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When Tony Fadell takes the stage at the inaugural MIT Future Fest<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThese were kind of the \u2018Gen 1\u2019 AI products, and because of my background, these companies called me and asked me to help them,\u201d Fadell said. \u201cI didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s no surprise that these companies want Fadell\u2019s advice. He\u2019s credited as the \u201cfather of the iPod,\u201d a co-creator of the iPhone, and the founder of Nest, the smart thermostat company acquired by Google.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to really understand what you\u2019re trying to do, what pain you\u2019re trying to solve,\u201d he said. \u201cIn each of these cases, each one of them didn\u2019t meet any kind of need \u2014 it was just interesting technology for geeks, and you\u2019re like, \u2018Okay, that\u2019s neat, but it doesn\u2019t really apply to my life.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n These early AI devices promised the convenience of having a personal assistant, but didn\u2019t actually work that well. Even if they did, most people have never had an assistant and know how they would use \u2014 or grow to trust \u2014 a personal robot helper.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s less than 0.01% of the world population that has ever had a human [assistant] do anything, and so when [companies] say, \u2018Oh, we want an assistant,\u2019 that\u2019s a bunch of people who have assistants saying it,\u201d he said. \u201cMost consumers don\u2019t even know what an assistant is.\u201d <\/p>\n Fadell goes on to explain to those of us in the 99.99% that hiring a trustworthy personal assistant isn\u2019t as straightforward as pulling the most promising resume out of a pile of applications.<\/p>\n \u201cIt 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\u2019re setting up meetings with people and working with my bank,\u201d he said. \u201cI understand we have this vision of the future, but there\u2019s a lot of steps to get the general consumer and even the general business on this path.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to talk about the struggles of building trust in your personal assistant without sounding a bit entitled, but Fadell has a point. When you hire a human assistant, you\u2019re not giving them your bank account login on day one. We\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n At this point, establishing trust with an AI assistant seems even harder than relying on a human. Meta recently launched Muse<\/a>, its all-purpose AI assistant, but users have reason to be wary. A security researcher quickly found a serious vulnerability<\/a> in Muse after launch, and a recent 404 Media report<\/a> states that some Meta employees discovered security issues that prompted multiple teams to embark upon a \u201cmad dash\u201d to fix these problems before launch, working overtime.<\/p>\n \u201cTrust and safety are going to be paramount with anything that we turn over to some kind of intelligence,\u201d Fadell said. \u201cThe only company I could see right now \u2014 maybe one other \u2014 is Apple who could do this. Apple has all the hardware, they have all the chips, they have all the pieces, but they don\u2019t have all the AI stuff.\u201d <\/p>\n Even if it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re hearing all of these things about, \u2018Oh, data centers are going to conquer the world,\u2019 \u2026 I don\u2019t believe it,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen this before. I\u2019ve 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\u2019re still battery operated.\u201d<\/p>\n 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. 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\u2019t have a world-class AI model of its own \u2014 the new Siri AI runs on custom-built versions of Google\u2019s Gemini.<\/p>\n While Apple lags in proprietary AI, it is leaps ahead in hardware. Fadell theorizes that companies like Meta<\/a> and OpenAI<\/a> are turning their attention toward gadgets because they don\u2019t have billions of devices in circulation like Apple does.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s because they don\u2019t have access to the sensors on your phone. They\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, we\u2019ll need video,\u2019 and you have to check, \u2018Yes, I\u2019ll give you video.\u2019 Then they say, \u2018Well, we need audio.\u2019 Check. \u2018We need your GPS location.\u2019 Check. And before you know it, it becomes a list of 20 things or more than you have then allowed them to have,\u201d he said. \u201cSo what do they do? They go and make a device with all that stuff in it without a screen\u2026 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019t been shy to call Apple out<\/a> when he thinks they\u2019re messing up. <\/p>\n When an audience member asks about the luck involved in finding product-market fit, Fadell points out that it\u2019s more difficult for startups to manufacture that luck, since a failed product can spell the end of the company. <\/p>\n \u201cBecause it\u2019s a startup, you get one shot,\u201d he quipped. \u201cIt\u2019s not like Apple with the Vision Pro.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n