This device that just sits and listens all the time and interrupts ... that's nothing like I use LLMs now. That's a completely different mode of operation / my tolerance for mistakes would be near 0 with that.

It's not clear to me if an LLM can even DO these things conversationally well enough to work / not be a nuisance.

Siri might be the best example, you use it a few times, it's useless a few times and then I just use it to set timers and forget about it otherwise.

That sounds like a terrible idea.

It's hard to say, but I like to think that something like the iPhone always sounded like a good idea. Basically, the entire web in your pocket. Check football scores while you're on the john, text someone instead of calling, GPS, etc. There were some unknowns, like can we get touch screen to work well enough, will people pay $600 for a phone when typical phones cost $100-200 at the time. But the product itself was obviously good.

But this is some puck that records everything and periodically chimes in? Sounds awful. What problem is this trying to solve? iPhone solved the problem of camera, entertainment and phone in one device. Is anyone walking around thinking gee I wish I had some AI talk to me right now but I don't want to press a button?

Yeah I can imagine that a device which records everyone around you, all the time, struggles with that.

"Helped" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. I'm still not sure if those these things did well because of Jony or due to Steve. What we saw from Jony after Steve (few ports, butterfly keyboard, thinness at the expense of everything else) makes me think that without a good editor (of which Altman may or may not be) Jony isn't able to create greatness on his own. I also find Jony's ventures post-Apple to be laughable and not interesting in the slightest.

> “The concept is that you should have a friend who’s a computer who isn’t your weird AI girlfriend... like [Apple’s digital voice assistant] Siri but better,”

Uh, ok, that sentence took a weird turn. I'm not sure if anyone has ever called Siri a "weird AI girlfriend", I've never seen it marketed that way or people using it that way. Now, the OpenAI API, on the other hand, has clearly helped enable whole slews of AI Girl/boyfriends. Odd dig to throw at Apple here.

I'm sure whatever they unveil will be interesting, just not clear if it will have the same fate as R1/Humane/Friend. Personally, I hope they fail based on the video they released when OpenAI first bought "io", cringe does not begin to describe it.

Maybe that's just my limited imagination, but since no one has made anything useful in this space...

It could have been great for them to work on something like smart glasses, a competitor to Meta one with AI. Or a nice AI super-smart watch.

Voice is inherently linear, even the most basic voice only menus are tedious to navigate.

So… a ‘phone’ - but no screen.

Finally, someone has, er, invented the smartphone? Except without the most useful bit?

Why do people keep trying to make special-purpose LLM gadgets? What on earth is wrong with just having an app on a phone?