Limitless Podcast

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OpenAI's new potential pen-shaped device may be designed for ambient computing and moving beyond smart glasses. We analyze the impacts of over $10 billion in failed AI hardware investments and OpenAI's strategic focus on voice technologies. 

Exploring the convergence of multimodal AI and societal screen fatigue, we consider how this device could reshape our tech interactions.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 AI's New Hardware Revolution
4:08 Speculating the Device's Design
8:25 Ambient Computing's Promise
12:11 The Cost of Innovation
14:52 The Flaws of Smart Glasses
17:49 Pickle's Unlikely Reality
19:26 OpenAI's Unique Approach
23:51 The Future of Device Integration
26:25 Looking Ahead to the Future

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RESOURCES

Josh: https://x.com/JoshKale

Ejaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

What is Limitless Podcast?

Exploring the frontiers of Technology and AI

Josh:
For the last three years, AI has been this disembodied superpower.

Josh:
It lives in tabs, it lives in chat windows, you summon it, you type to it,

Josh:
sometimes you even speak to it, it comes and then it vanishes.

Josh:
It's powerful, but it is trapped behind this glass.

Josh:
And then last week, we have one of the most exciting rumors to pop up in this

Josh:
world, which is around OpenAI and their new hardware device offering.

Josh:
OpenAI, they partnered with Johnny Ive, who has created devices including,

Josh:
but not limited to, the iPhone, the iPod, the MacBook, basically any hardware

Josh:
device that you've used.

Josh:
Uh johnny ive has designed it if it's come from apple and what's

Josh:
fascinating about this is the rumor isn't telling us

Josh:
that they're going to be choosing glasses everyone's choosing

Josh:
glasses meta has them google's working on them apple's working

Josh:
on them but this form factor this time is different and we're going to answer

Josh:
the question as to why on this episode and what makes this device so important

Josh:
and different in a world where everyone's seemingly failing right ijaz like

Josh:
if i think about all the other companies who have tried to build an ai first

Josh:
hardware device they've all been failing miserably. We talked about the Meta Ray-Ban displays.

Josh:
We can't even get our hands on them. The demos are clunky. It doesn't work.

Josh:
We have companies like Humane and Rabi.

Josh:
And we have another one this week called Pickle.

Josh:
And none of them seem to work. So OpenAI is going in a different direction.

Josh:
And I kind of want to talk about why they're making this decision to go one

Josh:
way when everyone else is going the other.

Ejaaz:
I think the toll of wasted money on kind of defunct AI hardware products is

Ejaaz:
now surpassing about $10 billion.

Ejaaz:
It's a mixture of like VC funded crap. And then you've got even the big boys

Ejaaz:
like Meta releasing sunglasses, which then suck.

Ejaaz:
It's pretty insane to think, Josh, that it's been less than a year since OpenAI

Ejaaz:
announced their kind of like entry into consumer hardware.

Ejaaz:
For folks who don't know, So OpenAI basically acquired Johnny Ives hardware startup called I.O.

Ejaaz:
For six and a half billion dollars repeatedly, a mixture of cash and equity

Ejaaz:
at the time, which was their largest acquisition to date, I still think.

Ejaaz:
And there was a lot of speculation and rumors around what that device might

Ejaaz:
be that they're building.

Ejaaz:
And we actually put out an episode early last year, I think it was during May,

Ejaaz:
actually, where you and I speculated about what that form factor might look like.

Ejaaz:
And I remember we settled on two devices, Josh, it was the glasses,

Ejaaz:
where they would have like microphones that could like listen to you,

Ejaaz:
but also kind of like speakers that could blare audio back to you.

Ejaaz:
Obviously, the lenses would act as with like a camera that can kind of see what

Ejaaz:
you do. It's kind of like this multimodal type of device.

Ejaaz:
And then the alternative was kind of like this puck-shaped disc that could like

Ejaaz:
sit on your desk or sit in your pocket that might have eyes and visions.

Ejaaz:
We were wrong on both accounts.

Ejaaz:
If this leak that we're showing on our screen right now is true.

Ejaaz:
So the tweet goes, additional details about OpenAI's device.

Ejaaz:
And it goes on to kind of describe this iPod shuffle type device,

Ejaaz:
which takes the form of a pen device, which will have a sort of camera.

Ejaaz:
Microphone, but kind of like ambient presence in your pocket where you can kind

Ejaaz:
of like take out, you can write,

Ejaaz:
the device will kind of detect the kind of motion of your hand and understand

Ejaaz:
and transcribe those words that are written into your chat GPT interface.

Ejaaz:
So there's like this weird link between real life ambient presence and chat

Ejaaz:
GPT, which you and I are familiar with today.

Josh:
So per that episode last year, we may have been wrong on some things,

Josh:
but I don't think we were wrong on all of them and i

Josh:
still feel pretty good about the direction that we're heading in so this

Josh:
says pen shaped device integrates ai lightweight highly portable about the size

Josh:
of an ipod shuffle can be carried in a pocket worn around the neck it'll include

Josh:
a microphone and a camera and it'll be able to convert handwritten notes directly

Josh:
to text and instantly upload them to chat gpt so if we the the.

Ejaaz:
Ipod shuffle by the way for anyone who

Ejaaz:
who is not a dinosaur that could get an idea of what this looked like.

Josh:
So I wanted to include this picture because I think it's important to help understand the form factor.

Josh:
I think when a lot of people think about this, and when we first thought about

Josh:
it, it was more of a rounded shape just because if you're designing these things

Josh:
from first principles, that kind of made sense to put on a desk, right?

Josh:
Like if you're designing one of these devices, you want it to see, you want it to hear.

Josh:
What materials does that look like? What shape does it have to take?

Josh:
How do the cameras have to interact with the materials?

Josh:
We kind of concluded on this like little round puck

Josh:
shape it appears as if the shape is wrong but the sensors are still

Josh:
correct it still has the ability to see it still has the

Josh:
ability to hear and it still will likely be this always on thing it will just

Josh:
come in a form that's maybe a little more wearable as jewelry or fits easier

Josh:
into your pocket that's what it seems like this is and i took the ipod shuffle

Josh:
first generation because ijaz if you notice on that image it actually has a

Josh:
little string around it to put around your neck and to wear it.

Josh:
So this has actually been done before in the very first generation of the iPod.

Josh:
What happens if you take this very portable device and you just add the new

Josh:
21st century technology that wasn't available when this thing first came out?

Josh:
You get something that can see, that can hear, that can speak back to you.

Josh:
And it creates this really interesting thing. Now we have some renderings of

Josh:
what people suspect this will look like.

Josh:
Ejaz, how do you imagine this actually plays out when we get it?

Ejaaz:
Well, it's really interesting. The number one term that's used to describe this

Ejaaz:
new advice since the news came out is pen.

Ejaaz:
And so the code name for this device, by the way, is Gumdrop.

Ejaaz:
The concepts people have drawn up is literally a pen.

Ejaaz:
And it kind of looks like, Josh, I don't know whether you ever bought one of these junk tech things.

Ejaaz:
But do you remember the pens that had a USB-C?

Ejaaz:
Sorry, USB-C. A USB stick within them?

Ejaaz:
They were like really chunky pens and you could write and then you could unscrew

Ejaaz:
the cap and suddenly, wow hey you've got like a memory stick here this kind

Ejaaz:
of looks like that and i and i hope it's it's not something like that but i

Ejaaz:
i get what they're going for and and here's my take um

Ejaaz:
One, I kind of weirdly like that it's not another screen.

Ejaaz:
I'm tired of like having like a laptop and then a cell phone and then you had like the Apple iWatch.

Ejaaz:
There's too many screens involved here. I like that they've gone with a potentially

Ejaaz:
kind of a non-impactful device that I can just kind of put down and not acknowledge,

Ejaaz:
but is still so aware of everything.

Ejaaz:
It's consuming maybe audio that I'm ingesting or it's seeing what I'm seeing.

Ejaaz:
I quite like the hands-off approach.

Ejaaz:
Number two, I like that it's mini.

Ejaaz:
It's funny. You mentioned that the pen could potentially be on a piece of string

Ejaaz:
like we're showing on the screen here with the iPod Shuffle.

Ejaaz:
It's giving me a friend.com vibes, Josh. Do you remember that device where it's like a pendant?

Josh:
I do it a little round circle. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ejaaz:
Exactly. Well, it's like a pendant that goes around your neck.

Ejaaz:
I'm kind of hoping it's not going to look like that. it's going to look like

Ejaaz:
a weird kind of jade totem crystal type thing.

Ejaaz:
But I appreciate that it's going to be non-impactful.

Ejaaz:
And then my other thought about this is I like that it is ingesting types of

Ejaaz:
data, which I'm not usually focused on. Okay, so what do I mean by that?

Ejaaz:
Humans to date have been the processes of information, right?

Ejaaz:
So we ingest all of this audio and visual stuff, We process it in our brain,

Ejaaz:
and then we stuff it into a laptop or a mobile phone. It comes in the form of text.

Ejaaz:
It comes in the form of TikToks that we film or whatever, but it's pre-processed in our human brains.

Ejaaz:
What's different with this device is it'll do the processing for us because

Ejaaz:
we've built this kind of like AI model already. And that's what's super exciting for me.

Josh:
Yeah. If we look at that pen again, I feel like I can say with almost 100% conviction

Josh:
that it will not actually be a pen.

Josh:
A pen, like if I put myself in Johnny's shoes, a pen is such a horrible form

Josh:
factor. There's so many different types of pens.

Josh:
There's fountain pens. There's the like different tips for pens.

Josh:
There's different inks for pens. There's this huge preference stack that people

Josh:
have and feel very strongly about because they've been writing with pens their whole life.

Josh:
And trying to cater to those people without creating a huge amount of SKUs that

Josh:
satisfy the preferences of each one of these people seems very complicated.

Josh:
How do you choose the quality of the ink?

Josh:
How do you replace the ink when it goes out? It just adds too much complexity

Josh:
to a device that should not be that complex.

Josh:
But I think the form factor is probably some hybrid between the pen and the

Josh:
iPod shuffle, like a pendant type thing.

Josh:
It makes sense. And then we have to talk about like the bet,

Josh:
like why are they doing this EJS? And you started touching on parts of that.

Josh:
But the idea is that currently the phone is it's intentional computing right now.

Josh:
You have to go seek these things out or perhaps they come to you,

Josh:
but they come to you in a noisy way.

Josh:
Where you go to your phone to send a text message, you go to do a Google search,

Josh:
you go to check social media or check whatever algorithm is going to keep you hooked on this device.

Josh:
These AI hardware devices, particularly this one without a screen,

Josh:
it aims for this ambient computing.

Josh:
It's something that's always there. It's always listening. It's always seeing.

Josh:
And it's not only waiting to help, but it's proactively seeking ways in which it can help.

Josh:
And we've seen this previously through a feature that OpenAI actually released

Josh:
in the past called Pulse, where if you remember Pulse, what it does overnight

Josh:
is it'll take all the queries that you had from the previous day.

Josh:
It'll do some extra research. It'll kind of figure out what you're most likely

Josh:
to be curious about the following day.

Josh:
And then you wake up in the morning and it'll have all the answers and all of

Josh:
these unique facts and things that you didn't know you wanted presented to you first thing.

Josh:
And it's this really valuable resource in the first step that they're taking

Josh:
towards becoming this predictive ambient AI that knows what you want before you even ask for it.

Josh:
Now, a second thing is happening that is confirming these suspicions.

Josh:
And it's the company shakeup that's actually happening within OpenAI right now.

Josh:
There are recent reports that happened earlier this week, and it talked about

Josh:
the shakeup that they're doing towards creating a better voice team.

Ejaaz:
Yeah, and I think this is the perfect time for a device like this to come out

Ejaaz:
because AI models aren't just LLMs anymore.

Ejaaz:
They ingest video and produce video. They ingest audio and produce audio to

Ejaaz:
a really good quality output.

Ejaaz:
I think Google's Gemini is probably the best or the leader here,

Ejaaz:
right? They've got VO3 on the video side.

Ejaaz:
They have translation AIs and they have one of the best LLMs there is out there.

Ejaaz:
And it all kind of combines and melds into this one product,

Ejaaz:
into this one model, which can kind of spit out any type of medium for you, right?

Ejaaz:
If you had a device that now ingests all of those different types of data that

Ejaaz:
is around you, you'll probably end up having a richer AI experience.

Ejaaz:
So I think that's what OpenAI is really going for. It's not like this fancy

Ejaaz:
device that kind of like does a crazy magic tricks for you. It's kind of like

Ejaaz:
an advanced sensor that can speak to you and hear and see the things that you guys see.

Ejaaz:
And actually, on that note, a bit of evidence that broke out this week is that

Ejaaz:
OpenAI is working on a new voice model.

Ejaaz:
And this was leaked by the information where basically, if you've ever used

Ejaaz:
ChatGPT or if you're, I don't know if you need to be a pro user to get this.

Ejaaz:
I think anyone can actually use it.

Ejaaz:
But there's a smart voice mode where you can basically talk to ChatGPT and it

Ejaaz:
is really, really good. In fact, there's like zero hesitation between me stopping

Ejaaz:
talking and then someone responding for me.

Ejaaz:
But then if I interrupt, it kind of there's this awkward interjection where

Ejaaz:
it kind of like stops and starts.

Ejaaz:
This new voice model is basically going to be like superior as if you're speaking

Ejaaz:
to a natural human in normal human tones. But also it'll be perfected for the

Ejaaz:
device that they're building and releasing later this year.

Josh:
Yeah. So why is 2026 the year of AI hardware? I guess to summarize,

Josh:
there's these three converging forces.

Josh:
There's, like you mentioned earlier, AI becoming multimodal.

Josh:
It has voice, vision, context.

Josh:
And the hardware part suddenly makes sense.

Josh:
Then there's people who are just tired of screens.

Josh:
Everyone is just kind of sick at scrolling. I don't know if they're sick,

Josh:
but they're getting sick by scrolling Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, the whole thing.

Josh:
It's just screens are very invasive. And there's very few passive ambient technologies

Josh:
that don't ask for your attention.

Josh:
Instead, they deliver you value. And then three is the distribution plus platform power.

Josh:
I mean, the next battle of who owns the AI interface isn't just the model, it's the entire stack.

Josh:
It's the, is it used on your mobile apps? Is it used, how do you inject yourself

Josh:
into more of these people's lives?

Josh:
And I think the distribution and platform power is something that OpenAI has

Josh:
a huge advantage when it comes to.

Ejaaz:
Josh, how much do you think this, if you had to guess, this device would cost? Yeah.

Josh:
I suspect it'll be under $200. And my hope is that it'll be under $100.

Josh:
And the reasoning is because OpenAI, I mean, by the time they release this,

Josh:
they might have one and a half billion weekly active users.

Josh:
It's this astronomically large user base.

Josh:
And OpenAI, if no one knows this, they haven't exactly produced hardware in the past.

Josh:
They don't have the distribution. They don't have the supply chain that a company

Josh:
like Apple has, where they can create tens to hundreds of millions of iPhones every single year.

Josh:
So the way you get around this is to dumb down the device to a point in which

Josh:
you can manufacture it at scale in a cost-effective way without needing to create any sort of,

Josh:
very eccentric frontier technology that is required for production.

Josh:
Like with glasses, it's very cutting edge. It's very difficult because it's a hardware problem.

Josh:
With OpenAI's device, I suspect they will make the hardware be basically trivial.

Josh:
I mean, you just need a few sensors. You need a camera, you need a gyroscope, you need a microphone.

Josh:
And the hope is that it will actually be underwhelming to a lot of people.

Josh:
When you see the final form, it's probably going to look pretty dumb.

Josh:
It's not going to be this crazy, beautiful, fancy device.

Josh:
It's just going to be a device that is going to be supercharged by the software

Josh:
stack instead of cutting-edge manufacturing techniques on the hardware.

Ejaaz:
Well also glasses are super

Ejaaz:
imposing on the average user right you're going over the most

Ejaaz:
sensitive uh organ of their of their entire body which is like their eyes which

Ejaaz:
they use every day right it's very personal whereas the hardware device that

Ejaaz:
open air is working on appears hidden yet present if that if that makes sense

Ejaaz:
yeah the other point I'll make is it definitely makes sense for it to be cheaper.

Ejaaz:
I see this as kind of like how Amazon priced Alexa or Google priced,

Ejaaz:
I've forgotten what their hardware device is actually,

Ejaaz:
but the point is you want to get this out to as many users as you can and if

Ejaaz:
you want to do that you probably need to price it really attractively.

Ejaaz:
You're not going to price this like an expensive iPhone, at least in the first

Ejaaz:
wave of getting this device.

Ejaaz:
You want to get it into as many people hands as possible because the feedback

Ejaaz:
loop for OpenAI is they, in return,

Ejaaz:
all this amazing data, which they can then make a crazy model for the future. So it makes sense.

Ejaaz:
But Josh, it hasn't prevented people from releasing more smart glasses.

Josh:
Nobody learns, man. I swear. And nobody looks at the previous failures and says,

Josh:
oh, maybe I shouldn't try that.

Josh:
They're just doing the same thing over and over again. And every single time it fails miserably.

Josh:
And not to ruin the plot here, but there's a

Josh:
new glasses company that was announced this week called pickle

Josh:
one the first soul computer they're calling

Josh:
it don't ask me what a soul computer what's a soul computer josh

Josh:
i have no clue dude they're just trying to market this

Josh:
thing and the marketing video was quite good i mean the glasses if you

Josh:
ask me they look beautiful on screen we're looking at these kind of futuristic silver

Josh:
glasses with clear lenses and the demo looked awesome it was this like really

Josh:
cool overlay into the real world and it showed you these like like rideshare

Josh:
instructions and navigation and it's everything that we dream an augmented reality

Josh:
device will be the unfortunate reality was is that this demo,

Josh:
wasn't even a demo it was just kind of this computer graphic imaging to make

Josh:
it look like a demo to sell the vision of something that doesn't exist and this

Josh:
came in the form of this kind of expose if you will you just if you want to

Josh:
share the details that came from within this and why in particular,

Josh:
this is still an impossibility.

Ejaaz:
Yeah, so basically this guy called Matthew Dowd, who has been kind of like the

Ejaaz:
most vocal opponent to this Pickle 1 announcement, which got everyone excited,

Ejaaz:
basically pointed out some simple things, which is like, huh,

Ejaaz:
in theory, if you wanted to create a pair of glasses that look like this,

Ejaaz:
you would need to get the costs of these components down

Ejaaz:
Five to 10x from what it is currently today. So he kind of basically pushed

Ejaaz:
back, he found some inaccuracies on the website versus what the founder was

Ejaaz:
also pitching in his demo video as well, and vocally on X.

Ejaaz:
So he these kind of discrepancies plus his expertise in hardware basically pointed

Ejaaz:
out that this pickle device is probably not real.

Ejaaz:
And it points towards a team that hasn't really figured out how they're going

Ejaaz:
to build these glasses. And this kind of like, reflects a lot of the conversation

Ejaaz:
you and I have had on AI hardware glasses, Josh, which is in concept,

Ejaaz:
in theory, it sounds great.

Ejaaz:
And Meta has probably been the only company that's got the closest to putting

Ejaaz:
out something that is actually real.

Ejaaz:
Although we saw that transpire really badly in real time on stage when they

Ejaaz:
demoed the product and three out of five of their demos completely flopped.

Ejaaz:
And the ones that did work also kind of sucked.

Ejaaz:
So it's not really useful for you and we don't think it's

Ejaaz:
practical or i don't think it's practical right now to be able to build something

Ejaaz:
like this now has this random dude in south korea uh calling his product pickle

Ejaaz:
pulled it out the bag maybe um he's kind of quoted to use a snapdragon processor

Ejaaz:
which is a qualcomm based chip uh maybe he's figured something out um

Ejaaz:
From the visual side of things, Josh, I don't know about you,

Ejaaz:
but I don't really like the look of this.

Ejaaz:
It's giving a Google Glass version one, which is funny because Google Glass

Ejaaz:
is supposedly going to be releasing their V2 sometime this quarter as well.

Ejaaz:
Excited to see what this is.

Ejaaz:
Now, to kind of like put my other hat on this, Josh, like, listen,

Ejaaz:
I'm not going to buy Pickle. I've been burned already with the Vets for Brakepads display.

Ejaaz:
But why do you think so many companies are focused on building glasses.

Ejaaz:
Like, it seems kind of weird that you have like, what, four,

Ejaaz:
five major companies and some startups focusing solely on the visual aspect

Ejaaz:
on these glasses form factor.

Ejaaz:
We even speculated that that's the most likely probable device.

Ejaaz:
And then you have OpenAI kind of going with this pendant approach.

Ejaaz:
Like, do you think both companies or both approaches are wrong or one is more right than the other?

Josh:
I actually think both approaches are right. I think the timing is wrong.

Josh:
And I actually, I shared one of the posts that I shared because it made sense

Josh:
when you build hardware, there's, you can win on two merits, right?

Josh:
You have either manufacturing innovation or software novelty.

Josh:
And if you don't have one of those two things, your competitors become Apple,

Josh:
Google, Meta, OpenAI, who's trying to build this manufacturing innovation themselves.

Josh:
So Pickle is unfortunately coming with neither of those things.

Josh:
It has no breakthrough manufacturing techniques? Or does it have any software

Josh:
novelty that creates this.

Josh:
Amazingly magical experience. So therefore, they're competing directly with

Josh:
Meta, directly with Apple on supply chains that they very much have a monopoly

Josh:
on when it comes to the cutting edge, when it comes to these two nanometer chips

Josh:
that are so small, and they're the only things that are possible for glasses.

Josh:
The problem is that they just don't have that.

Josh:
OpenAI, on the other hand, is taking the opposite approach. They are taking

Josh:
the non-elegant or perhaps non-complex hardware approach in hopes that they

Josh:
will have unbelievable software novelty.

Josh:
They'll give you this tiny little device. It's not going to look that flashy,

Josh:
but the idea is that the software behind it will be so impressive that it will

Josh:
stand out amongst the pack.

Josh:
It's very clear to me, and I think everyone, that glasses are a form factor

Josh:
of the future, and they have a very promising future.

Josh:
It's just the technology to manufacture them at scale, at a quality that is

Josh:
acceptable to the average user, is not there, nor will it be there really soon.

Josh:
It's very difficult technology.

Josh:
There's a lot of complex problems to solve, and it's very expensive to solve

Josh:
them. So I don't feel good about it.

Ejaaz:
It's funny. I think my major takeaway from this discussion with you is the only

Ejaaz:
thing that's certain is the uncertainty of the next few years and what these

Ejaaz:
devices are going to look like.

Ejaaz:
We are just going to be in uncharted territory, and it's going to take a few

Ejaaz:
different versions of these devices to kind of nail it.

Ejaaz:
Because let's be frank, AI models aren't at their end form right now, right?

Ejaaz:
We're going from LLMs to these kind of weird voice.

Ejaaz:
And now, oh, wait, it's spitting out video and Nano Banana from Google can edit

Ejaaz:
images. And we've got to combine and package all of these multimodal types of

Ejaaz:
things into a singular experience. And that's going to be aided by some kind of a device.

Ejaaz:
Now, we can speculate all we want about whether it's going to be glasses or

Ejaaz:
whether it's going to be some kind of puck device or a pendant.

Ejaaz:
We don't know. And I'm just excited that these companies are investing billions

Ejaaz:
of dollars to try and figure this problem out, because I think it's going to

Ejaaz:
be the cell phone moment.

Ejaaz:
I think it's going to be the PC moment and I cannot wait to live through all three of those, right?

Ejaaz:
It's going to be kind of technology supercharged. But listen,

Ejaaz:
I do have one request, Josh. What's that? As long as it doesn't look like this.

Ejaaz:
As long as it doesn't look like some kind of pin device that I slap on my shirt

Ejaaz:
and that I have to hold my hand out. Do you remember the humane pin?

Josh:
Yeah, to quote Marques Brownlee, the worst product I've ever reviewed.

Josh:
To me, the form factor here actually isn't the problem. And I think we do have

Josh:
a pretty clear view of what the form of these things is going to look like.

Josh:
We will have glasses. We will have this pendant shaped thing. We will have a TV.

Josh:
We will have a desktop device, a countertop device. The reality is, is it's distributed.

Josh:
It becomes a suite of devices. The wild card, the thing that is most exciting

Josh:
is how these devices actually deliver value to us.

Josh:
Like if we look at the Humane Pin, the reason why it was so bad isn't because

Josh:
the idea was bad. It was because the actual execution was so poor.

Josh:
It's that the hardware was kind of clunky.

Josh:
The software didn't actually deliver any real value. It took so much longer

Josh:
than your iPhone to generate the value that you wanted to extract from it.

Josh:
But if it actually delivered on the promises it made, I would have had one on my shirt right now.

Josh:
It would have been the best device there is. So the problem is it's a combination

Josh:
of both things. And we see it here again with the Rabbit R1.

Josh:
Oh my gosh, I almost forgot about this. Throwback.

Ejaaz:
Yeah, this was a device that was released in 2024 and kind of like projected

Ejaaz:
a lot of the concepts that we are talking about and discussing right now,

Ejaaz:
but in a really mundane and kind of like analog way.

Ejaaz:
It flopped. It ended up not becoming a thing. or I think maybe they're releasing

Ejaaz:
version two, but I get your point, Josh.

Ejaaz:
I think, I guess the way I think about it is

Ejaaz:
The end form is going to be chips in our brain.

Ejaaz:
And I know that sounds probably insane to a lot of you listening to this,

Ejaaz:
but it makes sense that like the human brain becomes the kind of end goal for

Ejaaz:
what a computer will be, right?

Ejaaz:
Instead of relying on glasses and mechanical hardware, we just use our own eyes

Ejaaz:
or an artificial brain that works with our brain.

Ejaaz:
So kind of like a human robot or human computer hybrid.

Ejaaz:
And so any kind of device that acts as a sensor to input and augment any kind

Ejaaz:
of information that we ingest that isn't just words, it could be audio,

Ejaaz:
it could be video, it could be any other form factor, makes sense.

Ejaaz:
And so I don't know whether it'll be a suite of these things.

Ejaaz:
It probably will be a suite of devices, I guess.

Ejaaz:
Maybe OpenAI becomes the sole supplier to all of these, or maybe we just buy

Ejaaz:
a bunch of devices from all different kinds of things.

Ejaaz:
I don't see the latter playing out because to your earlier point,

Ejaaz:
you kind of want the distribution and the platform if you want to own that kind

Ejaaz:
of cohesive experience.

Ejaaz:
So, you know, maybe this is the first of many devices from OpenAI.

Josh:
Yeah, it requires like a fundamental rethinking of the word device.

Josh:
Like if I could imagine what the future of this looks like, it actually becomes

Josh:
inverted where the device is the AI.

Josh:
It's the intelligence. and the intelligence is this modular thing that manifests

Josh:
itself through a suite of devices that's always around you.

Josh:
When you wear this pendant around your neck,

Josh:
it has the same exact context window as the TV on your screen,

Josh:
which is connected to the small desktop thing on your desk, which is connected

Josh:
to the display in your kitchen that is your like heads up display.

Josh:
It's all one universal thing.

Josh:
And the actual product becomes the hardware.

Josh:
It becomes your preference stack within that AI.

Josh:
So it really understands you deeply. And I think that is the way that we remove

Josh:
ourselves from the screens is by just putting this intelligence all around us.

Josh:
That's why it's considered ambient.

Josh:
It's because it's always there. It's always around us. And this OpenAI device

Josh:
is the first iteration of what that could look like, physically manifested as a product.

Josh:
So that's kind of it. That's where we're at. I'm hoping that they're going to

Josh:
release this thing or tease this thing sometime this year.

Josh:
It's moving slow, but progress is being made. And we were finally starting to

Josh:
get some leaks, which means it's at least going into tooling.

Josh:
They're figuring out where they want to manufacture it.

Josh:
Things are happening here. And I'm really excited for them to happen in a big way. Thank you.

Ejaaz:
Yeah, I think optimistically, we're going to see what this device release might

Ejaaz:
look like, I think in Q3 or Q4 of this year, which would be crazy.

Ejaaz:
They're already engaged in manufacturing contracts with Foxconn in Vietnam.

Ejaaz:
And rumors say that they also might be building a manufacturing plant in the US as well.

Ejaaz:
The reason why it was delayed in the first place, fun fact, was because it was in China.

Ejaaz:
And as you know, America doesn't really get along with China of right now,

Ejaaz:
especially in this AI race. So it's important to have everything onshore.

Ejaaz:
But yeah, that is it. I cannot wait to get my hands on one of these devices, Josh.

Ejaaz:
We have been speculating about this stuff for six months now.

Ejaaz:
And it would be nice to get a device in our hands that we can kind of like play

Ejaaz:
around with and maybe even bring onto the show and augment this entire experience for you guys.

Josh:
That is it. I have two hopes for this year.

Josh:
One of them is that we get to see what this open AI device is.

Josh:
The second one is that we get a good pair of glasses. My God.

Josh:
Can someone please make a good pair of glasses?

Ejaaz:
Google Glass 2. I don't care who makes it. I'm holding out. I don't care who makes it.

Josh:
Make it good. Make it so that I can put it on my face. I want so badly to wear

Josh:
glasses, but every product sucks.

Josh:
So whatever we've got to do, figure it out, deploy those. Those are the two

Josh:
things I will be stoked in the world of AI hardware.

Josh:
If we get glasses and this ambient device from OpenAI.

Josh:
But that's the hardware update. That's what's going on. Now you know about as

Josh:
much as we do, about as much as everybody except for Sam and Johnny,

Josh:
who are in the lab, hopefully cooking up something remarkable.

Josh:
And we'll just, we'll stay up to date with all these things as always.

Josh:
And see you guys in the next episode.

Ejaaz:
Don't forget to like and subscribe, turn on the notifications,

Ejaaz:
subscribe to our newsletter, all of those things, please.

Ejaaz:
Lots more information coming to you pretty soon. See you folks.