Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk podcast. This is a show where we discuss. The critical crossroads? That shape? SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neuralink, and I'm your host, Will Walden. One more thing. Before we start, Google Podcasts is. Being discontinued by. Google So if you want to continue getting episodes of the Elon Musk podcast, please check us out. Over at. YouTube Music Search us out over there and that's where you'll be able.
To find our. Podcast through Google. Roducts, thank you so much for understanding. I had no. Control over this Google ulled the Google Podcast a off of. Android and. I want to. Let you know where to continue finding the show. Over at YouTube Music. Search for. Elon Musk Podcast. Thank you so much. Joni I've previously from Apple and Sam Altman of Open AI are currently designing something interesting. Now Joni I've one of the absolute best industrial designers used to work at Apple.
All the products that we use now, iPhones, iPads, everything had Joni's handprints on it, and his ideas are amazing. And the way that he designs things absolutely brilliantly. Sam Altman of Open AI, great business person, very intellectual person. Open AI is revolutionizing the way that we use AI in every single facet of society. And they're building something together. They're trying to secure a billion dollars in funding for
this venture. Now this is wild, but they aim to develop an AI integrated personal device. It's going to have very distinct design and functionality is going to be similar to smartphones that we have now. Now the Information broke this story and they said that in 2023 after the initial disclosure from the information that they're working on something. We don't have many specifics right now. It's all undisclosed, it's all behind closed doors and there's curiosity about its design and
capabilities too. The developments have been under discussion since 2023, I think increasing momentum towards actualizing of the concept. Right now, the collaboration between I've and Altman combines significant expertise in design and AI, suggesting hopefully a new groundbreaking product is on the horizon. Now we've seen similar designs to the iPhone. Almost every smartphone now
looks very similar to an iPhone. And that's because Johnny Joni, I've sorry I keep saying Johnny, but Joni, I've was way ahead of the curve here. But Joni and Sam have engaged with several potential investors right now to reach their substantial funding target, a billion dollars.
They're going to hire the greatest minds in AI and design and engineering to come together and build this amazing device, whatever it is. And their discussions have included Thrive Capital, known for its investments, repeat investments, mind you in Open AI, and Emerson Collective established by Lorene Powell Jobs Now These talks indicate a broad search for financial backing to support the ventures ambitious goals that Joni Ive is behind it. Something spectacular is on the horizon.
The potential for something spectacular is on the horizon. We don't know how this thing is going to turn out. Also SoftBank, a CEO of SoftBank is another prominent figure in the tech sector and it's possibly interested in investing in this new format for interacting with yourself, your data, the environment. We don't know what this thing is yet, though this is all speculation. The involvement of the CEO from SoftBank suggests a possible
link to ARM ARM microprocessors. It's a company that he supports. It's high profile nature of this endeavor is if they get a chip company on board, they're going to do something absolutely amazing. If they can do custom chips, that's probably why they need the billion dollars too. They have to go through all the engineering to make prototypes and the whole gambit of things they have to run through. And not just alpha software, but beta software and also full
release software. But also they have to do a lot of testing with the hardware and the software together to make sure everything functions very well. And they have to keep it at a price point that people would actually buy out. Yeah, right now an iPhone is around a, let's say, 700 to $1000. And if this device is similar to the iPhone, like what it can accomplish? Check your e-mail, listen to music. What are the normal things that you do every day? Check maps, get an Uber and get
food delivered to you? Whatever it is, if this device can do that and it's smaller than iPhone, you don't have to take it out of your pocket. It's clipped to you somewhere. Or maybe it's a ring. I don't know. And it I don't know what it is and we have no idea. Nobody really knows. Then would you buy it for 700 dollars, $800? That's an ambitious goal for a price, but there's a possibility that it could be around that
price. If it's a small device and it could do things that are similar to an iPhone but doesn't have the capabilities of a screen, isn't worth that much money, though. You have to think about that too. But they want to raise a billion dollars, build the chips, build the software. You need bright people to do all of those things and managing the company and AI everything. So let's go back to the
information. If you're not familiar with the information is they break a lot of tech stories and they have people on the inside. They know everybody in Silicon Valley. They have some insiders that come through with some very reputable information. That's why they're called The Information now. They say that the device excused traditional designs, potentially offering a novel user experience. They're looking into screenless interfaces.
Sam Altman wants to have creative, intuitive, less distracting technology, and I think Joni, I've was on the precipice of something. Let's not talk about the Apple Pencil, though. Can we? Or the way that the Apple mouse charges? Let's not talk about those two things. Those are horrible, horrible designs.
I don't know if Joni, I've had anything to do with that, but if he did, Joni, you did a horrible thing to humanity for introducing those two ways of charging things, The way to charge an Apple Pencil and the way to charge an Apple mouse. Horrible designs. But this new design hopefully screen this interface and it's going to be very intuitive. It's going to be very novel. It's supposed to leverage open AI's ChatGPT or some version of that or some sort of something
with the large language model. And they're going to be integrating advanced AI capabilities with this device now. Between I've designed prowess and Altman's AI expertise, they could redefine personal computing devices. Think about how much money Apple makes just from iPhone sales and software sales.
I've's previous contributions to Apple's iconic products in his post Apple venture love form show that he has a deep commitment to innovation in design and functionality, even though he's been gone from Apple for a long time now. And the project's ambition is evident in the recruitment of Tank Tan, a former Apple executive, to lead Hardware Engineering. Now, this venture's commitment to high quality design and engineering could draw upon Tan's experience with Apple's product lineup.
They have to the right people, in the right places, doing the right things in order to produce an amazing device that people would actually want to use and wear. Now, there's an ongoing debate, though, about the role of AI in enhancing productivity while minimizing distractions. Previous AI devices have promised efficiency without the pitfalls of conventional smartphones, but real world effectiveness and security concerns remain to be addressed
comprehensively. Just hear me out for a moment. If you ask your device that's connected to Open AI to look up somebody's phone number or to give your information, any sort of information, let's just dial it back here. Any sort of information. Do you want Open AI to have your information or do you want it to be encrypted? I would go for encrypted. Nobody needs to know if I'm having one of those nights and I need a pizza at 3:00 in the
morning. Nobody needs to know what, like where I go or anything like that. Same with you. I'm sure I'm most people don't really worry about them. That's not. I don't really worry about it, but I don't think a company should have all of my specific data for things that I for where I go and what I do though. I have an iPhone and I'm probably tracked all the time anyway. I have googled Google on my iPhone, so I'm pretty sure ads are being forced to me through Google.
Because the things that I say or the things that I search, there are trade-offs. This little device, it's supposed to be smaller than an iPhone, will be able to do all that, I'm not sure. I'm not sure what they'll be able to do, but I'm pretty sure everything will go up to the cloud anyway. They'll be able to process things in the cloud as opposed to on your device. So maybe that's where they're going to be doing their
processing. Maybe they're going to have server farms, GPU farms, etcetera that will be handling all this computation. Now the feasibility and the impact of such AI power devices are still under scrutiny though. Nobody's made anything like this before. Questions about their practicality, user experience and data security linger, and that's the challenge for Ivan Altman's project going ahead. There's a lot of problems, actually a lot of things to solve the funding of a billion
dollars. With high profile investors like SoftBank, it's potentially significant. In the tech industry. The involvement of such influential figures could shape the project's direction and its technological foundations, particularly with arms potential involvement as well. And the project's conception involving brainstorming Session I of San Francisco Studio indicate a hands on approach to defining the devices, core
features and user experience. If you get together with somebody, there's a lot that can be done that you cannot do over Zoom. Real time collaboration in person is a lot different than real time collaboration on Zoom or any other. Their meeting app.
I'm glad they met up. I'm glad they can brainstorm traditionally one-on-one or with their team to pound this out because it sounds like an amazing thing and the goal is to develop an intuitive user interface that transcends conventional computing paradigms. Most like the iPhone revolutionized mobile Internet access. If you remember back then phones didn't really have the Internet. And when they did have the Internet it was expensive and it was basic text.
There wasn't a lot of websites that were developed. There weren't any apps really, just apps that came with your T-Mobile phone or whatever. But no real apps for the Internet back then, not compared to like now everything has. Every phone has 5000 apps on it. It's a lot different time. And what kind of apps would they use on a small device that they don't really want to interfere with your life? We'll see. We'll see in the future.
But this project is still in his formative stages of course, with various ideas being considered the complexity of creating a new device category. This is everything. It's a whole new thing. Means that the venture might take years to materialize into a market ready product and this could be a long term vision behind this initiative. Ivy's concerns about the addictive nature of smartphones and their unintended consequences have been well documented. That's why he's going forth with
this venture. This project with open AI offers a chance to address these issues. But developing a less screen dependent method of interaction potentially mitigating some of the negative aspects of modern technology use. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your
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