“There are some secret form factors that I cannot tell you about,” the Qualcomm CEO said in an interview with Fortune Editor in Chief Alyson Shontell on the Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast. “But I think we’re working with pretty much all of them.”
“Pretty much all of them,” in this case, means the AI companies racing to build the device that replaces the smartphone. OpenAI, Meta, and others that Amon declined to name in an interview from the company’s San Diego headquarters. This device won’t be something you can hold; it’ll be “things you wear”: glasses, jewelry, pins, pendants. And it’ll center on the idea that the center of digital life will no longer be a phone but an autonomous agent.
It’ll still need a screen so your not replacing the smart phone.
So, they all promptly forgot about the humane pin? Did it flop so hard it fell out of collective memory? These AI wearables solve absolutely no real world problem.
Whatever it is they are selling will suck, which sucks because AI could be great. I like some of its usecases, granted that is because the alternatives are enshittified.
Good for him.
All devices you wear, have inside you, all of it will be spying for corporate execs and you’ll be paying for the privilege
Am I the only one that doesn’t have enough going on in their life that can be automated by agenetic AI? I mean, if I had an AI-powered robot that can do my cooking and cleaning that would be helpful, but other than that I just don’t have anything for it to do.
It would be great if new AI and robotics is used to grow food and make clothes from scratch to save a lot of money long term.
We’re waiting for clothes patents on robots to expire just like 3d printing patents expired. Only then will we see a boom.
I could honestly use a setup playing the role of personal assistant so I don’t over schedule and stretch myself too thin on stuff. A few of my friends have created very effective setups for just that, but I have lacked the bandwidth to figure out how to replicate for quite a while now…because of aforementioned need for a scheduling helper. :(
I feel like an app from the 90’s with zero AI in it plus text to speech interface can cover this base. Just because a lot of software is crummy doesn’t mean it has to be. Let’s not forget that getting an LLM to do a thing, instead of conventional software, always uses dramatically, often hundreds of times more system resources and power.
I feel like using an LLM to organize your calendar is like getting an interplanetary orbital space laser to kill a fly.
More consumer spyglasses and bodycams, which perpetually feed an AI agent; that isn’t dystopian, you are…
“Amon’s pitch is that the smartphone-centric world Qualcomm helped build is coming to an end. In its place, he describes what he calls the “ecosystem of you”: glasses with cameras pointed at whatever you’re pointing at, earbuds that hear perfectly what you hear, and an agent that ties them together and operates across all of them.”
“‘If AI understands what we say, what we hear, what we see—glasses are very close to your eyes, your ears, your mouth,’ he said. ‘All of this information is going to be very important context for agents to do things for you.’"
All of this will be very important for the total surveillance state so we can monitor everything single thing and make thought crime actually happen.
+1 for your user name, +1 for this comment
Nobody has released a single piece of AI specific hardware that has an answer to the question “What problem does this solve that a phone couldn’t do?”
I struggle to even imagine what that device would do. They talk about essentially adding sensors to the AI’s perception around you and doing stuff for you. What daily problems do people have that AI can help? As far as I’m aware most people use AI as a glorified search engine.
Ignoring the privacy concerns there, this device just sounds like an extension to your current smartphone, which is in no way a groundbreaking product. The only way it ends the smartphone centric world is if this new form factor also replaced content consumption, which would just be AR glasses, and we are quite a way from technology making those feasible for replacing a smartphone and being usable for a full day.
the hardware, I’ve heard many speculate, is for collecting data needed to power embodied AI (actual robots).
so far, US-based “AI” has focused largely on LLMs and disembodied “intelligence”. this is just interacting with screens. but getting their proprietary AI models into a real body that moves in the real world (using motors, balance, gyroscopes, accelerometers) will require a ton of training data.
might be bullshit. who knows. either way the goals of AI companies is all the same imo: create perfect slaves to replace workers.
I’ve always felt that AI was a solution looking for a problem.
Three things I use my phone for more than anything else: signal chat, reading, maps.
I don’t think any of those devices are going to replace that.
If I’ve learned anything from the home assistant community, it’s that things don’t have to be connected to the Internet to function. I hope those folks branch out and provide better alternatives.
doesn’t matter when it can’t be determined whether it transmits anything or not. if this is the future, then it is very dark.
Sounds great for watching videos, reading, music. Can’t wait.
This to me feels like a rift between the generations. I’m too old to likely ever trust these things to function without concern of what they will do. Folk older than me tend to excessively trust this type of tech and the folk younger than me seem the same. In my mind it creates a break between those in the ecosystem and those that are not. Like how a bunch of places in my town don’t have websites but do have Facebook pages for their business. I don’t have a FB account so it’s a pain for me but no one else seems to mind. It’s kinda weird being the generation that helped usher in the internet and modern connectivity yet being kinda left out of tech ecosystems (by choice or by exclusion).
“You know you’re Generation X when….”
I find it odd that people now reflect fondly back on “old Facebook” when I remember Zuck and his friends going on about how they got hot girls to give them their photos and personal info.
Hopefully the pendulum will swing again; Gen Z doesn’t actually seem very impressed with AI and the digital services economy.
All these ai agents sound interesting on paper, but who actually wants them? A salesman was talking about a company that used one to let customers initiate returns like it was impressive. I can accomplish that with any app, email, or phone call today. How is an agent doing it better?
So let’s say for a brief moment that I want to wear an AI around everywhere I go. Of what use would it be to have all of them? Am I supposed to poll Grok, Claude, and ChatGPT and majority wins? Or do I just pick my favorite answer? Are they going to argue it out?
I can’t keep the names of my kids straight when I call to them, why the fuck would I want to remember a dozen more names?
Well yeah the reason I don’t find raspberry pi a good alternative
Well, the perf of these devices will be barely acceptable, then.
