Man who made iPhone helping Sam Altman bury it

Asia Times

23-05-2025

Sam Altman isn't just coming for your job. He's coming for your phone, and maybe your soul.
OpenAI just spent US$6.5 billion to acquire a secretive hardware company founded by Jony Ive—the man who helped make the iPhone what it is. You may not know Ive's name, but you've touched his work. Literally. Every day.
When we think of the iPhone, we automatically think of Steve Jobs—the black turtleneck, the enormous ego. The messianic charisma. But the real sculptor behind it was Ive. He's the architect responsible for Apple's sleek, seductive gadgets. He's the reason your phone feels like a lifestyle, not a tool. Ive turned cold metal into a fetish object.
Now he's back. But not with Apple. With OpenAI.
And that should make you pay attention. Because this isn't some design side-hustle or futuristic prototype for nerds in labs. This is OpenAI trying to build the first real AI-native device—a category killer designed not just to complement your phone but to replace it. A smart device that doesn't just respond to your voice, but listens when you don't speak. That doesn't wait for your command, because it already knows what you want.
The goal is clear: Kill the iPhone, the interface and the screen. Become the last machine you ever carry.
What OpenAI is building is not a phone. It's an ambient intelligence system—a wearable, maybe even implantable, AI that will live with you. On you. In you. It won't need an app store. It is the app. It'll whisper reminders, flag your blood pressure, read your micro-expressions, log your emotional state, track your speech, and give you answers before you ask.
This isn't a more developed Siri. It's something far more intimate. It doesn't seek your input—it seeks your patterns. Your breath, your posture, your pulse. It'll understand what stresses you out. What calms you down. Who you're texting. What you're hiding.
It's not a search engine. It's your new nervous system. You won't need to tap it. You'll forget it's there. But it'll always be listening. Always learning. Always predicting. Imagine something that makes Google seem slow and Apple seem old.
That's what $6.5 billion just bought.
Altman didn't hire Ive to make something cool. He hired him to make something irresistible. Because that's Ive's superpower: making invasive technology feel like art. Like you chose it. You didn't buy an iPhone. You joined the cult.
Altman's about to launch a new one.
If you want people to accept constant AI surveillance, you can't roll it out in a black box that looks like an NSA project. You need it to feel like magic. Smooth edges. Soft glow. Maybe white ceramic.
Something elegant enough to be worn in public. Something that lets you lie to yourself and say: 'It's just a new kind of AirPod.' When in reality, it's the most intimate listening device ever created.
This isn't just about hardware. It's about behavioral capture. You don't get true intimacy from cameras or mics. You get it from proximity—constant, seamless proximity. From something that nestles up to you like a digital familiar. And once it's there, you'll trust it. Because it'll work. And because it will flatter you.
It'll make you smarter. More organized. More efficient. Less anxious. That's the hook. It's not surveillance if it helps you.
And OpenAI isn't going to stop at design. The company's mission is to 'ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.' But the way it's moving, it doesn't just want to build AGI. It wants to be the gateway to reality. That means controlling the interface between you and the machine. Not through a web browser. Not through a keyboard. But through something much closer.
I suggest this is the final app—the interface to end all interfaces. Because the moment an AI companion lives in your ear, understands your speech patterns, and feeds you real-time answers… why would you ever Google something again?
Why open your phone when your device knows what you're thinking before you do? That's the ambition here. Not just to make a better device. But to own the future of cognition itself.
And the crazy—or maybe not so crazy—thing is that people will accept it. Happily. Gleefully. Because it will be useful (initially, anyway). It will help them write better emails, get better sleep, pick better dates, remember birthdays, spot diseases, and schedule their lives.
It will become an outsourced consciousness, and it will feel natural. This is the seduction of AI intimacy: it will work. And when it does, it will become indispensable, like electricity or oxygen.