Limitless Podcast

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.