- We are actually in the midst of a technological sea change
of the likes of which we haven't seen for a few decades now.
People like to believe technology moves along evenly
on a constant, but actually, it bolts ahead at time,
and right now one of them is the world of AI
that's based on very large training set models.
A second is we're about to have a few new devices,
robots and wearable mobile computers,
which allows us to use computing to amplify
in moments where we need to be heads up and present.
- Generative AI represents
a massive step forward in computer capabilities,
and robotics and new interfaces will utterly change
both how we interact with machines
and how machines will interact with our world.
- When these things come together,
it creates a whole new computing landscape.
You could call it, and we would, the real-time internet.
- The future of computing
won't be about apps or websites.
It'll be about you and your imagination.
It's an idea called the real-time internet
and it could change everything.
Stick around to learn how.
This is "Hard Reset,"
a series about rebuilding our world from scratch.
We've come to argodesign here in Austin, Texas
to speak with Jared Ficklin.
And as a product designer and futurist,
his job is to live with one foot in the future.
So we asked him to look into his crystal ball
and give us a peek at what that future looks like.
- Those who've been following the trends with generative AI
know that you can already have it write poetry
or a short story or a screenplay
with giving it just a few prompts,
or it can generate images for you.
It's actually more than that.
It's capable of potentially generating whole pieces
of software in real-time.
The real-time internet is a future
where software experiences can be extremely personalized
to whatever prompt you have given it.
- Generative AI has graduated from making images
with creepy hands in them to making software.
Soon, you won't need someone to write an app for you.
You can just tell your device what kind of app you want
and it'll write it for you on the fly.
- You might say, "Help me organize my bookshelf."
Generative AI will use a large model
to assemble a application that helps you do that.
The same model can then successfully identify
all the books on your shelf.
It can then reach out and figure out
the values and the ages of them.
It can understand what different colors are
and it can even understand a color wheel.
When you put that all together with an extreme pattern
of the hundred million apps that already exist,
well, it can successfully lead you
through a process of saying,
"Okay, do you wanna organize them by size,
by date, by value, by color?"
You'll select one, it'll say,
"Okay, move them into this position,"
because it's all happening on a wearable mobile computer;
your hands are free to rearrange your bookshelf, right?
And when you finish, it's important to note
that all this started with a prompt.
Not only that, but when you finish,
the whole app just goes away.
It doesn't need to take up space
on your desktop as some icon,
'cause you can reinvoke it at any time you want.
The data that was encountered is now checked
into your data marketplace to be useful in the future.
So for instance, a couple weeks later you're like,
"Man, I have too many books.
Hey, help me get rid of a couple of books."
It checks out that data, sees the two that are most value,
figures out an interface for which to list them for sale
and allows you to sell them.
This is a different architecture than today.
- The way we think of the internet
has changed over time.
Now, instead of largely static websites,
we expect them to have dynamic content
tailored specifically for us.
- Now, it's getting entirely personal,
in fact, almost quantum-like,
meaning that when I go to the Amazon homepage,
I see a webpage that was created
for me in near real-time from certain patterns,
and you see a completely different page.
They don't exist until we look at 'em,
like Schrodinger's cat or something, right?
We jokingly call this the 'quantum internet.'
There's a quantumness to it, right?
- So right now, the information
we see on the internet is dynamic and personalized.
What will it be like when the capabilities
of the internet are also dynamic and personalized?
Will this mean the end of apps and websites
when any function of the internet,
even one that hasn't been thought of yet,
is a simple prompt away?
- This real-time internet is where computing is headed
and it's gonna be experienced radically different.
It's gonna be as big of a sea change
as 2007 when the iPhone was released
and we all converted to handheld mobile computing
as opposed to two-foot desktop computing.
- This is a fundamental change
in how we interact with technology,
and that can be just as important
as the capabilities of the technology itself.
Many technologies are limited by the fact
that their interfaces aren't great.
- An interface is more than just delight
or, you know, it's not hard to use.
Interfaces also provide the guardrails
and they surface what value a technology has for the user.
Back when we were in those computers, were mainframes
and we all used DOS,
a few key commands could erase your entire hard drive.
And Windows, as a interface, actually put guardrails
that made that much harder,
which meant that more people could successfully
use the computer without doing damage.
When you're designing interfaces for technology,
you really do need to think about
where you are responsible to the user
to make sure that this is a positive thing
for their lives and humanity as well.
3D printing is currently something that's niche.
It's a cottage industry
because the interface is very complex.
Even just going to a website where they throw up models
and picking one to print out is actually really hard to do.
But we're about to be in a place
where I could tell the printer,
"Print me a coffee cup in the style of Ikea."
It will show me four options on a clear OLED screen
where I can actually see them on the printing plate.
I'll tap one and it'll print it out.
At that point, that's an interface so easily adoptable
that Samsung, LG, who knows, will get into the market
and you'll have one of these sitting
on your kitchen countertop
and you'll be able to have a replicator in your kitchen.
- Once again, "Star Trek" called it.
- 'Tea. Earl gray, hot.
Earl gray?'
- This is the stuff of science fiction
and we often think it's the technical capability
that holds it back from adoption, and it's not.
You can do that whole story today if you're an enthusiast.
It's the interface, it's the metaphor
and the way we can interact with it
that holds it back from wider adoption.
And that's a part of the product story
for computing that I play with in the interface
between the human and the computer.
There's a pretty interesting story here
about how computing deployed for humanity
and product design intersected.
- Consider the punch card.
This is how humans used to interface
with computers and program,
binary expressed as holes in card stock.
- At first, computing, in order for you to program it,
you had to actually understand the mathematics
behind the binary code.
Then a layer was placed on top of it that we called syntax
that turned it into a language.
We being creatures who evolved to understand language,
this created a kind of computing
that required the knowledge of a specific language,
and it was this monastic pursuit of people
who could understand that.
- Using programming languages
that could be written with a keyboard,
the tiny, tiny fraction of people
who could code in binary was suddenly expanded
to a much larger group of people
who were comfortable with using the command line.
Then we expanded the interface again
with the mouse and the graphic user interface.
- Then we gave it the metaphor of the '60s office place.
This happened with a piece of software
we all know called Windows.
And with this metaphor of putting files into folders
and opening applications into a window pane,
everyone who is a business user could understand
how to use a computer,
and it extended computing from the 10% of the IT department
to nearly half of the population that worked in business.
- As the interfaces for computers evolved,
each change meant more and more people
could benefit from the advantages
of automation and computing.
And each time there was a jump in productivity.
- Every time we have deployed a metaphor
that removed friction
and that the user could understand innately,
adoption has exploded.
And I believe we're poised at this moment,
due to a convergence of technology,
to begin seeing a new or a next, if you will,
computing metaphor that would be wearable mobile computing
that will operate in terms of having objects
that are digital join us in physical space.
And this will allow us to bring computing
out of an immersive screen
out into the physical environment around it.
And we're gonna have a new vocabulary that's multimodal,
such as launch that, put it there, close that,
using gesture, eye contact, voice,
and certain control surfaces altogether.
- Immersive interfaces like AR
will mean that computing can amplify the productivity
of even more people.
Instead of just people who can work in an office
and look at a screen like an architect designing a building,
these interfaces will be able
to help the people actually constructing the building.
- Well, then you get out into the field
and you're actually building this skyscraper
and you're on the 57th floor
and you're putting that girder into place,
and you're like, "How many bolts are there supposed to be?"
Well, who wants to be standing on a single girder
57 floors above the ground staring into a screen
where they lose all their perceptual vision?
Well, if you had a wearable mobile computer,
you actually could be looking at the girder
with the design overlaid on it.
Count one, two, three, four, five, six.
"Great, we're good. Let's keep going."
- Artificial intelligence
and new immersive interfaces
are combining to make computing into something
that is more human-centered than ever before.
- I just think we've crossed a rubicon here.
As designers, we used to obsess over the uncanny valley.
The uncanny valley was this thought experiment
that the closer computing showed you reality or humanity,
the more it got small details wrong.
It either creeped out the user
or helped them recognize that it was not real.
The idea was that this was a value that was very wide,
and the closer you got to it,
the valley got very, very deep.
This latest batch of AI has closed that gap.
Computers are now more powerful than human perception.
They can put out more colors than our biology
is capable of perceiving.
This is why I think there's a reaction
to this latest technological sea change
that we should pause.
So we may have to add a new obligation
to our levels of responsibility when we do design.
We also may need to ask the question of,
"Does this technology amplify humanity
or does it emulate humanity?"
We should ask these questions
as we begin deploying technologies now.
It's okay to love technology
so long as you love humanity equally or more.
- These technologies are here
or will be very soon.
Things that used to seem fantastical are now commonplace.
So it's hard not to get excited
or nervous about the possibilities this presents.
- As much as it seems like we're moments away
from Skynet, we're really not.
We're really in control of our own destiny here,
and so long as we believe that,
humanity can be a positive experience,
where our purpose could be to create as much love
and intellect as possible for the Universe-
I think we're gonna land in a great place.