Former Apple designer Jony Ive, known for helping drive the world’s obsession with smartphones and other touch devices, has some thoughts on how to improve our relationship with technology.
The 58-year-old designer was instrumental in creating the iPhone, iPod, and iPad, and is now helping OpenAI create AI-first devices after it acquired his AI hardware startup, Io, earlier this year for a cool $6.5 billion. But rather than replicate the work that made him famous, Ive said he wants to create devices that spark more joy and less anxiety, Business Insider reported.
“When I said we have an uncomfortable relationship with our technology, I mean that’s the most obscene understatement,” Ive said while being interviewed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman this week at OpenAI’s DevDay conference.
Ive said his latest work at OpenAI is a chance to completely change the situation the world finds itself in regarding technology so as to “not accept the norm.” Apparently, he and his team have no shortage of ideas to bring this vision to life.
“That momentum has led us to create 15 to 20 really compelling product ideas. The challenge is to focus,” Ive told Altman at the San Francisco event. “It would be easy if you knew there are three good ones. It’s just not like that. We’re designing a family of products. And we’re trying to make sure we’re judicious and thoughtful in what we focus on and to then not be distracted.”
Building an AI-first device
It’s unclear exactly what Ive is building at OpenAI, but Altman in a preview to staff earlier this year teased a “family of devices.” The Financial Times reported the secretive device may be palm-sized, without a screen. The device could also be responsive to voice prompts as well as audible and visual cues. Yet OpenAI still needs to solve critical problems that could delay the device’s launch, the FT reported.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Ive said he hopes the devices he and his team ultimately create address some of the biggest issues caused by smartphones and tablets, such as problems with concentration, patience, and anxiety. Researchers have also correlated “doomscrolling” negative news on social media with worsening mental health.
In what could be interpreted as a veiled criticism of his former company, Apple, Ive said OpenAI is going for the opposite of exclusivity. Apple, with its $1,000-plus phones, its “walled garden” of apps, and its conspicuous blue iMessage bubbles, has clearly positioned itself for years as the exclusive brand in a world overflowing with technology.
“The ramifications and consequences of not caring and not being careful are truly horrendous,” Ive said. “In terms of the interfaces we design, if we can’t smile honestly, if it’s just another deeply serious exclusive thing, I think that would do us all a huge disservice.”
The new generation of AI-first devices “should seem obvious—as if there wasn’t possibly another rational solution to the problem,” he added.
Ive has previously talked about how the tech industry has changed since he moved to the Bay Area in 1992. When he arrived, Ive said he felt smart people in Silicon Valley were driven by a mission to serve humanity—a calling that has more recently been replaced in some cases by corporate agendas “driven by money and power.”
Going back to the central idea of technology as a force for good and a tool to help the world is for him top of mind, Ive said during a talk with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison in May.
“I think there needs to be foundational values and an understanding of our place in all of this and having a clear sense of the goal, which is to enable and inspire people,” he said.
