OpenAI Will Need Screens
We are in a weird phase of consumer gadgetry as the more Silicon Valley tries to move us beyond our smartphones, the less promising such prospects look. This subject was pushed into the spotlight again with OpenAI’s big news of working with Jony Ive on screenless AI devices. There is both a massive under bet as to just how addicting our mobile screens have become as well as an overreaction to voice’s allure, as if talking to our computers will somehow help us overcome our video addictions. There is a way to move us past the smartphone, but it likely will involve more, not fewer, screens.
If there were a competition for “Most Likely to Fail” awards given to HW start-ups, Humane was in the early front running and never looked back. The November 2023 Inside Orchard essay, “Humane’s Unimaginative Pin,” published shortly after the company unveiled its hyped Ai Pin but before the product was released, went on to serve as an accurate autopsy of what went wrong with the company. In summing up Humane’s problem in a sentence:
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