Interview with Steve Jobs — January 2025
The following is a fictional, imagined interview. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. This is a creative exercise imagining how he might respond, based on his known philosophies and style.
Interviewer: Steve, thanks for sitting down with us. Everyone wants to know — what do you think about the AI revolution?
Steve Jobs: Well, you know, everyone's running around saying AI is going to change everything. And they're right. But most of them are changing the wrong things. They're using the most powerful technology in a generation to make… what? Slightly better ad targeting? Chatbots that write mediocre emails faster? That's not a revolution. That's a missed opportunity.
Interviewer: So you think the industry is getting it wrong?
Steve Jobs: I think the industry is doing what it always does — it's letting the engineers lead instead of starting with the experience. I've said this a thousand times: you have to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. What I see right now is a thousand companies starting with a large language model and asking, "What can we do with this?" That's backwards. That's always been backwards.
Interviewer: What would Apple's approach be?
Steve Jobs: [leans forward] You don't ship AI. You ship an experience. The person using it should never have to think about the model, the parameters, the prompt. They shouldn't even have to think the word "AI." You know what the best technology does? It disappears. The original Mac didn't sell because of the Motorola 68000 processor. It sold because a person could sit down and create something. AI should be like that. Invisible. Intuitive. Almost emotional.
Interviewer: A lot of people are worried about AI taking jobs, about existential risk. Where do you fall?
Steve Jobs: Look, I understand the fear. When we introduced the Macintosh, people said personal computers would destroy industries. And some industries were destroyed. But what replaced them was extraordinary. The question isn't whether AI will displace things — it will. The question is whether we have the courage and the taste to build what comes next.
As for existential risk — I take it seriously. But I also think fear is a terrible product manager. You don't build the future by being afraid of it. You build it by having a vision for what humans can become with these tools. The bicycle for the mind — remember that? AI is the jet engine for the mind. But a jet engine without a pilot is just a disaster. So yes, we need the pilot.
Interviewer: Who should that pilot be?
Steve Jobs: [smiles] Not a committee. I can tell you that. Every time something important gets handed to a committee, you get something safe and mediocre. The best things in the world were built by small teams of incredibly talented people who cared deeply. That's who should be shaping this. Artists, designers, engineers — people with taste. Not just people with PhDs and GPU clusters.
Interviewer: OpenAI, Google, Meta — they're all in an arms race for the biggest models. Your thoughts?
Steve Jobs: It reminds me of the megahertz wars in the '90s. Intel and AMD screaming about clock speeds, and nobody could tell the difference in actual use. Bigger isn't better. Better is better. I don't care if your model has ten trillion parameters if the experience of using it makes me feel like I'm filing a tax return.
Somebody is going to come along — maybe they're in a garage right now — and they're going to make something with AI that makes people feel something. That makes them cry, or laugh, or see the world differently. And it won't be the company with the most data centers. It'll be the company with the most clarity about what it means to be human.
Interviewer: Do you think AI can be creative?
Steve Jobs: [pauses] It can be clever. I've seen that. But creativity? Real creativity comes from the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. It comes from life experience — from dropping out of college and taking a calligraphy class, from traveling to India, from being fired from your own company and having to find out who you really are. AI hasn't suffered. It hasn't loved anyone. It hasn't stared at a Zen garden and understood emptiness.
So can it be a tool for creative people? Absolutely. The most powerful tool we've ever had. But the soul has to come from us. The day we outsource that is the day we lose something we can't get back.
Interviewer: One last question. What would you build right now if you were starting over?
Steve Jobs: [long pause, slight smile]
Something at the intersection of AI and human health. The body is the ultimate product, right? We all have one. And yet we understand it so poorly. The ability to have an intelligence that knows you — really knows you — your biology, your patterns, your risks — and helps you live better and longer? That's not a gadget. That's a profound contribution to humanity.
But I'd make it beautiful. I'd make it simple. And I'd make it something you love to use. Because if people don't love it, none of the rest matters.
Interviewer: Steve, thank you.
Steve Jobs: One more thing — [grins] — no, I'm just kidding. Thank you.
This interview is entirely fictional and created for creative and entertainment purposes. It is based on Steve Jobs' publicly known philosophies, speech patterns, and worldview, but represents the author's imagination — not his actual words or opinions.
