Latest news with #UserFriendly
Vox
3 days ago
- Health
- Vox
Headphones that scan your brainwaves and keep you focused? It's not science fiction.
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. The MW75 Neuro headphones are primarily used to sharpen your attention — with the new and added benefit of giving you a snapshot of your brain health. Paige Vickers/Vox; Getty Images; Neurable For the past few months, when I really needed to get something done, I put on a special pair of headphones that could read my mind. Well, kind of. The headphones are equipped with a brain-computer interface that picks up electrical signals from my brain and uses algorithms to interpret that data. When my focus starts to slip, the headphones know it, and an app tells me to take a break. It sounds like something out of science fiction, but a decade-old startup called Neurable is pioneering the technology, and it's preparing to put the brain-tracking tricks into more gadgets. Earbuds, glasses, helmets — anything that can get an electrode near your head could provide a real-time stream of data about what's going on inside of it. Neurable's technology uses a combination of electroencephalography (EEG) sensors to collect brain data and algorithms to interpret those signals. Beyond measuring attention, the company is now using that data to track and improve brain health. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. I want to emphasize again that this technology does not actually read your mind in the sense of knowing your thoughts. But, it knows when you're entertained or distracted and could one day detect symptoms of depression or, on a much more consequential front, early signs of Alzheimer's disease. I came across Neurable on a longer mission to understand the future of health-tracking technology by testing what's out there now. It's one that left me anxious, covered in smart rings and continuous glucose monitors, and more confused about the definition of well-being. That's because almost all health trackers that are popular on the market right now — Apple Watches, Oura Rings, Whoop Bands — are downstream sensors. They measure consequences, like elevated heart rate or body temperature, rather than the root cause of that state. By tapping directly into your brainwaves, a brain-computer interface can spot issues sometimes years before they would show up. It could one day detect symptoms of depression or, on a much more consequential front, early signs of Alzheimer's disease. 'Biologically, your brain is designed to hide your weaknesses: It's an evolutionary effect,' Neurable's co-founder and CEO Ramses Alcaide, a neuroscientist, told me. 'But when you're measuring from the source, you pick up those things as they're occurring, instead of once there's finally downstream consequences, and that's the real advantage of measuring the brain.' Other major tech companies are also exploring ways to incorporate non-invasive brain-computer interfaces into headphones. A couple years ago, Apple quietly applied for a patent for an AirPod design that uses electrodes to monitor brain activity, and NextSense, which grew out of Google's moonshot division, wants to build earbud-based brain monitors for the mass market. There's also been a recent boom in activity around invasive brain-computer interfaces being developed by companies like Elon Musk's Neuralink and even Meta that surgically implant chips into people's brains. It's safe to say that's not currently a mass-market approach. Still, while all of those mega market cap companies ponder the possibilities of their own brain-powered projects, Neurable's is on the market. It's on my head right now, actually, and it works. The cutting edge of neurotech The Master & Dynamic MW75 Neuro — the $700 pair of headphones I tested — looks like any other set of noise-canceling headphones, except for the badge that reads, 'Powered by Neurable AI.' When you connect them to the Neurable app is when things get fun. Inside the Neurable app is a little video game that lets you fly a rocket ship with your brain — and serves as a proof of concept. The trick is you have to focus on a set of numbers on the screen. The more intensely you focus, the higher the numbers go, and the faster the rocket ship flies. If you start to get distracted by, say, thinking about flying an actual rocket ship, the numbers go down, and the rocket ship slows. It's one of the coolest innovations I've ever seen, if only because it's so simple. The EEG sensors in Neurable's products can pick up a range of brainwave frequencies, which are associated with different behaviors and activities. The beta frequency band provides some information about attention state as well as anxiety, while alpha indicates a mind at rest. While EEG sensors and brain-computer interfaces are most often seen in labs, putting these sensors into a device that people wear every day stands to transform our understanding of the mind. 'Non-invasive EEG is cheap and completely safe,' said Bin He, a professor of biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, whose lab built a drone you can fly with your mind over a decade ago. 'AI, or deep-learning technology, however has drastically improved the performance of [brain-computer interfaces] to read the minds of individuals.' If you changed the technology's mission from measuring focus to, say, symptoms of depression, you could imagine how an everyday gadget could offer some life-changing interventions. The possibilities are as endless as the list of issues that can affect the brain. The Pentagon has been using Neurable's portable technology to study traumatic head injuries in soldiers, for instance, and that research could have practical applications in sports. Alcaide also mentioned Alzheimer's and Parkinson's as potential targets for their technology. Symptoms for these diseases don't appear for years after onset, but early markers could show up in the kind of EEG data their technology captures from everyday wear. If you changed the technology's mission from measuring focus to, say, symptoms of depression, you could imagine how an everyday gadget could offer some life-changing interventions. For now, however, the MW75 Neuro headphones are primarily used to sharpen your attention — with the new and added benefit of giving you a snapshot of your brain health. This involves starting a session with the headphones on and letting the sensors collect the electrical signals your brain's sending off. Your focus is measured as low, medium, or high, and when you're flagging for a while, the app will prompt you to take a break. You can also turn on a feature called Biofeedback, which plays music of varying intensity in order to nudge your focus toward the high range. The Brain Health reports are still in beta mode but will show you daily estimates of how you're doing in terms of things like anxiety resistance, cognitive speed, and wakefulness. The way you know that the device isn't actually reading your mind comes down to science and a strong data policy. Neurable's technology picks up raw voltage — not actual thoughts — from your neurons and uses AI to decode the data and identify signals associated with focus, the company's co-founder Adam Molnar explained to me recently. Neurable encrypts and anonymizes the data coming out of your head and onto its sensors and then again when it goes to your phone, so it's far removed from any personal data. Furthermore, he said, Neurable has no ambitions to be a data company. 'Our business model doesn't depend on identity. We don't sell ads. So there's no benefit,' Molnar said. 'It's actually more of a liability for us to be able to have data map back to an individual.' It's hard for me to say how much more productive I became thanks to the brain-reading headphones. As with many other health trackers, there's sort of a placebo cat effect: Simply deciding to track the behavior changed my state of mind and made me behave a certain way. So, setting up a focus session inevitably made me pay closer attention to how well I was focusing, how often I took breaks, and if I was choosing to be more mindful. This is actually what makes me so curious about an earbud version of what Neurable's doing. I wear AirPods for most of the day, whether it's taking calls for work, listening to podcasts, or just drowning out the sounds outside my Brooklyn apartment. If these earbuds were also collecting data about my cognitive well-being during all those activities, I'd be interested in knowing what I could glean from that information, if only to better understand what's rotting my brain. And I'm sure plenty of companies would be happy to collect more data about their users' states of mind at any given time. Imagine if the TikTok algorithm knew you weren't interested in something — not because you swiped through it but rather because your brainwaves said so. Neurable's website has mockups of EEG-equipped earbuds, helmets, and smart glasses, and it's clear that the company is eager to move beyond its first product. The company doesn't just want to make gadgets, either. It wants to be the leading platform for brain-powered technology. 'Just like Bluetooth is in every single device, and everyone should have access to Bluetooth, we believe that everyone should have access to neuro tech,' Alcaide told me. We're years away from the most far-fetched applications of brain-computer interfaces, but we're heading in that direction. 'There's so many things you can do with neuro tech, whether it's tracking health conditions, whether it's controlling devices, whether it is understanding yourself better,' he said. 'It would be a disservice to the world if the only solutions that came out were our own.' Neurable is indeed one of many startups trying to bring neuro tech to the masses, although they're the only ones selling a product I'd actually wear in public. Several other EEG-based gadgets out there take the form of headbands, many of which are geared toward sleep health or meditation. A company called Emotiv, which also partnered with Master & Dynamic, will start selling its own EEG-equipped earbuds this fall. It remains to be seen if and when Apple will make brain-reading AirPods, but they've already partnered with a brain interface startup called Synchron, which allows people to control iPhones with their minds (Haven't you always wanted to become one with your iPhone?). This is where we circle back to the point where science fiction meets reality. We're years away from the most far-fetched applications of brain-computer interfaces, but we're heading in that direction. Whether that future ends up looking miraculous or like a Black Mirror episode is up to us — and to the companies, like Neurable, pioneering it.
Vox
4 days ago
- Health
- Vox
What if your earbuds could read your mind?
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. The MW75 Neuro headphones are primarily used to sharpen your attention — with the new and added benefit of giving you a snapshot of your brain health. Paige Vickers/Vox; Getty Images; Neurable For the past few months, when I really needed to get something done, I put on a special pair of headphones that could read my mind. Well, kind of. The headphones are equipped with a brain-computer interface that picks up electrical signals from my brain and uses algorithms to interpret that data. When my focus starts to slip, the headphones know it, and an app tells me to take a break. It sounds like something out of science fiction, but a decade-old startup called Neurable is pioneering the technology, and it's preparing to put the brain-tracking tricks into more gadgets. Earbuds, glasses, helmets — anything that can get an electrode near your head could provide a real-time stream of data about what's going on inside of it. Neurable's technology uses a combination of electroencephalography (EEG) sensors to collect brain data and algorithms to interpret those signals. Beyond measuring attention, the company is now using that data to track and improve brain health. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. I want to emphasize again that this technology does not actually read your mind in the sense of knowing your thoughts. But, it knows when you're entertained or distracted and could one day detect symptoms of depression or, on a much more consequential front, early signs of Alzheimer's disease. I came across Neurable on a longer mission to understand the future of health-tracking technology by testing what's out there now. It's one that left me anxious, covered in smart rings and continuous glucose monitors, and more confused about the definition of well-being. That's because almost all health trackers that are popular on the market right now — Apple Watches, Oura Rings, Whoop Bands — are downstream sensors. They measure consequences, like elevated heart rate or body temperature, rather than the root cause of that state. By tapping directly into your brainwaves, a brain-computer interface can spot issues sometimes years before they would show up. It could one day detect symptoms of depression or, on a much more consequential front, early signs of Alzheimer's disease. 'Biologically, your brain is designed to hide your weaknesses: It's an evolutionary effect,' Neurable's co-founder and CEO Ramses Alcaide, a neuroscientist, told me. 'But when you're measuring from the source, you pick up those things as they're occurring, instead of once there's finally downstream consequences, and that's the real advantage of measuring the brain.' Other major tech companies are also exploring ways to incorporate non-invasive brain-computer interfaces into headphones. A couple years ago, Apple quietly patented an AirPod design that uses electrodes to monitor brain activity, and NextSense, which grew out of Google's moonshot division, wants to build earbud-based brain monitors for the mass market. There's also been a recent boom in activity around invasive brain-computer interfaces being developed by companies like Elon Musk's Neuralink and even Meta that surgically implant chips into people's brains. It's safe to say that's not currently a mass-market approach. Still, while all of those mega market cap companies ponder the possibilities of their own brain-powered projects, Neurable's is on the market. It's on my head right now, actually, and it works. The cutting edge of neurotech The Master & Dynamic MW75 Neuro — the $700 pair of headphones I tested — looks like any other set of noise-canceling headphones, except for the badge that reads, 'Powered by Neurable AI.' When you connect them to the Neurable app is when things get fun. Inside the Neurable app is a little video game that lets you fly a rocket ship with your brain — and serves as a proof of concept. The trick is you have to focus on a set of numbers on the screen. The more intensely you focus, the higher the numbers go, and the faster the rocket ship flies. If you start to get distracted by, say, thinking about flying an actual rocket ship, the numbers go down, and the rocket ship slows. It's one of the coolest innovations I've ever seen, if only because it's so simple. The EEG sensors in Neurable's products can pick up a range of brainwave frequencies, which are associated with different behaviors and activities. The beta frequency band provides some information about attention state as well as anxiety, while alpha indicates a mind at rest. While EEG sensors and brain-computer interfaces are most often seen in labs, putting these sensors into a device that people wear every day stands to transform our understanding of the mind. 'Non-invasive EEG is cheap and completely safe,' said Bin He, a professor of biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, whose lab built a drone you can fly with your mind over a decade ago. 'AI, or deep-learning technology, however has drastically improved the performance of [brain-computer interfaces] to read the minds of individuals.' If you changed the technology's mission from measuring focus to, say, symptoms of depression, you could imagine how an everyday gadget could offer some life-changing interventions. The possibilities are as endless as the list of issues that can affect the brain. The Pentagon has been using Neurable's portable technology to study traumatic head injuries in soldiers, for instance, and that research could have practical applications in sports. Alcaide also mentioned Alzheimer's and Parkinson's as potential targets for their technology. Symptoms for these diseases don't appear for years after onset, but early markers could show up in the kind of EEG data their technology captures from everyday wear. If you changed the technology's mission from measuring focus to, say, symptoms of depression, you could imagine how an everyday gadget could offer some life-changing interventions. For now, however, the MW75 Neuro headphones are primarily used to sharpen your attention — with the new and added benefit of giving you a snapshot of your brain health. This involves starting a session with the headphones on and letting the sensors collect the electrical signals your brain's sending off. Your focus is measured as low, medium, or high, and when you're flagging for a while, the app will prompt you to take a break. You can also turn on a feature called Biofeedback, which plays music of varying intensity in order to nudge your focus toward the high range. The Brain Health reports are still in beta mode but will show you daily estimates of how you're doing in terms of things like anxiety resistance, cognitive speed, and wakefulness. The way you know that the device isn't actually reading your mind comes down to science and a strong data policy. Neurable's technology picks up raw voltage — not actual thoughts — from your neurons and uses AI to decode the data and identify signals associated with focus, the company's co-founder Adam Molnar explained to me recently. Neurable encrypts and anonymizes the data coming out of your head and onto its sensors and then again when it goes to your phone, so it's far removed from any personal data. Furthermore, he said, Neurable has no ambitions to be a data company. 'Our business model doesn't depend on identity. We don't sell ads. So there's no benefit,' Molnar said. 'It's actually more of a liability for us to be able to have data map back to an individual.' It's hard for me to say how much more productive I became thanks to the brain-reading headphones. As with many other health trackers, there's sort of a placebo cat effect: Simply deciding to track the behavior changed my state of mind and made me behave a certain way. So, setting up a focus session inevitably made me pay closer attention to how well I was focusing, how often I took breaks, and if I was choosing to be more mindful. This is actually what makes me so curious about an earbud version of what Neurable's doing. I wear AirPods for most of the day, whether it's taking calls for work, listening to podcasts, or just drowning out the sounds outside my Brooklyn apartment. If these earbuds were also collecting data about my cognitive well-being during all those activities, I'd be interested in knowing what I could glean from that information, if only to better understand what's rotting my brain. And I'm sure plenty of companies would be happy to collect more data about their users' states of mind at any given time. Imagine if the TikTok algorithm knew you weren't interested in something — not because you swiped through it but rather because your brainwaves said so. Neurable's website has mockups of EEG-equipped earbuds, helmets, and smart glasses, and it's clear that the company is eager to move beyond its first product. The company doesn't just want to make gadgets, either. It wants to be the leading platform for brain-powered technology. 'Just like Bluetooth is in every single device, and everyone should have access to Bluetooth, we believe that everyone should have access to neuro tech,' Alcaide told me. We're years away from the most far-fetched applications of brain-computer interfaces, but we're heading in that direction. 'There's so many things you can do with neuro tech, whether it's tracking health conditions, whether it's controlling devices, whether it is understanding yourself better,' he said. 'It would be a disservice to the world if the only solutions that came out were our own.' Neurable is indeed one of many startups trying to bring neuro tech to the masses, although they're the only ones selling a product I'd actually wear in public. Several other EEG-based gadgets out there take the form of headbands, many of which are geared toward sleep health or meditation. A company called Emotiv, which also partnered with Master & Dynamic, will start selling its own EEG-equipped earbuds this fall. It remains to be seen if and when Apple will make brain-reading AirPods, but they've already partnered with a brain interface startup called Synchron, which allows people to control iPhones with their minds (Haven't you always wanted to become one with your iPhone?). This is where we circle back to the point where science fiction meets reality. We're years away from the most far-fetched applications of brain-computer interfaces, but we're heading in that direction. Whether that future ends up looking miraculous or like a Black Mirror episode is up to us — and to the companies, like Neurable, pioneering it.
Vox
31-07-2025
- Business
- Vox
The surprisingly sound financial advice I got from a chatbot
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. Recently, as an experiment, I gave a bunch of my financial information to an AI chatbot. I know what you're thinking — it sure doesn't sound like the wisest move. While the large language models that power such bots are good at many things, math is not historically one of them. Still, a growing number of startups are training generative AI tools to work like financial coaches. Some of them are pretty good, too. Cleo, which bills itself as 'the world's first AI financial assistant,' got a big update that uses OpenAI's sophisticated o3 reasoning model to help users break down complex financial decisions. The app also now has the ability to remember your financial history and goals. You can even talk to the app with a new two-way voice feature. At some point, Cleo might ask you if you want to take out a loan. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. I'd been using the previous version of Cleo for a few weeks without any big breakthroughs. But when I linked my bank accounts (securely!) to Cleo 3.0, the latest version of the artificially intelligent financial assistant, I was stunned by how handy it was to ask detailed questions about my spending habits, savings goals, and retirement planning in plain English and get useful answers. The app is built on top of ChatGPT and is specifically trained to handle those kinds of questions. It's also equipped with tools to do the math correctly. In the past, only the very wealthy have been able to map out their financial futures like this. In the very near future, anyone could do it for free. There's something revolutionary about this concept. And that's not just Cleo's executives talking. A number of experts have told me that tools built on top of large language models like ChatGPT stand to transform the world of financial advice and planning. They have the ability to ingest vast amounts of your financial data, they're trained on the same materials a human financial planner might use, and they can answer an endless number of questions based on that knowledge and expertise. In the past, only the very wealthy have been able to map out their financial futures like this. In the very near future, anyone could do it for free. 'We're on the cusp of a pretty significant change in how [people] are able to use AI to help manage their finances,' said Andrew Lo, a professor of finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. 'I don't think these apps are all ready for primetime, but nonetheless, there is a sea change between today's AI finance applications and what existed even two years ago.' Such a sea change comes with its own challenges. The arithmetic issue is one of them, although there are ways to build these apps in order to curb hallucinations. Another is ensuring the right guidance is tailored to the right user — what's called 'suitability' in the finance world. But, Lo explained, 'probably the most important and most difficult challenge is trust and ethics.' How do you ensure an AI fulfills its fiduciary duty to give you the best advice? Licensed financial advisers, who work in a highly regulated industry, can face civil or even criminal charges for failing their clients. An AI currently cannot. That means you definitely should not let an app talk you into pouring your retirement savings into meme stocks. But you might consider letting a chatbot take a peek at what you're spending on streaming services. Did you know, for instance, that canceling Apple TV+ and putting that $10 a month into an IRA could add up to over $12,000 saved in 30 years? That's a fact I learned from Cleo. The artificial lightness of banking My first brush with algorithmic financial advice was a decade ago, when I downloaded an app called Digit. The proposition was simple: You connect your bank account to Digit, which would analyze your spending and strategically slide a few dollars or cents into a savings account. I ended up saving thousands of dollars using Digit without really noticing, which was precisely the point. There's a lightness to the Digit experience. Contrast that with Mint, the now-defunct app and website that let you connect to your bank accounts and used machine learning to categorize your spending. Mint was heavy, because it required a lot of time to set up; you had to make sure all the automation was working correctly and then had to keep the settings updated as your financial situation changed. An array of finance and budgeting apps have swept in to replace Mint after its 2024 closure: YNAB, Monarch Money, Origin, to name a few. They're heavy, too, although they're increasingly incorporating AI to make things run more smoothly. Most of these apps use a service called Plaid in order to keep your financial data secure. Plaid, which is used by companies like Venmo, Robinhood, and Chime, gives the apps real-time, read-only access to your accounts so the apps never have direct access to your money. There's always the risk of a data breach, which is not unheard of in the fintech world. While Plaid has made it easier for apps to see all your balances and transactions, what people actually need from a fintech app varies widely. 'If the product can help you make a complex financial decision confidently and competently in minutes, instead of hours with a bunch of pain and stress and mental suffering, more people will use it.' — Ethan Bloch, Digit founder 'Personal finance is incredibly niche, because each person, on a set of dimensions, is a unique snowflake financially,' Ethan Bloch, the founder of Digit, told me. Bloch sold Digit to the financial technology, or fintech, company Oportun in 2021 and is currently working on a new AI-powered financial tool called Hiro, which promises to 'turn your financial data into personalized advice' through a chatbot. Bloch said that large language models have made this possible and that, like Digit, the experience can be incredibly light and feel effortless. 'If the product can help you make a complex financial decision confidently and competently in minutes, instead of hours with a bunch of pain and stress and mental suffering, more people will use it,' he said. Of course, this is assuming the AI never gets anything wrong. AI at your own risk Fintech apps are not banks — which means that even though they might handle your money or your financial data, an app like Cleo is not as heavily regulated as a chartered bank, like Chase or Bank of America. Fintech apps might require licenses to take part in certain activities, like moving money between accounts or holding balances. If an app gives investment advice, it might face scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or state regulators. For the most part, though, there is no regulatory oversight when it comes to financial coaching, which is what Cleo does. Making sure AI-powered fintech apps don't dupe Americans was a job for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), but it's unclear how much power the agency has under the Trump administration. For example, the CFPB passed a rule last year that established a set of personal financial data rights around what happens when you connect your bank account to an app like Cleo, YNAB, or Monarch Money. That rule is now being rewritten under the Trump administration, as congressional Republicans attempt to defund the CFPB altogether. Related The perils of using payment apps as your bank account 'The vision that came out of the financial crisis was that we would have a strong regulator putting consumers first, because for too long, the regulators had put banks first,' said Aaron Klein, a senior fellow at Brookings, 'and that vision has been destroyed by the Trump administration.' It almost goes without saying these days that generative AI is a new technology, and the apps using large language models for financial advice are even newer. There is not a lot of oversight of this space — there's not none — but you should be careful when entrusting your financial fate to a chatbot. The proposition is still intriguing. We've already seen AI chatbots streamline the tax-filing process, and it's increasingly clear that AI can make you better at your job, as long as it's not stealing it. It seems very possible that in the near future, AI will make it easier to make a budget and stick to it. It might help you plan better for your retirement. I am not yet asking an AI chatbot for investment advice — there is just too much downside when it comes to sensitive decisions involving large sums of money. But talking through ideas for how I might get more out of my money and then fact-checking everything the bot tells me? That makes sense. At the end of the day, I still want to talk to living, breathing experts about my big financial decisions. But for the smaller stuff, this technology could help a lot of people. It could democratize financial advice, in a sense. 'On the bright side, I think that a large number of individuals, who are currently not getting any financial advice and badly need it — they will have access to pretty good financial advice at no cost,' said Lo, the MIT professor. 'That's the promise of AI over the course of the next few months, not to mention years.'
Vox
17-07-2025
- Vox
Revenge of the flip phone
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. Despite rumors of its demise, the smartphone will continue to be your most important gadget for a long while. Paige Vickers/Vox; Getty Images I laughed out loud the first time I saw a folding phone. The contraptions, which debuted when the Samsung Galaxy Fold hit the market in 2019, are smartphones with bendable screens. You can fold them in half and put them in your pocket. That first Galaxy Fold was huge, heavy, cost nearly $2,000, and looked like it would snap in half the first time you used it. When folded, the tiny display on the front was not enough screen. When unfolded, the device became a creased tablet and too much screen. But after spending a few days with the latest iteration of that very gadget, which Samsung announced last week, I think the future of smartphones is more interesting than we thought. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. We've all been beholden to smartphones for more than a decade. Although they're wonderfully capable pocket computers, smartphones are also a source of work stress and a place for doomscrolling, all wrapped up in a piece of hardware that hasn't evolved in a meaningful way in years. The new iPhone that will debut later this year, for example, will undoubtedly look and work a lot like last year's iPhone. This lack of innovation is why people have been saying for about a decade that the smartphone era has run its course. Soon, they say, we'll be wearing augmented reality glasses instead, or AI pins that we talk to. Despite rumors of its demise — including those coming from AI maximalists like Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg — the smartphone will continue to be your most important gadget for a long while. That doesn't mean you'll continue to carry around the same boring slab of glass you've had in your pocket since the late 2000s. Foldables, an unfortunately named category of devices with shape-shifting abilities, are finally becoming an appealing alternative. In a lot of ways, it feels like the comeback of a much older device: the flip phone. Samsung just released the $2,000 Galaxy Z Fold 7, which is effectively the same size and thickness as my iPhone 15 Pro but opens up to reveal an 8-inch screen (about the size of an iPad Mini). The company also released the $1,100 Flip 7, which is 4.1 inches of screen folded up but becomes a full-sized smartphone when unfolded. Motorola has a similarly futuristic flip phone, the Razr Ultra, and Oppo has a comparable folding phone, the Find N5. Things get even more mind-bending in China, where Huawei sells the Mate XT, a phone that folds twice. Dubbed a 'trifold,' this form factor is basically a tablet that folds up like a brochure. Even Apple is reportedly working on a folding iPhone. 'If and when Apple enters this segment, they will create a lot of awareness,' said Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for data and analytics at IDC. 'It will help the entire industry to move towards [foldables].' Folding phones are supposed to adapt to your needs: Start with the smaller screen for basic tasks, like checking notifications, and then switch to the bigger screens for writing emails and watching videos. As someone who dreads reading anything long on a small screen, I get the appeal. I really like the idea of making the device smaller, as the Samsung Flip and Motorola Razr do, to give me less screen to stare at for basic functions. It also makes me nostalgic for a time when these devices didn't fill up your entire pocket — or your attention span. Related How switching to a flip phone deepened my friendships More than anything, the idea that smartphones still have a few tricks up their sleeves brings me hope that, even if people like Altman and Zuckerberg really want us to, we won't all be wearing AI pins or smart glasses any time soon. 'Is the smartphone going to be replaced? I think at some point, yeah,' Gerrit Schneemann, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, told me. 'But I think it's going to take a long time for that to shift, so not in the next five years.' The hunt for an iPhone successor There was a time when people were obsessed with their phones, and these devices were a source of wonderment and fun. (This was well before we knew how phones were cooking our brains.) Companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung got into an arms race over how many cameras they could cram onto a device or how high the screen resolution could go. By the late 2010s, however, the specs had more or less maxed out. Even cheap phones were really good. So people held onto their phones for longer, breaking the annual upgrade cycle. Devicemakers started inventing reasons to upgrade, like the introduction of 5G wireless technology, which was really important to carriers but didn't impact consumers all that much. More recently, there's been a similar push to upgrade your phone to take advantage of AI features, even when the ChatGPT app works just fine on most phones. Apple ended up getting sued several times over how it marketed its Apple Intelligence-capable iPhones. Whatever the future of the smartphone is, standalone AI devices have not done well so far. In 2024, the Humane Pin, a $700 AI-powered device that clipped to your shirt and projected text messages onto your hand, became one of the biggest flops in gadget history, lasting less than a year on the market. The Rabbit R1, a smartphone-adjacent little box that promised to be a personal assistant, also got awful reviews last year. Even the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which I've spent hours testing, currently struggle as a smartphone replacement (Meta has admitted as much). You can talk to the AI assistant, but you have to take out your phone to get anything done. Related Your iPhone is about to get uglier 'I'm not sure why they've decided voice is a good input method, but I'm not totally certain users are actually ever going to be comfortable doing that,' said Max Weinbach, an analyst at Creative Strategies. That brings us back to the familiar glow of a smartphone screen. Love it or hate it, this will continue to be your portal into the digital world for years to come — but probably not forever. Meta, Apple, and Google are all working on their versions of augmented or mixed reality devices. In addition to the Ray-Ban glasses, Meta revealed the Orion glasses last fall, which project virtual elements onto the real world and make you look goofy in the process. Apple is expected to release the second-generation Vision Pro headset, a very expensive set of goggles that also mix the real and virtual worlds, later this year on the way to its own lightweight glasses. Both devices currently require you to keep a smartphone-sized component in your pocket for the glasses to work. So we're a ways away from a total smartphone replacement. Foldables, in the meantime, create a sort of bridge. If your hope is to spend less time staring at screens, a new-fangled flip phone like the Samsung Flip or the Motorola Razr is a good compromise, since the small screen ostensibly keeps you from looking at the big screen too much. If you want to be more immersed in your daily content, a device like the Galaxy Fold makes certain sense in the absence of a true augmented reality experience that turns the real world digital. If you really just want more control over your screen time and you're not enthralled by the idea of talking to an AI all day or dealing with anything foldable, I have to recommend the Light Phone 3. This compact device for digital minimalists is effectively a smartphone that's been stripped of the most addictive features. I like to think of it as a weekend phone that lets you put your smartphone life on hold for an extended period of time. On the Light Phone, there is no app store, and thus, no TikTok or any other endless feeds. There are simply tools like maps, a music player, a messaging feature, and of course, a phone. As Kaiwei Tang, co-creator of the Light Phone, told me earlier this year, 'We don't want the device to try to fight for your attention, or be shiny. We wanted it to be calm, low key, and just disappear, even when you use it.' I've tried out all of these form factors, because I'm a nerd and because it's my job. As appealing as they are, I won't be switching to either of Samsung's foldable options permanently, because I am stuck in the Apple ecosystem and basically satisfied. I tried switching to the Light Phone, but as a young parent, I'm too dependent on being constantly connected — for better or worse. I also have a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses that I primarily use as sunglasses that can also play podcasts. You could say that I'm stuck somewhere between the future and the past. As eager as I am for something new to come along and unify my digital life, as the smartphone did so many years ago, I find myself reaching for different devices for specific purposes. But I'm also nostalgic for the time when each gadget had its purpose, when a flip phone was what I used to make calls and an iPod was how I listened to music. My smartphone can do it all, sure, and it will for years to come.
Vox
03-07-2025
- Business
- Vox
Don't let AI steal your job
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. It's okay to be scared of AI. You should learn to use it anyway. Getty Images/CSA Images RF User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. ChatGPT's most advanced models recently served me a surprising statistic: US productivity grew faster in 2024 than in any year since the 1960s. Half that jump can be linked to generative AI tools that most workers hadn't even heard of two years earlier. The only problem is that it's not true. The AI made it up. Despite its much-documented fallibility, generative AI has become a huge part of many people's jobs, including my own. The numbers vary from survey to survey, but a June Gallup poll found that 42 percent of American employees are using AI a few times a year, while 19 percent report deploying it several times a week. The technology is especially popular with white-collar workers. While just 9 percent of manufacturing and front-line workers use AI on a regular basis, 27 percent of white-collar workers do. Even as many people integrate AI into their daily lives, it's causing mass job anxiety: A February Pew survey found that more than half of US employees worried about their fate at work. Unfortunately, there is no magic trick to keep your job for the foreseeable future, especially if you're a white-collar worker. Nobody knows what's going to happen with AI, and leadership at many companies is responding to this uncertainty by firing workers it may or may not need in an AI-forward future. 'If AI really is this era's steam engine, a force so transformative that it will power a new Industrial Revolution, you only stand to gain by getting good at it.' After laying off over 6,000 workers in May and June, Microsoft is laying off 9,000 more workers this month, reportedly so the company can reduce the number of middle managers as it reorganizes itself around AI. In a note on Tuesday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees that the company would 'roll out more generative AI and agents' and reduce its workforce in the next few years. This was all after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned AI would wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the same timespan, a prediction so grim that Axios coined a new term for AI's imminent takeover: 'a white-collar bloodbath.' This is particularly frustrating because, as my recent encounter with ChatGPT's tendency to hallucinate makes clear, the generative AI of today, while useful for a growing number of people, needs humans to work well. So does agentic AI, the next era of this technology that involves AI agents using computers and performing tasks on your behalf rather than simply generating content. For now, AI is augmenting white-collar jobs, not automating them, although your company's CEO is probably planning for the latter scenario. Maybe one day AI will fulfill its promise of getting rid of grunt work and creating endless abundance, but getting from here to there is a harrowing proposition. 'With every other form of innovation, we ended up with more jobs in the end,' Ethan Mollick, a Wharton professor and author of the newsletter One Useful Thing, told me. 'But living through the Industrial Revolution still kind of sucked, right? There were still anarchists in the street and mass displacement from cities and towns.' We don't know if the transition to the AI future will be quite as calamitous. What we do know is that just as jobs transformed due to past technological leaps, like the introduction of the personal computer or the internet, your day-to-day at work will change in the months and years to come. If AI really is this era's steam engine, a force so transformative that it will power a new Industrial Revolution, you only stand to gain by getting good at it. At the same time, becoming an AI whiz will not necessarily save you if your company decides it's time to go all in on AI and do mass, scattershot layoffs in order to give its shareholders the impression of some efficiency gains. If you're impacted, that's just bad luck. Still, having the skills can't hurt. Welcome to the AI revolution transition It's okay to be scared of AI, but it's more reasonable to be confused by it. For two years after ChatGPT's explosive release, I couldn't quite figure out how a chatbot could make my life better. After some urging from Mollick late last year, I forced myself to start using it for menial chores. Upgrading to more advanced models of ChatGPT and Claude turned these tools into indispensable research partners that I use every day — not just to do my job faster but also better. (Disclosure: Vox Media is one of several publishers that have signed partnership agreements with OpenAI. Our reporting remains editorially independent.) But when it comes to generative AI tools and the burgeoning class of AI agents, what works for one person might not be helpful to the next. 'Workers obviously need to try to ascertain as much as they can — the skills that are most flexible and most useful,' said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro. 'They need to be familiar with the technology because it is going to be pervasive.' For most white-collar workers, I recommend Mollick's 10-hour rule: Spend 10 hours using AI for work and see what you learn. Mollick also recently published an updated guide to the latest AI tools that's worth reading in full. The big takeaways are that the best of these tools (ChatGPT from OpenAI, Claude from Anthropic, and Google Gemini) can become tireless assistants with limitless knowledge that can save you hours of labor. You should try different models within the different AI tools, and you should experiment with the voice features, including the ability to use your phone's camera to share what you're seeing with the AI. You should also, unfortunately, shell out $20 a month to get access to the most advanced models. In Mollick's words, 'The free versions are demos, not tools.' 'If I have a very narrow job around a very narrow task that's being done repetitively, that's where the most risk comes in.' You can imagine similar advice coming from your geeky uncle at Thanksgiving circa 1984, when personal computers were on the brink of taking over the world. That was the year roughly the same percentage of white-collar workers were regularly using PCs at work as are using AI today. But the coming AI transition will look different than the PC transition we've already lived through. While earlier digital technologies hit frontline workers hardest, 'AI excels at supporting or carrying out the highly cognitive, nonroutine tasks that better-educated, better-paid office workers do,' according to a February Brookings report co-authored by Muro. This means AI can do a lot of the tasks that software engineers, architects, lawyers, and journalists do, but it doesn't mean that AI can do their jobs — a key distinction. This is why you hear more experts talking about AI augmentation rather than AI automation. As a journalist, I can confidently say that AI is great at streamlining my research process, saving me time, and sometimes even stirring up new ideas. AI is terrible at interviewing sources, although that might not always be the case. And clearly, it's touch-and-go when it comes to writing factually accurate copy, which is kind of a fundamental part of the job. That proposition looks different for other kinds of white-collar work, namely administrative and operational support jobs. A Brookings report last year found that 100 percent of the tasks that bookkeepers and clerks do were likely to be automated. Those of travel agents, tax preparers, and administrative assistants were close to 100 percent. If AI really did make these workers redundant, it would add up to millions of jobs lost. 'The thing I'd be most worried about is if my task and job are very similar to each other,' Mollick, the Wharton professor, explained. 'If I have a very narrow job around a very narrow task that's being done repetitively, that's where the most risk comes in.' Related These stories could change how you feel about AI It's hard to AI-proof your job or career altogether given so much uncertainty. We don't know if companies will take advantage of this transition in ways that produce better products and happier workers or just use it as an excuse to fire people, squandering what some believe is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform work and productivity. It sucks to feel like you have little agency in steering the future toward one outcome or the other. At the risk of sounding like your geeky uncle, I say give AI a try. The worst-case scenario is you spend 10 hours talking to an artificially intelligent chatbot rather than scrolling through Instagram or Reddit. The best-case scenario is you develop a new skill set, one that could very well set you up to do an entirely new kind of job, one that didn't even exist before the AI era. You might even have a little fun along the way. A version of this story was also published in the User Friendly newsletter. Sign up here so you don't miss the next one!
