Carl Pei, co-founder and CEO of Nothing, is imagining a future beyond the iPhone — and it’s a device powered by AI agents, not running apps.
“In terms of AI in software, I think people should understand that apps are going to disappear,” said Pei, whose consumer electronics brand makes unique smartphones and other accessories. “So, if you’re a founder or a startup and your app is like where the core value lies, that will be disrupted whether you like it or not.”
Pei made these comments during an interview at the SXSW conference in Austin on Wednesday.
The founder has talked about an AI-first device before, as this vision helped the company close its $200 million Series C funding round last year. At the time, Nothing was pitching the idea of a new kind of smartphone using AI and personalization technology that’s accurate enough for its users to not feel they had to go behind the AI and double-check its output.
At SXSW, Pei expanded on his vision for the AI-first device and the steps needed to get there.
The initial step, which is being tested by some companies today, is an AI feature that can execute a command on the users’ behalf, like booking flights or hotels. Pei, however, dismissed this step as being “super boring.”
The next step is where things could get more interesting, as the AI begins to learn a user’s intentions long-term. For instance, if you wanted to be healthier, the device could give you nudges to help you accomplish your goals.
“I think it gets even more powerful when it starts surfacing suggestions for you; you don’t have to manually come up with an idea…when the system knows us so well, it will come up with things that we don’t even [know] we wanted,” Pei explained, comparing this concept to something like ChatGPT’s memory feature.
In describing how he pictured an AI-first smartphone, Pei said it would be a device that would do things for you without needing to be commanded to.
“The current way we use phones is very old-school. It’s pre-iPhone…there used to be Palm Pilots and PDAs back in the day. And if you think about the user experience, it’s still very similar,” Pei said. “You have lock screens, home screens, apps. You browse different apps. Each app is like a full-screen thing. There’s some kind of app store that allows you to download more apps. So it hasn’t really changed for like, 20 years.”
This frustrated him because the technology consumers are using has evolved quite a bit, but the products we use have not. Even simple tasks have us jumping through multiple steps, he explained.
“It’s very hard to get things done on a phone,” Pei said. “Let’s say we want to grab coffee. That’s an intention. But to execute that intention, we have to go through so many different steps and so many different apps. It’s probably like four apps to grab coffee with somebody — some messaging app, some kind of maps, Uber, calendar.”
He continued: “I think the future of smartphones or operating systems should just be: ‘I know you very well, and if I know your intention, I just do it for you,’ instead of having to go through all the apps manually.”
“It should just do it through AI,” he said.
This also means devices would have an interface that’s not focused on apps for humans to navigate, but would instead feature an interface designed for the AI agent to use.
That doesn’t mean apps are going away in the near-term, Pei cautioned. Nothing’s own operating system even allows users to vibe code their own mini apps today. But eventually, the AI will need to be able to use the “app” in a frictionless way, not trying to mimic human touch on the smartphones by moving through menus and tapping options.
“That’s not the future. The future is not the agent using a human interface. You need to create an interface for the agent to use. I think that’s the more future-proof way of doing it,” Pei said.
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