Steve Jobs predicted Apple Intelligence almost 40 years ago
The generative AI revolution began long before ChatGPT made its debut in November 2022. Computer Science researchers and sci-fi authors alike have been imagining the potential of thinking, feeling computers from the days of pulling literal bugs out of mainframes. Visionary Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was just as enamored with that ideal, as he describes in this 1985 video recording, almost 40 years ago.
When Steve Jobs could predict Generative AI few decades forward ! #GodLevel pic.twitter.com/5kUNn18R5L
— Vijay Shekhar Sharma (@vijayshekhar) September 16, 2023
In the clip above, which has been resurfaced on X (formerly Twitter), Jobs first reveals his minor jealousy toward Alexander the Great for having the legendary philosopher Aristotle for a tutor. “I think I would have enjoyed that a great deal,” he quipped, but, “through the miracle of the printed page, I can at least read what Aristotle wrote without an intermediary.” But even with access to Aristotle’s writings, Jobs noted that he couldn’t actually ask any questions of the philosopher — and expect a reply.
“My hope is that, in our lifetimes,” Jobs continued, “we can make a tool of a new kind, an interactive client… When the next Aristotle is alive, we can capture the underlying world view of that Aristotle in a computer. And someday a student will be able to not only read the words Aristotle wrote but ask Aristotle a question. And get an answer.”
Unfortunately, Steve Jobs lost his fight against Pancreatic cancer in 2011, a decade before the debut of ChatGPT. However, the company that he created is continuing his vision for interactive computing, and plans to launch its Apple Intelligence service later this summer, coinciding with the release of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and MacOS Sierra.
“This is a moment we’ve been working towards for a long time,” Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said at WWDC 2024. “Apple Intelligence is the personal intelligence system that puts powerful generative models right at the core of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It draws on your personal context to give you intelligence.”
The generalized AI agent will enable users to streamline any number of daily tasks, from helping to write, edit, and refine text across Mail, Notes, Safari, and Pages to quickly spin up AI-generated images. It will reportedly also be able to summarize the contents of rambling email chains and find photos of specific groups and individuals within the camera roll using written prompts, among a host of additional functions. Whether some of its more advanced features will be hidden behind paywalls remains to be seen.
Andrew has spent more than a decade reporting on emerging technologies ranging from robotics and machine learning to space…
40 years ago today, Apple launched something as audacious as the Vision Pro
Today marks 40 years since Apple released the very first Mac, upending the entire computer industry and sowing the seeds for four decades of success for the company. Dubbed the Macintosh 128K, the device was an unprecedented success for Apple, and it quickly became one of the most important Macs ever. It also has curious parallels to the company’s situation today.
It’s easy to look back now with fondness at the impact the product made — a familiar piece of tech history that still undergirds so much of our current technology. But at the time, it was the start of something new. A bold, risky, and unprecedented leap forward. It’s hard not to make comparisons to the Vision Pro, which officially launches just next week. But will we look back in 40 years at the Vision Pro with the same kind of reverence? Perhaps, but only if Apple learns the right lesson from its own history.
A computing revolution
1984 Apple’s Macintosh Commercial (HD)
This AI app just brought Hollywood icons back from the dead to read you PDFs
Barely a week after unveiling its new Reader App, which can narrate virtually any piece of written text users present to it, ElevenLabs has already released a significant update for the AI-powered program.
On Wednesday, the audio AI startup announced that it will offer users the option to have their words spoken by one of four classic Hollywood stars: Burt Reynolds, Judy Garland, James Dean, and Sir Laurence Olivier as part of its “Iconic Voices Collection.”
Japan finally says goodbye to floppy disks
Japan’s Digital Minister Taro Kono announced late last month that he had successfully scrapped 1,034 government regulations that required the use of floppy disks. According to Reuters, Kono described the achievement as winning “the war on floppy disks” — though there is apparently one regulation left that still requires their usage.
At a time when younger readers may have never seen or heard of a floppy disk, it seems truly insane that the world’s fourth-largest economy still relied on them in over 1,000 different situations. But this has been a long journey for Kono and Japan, which announced its intentions to rid the government of floppy disks in 2022.
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