The Interface Shift is Coming: Why AI Is Under-Hyped and What Comes Next Will Transform Everything

Artificial intelligence is not just a breakthrough in software. It’s a foundational shift in how we work, think, communicate, and create. We’re not at the peak, we’re just getting started.

Many think AI is overhyped because they equate it with ChatGPT writing emails or summarizing meetings, but what’s actually happening behind the scenes, at the intersection of language, agency, planning, sensing, and hardware, is so much bigger. If anything, as Eric Schmidt recently said, AI is under-hyped. 

The scale of change now accelerating toward us will reorganize industries, redefine competitive advantage, and require entirely new ways of interfacing with information. Think of how analog-era software companies struggled, and often failed to compete with cloud-native disruptors; the same kind of upheaval is coming again, only faster, deeper, across all industries and powered by AI at every layer. 

AI-Native organizations are what’s coming.

The teams that will thrive in this new landscape won’t be the biggest. They’ll be the most aligned, adaptive, and skilled.

Let me explain...

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Part I: The Coming Interface Shift - From Screen to Sensing 

We’ve had three major computing interface waves:

 1. Command-line (think Unix and DOS) 

 2. Graphical interface (think macOS and Windows) 

 3. Touch and voice on mobile devices (think iPhone and Android) 

Now comes the fourth wave: ambient AI devices; Intelligent, sensor-rich wearables that are always-on, always-aware, and voice-first. These will be less about typing and swiping, and more about interpreting intention, recognizing context, responding and executing seamlessly.

Why must they be close to the face? Because this is the center of our five senses.

• Sight. 
• Hearing. 
• Taste, smell and touch (less commonly utilized for ambient devices, but increasingly measurable).

The human head is the gateway to context. And context is what AI needs most to act intelligently in the real world.

This is where the next generation of ambient AI hardware will live.

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Part II: What It Will Look Like - A Communications Badge for the Real World 

Imagine a small, elegant communications badge worn below the collarbone on your chest. Embedded in the device:

• Omnidirectional and directional microphones, able to discern directionality and identify unique speakers.
• A wide-angle camera lens (perhaps the 48MP ultra-wide used in today’s iPhones) to capture real-world visuals and feed multimodal reasoning models.
• Voice recognition and speaker labeling, cross-referenced with accelerometer and gyroscope data to track attention and subject interaction.
• A reverberation chamber, like a Bose speaker, to sound auditory pleasing and natural, without screens.
• Minimal physical inputs: perhaps a tap to prompt, a swipe for volume, a long press to activate recording, a double tap to stop, and a triple tap for privacy.

Think of it as an intelligent extension of your mind, an assistant/coach/teacher that listens, sees, reasons, and responds, like a Star Trek badge fused with OpenAIs platform, extended and enabled by AI agents and agentic AI.

The first iterations will likely be tethered to a phone, which will provide edge compute power and connectivity. But eventually, this device will become the hub itself, fully untethered.

This is what Siri should have become. But Apple missed the AI boat.

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Part III: The Johnny Ive Connection - Why This Will Scale Fast 

Enter Johnny Ive, former chief design officer at Apple and the visionary behind the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Now collaborating with OpenAI, he’s uniquely positioned to bring this vision to market in a form the world is ready to adopt.

His expertise in:

• Power efficiency 
• Sensor integration 
• Wearable ergonomics 
• Human-first simplicity 

…combined with OpenAI’s platform, will give birth to the device that defines the next decades.

This isn’t hypothetical. It’s a tectonic shift already in motion. The tools exist. The market is hungry. The prototype is with Sam Altman. And the pieces; compute, cloud, wearable design, AI agents and agentic AI, are aligning.

This is what Apples next big thing should have been. 

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Part IV: Why Small, Aligned Teams Will Outperform Giants 

Here’s the key insight for leaders:

In an AI-enabled world, size is not the advantage. Alignment is. Smaller teams align faster and AI scales their efforts.

Large organizations move slowly because they are fragmented, having multiple priorities, misaligned incentives, outdated systems, and talent gaps. They accumulate inertia.

But small, skilled, adaptive teams with shared goals and clear direction? They scale exponentially when paired with AI. They have organizational dexterity.

Imagine a 10-person team with:

• A clear mission
• Integrated digital tools
• Agentic systems handling repetitive tasks
• A strong culture of feedback and learning
• Organizational dexterity to quickly and flexibly adapt to change
• Coaching and clarity from leadership

This team will outperform a 100-person team struggling to get its tech, process, and people in sync.

This is where I help.

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Part V: How I Help Leaders and Teams Adapt to the Pace of Change 

As someone who’s coached enterprise teams, led cultural change initiatives, and consulted on AI transformation, I’ve seen the pattern:

Most digital transformation efforts fail not because the tech doesn’t work, but because the people aren’t aligned to use it, or in other cases they chose disparate technologies for their organization.

I coach executives and teams to align vision, culture, talent, tools, and workflows—so they can scale performance without the chaos.

My approach:

• Clarify direction (why are you transforming?)
• Strengthen team cohesion (how do you work together?)
• Streamline & curate tools and data (which tools do you use?)
• Level up digital fluency (how do you use tools well?)
• Build flexible systems (what needs to scale for you to be successful?)

Whether your organization is at the beginning of its AI journey or facing resistance mid-stream, I help unlock real momentum.

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Part VI: Privacy Is Not Optional - It’s the Foundation 

As we move toward ever-more intimate AI interfaces, such as devices worn on our bodies, listening to our conversations, interpreting our surroundings, privacy becomes not just a feature, but a fundamental human right and necessity. 

This new class of ambient AI hardware will be deeply personal, like the smartphone…only more so now. Which is why we need rules and guardrails that ensure personal data, stays personal. Much like Apple set the gold standard for on-device privacy with the iPhone, future AI-native wearables must be designed with privacy as a core principle, not an afterthought.

Fortunately, Johnny Ive has already led this playbook. His experience designing the Apple Watch, with its secure health tracking, ambient sensors, and strict data handling, positions him perfectly to guide OpenAI toward a privacy-first design ethos. He knows what it takes to balance seamless functionality with uncompromising user protection.

The hope now is that OpenAI not only matches Apple’s privacy bar…but raises it. That they encode these protections not just in the device, but within the AI itself:

• Hard boundaries on data usage
• Transparent, local decision-making
• User-first permission models
• The right to audit, revoke, and remain anonymous

This isn’t just about compliance, it’s about trust. And in a future where AI is always listening, watching, and reasoning, trust will be the new currency.

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Part VII: The Moral Imperative - Why We Must Build With Humanity In Mind 

The AI genie is out of the bottle, and it’s not going back in. The only way forward is not to slow down, but to move ahead with urgency and intention, shaping this next era with our values, ethics, and humanity at the core. Bad actors aren’t going to pause their efforts. Closed borders won’t stop open-source models from spreading. As game theory reminds us, the rational path in a globally competitive race is to advance, fast, while building in the safeguards and principles that keep us aligned with what’s right. This moment calls for courage, clarity, and wisdom in equal measure.

With great power comes great risk. AI doesn’t just scale productivity, it also scales bias, misuse, and harm.

Eric Schmidt voiced this powerfully: even a well-meaning developer can create harm if they overlook a key perspective. In the age of AI, those oversights can replicate across billions of interactions.

That’s why we must encode ethics, humanity, and guardrails directly into our systems. Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics may seem dated, but the principles remain everlasting: in addition a directive for human-in-the-loop design. Such as DoD Directive 3000.09 (Autonomy in Weapons System Directive) built in to AI, with a tweak, requiring meaningful human oversight when certain criteria are met.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

It’s not enough to build powerful tools. We must build wisely, encoding our humanity in to AI.

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Conclusion: Ride the Wave, Or Be Left Behind 

As Eric Schmidt said:

“If you’re not using this technology, you’re not going to be relevant.”

The pace of change isn’t just accelerating, it’s compounding, moving forward in exponential leaps with each passing increment. This isn’t a sprint or even a marathon…it’s a marathon run approaching sprint speeds, and will eventually become even faster.

The winners of this next era will be the leaders who:

• Embrace constant change
• Empower their people
• Modernize their tools while executing 
• Align and actively pivot their strategy while executing

And the businesses that survive will be those that transform now, not later.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you just need to outrun the slowest competitors, this isn’t a bear-in-the-woods scenario.

If you’re a leader navigating this transition, unsure where to begin or continue, let’s talk.

The interface shift is coming.

Let’s help your team meet it with clarity, confidence, and capability.