
When I talk about a benefit to upgrading most parts, I mean that if you go buy say a general consumer model at Wal-Mart, you probably can’t just change out the CPU because the sockets change frequently. The RAM may have a spare slot, or be able to be increased in size, which is probably the most bang for your buck unless your PC happens to be a slow spinning disk. Most of the pre-built PCs have a PSU sized exactly for what’s in the box, and there usually isn’t a discrete GPU. Not only that, but there aren’t extra plugs, so you’re not plugging in a PCIe GPU without swapping out the PSU.
All things I’d imagine most computer buyers don’t or can’t do. They buy a box, and when it “dies” they buy a new box. I’ve only met PC Gamers online in the last … 15 years or so. Everyone else uses a console, phone, or gave up gaming.
No one I know upgrades PCs in a 3 year cycle and haven’t since the aughts. This is because high end PCs from 2010 worked straight through 2022 for people - Windows 11 is pushing new PCs, in so far as people care to upgrade / patch. Most people want the cheapest PC possible, which means they’re not upgrading anything till it breaks. And they upgrade the entire PC at a time.
As to the phone I have, I have a Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite from 2019. No desire to upgrade it till it dies.
You make a good point, whenever I do an upgrade it’s usually not viable to just upgade the CPU… as the socket type has changed, if I want a significantly better CPU then I also need a new motherboard. If I want a better GPU then I might need a better power supply.
I made a big mistake with the PC I got three units ago (PC, then laptop, then current PC), it was a custom build but I went for a cheapshit case and a cheap mobo to increase budget for other components. But then when it came time to do some upgrades, it was a complete nightmare and had to buy a nicer case / better mobo anyway!
