Jony Ive and Laurene Powell Jobs have given a rare joint interview to the Financial Times, addressing their collaboration, their concerns about technology's social impact, and OpenAI's mysterious hardware device.
The interview follows the recent acquisition of Ive's AI startup, IO, by OpenAI in a $6.4 billion deal. Ive was Apple's Chief Design Officer and led the design of products including the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and Apple Watch. Powell Jobs is the widow of Apple CEO Steve Jobs. She was an early investor in IO said she has been closely involved with Ive's work since his departure from Apple in 2019.
Ive explained that Powell Jobs was instrumental in enabling his transition from Apple, saying, "If it wasn't for Laurene, there wouldn't be LoveFrom." Before supporting IO, Powell Jobs backed LoveFrom via her organization Emerson Collective.
While neither Ive nor Powell Jobs disclosed further details about the hardware device in development at OpenAI, they offered insight into the motivations behind the project and their shared belief that current technology has failed to adequately serve human wellbeing. Both expressed concern over the direction technology has taken in the years since the launch of the iPhone. Powell Jobs cited evidence of increasing mental health problems among young people as one consequence:
We now know, unambiguously, that there are dark uses for certain types of technology. You can only look at the studies being done on teenage girls and on anxiety in young people, and the rise of mental health needs, to understand that we've gone sideways. Certainly, technology wasn't designed to have that result. But that is the sideways result.
Ive agreed, acknowledging that even innovations developed with the best intentions can produce harmful outcomes:
If you make something new, if you innovate, there will be consequences unforeseen, and some will be wonderful and some will be harmful. While some of the less positive consequences were unintentional, I still feel responsibility. And the manifestation of that is a determination to try and be useful.
Powell Jobs declined to comment on whether the OpenAI device would compete directly with Apple, and emphasized her continued ties to the company:
I'm still very close to the leadership team in Apple. They're really good people and I want them to succeed also.
The interview also touched on broader changes in Silicon Valley culture. Ive moved to the United States in the 1990s to join Apple, but said the tech industry had lost much of its original sense of purpose:
When I first moved here I came because it was characterized by people who genuinely saw that their purpose was in service to humanity, to inspire people and help people create. I don't feel that way about this place right now.
Previous reports from The Wall Street Journal and analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed that OpenAI's first hardware device may be a compact, screenless, wearable AI companion. Kuo said it may resemble the iPod Shuffle in form factor, be worn around the neck, and begin mass production in 2027. The WSJ described the device as a user's "third core device" after a smartphone and laptop, potentially offering persistent environmental awareness and personal context.
Ive said that the project has reignited his optimism about technology. The device is apparently being designed with a mentality of "we deserve better. Humanity deserves better." Read the full Financial Times interview for more information.
