An AI gadget mightier than the sword?

OpenAI has kept its plans a secret, but here’s what we know: The first so-called AI device won’t have a screen and it won’t be something you can wear, according to recent filings in an unrelated court case. It probably won’t look anything like the Humane Pin, a pioneering AI gadget that failed spectacularly. 

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So what will it be? My money is on a pen. Altman told staff in May that the new device would be able to fit in a pocket or sit on a desk, according to a recording of the meeting reported by the Wall Street Journal. It will be fully aware of a user’s surroundings and act as a “third device” to complement—not replace—their smartphone. It will be unobtrusive.

A pen checks all those boxes. Its familiarity to everyone eliminates a major barrier to adoption and it wouldn’t look out of place on a desk. Ive himself has personal affinity with pens, having built up a personal collection that includes a vintage Montegrappa fountain pen and a Hermes pen designed by Marc Newson. He was deeply involved in the design of the Apple Pencil and an early commercial success in his career was designing the TX2, a sporty-looking pen.

I can’t take credit for this theory, which came to me from Max Child, the founder of San Francisco-based startup Volley. Child is better placed than most to speculate on what a non-screen device would look like, since his company develops voice-based games for smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo. 

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Perhaps Ive can get around the lack of screen by adding a projector to the top of the pen to cast images on hard surfaces. Its clip could contain a microphone and perhaps even a camera. That would not only scan text for analysis but also a person’s wider environment. 

As intrusive as that sounds, constant monitoring (or surveillance) of our lives is core to the vision for AI tools that increasingly step into the role of daily companions. Altman, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s consumer AI chief Mustafa Suleyman all want consumers to talk to AI as they might to a friend.

As it happens, an early entrant to the field of AI devices is called Friend. The San Francisco-based startup makes an always-listening pendant with a built-in microphone. “How did my chat with Kevin go earlier?” the wearer might ask it through a designated app. In a demo video, a young woman eating lunch is interrupted by the pendant with a text message asking, “How’s the falafel?”

“It’s dank,” she replies to it out loud. “I could eat one of these every day.”

Turning a pen into a listening device probably sounds like a vile contortion of its status as a solitary tool for expression. But consider that glasses may be gradually adopting a darker image too. 

Having long symbolized bookishness, glasses are increasingly being fitted with cameras, bestowing on their wearers the aura of a potential cheat or creep. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses have secretly shown users what chess moves to make, or been plugged into facial-recognition software to identify people on the street, or by social media influencers to film people without their consent.

The bigger picture of such devices is that such monitoring is destined to become normalized, especially when paired with AI tools pitched as companions that deliver new forms of convenience.

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Altman has said that Ive’s first prototype of the device “completely captured his imagination” and he told staff that the ex-Apple designer’s team could add $1 trillion in value to OpenAI. Altman is often loose with the hyperbole, but he is eager to replicate the first-mover-advantage success of ChatGPT in the next big market for AI devices, one that other companies appear to be jumping into as well.

Meanwhile, both Meta and Alphabet are working on smart glasses, while Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported that Apple is working on adding cameras to its AirPods and smartwatches to turn them into AI gadgets too. But Jonathan Ive’s minimalist ethos, the one that earned him fame as a designer for Apple, could make OpenAI’s first product stand out and win over consumers who might be wary of tech’s latest intrusion into their lives. 

The most disruptive new technological gadget may well be one that feels least like technology.  ©Bloomberg

The author is is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology.