The Operating System died years ago; we just never realized it because the Internet Browser hid it from us.
The operating system (OS) on a computer used to play a fundamental role. We would install applications like iTunes to listen to music, Microsoft Word to write documents, and Photoshop to edit photos.
Today it all lives in your web browser. Want to watch a movie? Open a tab. Create a pitch deck or design an app? Just open a tab.
Modern operating systems like macOS and Windows are essentially filing cabinets, and not very good ones - most of my files are stored in the cloud, not locally. Sure, we have standalone applications, but in reality those are just downloadable Web Pages.
Computers are Evolving
There's a new player in town and it’s misunderstood. It goes by the name AI - no, not Allen Iverson - Artificial Intelligence.
Computers were simple when they started. They were a screen and a keyboard, they didn’t even have a mouse. The screen was black with a green cursor called the command line. You would type commands into the computer through this command line interface which would trigger different actions.
Wait a second, there's this hot new technology called ChatGPT. It has a text box, I type in commands, and it triggers different actions. This sounds familiar. Have we gone full circle?
ChatGPT is the command line for AI. The GUI has not yet been discovered. A GUI is a Graphical User Interface. It brought buttons, icons, menus, windows, and a cursor to the computer - making computers much more natural to use.
AI: a Party Trick or the Next Big Thing?
Most use AI as a command line, a chat bot, albeit for unique and specific use cases - but nonetheless it's a modern, smarter command line.
90% of AI apps are features. Building a chatbot or adding chat to your product does not make it an AI-native app. All you did was add AI as a feature.
The top 10% are using AI as a platform - they're building truly amazing things with AI and not just integrating it as a feature. Companies like Cursor can 10x the output of a single developer. Bolt.new and Lovable.dev allow anyone off the street to create their own app with no prior coding experience.
A Breakout Moment
But we're still missing a piece of the puzzle. And no one has tapped into it yet.
AI is not a feature, its not a platform, its not even a program - its an Operating System. And it's about to completely change the way we interact with computers.
The GUI + Mouse made computers usable for everyone. It birthed the PC, the Personal Computer.
Smartphones put the computer in our pocket. Information available from anywhere at the touch of a button.
AI is merging humans and computers even closer together. This new medium transcends being a mere operating system for computers—it will become the invisible infrastructure orchestrating our daily lives
AI will be omnipresent and ambient meaning it will always be there when we need it but not a distraction when we don't. It's easy to build an app that predicts your every move and notifies of upcoming actions but thats not helpful—its a distraction—I don't need a notification that my favorite coffee shop is 2 minutes away. I go there everyday!
There was a company that came close to bringing this idea to life: Humane. It recently sold to HP for less than half of what VCs invested into the company. Humane's motto was 'See the World, Not Your Screen' and the goal of their AI Pin Humane was to make interacting with AI natural. It turns out listening to AI ramble isn't fun.
There's nothing wrong with that, there will be many failed attempts, each one with its own set of learnings.
Who remembers the Apple Newton - that was Apple's first "smartphone" - back then they were called PDAs. The Newton was a massive failure—the technology and market weren't ready for that type of device. It wasn't until we got touch screens with multi-touch capabilities were we able to naturally use an all screen device.
AI as a Computer
Whether AI comes in the form of a pin, pendant, goggles, glasses or something entire new is unknown. But it is coming.
Just like how computers changed over time evolving from desktops to laptops to smartphones and tablets its core functions remained the same, run software and connect us to the internet.
The core function of AI is here. It's a machine that can process data and execute tasks faster than any human.
It's time to build AI for what it’s meant to be. AI is not a chatbot toy or some feature you slap into a product. It's an operating system that controls an ecosystem of devices, inputs, memories, and preferences.
Funny to think of ChatGPT as a return to the command line. The user experience isn’t that different as you noted. It’s a reminder that we’re still very early in the development of interfaces for AI tools.