Being a designer myself, but in the interest of public good, I will share my design here and urge anyone else to copy it. The ideal form factor for this device is a cowboy hat. Here's why
1. Such a device will require significant local compute, generating a lot of heat. It cannot be too close to the body, and require efficient cooling. In the cowboy hat, the processing can be placed above the head in the bucket of the hat, and the cooling dispersed in a large surface area around the brim
2. Such a device requires 360 degree camera vision, thus cannot be a backpack or vest type design (which also bring heat too close to the body). It also must be close to eye level (cannot be shoes).
3. Has to be able to be worn in any environment, with any style. A cowboy hat is great for sun protection, and in the rain.
I've been wanting an AI drone companion for decades. Forget having to wear any tech. But I'll be building my own. And I'll just wear a regular cowboy hat when it's hot and sunny.
>The product will be capable of being fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one’s pocket or on one’s desk, and would be a third core device a person would put on their desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone.
We're all comfortable with phones with all sorts of sensors, but most of those are on or off in a way we understand.
I'm not a fan of the idea that someone else around me brings a device that is perpetually "fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life" around me and then now my privacy is gone ...
you know the story of callerID from the 1990s? The whole idea that it was a person's right to see WHO was calling them was deemed crazy. Before this it was consider your right to call people anonymously. Now when we see "Unknown Caller" no one answers. In 2030 this little orb will be so standard if someone wants their privacy back it will be seen the same way. They are the ones wanting to call someone anonymously.
While I don't like this future, I'm afraid that you're correct in your prediction.
This is actually the sentiment I had about Google Glass - people (and tech) were not ready then, but I think that slowly the world is moving towards the acceptance that everything is being recorded and analyzed, by default. I just hope that we'll still be able to have some private spheres where there is no recording, but am concerned that this would have to be enforced by just not having any electronics there at all.
> I'm not a fan of the idea that someone else around me brings a device that is perpetually "fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life" around me and then now my privacy is gone
This is my primary concern about these things. I'd be very likely to avoid being around people that I know are using something like this to the greatest degree I can.
I'm not a fan either, but I think it's inevitable that everything we do, at least in any not 100% private space, will be recorded in the not distant future.
Because recording will be so very cheap and useful.
As an example, my car has at least 5 cameras that are constantly on. This is - or will be soon - true for all cars. So anytime you can see a car, you're being recorded.
More likely we're just in a liminal phase. There are basically no meaningful privacy protections to speak of basically anywhere in the world. And the same was once true of drug laws, gambling laws, weapons laws, advertising laws (as in you could sell a bag of chalk and claim it was whatever you wanted at one time), and so on endlessly.
The odds of there being no privacy laws perpetually into the future are probably 0. So we're just in a period that'll probably be thought of, in terms of privacy, of how we might think of the 'wild west' in terms of guns/violence. And I think the change will probably come fairly soon, especially if this idea isn't as DOA as wearable AR stuff was.
That is going to be a hard no in so many contexts. Hospitals, gyms, many work environments, my house, the list is going to be long. We know the companies can’t keep their government from forcing access at some point or another. We also know at some point a zero day exploit will allow pin point targeting of who you want to spy on. We see this already on mobile phones.
Edit: When I read the archive link above I can’t actually see the quote referenced.
Most people will give privacy away for convenience or because they want the thing buys them status. The few holdouts will be pressured into get the new thing because they risk being left behind or not be in the loop. If done right, this will go exactly like smartphones did.
> will be capable of being fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one’s pocket or on one’s desk,
Sounds an awful lot like the phone. But it s not a phone. But people forget that a tool with the form factor of a phone has been man's best friend for millenia: it was a knife, a purse, a notebook, and now a phone. They are not going to beat that , is my bet. If it can be integrated in a phone, it's a phone
> a third core device a person would put on their desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone.
That's my car keys. now i will have to charge them too?
They know people don't want it, they just hope to be able to convince them otherwise because right now OpenAI is a feature, and not a product. The real money is in owning a product platform and so executives are forced to pitch some product idea to continue working there.
It is kind of interesting to note that the 1 thing tech was able to successfully get us to add to things we carry with us was the phone.
And that had prior signals that we would accept that: basically every household in the US had a phone. Cordless phones gained popularity. Beepers were a thing. We knew people wanted phones with them, we just couldn't do it yet.
The odds of creating a brand new device that no one has ever heard of that people will carry everywhere with them is basically zero.
>stealth will be important for their ultimate success to avoid competitors copying the product before it’s ready.
shouldn't statements like this be bearish for OpenAI? If what they had internally was so far ahead of everyone else then why would it matter if the physical hardware were cloned, the model would make the difference in the same way the iPhone software and focus on scroll fidelity made it leagues above the LG Prada.
None of it makes any difference because they've managed to be worth over 300 billion without an ounce of moat.
This shit is gonna go nuclear, and probably soon. Valuation is utterly detached from reality for the mediocre products they've shipped and the only reason it's still going is the tech sector doesn't have anything else to show for itself. Purchasing user numbers must be absolutely pathetic what with the complete silence on them, and even their highest tier paying customers have them hemorrhaging money, let alone all the cheaper/free ones.
Microsoft clearly got tired of being the pay-pig and is scaling back datacenters. OpenAI is supposedly taking up that stock but the projects are stalling because OpenAI doesn't have any money. Softbank is supposedly funding them but it also doesn't have the money, which is a huge issue what with them being the only substantial investor. And that's JUST for THIS YEAR. By all accounts they'll need dozens more billions for 2026.
For what? Chat bots and boring pictures/video that nobody aside from AI hype people give the slightest damn about.
Like, to put this in perspective: OpenAI is supposedly worth a tenth of what APPLE is worth. Fucking APPLE. Love em or hate em, Apple is one of the most valuable companies on the fucking planet, for a reason. What on Earth is OpenAI shifting in terms of actual products-to-customers that deserves to be in the same ZIP code as the Mac, iPhone or iPad?
> For what? Chat bots and boring pictures/video that nobody aside from AI hype people give the slightest damn about.
I shed a tear when I saw those Sora demos of people walking down a street. I'd never seen anything so beautiful in my life. No human has ever filmed anything so good. Just amazeballs.
The only thing they have of value is the ChatGPT brand. They have no moat, and AI needs to be embedded in products to have value. OpenAI doesn't sell any products, and anyone can sell tokens through an API.
> He suggested the $6.5 billion acquisition has the potential to add $1 trillion in value to OpenAI, according to a recording reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Crazy part is there will be investors who will absolutely believe this. Nothing has shattered the illusion the rich are smarter than everyone else for me than the sagas of madoff, ftx, holmes and now the AI hype.
It is so blatantly obvious OpenAI is paying these ridiculous prices for acquisitions to try and justify their own valuation. The emperor has no clothes, indeed.
His last few years at Apple lost him a large amount of my respect (or at least proved he wasn't the genius he had been portrayed as) but this OpenAI move took whatever respect was left to 0.
That video they posted was completely over the top and absurd (especially without announcing/shipping a product). Watching Sam and Jony fellate each other was nauseating. I don't SNL could have done a better (worse?) job.
He saw investors pouring tens of billions into a big money pit and has siphoned off probably a billion or two for himself. The boy done good as we say here in Britain.
> and would be a third core device a person would put on their desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone.
Or build an AI-enabled device that replaces both. All you really need is local sensors, local emitters, and lots of local+remote processing+storage.
The laptop/desktop mostly goes away, when most people won't need desks, since most desk-requiring jobs will soon be done passably by "AI". (Whether the "AI" is actual intelligence, or just robo-plagiarism of training material.) Do you really need a keyboard, when there's nothing for you to type. Do you really need a bunch of screens, when you're not looking at and reasoning about lots of information.
If anyone is going to build a one-device for the idle and disaffected eloi, to be harvested of remaining value, by the weathly, who increasingly consolidate all of the wealth and power, it may well be OpenAI building that device.
Apple isn't the best candidate to nail this, because they have lingering whiffs of hippie counterculture in their self-image. And for a long time, Google thought of themselves as the good ones, with vestiges of that enduring, no matter how much DoubleClick metastasizes. But OpenAI staff was confronted unambiguously with its true self early on, so doesn't have the encumbrances that the others do.
Readit News
1. Such a device will require significant local compute, generating a lot of heat. It cannot be too close to the body, and require efficient cooling. In the cowboy hat, the processing can be placed above the head in the bucket of the hat, and the cooling dispersed in a large surface area around the brim
2. Such a device requires 360 degree camera vision, thus cannot be a backpack or vest type design (which also bring heat too close to the body). It also must be close to eye level (cannot be shoes).
3. Has to be able to be worn in any environment, with any style. A cowboy hat is great for sun protection, and in the rain.
---
"It combines the spirit of old Mexico with a little big city panache." - Elaine Benes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOsWfzzvlkU
Or was that an episode that I missed in the last ... 15 years... Oh man...
We're all comfortable with phones with all sorts of sensors, but most of those are on or off in a way we understand.
I'm not a fan of the idea that someone else around me brings a device that is perpetually "fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life" around me and then now my privacy is gone ...
Not that I think you're wrong, people put alexa in their houses, buy samsung smart tvs, etc.
This is actually the sentiment I had about Google Glass - people (and tech) were not ready then, but I think that slowly the world is moving towards the acceptance that everything is being recorded and analyzed, by default. I just hope that we'll still be able to have some private spheres where there is no recording, but am concerned that this would have to be enforced by just not having any electronics there at all.
Dead Comment
This is my primary concern about these things. I'd be very likely to avoid being around people that I know are using something like this to the greatest degree I can.
Because recording will be so very cheap and useful.
As an example, my car has at least 5 cameras that are constantly on. This is - or will be soon - true for all cars. So anytime you can see a car, you're being recorded.
The odds of there being no privacy laws perpetually into the future are probably 0. So we're just in a period that'll probably be thought of, in terms of privacy, of how we might think of the 'wild west' in terms of guns/violence. And I think the change will probably come fairly soon, especially if this idea isn't as DOA as wearable AR stuff was.
That is going to be a hard no in so many contexts. Hospitals, gyms, many work environments, my house, the list is going to be long. We know the companies can’t keep their government from forcing access at some point or another. We also know at some point a zero day exploit will allow pin point targeting of who you want to spy on. We see this already on mobile phones.
Edit: When I read the archive link above I can’t actually see the quote referenced.
Which is totally fine.
What is not totally fine is people giving my privacy away for their convenience and/or status.
(Anyone hear read _We_?)
> will be capable of being fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one’s pocket or on one’s desk,
Sounds an awful lot like the phone. But it s not a phone. But people forget that a tool with the form factor of a phone has been man's best friend for millenia: it was a knife, a purse, a notebook, and now a phone. They are not going to beat that , is my bet. If it can be integrated in a phone, it's a phone
> a third core device a person would put on their desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone.
That's my car keys. now i will have to charge them too?
You’re going to love it!
And that had prior signals that we would accept that: basically every household in the US had a phone. Cordless phones gained popularity. Beepers were a thing. We knew people wanted phones with them, we just couldn't do it yet.
The odds of creating a brand new device that no one has ever heard of that people will carry everywhere with them is basically zero.
If there is enough utility in the device, and the form factor is well done, I think the odds are much higher than zero.
https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/05/glass-redux-google-ai...
shouldn't statements like this be bearish for OpenAI? If what they had internally was so far ahead of everyone else then why would it matter if the physical hardware were cloned, the model would make the difference in the same way the iPhone software and focus on scroll fidelity made it leagues above the LG Prada.
This shit is gonna go nuclear, and probably soon. Valuation is utterly detached from reality for the mediocre products they've shipped and the only reason it's still going is the tech sector doesn't have anything else to show for itself. Purchasing user numbers must be absolutely pathetic what with the complete silence on them, and even their highest tier paying customers have them hemorrhaging money, let alone all the cheaper/free ones.
Microsoft clearly got tired of being the pay-pig and is scaling back datacenters. OpenAI is supposedly taking up that stock but the projects are stalling because OpenAI doesn't have any money. Softbank is supposedly funding them but it also doesn't have the money, which is a huge issue what with them being the only substantial investor. And that's JUST for THIS YEAR. By all accounts they'll need dozens more billions for 2026.
For what? Chat bots and boring pictures/video that nobody aside from AI hype people give the slightest damn about.
Like, to put this in perspective: OpenAI is supposedly worth a tenth of what APPLE is worth. Fucking APPLE. Love em or hate em, Apple is one of the most valuable companies on the fucking planet, for a reason. What on Earth is OpenAI shifting in terms of actual products-to-customers that deserves to be in the same ZIP code as the Mac, iPhone or iPad?
Ludicrous.
I shed a tear when I saw those Sora demos of people walking down a street. I'd never seen anything so beautiful in my life. No human has ever filmed anything so good. Just amazeballs.
Deleted Comment
Crazy part is there will be investors who will absolutely believe this. Nothing has shattered the illusion the rich are smarter than everyone else for me than the sagas of madoff, ftx, holmes and now the AI hype.
That video they posted was completely over the top and absurd (especially without announcing/shipping a product). Watching Sam and Jony fellate each other was nauseating. I don't SNL could have done a better (worse?) job.
Or build an AI-enabled device that replaces both. All you really need is local sensors, local emitters, and lots of local+remote processing+storage.
The laptop/desktop mostly goes away, when most people won't need desks, since most desk-requiring jobs will soon be done passably by "AI". (Whether the "AI" is actual intelligence, or just robo-plagiarism of training material.) Do you really need a keyboard, when there's nothing for you to type. Do you really need a bunch of screens, when you're not looking at and reasoning about lots of information.
If anyone is going to build a one-device for the idle and disaffected eloi, to be harvested of remaining value, by the weathly, who increasingly consolidate all of the wealth and power, it may well be OpenAI building that device.
Apple isn't the best candidate to nail this, because they have lingering whiffs of hippie counterculture in their self-image. And for a long time, Google thought of themselves as the good ones, with vestiges of that enduring, no matter how much DoubleClick metastasizes. But OpenAI staff was confronted unambiguously with its true self early on, so doesn't have the encumbrances that the others do.