A Conversation with Sam and Jony

Thank you. Hey, John. — Hello, Sam. Hello. — Good afternoon. What a beautiful afternoon in San Francisco. It's — warm today. — It is. — So, I thought we would maybe start off by talking about how this whole collaboration started. Um, do you want to sort of tell the story? Um well I was at Apple for um nearly 30 years and I left about six years ago and started to build a um an interdisciplinary uh creative team that range from industrial designers um architects, graphic designers, user interface designers And my goal and the goal of the group as we grew was to try to build the most um powerful and experienced creative team that we could. The problem that we had was we weren't really quite sure why. Um it felt slightly like a moral um crusade that we were on. But it wasn't until about three years ago when Chachi PT launched that we felt and this sounds almost corny but unfortunately it's true that with the launch of Chachi PT it felt like our purpose of the last six years um became clear and um I reached out to Sam because we were starting to develop some ideas for interface um based on the capability of the technology these guys were developing technology you guys are developing and so we first met yeah it was about 3 years ago wasn't it so the first time we met and since then I've had this experience I've always wanted to ask this question um but I've had this experience of Johnny and I will talk Johnny and the team will look at the way the technology is developing and sort of say it feels like there's something important, something is going to change about how people use computers, how people interface with this kind of technology. It it feels like as great as phones and computers are, there's something new to do. And we'll talk about the problem space and sort of what the technology allows and what people want to use. And then Johnny and his team will go off for a while and a few weeks later uh we'll come back together and they will have invented some entirely new different idea that seemed that seems obviously right and simple and beautiful and sort of always the thing that should have been the case but impossible to have come up with before and then we talk about it and we can you know figure out ways to evolve it and use it. The thing I would love to understand is how do you do that part in the middle? the part from like exploring the problem and understanding how people interact with each other and how different materials work and how people think about what feels natural and what feels uncanny? How you do that in-depth exploration which I can kind of understand and then you refine a product which I can also kind of understand but this thing in the middle of coming up with a totally new idea. How does that work? — Well, I think f first of all, our motivation um and our fuel is really important. Um, and we're very clear the reason we're doing this is um we love our species and we want to be useful and we think that humanity deserves um much better than humanity generally is given and motivation and fuel I think are um if those aren't quite right you it doesn't matter how hard you work in the um the subsequent part you're going to end up somewhere unpleasant I think. So I think first of all the motivation and the fuel is um very much centered on people. I mean as you know we we've always I I pay so much attention in desperately trying to understand the future. I pay a lot of attention to history and to the past. I mean, people are so clever, you know, we didn't just start to be clever. Um, and to me, it's the most absurd arrogance to

not carefully study history. So, we do lots of research, but in our learning, I think this is one of the big struggles we have is we just don't we don't easily accept received wisdom. It's constantly why you know I so I think it's the the tenacity of the questions we ask um I I think is very is very important but at the end of the day it's an idea. Um, and you know, I've talked about this before. Ideas, even though they can become so powerful, ideas always start in a tentative um, quiet and essentially fragile way. And I think that the the team there's a number of things that we know we benefit from having I mean some of us have worked together for 25 years and we can and the trust and the um the biography we have together um I think creates an atmosphere that is really supportive of trying to gently explore an idea that you can barely give words to. You know, when you're thinking of something and you have a sense of it, but the next step from your from what's in your head, you try to give a thought body, which tends to be language. And how you do that and who you do that with is everything. And I think it is accepting your vulnerability because the creative process is so unpredictable, but doing the rigorous hard work to try to increase the probability that you might have a good idea and we don't show you any of the terrible ideas. — They're all very impressive. H how do you think about craft in this process? I' I've never seen anyone sweat fractions of a millimeter so early in the design process and think about the subtlest differences in materials and how that's going to change the relationship with a piece of technology or even a thing that particularly well let me ask that first actually how do you think about sort of the role of craft in exploring a new idea — yeah I I've always thought that it's the mark of someone's you know it tells you a lot about someone if they will care about something that is not seen, if how they behave when it's not in public tells you an awful lot about who they are. And I I've always thought that um to me craft and care are, you know, almost interchangeable, but that obsession with I mean it can be um a pleasurable thing to do. very often it's inconvenient. Um, but if you only care when it's convenient, I mean, I don't know what that says about you. Um, but I do think that o over the years I've come to believe passionately that we sense when people have cared. Doesn't mean that it's always right. Of course not. But in the same way we sense care, I think you might understand, it's easier almost to understand the concept if I say you sense carelessness. You sense when somebody does not care about you, they care about money and schedule and you can you sense that I think a mile away. Um and so I don't know. I I think that practice and that um the rigor around caring whether it's convenient or not whether it's going to be manifest in a way that's seen or not that doesn't matter the practice is an extension of our motivation which is why I always come back to what is motivating what's driving us — what is motivating and driving you — well one I think it's the um the opportunity unity of I I've never in my career come across anything vaguely like the affordance like the capability that we're now starting to sense and that's at one level that could be and you know that could be it that um but to me that's part of the story part of the drive I think the The huge part of it is um I don't think we have an easy relationship with our

technology at the moment. And um rather than see AI as an extension of those challenges, I see it very differently. I see it as a chance to use this most remarkable capability to full-on address a lot of the overwhelm and despair that people feel right now. And some of that is connected to the tools that they are using. Speaking of that, you a thing that you said to me very early on when we started talking about this that really stuck with me is, you know, the default answer, the most likely answer is we shouldn't do anything at all. The current devices are great. It's very the general purposeness of a phone is an incredible thing, which I strongly agree with. And it's there's got to be a really compelling reason for something new. What convinced you eventually that there was something here worth doing? — Well, I think I mean, as Sam said, I think what was amazing about multi-touch was that it it supported a user interface that was not compromised by app A over app B over C. So it was the most remarkable interface that meant you could have a generalpurpose um device whether it was a phone, whether you know tablet and that I think that general purposeness combined with the fact combined with its connectivity and its physical size was incredibly liberating. Um, but that was in 2007. And I think you could frame the question the other way, which is I think it would be absurd to assume that you could have um technology that is just breathtaking delivered to us through legacy products, products that are decades old. Um and yeah, as I said, I mean, this is the most compelling, most exciting um uh technology and capability I've ever experienced. Um and the nature of how we connect to it, the character this capability is going to be so important. — And how will you know if we've gotten that right? like what will what do you hope people will say about it when they use this family of devices? What do you hope will feel different than previous generations of decades old technology? And how do you think about what it means to build this in a way we can be really proud of? That's a great question. I well I I've always loved you know if you're trying to solve a complicated problem as a designer um I sort of think that's my job and the team's job and I don't want to like um be wagging my tail in your face saying oh look what we solved it was very hard but look what we did. I think that it should be, you know, the if the solution is clever, it should I mean this is this has been said many times, but that it should just work. It should seem inevitable. It should seem obvious as if there wasn't possibly another rational solution to to the problem. So, so I think a sense of oh well of course I've always found that um I'm always nervous of that because I wish it would be there would be some in you know intrinsic fanfare and trumpeting that oh look at but my experience consistently suggests to me that you'll look at something and think well yeah of course you'd do it that way. Why did it take so long? Um I think it's partly that but I also think um and we've talked about this a bit before. I do think having, you know, I've lived in San Francisco since 92 and I've seen so many changes in, you know, in the valley and I think um one of the things I miss is just humor is probably overstating it a bit, but I I am just a little crushed by how seriously we all take ourselves.

Now, this happens to be um this is serious stuff. Um I mean truly and the ramifications and consequences of not caring and not being careful are truly horrendous. But in terms of the devices we design, interfaces we design, um if we can't smile, um honestly, if it's just another deeply um serious um sort of exclusive thing, I think that would do us all a huge disservice. That's been a thing I found very wonderful about working with you is you can take the most serious things and bring some whimsy and joy to them in a way that makes the whole thing approachable and feel very different. — I mean to me that's the you know one of the first things Sam said to me when we very first met and when I meet someone I don't take notes. I mean it's a bit creepy isn't it? And um and on the I was taking notes and one of the things he said was you know this is computers are are starting to think. Um and we went down a path of you know what we were describing clearly was an extraordinary level of intelligence. And of course my references are going to be how what my interface is to other you know to other members of our you know of our species. And when that is humorless, it's also not so efficient. And um if because it's not enjoyable and you tend to do stuff with a bit more vim if you if you're enjoying it, I think — any unexpected challenges so far. — Yes. Um the I mean it was I think I was aware that the rate of change and the rate of progress. I' I've never known anything um ever like that. And I do wish I was about 20 years younger. Um, but the I I've spent a huge amount of my time as a designer trying to create momentum, you know, in you know, it's part of my job, I think, is to draw on my experience and try to figure out how we can, you know, create a momentum to help generate ideas. Um again this is a first for me where my fe you know my challenge is the momentum is so extraordinary the technology momentum the momentum of the open AI team the momentum of love from and IO um is almost overwhelming and has led us to um generate you know 15 20 really compelling product ideas and the challenge is is trying to focus and I I used to be good at that and I'm I've lost some confidence because it's that the choices are it'll be easy if you really knew there were three good ones and everything else, you know, was it's just not like that. And so so you know obviously we're designing a family of products we're not doing um but it's really trying to make sure we choose you know we're judicious and thoughtful in what we focus on and to then not be distracted. But I've never known that this sort of momentum and these guys they have so many distractions because it's just so from one week to the next there's something else and then something else. So it is it's you know to try to be a little blinkered is I think is going to be necessary so that we can finish the first thing so we can get to the second to the third and to the fourth etc. Speaking of that, we got a room full of builders that I assume are facing the same sort of vertigoinducing challenge. Do you have advice for people who are trying to build in a world like this? Well, one thing that really does strike me is I don't know if you feel this way, but I feel there's something very equalizing about what's going on because it's new to all of us. You know, if anybody says, "Oh, I

I'm extraordinarily confident. I am I've got decades of experience with this. " Obviously, it's a that's a silly thing to say. Um, so one thing I love is that there is something egalitarian and very somehow oddly inclusive about what's going on. And one of the things I've loved is I think success is going to be you have to be curious and inquisitive and desperate to learn. And I think these are such healthy ways of being personally, but I know that they're critical ways of innovating. Um I think the advice I mean I can only speak, you know, to what I I'm personally wrestling with is I find myself every day, I think, having to challenge myself and think where is my experience relevant? where's my experience of sort of 30 40 years of doing what I've been doing useful but also be really clear where it's just ir you know is not relevant in fact can be an obstacle or an impediment and so I I do think that there's tremendous sort of solace and encouragement to think we're all in this um pretty much sort of level set and the to be really curious about why you have the beliefs that you have and my sense is dogma and I'm not talking about values so separate from values but sort of dogma associated with creating and engineering would seem to me out of place I think it's always out of place but I think you'd be highly unsuccessful here — along those lines one thing you said to me a long time ago but that has really stuck with is you you're not even sure that things like an operating system or a UI in the way we traditionally think of one what those things will mean in the future. So, h any new thoughts on where that's all going to go? But more generally, like it is I agree it is kind of wonderful. We're all noviceses in this together, but how do you kind of like think for this very different brave new world? Well, I I've I think we've spent as a team, you know, in our research and some of the research we did was fairly well, it was extraordinarily broad and some of it really quite deep, but in terms of the nature of our um you know, I was reading something the other day about how important the character of our um connection um to An activity is and what might be seen as a tedious repetitive um activity like gardening for example if the nature of your connection to that activity is such it can be the most therapeutic um edifying um and I'm I love gardening so this I mean this is a great this is a I think a this has really resonated with me and So I it's really we've gone very deep on trying to understand our interface with um sort of persontoerson interface how incredibly sophisticated and nuanced that is but how very often we um you know we're so entwined the way we think is so entwined you know with other devices and tools. So how we often reference in our interface together when we're trying to connect um the role of other tools in there and then there are just those very taskspecific um you know using scissors you know something so beautifully simple and focus and appliancelike. Um, and so I think I think the clues and the pointers all exist and it's just trying to sort of put them together, but there has, you know, it will be ideas. It will be a vision for what makes sense. Um, and I think we're only going to arrive at that if we are, you know, very curious and light on our feet. And the, you know, we both know humility is critical for to be open to realizing, oh, this isn't quite the right direction. We need to change.

change. One thing that I've observed is that AI has really changed what it means to write code in a huge way in this year. Like the way people wrote code a year ago and the way people write code now are pretty different, surprisingly different for one year. Is that happening in the design process or do you expect that to happen in the design process? Like use will these tools really change it? — Yeah, it's funny. I think the um I want it to be I really do. I think um I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but um what we've struggled with as a team is we're so consumed with the work is trying to make time to um sort of incorporate and seek the help of new tools. Um, I mean, one of the things that we've found, I've always found this generally an affirmation that what we're doing is indeed new when your tools are just irrelevant and we aren't we are there's a sort of a tenacity that I sense in know in the design team where the things we want to explore right now we're struggling to explore. Um, but that's fantastic. I mean so it means and this has happened a number of times is that we have to build the tools ourself but I I'm this is an area where I personally feel you know a bit guilty and certainly tenacious in that want to be further alone. — Yeah. Last question. We talk a lot about the tools that people deserve and the sort of values that we want to express with our work. AI clearly will change the world in all sorts of ways, some really huge. What do you most hope that we get right? Like as we go through this technological revolution, what do you most hope we discard or preserve or put out? I I think that it would be that um these tools I mean this is almost too naive sounding to say it but that they would make us happy and fulfilled and more peaceful and less anxious and less disconnected. I know I should care about productivity um and I do but um but I just think that we've for the last 20 years and you know the data you know I mean this when I said we have an uncomfortable relationship with our technology I mean that's the most obscene understatement and I see that we have a chance to and every bone in my body believes this we have a chance to not sort of just red address that but absolutely change the situation that we find ourselves in that we don't accept this has to be the norm that we don't accept that we can just we have to extrapolate where we've been to get a sense of where we're going that we just reject that and I really believe that we can I really do — that is a lovely note to end on thank you all very much for spending the day with us. Thank you, Johnny, for coming. We hope to see you all next year. Thank you.