当托尼·法德尔（Tony Fadell）在首届麻省理工学院未来节（MIT Future Fest）上登台时，他展示了一张幻灯片，上面有三张曾经备受追捧、但如今已被停产的人工智能设备图片：Rabbit R1、Humane AI 别针和 Limitless 吊坠。
When Tony Fadell takes the stage at the inaugural MIT Future Fest, he projects a slide with three images of once-hyped AI devices that have already been discontinued: the Rabbit R1, the Humane AI pin, and the Limitless pendant.
“这些可以说是‘第一代’人工智能产品。由于我的背景，这些公司都打电话来找我，希望我能帮他们一把，”法德尔说，“但我没有。”这些公司想要法德尔的建议并不令人意外。他被誉为“iPod 之父”，是 iPhone 的联合创造者，也是被谷歌收购的智能恒温器公司 Nest 的创始人。
“These were kind of the ‘Gen 1’ AI products, and because of my background, these companies called me and asked me to help them,” Fadell said. “I didn’t.”It’s no surprise that these companies want Fadell’s advice. He’s credited as the “father of the iPod,” a co-creator of the iPhone, and the founder of Nest, the smart thermostat company acquired by Google.
“你必须真正理解自己到底想做什么，想解决什么问题，”他说。“在这些案例中，每一款产品都没有真正满足任何需求——它们只是让极客们感到新奇的技术而已。你会觉得：‘好吧，这确实挺酷的，但它和我的日常生活没什么关系。’”这些早期的人工智能设备曾承诺带来个人助理般的便利，但实际上效果并不理想。即便它们真的好用，大多数人也从未拥有过助理，更不知道该如何使用——或者逐渐信任——一个个人机器人助手。
“You have to really understand what you’re trying to do, what pain you’re trying to solve,” he said. “In each of these cases, each one of them didn’t meet any kind of need — it was just interesting technology for geeks, and you’re like, ‘Okay, that’s neat, but it doesn’t really apply to my life.'”These early AI devices promised the convenience of having a personal assistant, but didn’t actually work that well. Even if they did, most people have never had an assistant and know how they would use — or grow to trust — a personal robot helper.
“全球人口中，真正有人类助理为他们做过任何事情的人还不到 0.01%。所以当这些公司说‘哦，我们想要一个助理’时，其实只是那些已经拥有助理的人在这么说，”他说。“大多数消费者甚至根本不知道什么是助理。”法德尔接着向我们这些属于 99.99% 的大众解释，要找到一个值得信赖的个人助理，并不像从一堆申请中挑出最出色的简历那么简单。
“It’s less than 0.01% of the world population that has ever had a human [assistant] do anything, and so when [companies] say, ‘Oh, we want an assistant,’ that’s a bunch of people who have assistants saying it,” he said. “Most consumers don’t even know what an assistant is.”Fadell goes on to explain to those of us in the 99.99% that hiring a trustworthy personal assistant isn’t as straightforward as pulling the most promising resume out of a pile of applications.
“起初，我花了两三年时间才弄明白如何最好地利用[助理]，之后才敢将最敏感的数据交给他，并让他成为我的代理人，负责安排与他人的会议，以及处理我的银行业务，”他说。“我理解我们确实对未来的发展有明确的愿景，但要让普通消费者甚至普通企业走上这条路，还需要经历很多步骤。”要谈论建立个人助理信任过程中的困难，听起来难免有点自命不凡，但法德尔的观点确实有道理。
“It took me a couple of years first to understand how best to utilize [an assistant], and then to trust them with the most sensitive data, and have them be an agent where they’re setting up meetings with people and working with my bank,” he said. “I understand we have this vision of the future, but there’s a lot of steps to get the general consumer and even the general business on this path.”It’s hard to talk about the struggles of building trust in your personal assistant without sounding a bit entitled, but Fadell has a point.
当你雇佣一位人类助理时，并不会在第一天就把自己的银行账户交给他们。我们正在迈向一个任何人都能拥有个人AI助理的世界，但这些工具的价值取决于我们能否信任它们具备绝对的安全性。
When you hire a human assistant, you’re not giving them your bank account on day one. We’re heading into a world where anyone can have a personal AI assistant, but these tools are only valuable if we can trust them to be completely secure.
目前来看，建立对AI助理的信任似乎比依赖人类助理还要困难。Meta最近推出了其全能型AI助理Muse，但用户确实有理由保持警惕。一位安全研究人员在Muse发布后很快发现了一个严重漏洞，而404 Media最近的一份报告指出，一些Meta员工在发布前就发现了安全问题，导致多个团队不得不加班加点，展开一场“疯狂冲刺”来修复这些问题。
At this point, establishing trust with an AI assistant seems even harder than relying on a human. Meta recently launched Muse, its all-purpose AI assistant, but users have reason to be wary. A security researcher quickly found a serious vulnerability in Muse after launch, and a recent 404 Media report states that some Meta employees discovered security issues that prompted multiple teams to embark upon a “mad dash” to fix these problems before launch, working overtime.
“无论我们将什么交给某种智能系统，信任和安全都将是重中之重，”法德尔说。“目前唯一能实现这一点的公司——或许再加上一家——就是苹果。苹果拥有全部硬件、所有芯片以及所有必要的组件，但他们并不掌握全部的人工智能技术。”即使最终打造出最强大AI代理的并非苹果，法德尔也预测，一个成功的AI代理必须仅能在设备本地运行，这既是为了保护隐私，也是为了让技术保持轻量。
“Trust and safety are going to be paramount with anything that we turn over to some kind of intelligence,” Fadell said. “The only company I could see right now — maybe one other — is Apple who could do this. Apple has all the hardware, they have all the chips, they have all the pieces, but they don’t have all the AI stuff.”Even if it’s not Apple that ultimately produces the stickiest AI agent, Fadell predicts that a successful agent will have to operate on-device only, both for the sake of privacy and to keep the tech lightweight.
“当你在听到各种‘数据中心将征服世界’之类的说法时……我并不相信，”他说，“我以前见过这种情况。在互联网时代，我就已经见过类似的事情上演了。如今我们的设备本身已经拥有强大的性能，甚至更强的计算能力，但它们仍然依赖电池供电。”通过将敏感数据保留在设备本地，而不是通过云端传输，苹果赢得了用户的信任，使他们愿意通过 Face ID 等功能分享生物识别数据。
“When you’re hearing all of these things about, ‘Oh, data centers are going to conquer the world,’ … I don’t believe it,” he said. “I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen this play out in the internet days and what have you. We have so much power on the device now, and even more compute, and they’re still battery operated.”By keeping sensitive data on-device, rather than transmitting it through the cloud, Apple has garnered trust from users to share their biometric data through features like Face ID.
正如法德尔所指出的，在隐私方面，苹果似乎比竞争对手更受消费者信赖，但与其他顶尖科技公司不同，苹果并没有自己世界级的 AI 模型——新款 Siri AI 运行在谷歌 Gemini 的定制版本之上。
As Fadell notes, Apple seems to have more goodwill with consumers than its competitors when it comes to privacy, but unlike other top tech companies, Apple doesn’t have a world-class AI model of its own — the new Siri AI runs on custom-built versions of Google’s Gemini.
尽管苹果在自主 AI 领域有所落后，但在硬件方面却遥遥领先。法德尔推测，像 Meta 和 OpenAI 这样的公司之所以开始关注智能设备，是因为它们不像苹果那样拥有数十亿台在用的设备。
While Apple lags in proprietary AI, it is leaps ahead in hardware. Fadell theorizes that companies like Meta and OpenAI are turning their attention toward gadgets because they don’t have billions of devices in circulation like Apple does.
“这是因为它们无法访问你手机上的传感器。它们会说：‘哦，我们需要视频。’你得同意：‘好的，我允许你获取视频。’接着它们又说：‘那我们还需要音频。’同意。‘我们需要你的 GPS 位置。’又同意。不知不觉间，这已经变成了一份包含 20 项甚至更多权限的清单，而这些权限你原本并没有授权给它们，”他说，“那么它们会怎么做呢？它们会制造一台集成了所有这些功能却没有屏幕的设备……然后通过蓝牙或 Wi-Fi 连接到你的手机，再上传到网络或 5G 网络，从而获取所有传感器数据。”
“It’s because they don’t have access to the sensors on your phone. They’re like, ‘Oh, we’ll need video,’ and you have to check, ‘Yes, I’ll give you video.’ Then they say, ‘Well, we need audio.’ Check. ‘We need your GPS location.’ Check. And before you know it, it becomes a list of 20 things or more than you have then allowed them to have,” he said. “So what do they do? They go and make a device with all that stuff in it without a screen… and then they just Bluetooth or Wi-Fi into your phone and then back up to the web, or into a 5G network, so they can get all the sensor data.”
鉴于他参与创造 iPhone 和 iPod 的经历，人们或许会觉得法德尔仍然对这家昔日的雇主抱有滤镜。尽管他承认苹果在某些方面的成就，但一旦他认为苹果做得不妥，他也从不避讳提出批评。
Given his history creating the iPhone and iPod, it might seem like Fadell is still looking at his former employer through rose-colored glasses. While he may give Apple credit where due, he hasn’t been shy to call Apple out when he thinks they’re messing up.
当一位观众问及找到产品市场契合点所涉及的运气时，法德尔指出，初创公司要制造这种运气要困难得多，因为一款失败的产品可能意味着公司的终结。
When an audience member asks about the luck involved in finding product-market fit, Fadell points out that it’s more difficult for startups to manufacture that luck, since a failed product can spell the end of the company.
“因为是初创公司，你只有一次机会，”他打趣道，“这不像苹果推出 Vision Pro 那样。”
“Because it’s a startup, you get one shot,” he quipped. “It’s not like Apple with the Vision Pro.”