The future or death of cell phones

[COcheesehead]

Elon Musk: "Tesla isn't building a phone. They're leapfrogging the entire concept. The device in your pocket won't be a phone anymore. It'll be a super-thin AI edge node, a screen with radios that pings Grok/xAI servers for everything in real time."

 

[disneysteve]

For what purpose? I use my phone for many functions, none of which involve accessing AI servers. I don't need AI to send texts, get directions, take pictures, check our financial accounts, send email, visit websites, make hotel and restaurant reservations, play games, stream video content, use social media, etc. And of course I use it to make the occasional phone call.

 

[COcheesehead]

The future is over estimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term.

 

[TheWizard]

I make very few voice calls on my Pixel 10 "phone".
It's mainly a hand held computer that I use for lots of daily life things too numerous to mention, such as making this post.

I don't explicitly invoke AI functionality with it but I suppose that could change...

 

[target2019]

No thanks. That sounds tragic

 

[audreyh1]

Whatever.

 

[Diogenes]

I use a computer to type (as is happening right now), to check stocks, to view maps, to watch videos and so on. I use my phone to call people. Alexander Graham Bell would have been proud.

As for this Eh-Eye thing... uh, sounds like a scam to me.

 

[audreyh1]

I use my iPad and iPhone extensively for all sorts of things. Phone calls are rare, and almost always business related- appointments, billing questions, etc.

However, being plugged unto AI doesn’t sound that appealing to me. Maybe one day when virtual reality gets really great and I’m no longer able to travel to experience the real thing.

 

[Sunset]

Elon Musk: "Tesla isn't building a phone. They're leapfrogging the entire concept. The device in your pocket won't be a phone anymore. It'll be a super-thin AI edge node, a screen with radios that pings Grok/xAI servers for everything in real time."

What is he talking about by pocket.

I want a thin disk implanted in my throat to do the connection to AI, operated by voice and heard by bone conduction. Totally hands free.

 

[sparky08]

I can see this. In your pocket will be a display, and most of the computations will be done in the cloud.

Not much different than a Chromebook.

 

[braumeister]

Musk, eh?
Isn't he the guy who said he would have a million autonomous taxis operating by 2020?
And a human Mars colony by 2024?

He seems to share the trait made famous by Steve Jobs: generating a "reality distortion field" that gets people to agree with him.
Impressive, but not all that convincing.

 

[GenXguy]

Yeah.... a big mehhhh. I take what he says with a grain of salt.

 

[Aerides]

Elon Musk: "Tesla isn't building a phone. They're leapfrogging the entire concept. The device in your pocket won't be a phone anymore. It'll be a super-thin AI edge node, a screen with radios that pings Grok/xAI servers for everything in real time."

I would sooner have no device than sign on for nonsense.

 

[freedomatlast]

Elon isn't satisfied with knowing absolutely everything about you while you're driving your Tesla, now he wants to know everything about you 24/7.

 

[FLSUnFIRE]

This is such a funny thread to read.... All this skepticism of the future with AI by people claiming that the previously inconceivable pocket sized sci-fi turned reality smartphone does all they need. I have no idea how it will play out but it will change the way we live.

 

[TripleLindy]

It'll be a super-thin AI edge node, a screen with radios that pings Grok/xAI servers for everything in real time."

I don’t have any idea what an AI edge node is, nor do I care, but let’s break the statement down:

A screen with radios - current cell phones already meet this definition.
Pinging servers in real time - current cell phones already do this.

Unless the device is anticipating what I want and providing it to me before I even realize I want it, I’m not sure what query it would executing on an AI server.

 

[Aerides]

I don’t have any idea what an AI edge node is, nor do I care, but let’s break the statement down:

A screen with radios - current cell phones already meet this definition.
Pinging servers in real time - current cell phones already do this.

Unless the device is anticipating what I want and providing it to me before I even realize I want it, I’m not sure what query it would executing on an AI server.

And what I use my phone for today has no use for ai.
Checking email, taking photos, playing wordle or a puzzle, texting with family, maybe a little shopping and doomscrolling, none of that needs a query of anything.

 

[TripleLindy]

However, being plugged unto AI doesn’t sound that appealing to me.

I don’t know that it was considered AI, but Google had a feature that I really liked. If I had an entry in my calendar and the location was a 30 minute drive away, I’d get an alert at least 30 minutes in advance telling me that I needed to leave to arrive at my destination on time. It wasn’t an alert that I scheduled, like a calendar reminder. I don’t recall getting these for quite a while, so either Google turned it off or maybe an update did something. But it was very helpful. And when I jumped in the car and fired up Google Maps, it already had my destination plugged in. Very cool and the kind of simple but helpful things tech can do.

 

[surprising]

This is an interesting concept. What Musk is saying is you don't need a traditional device with an Operating System and software apps. You will be able to do anything and everything you want just through prompts that are serviced by AI. You would most likely still have icons just like today but instead of executing software, it is just queries and prompts to AI. The point is that no longer will you be limited by someone else's software, so conceivably you will be able to do anything you can think of.
Where I get lost though is for things like games. Those certainly need to be pre-designed right?

 

[ArmchairMillionaire]

I don't need AI to send texts, get directions, take pictures, check our financial accounts, send email, visit websites, make hotel and restaurant reservations, play games, stream video content, use social media, etc. And of course I use it to make the occasional phone call.

I use a computer to type (as is happening right now), to check stocks, to view maps, to watch videos and so on. I use my phone to call people. Alexander Graham Bell would have been proud.

As for this Eh-Eye thing... uh, sounds like a scam to me.

We don't need a phone to send texts, get directions, take pictures, check our financial accounts, send email, visit websites, make hotel and restaurant reservations, play games, stream video content, use social media, etc. We use our laptops for online stuff.

99% of our phone calls are on our land-line rotary phones. We'll occasionally use a flip-phone to make a call while we're out of town, since there are no more pay-phones, but we do not text.

I don't see us buying into the Elon hype any time soon.

 

[CO-guy]

Since I got my first smartphone I've been waiting for the day to have that technology in something that isn't a rectangle in my pocket. Maybe it will be a screen on your eyeglasses. Maybe it will be a hologram of a screen projected from a watch, but the few decades of "pocket rectangle" are coming to a close.

 

[MRG]

Ketamine is a powerful drug. Makes you see things. Some are real, others are not.

 

[calmloki]

Put me in the camp that sees desktop computers vanishing - the cloud is already doing away with the hard drives. Cellphones have wiped out landlines. WiFi speeds are in the 200Mb range on my computer compared to 100Mb on the ethernet cable and 500Mbs on the cell phone. I speak multi-clause questions to Google AI and get answers fast and sources shown far faster than trying to type the same questions. Amazon's Alexa the wonder assistant is a dumb bunny compared Google's AI.

Progress is accelerating at ever increasing speed - don't know what will come next, but expect AI to do away with many of our physical tools - no slide rules, solar powered calculators, cell phones; just an internal node to connect us with the Mother Brain AI, then transfer of consciousness to AI and deletion of bodies..

Fifty years from now may show some portion of the population no longer in physical form while other people batter at the walls of the data centers with clubs. K-shaped economy results?

 

[Dtail]

Ahh don't think so.

 

[bobandsherry]

Musk has said many things that have not come true, or borderline ridiculous. Anyone buying a $39K cybertruck? Anyone still waiting for that $25K "affordable" Tesla model? California still waiting on that hyperloop? Anyone think DOGE is going to save $2 trillion? So yeah, he says a lot of things.