The first hardware product from OpenAI, the artificial intelligence lab focused on trying to ensure human beings remain relevant, is evidently a machine that helps people play video games.
And why not? There have been worse ideas.
Saturday at SXSW in Austin, Texas, CEO Sam Altman and CTO Greg Brockman answered what Altman called “common questions” about AI — that it’s going to destroy us all (probably not), that the people building it are working in an ethical vacuum (allegedly not) — as well as more practical ones.
“We don’t recommend you run out and buy a graphics card and start playing,” joked Brockman on stage with Altman.
Created if only so we can selfishly train bigger AIs ourselves.
Controlling games players love would seem relatively simple compared to recovering jobs from unemployed truck drivers or robots replacing Uber drivers.
OpenAI says one of the things holding back its work training beefier and deeper neural networks has been access, funnily enough, to powerful, fast turnaround of video game simulations doing battle within those new machines.
“Helena will simulate slightly less than 5 trillion environments every second,” said one OpenAI blog post last spring.
Posts like these betray impatience — partly, but intentionally — impatience, showboating this arise-and-let-fly-to-profit activity long before worth investing into.
Other components will take until nearly next year, though, because social metaphors coincide here with unprofitability when demoed.
Appearing in a public conversation with respected designer Jony Ive, Altman positioned the soon-to-be device as basic, pocketable, and possibly screenless — intended to fade into the background while an AI assistant does more of the thinking.
While details were kept under wraps, both executives framed the prototype as an antidote to the always-on, always-buzzing iPhone era that they otherwise rhapsodized about being a landmark in consumer tech. I’ve argued that the product could appear in less than two years, indicating that the design phase has transitioned to actual hardware.
A Machine Made For Quiet, Seamless Everyday Computing
Altman’s vision echoes a classic concept of the Xerox PARC researchers Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown: technology that amplifies capacity while receding from the incessant foreground of attention. The ideal assistant he envisions is nothing like the current churning volume of bright screens and dopamine-driven feeds: It’s one who you trust can triage tasks, nudge when necessary and otherwise be quiet.
That sort of thing necessitates strong contextual awareness — where you are, what you’re doing, and when it’s OK to interrupt. Altman highlighted long-horizon trust, suggesting an agent that learns preferences over months, not minutes. The “vibe,” he said, is supposed to be like a tranquil getaway, not an overflowing city block.
Why This Goes Against The Smartphone Playbook
Mobile attention has become costly. Data.ai’s State of Mobile reports detail that consumers in top markets are spending around 5 hours per day in mobile apps, with social, messaging and short video accounting for much of this time. Deloitte’s Global Mobile Consumer Survey, for example, has repeatedly found that users consult their phones dozens of times a day — behavior encouraged by push notifications and infinite feeds.
Pew Research Center has also tracked the “always online” phenomenon, with significant portions of adults — and higher shares of teens — saying they are constantly connected.
Tech behemoths have done so with Screen Time and Digital Wellbeing dashboards, tacitly admitting that a burden has been placed upon us. Altman’s sales pitch is yet more radical: design the device itself to be less attention-seeking in the first place.
The Jony Ive Signature Design and Minimalist Vision
Ive helped define the tactile clarity of the iPhone and Apple Watch, work that integrated complex technology with radically simple design. His characterization of “naive” simplicity and nonthreatening tools sound like a device where the interface is primarily voice commands, ambient cues or restrained haptics — less time staring at a screen in dumb absorption, more brief moments of intention.
It’s an approach that recalls the best minimalism of industrial design: fewer modes, fewer decisions, and — crucially — fewer reasons to reach for a glowing rectangle. And if the device is truly screenless or close to it, you may see new interaction norms — discreet status LEDs, contextual sounds, responsive materials — meant to signal state without hijacking attention.
Lessons From Recent AI Gadgets and Wearable Devices
The last two years offered warning signs. Earlier AI wearables overpromised and met battery challenges, latency issues and unclear use cases. The AI Pin from Humane and other screen-lighting devices generated a lot of curiosity but had mixed reviews around trustworthiness and everyday utility. The lesson: ambient AI will need to be invisible and indispensable.
On the other hand, voice-forward devices that fit into people’s daily routines — such as smart speakers and camera-equipped eyewear — have illustrated how, when friction drops, adoption may follow. The chance for OpenAI and Ive is to merge cloud-scale models with a purpose-built object that gets the ergonomics right on day one.
What It Takes To Be Truly At Peace With Technology
Drawing a more chilled-out audience will rest on three pillars.
- Latency needs to get close to instantaneous, or the interruptions just won’t feel polite.
- Privacy and data control need to be explicit; contextual awareness only succeeds if users believe in how it is learned and stored.
- The agent should handle multi-step tasks — booking, summarizing, planning — so you ask more and get more.
None of that diminishes the iPhone’s legacy; Altman himself referred to it as “the greatest invention in consumer products.” But as generative models grow from chatbots to trusted agents, the locus of control may move from screens that you operate to assistants that operate the screen.
The Road To Launch And The Path To Manufacturing
Ive’s under-two-years guidance indicates that the team is working on something manufacturable, not just a concept. Trade-offs between on-device processing, battery life and cloud inference costs can be anticipated. There are a number of forces that will manage its scaling, including hardware partnerships, carrier integrations and developer tools for this new agentic form of workflow.
If OpenAI and Ive succeed in capturing serenity into a pocketable friend, not only will they supersede the iPhone — they’ll propose a new deal with our attention.
At a time when we live by taps and pings, that may be the boldest feature of all.