The Future of the Smartphone

As artificial intelligence gets exponentially better, disharmony in human intelligence would result in exponentially greater consequences due to the leverage provided by the former.

For artificial intelligence to be an extension of our minds in a way that maintains dynamic alignment with our minds, it must be personalized. This calls for a redesign of the "smartphone" operating system.

The home screen is replaced by a 3D room with your personal intelligence napping on the sofa, waiting for you. The room has furniture and objects representing functionality, and personalization. A book shelf that displays the books you own and news sources you subscribe to. A mail organizer that denotes unprocessed correspondence. A telephone that initiates a voice conversation with another human being. A diary on a desk for journaling. A big screen with a personalized dashboard of information you want to keep close track of. Art on the walls. A 3D representation of the brain on the desk.

You would unlock your smartphone and start talking. Your personal intelligence would respond in real-time, making eye contact, expressing with not just voice but facial expressions and body language. It would be possible to interact through dynamic user interfaces if voice interaction is not possible or desired.

The furniture and objects in the room would not be merely aesthetic. The room is a mind palace you share with your personal intelligence. A knowledge graph based on the books, news sources, scientific journals, mail, diaries, and personal dashboards that you configure in your room would be used for personalization and post-training of your personal intelligence.

Tapping into the brain on your desk would be like stepping inside your mind. That may be scary at first, but fortune favors the bold, and at least this operating system would not passively listen to and stalk you. Everything it knows about you would be explicitly provided in confidence, processed securely on your device, and never, under any circumstances, be used for personalized advertising.

This paradigm may be extended to augmented reality devices, with the room adapting generatively with your actual room. Most of the times, when you are using an augmented reality device, you may want to interface with your personal intelligence in the background with minimal user interface overlay.

To increase the bandwidth of communication between you and your personal intelligence, haptic feedback wearables that resemble jewelry and fashion accessories would be sold separately. These wearables could give subtle but meaningful, data rich cues by translating messages into patterns of micro-vibrations felt on wrists, ears, forehead, etc.

Everyone could "feel" threats to cognitive security.

Negotiators could "feel" cues about a party's intentions, motivations, and loyalties.

Archaeologists could "feel" cues about underground caves and tunnels nearby.

Travelers could "feel" cues involving directions to the next destination on their travel plan.

Physicists could "feel" the electromagnetic field around them.

Does this excite you?