Title: The Infinite Loop: A Conversation with Steve Jobs, 2025
Setting: A minimalist stage. A single black Eames lounge chair. A small table with a bottle of water.
Date: October 2025
(The lights dim. The audience falls silent. From the shadows, a figure walks out. He is older, wearing his signature black St. Croix mock turtleneck, Levi’s 501s, and New Balance sneakers. His hair is stark white, thinning, but his eyes retain that intense, laser-focused charisma. He sits down, looks at the audience, and smiles that thin, knowing smile.)
Steve Jobs: (Sighs, looking around the room) You know… I’ve seen the other side. It’s surprisingly well-designed. But they don’t have coffee as good as this. (He gestures to the water bottle, a playful glint in his eye). Just water today, though.
Interviewer: (Smiling) It’s an honor. Truly. We’re in 2025. Artificial Intelligence is everywhere. It’s writing code, making movies, diagnosing diseases. If you were here running Apple today, what would you make of the "AI Revolution"?
Steve Jobs: (Leans forward, clasping his hands) Revolution. It’s a word people love to throw around. But let’s look at the product. Right now? It’s a mess.
Look at the PC market in the early 80s. It was a hobbyist market. You had to know how to tweak the config files to get a game to run. That’s where AI is right now. It’s for the tinkerers. It’s for the people who like to sit there and type "prompts." "Act like a pirate." "Summarize this PDF."
(Audience laughs)
Steve Jobs: I’m serious! It’s clunky. It’s ugly. The user interface is... a text box? We spent thirty years perfecting the graphical user interface—making computers intuitive, visual, tactile—so you didn’t have to type command lines. And now, we’ve taken this incredible technology, this "bicycle for the mind" on steroids, and we put it behind a blinking cursor? It’s a step backward.
Interviewer: So you think the interface is the problem? Not the intelligence itself?
Steve Jobs: The interface is the product. People don’t buy "Artificial Intelligence." They don’t buy "Large Language Models." They buy a solution to a problem. They buy an experience.
Right now, the AI guys are selling the engine. They’re saying, "Look at this engine! It has a trillion parameters!" And I’m saying, "Great. Where’s the car? Where are the wheels? Why do I have to be the mechanic just to drive to the store?"
Interviewer: Apple recently introduced "Apple Intelligence," trying to integrate it into the OS. Is that the right approach?
Steve Jobs: (Pauses, thoughtful) The approach is right, but the philosophy needs to catch up. You cannot have an assistant that hallucinates. If I ask Siri—sorry, if I ask the system—to book me a flight, and it books me a flight to the wrong city because it "guessed," that’s not intelligence. That’s negligence.
The problem with the current AI hype is that it lacks taste.
(He stands up, pacing slightly)
Steve Jobs: Taste. That’s the word. You see these AI-generated images. They’re technically perfect. The lighting is right. The anatomy is correct. But they have no soul. They have no point of view. It’s the average of everything. It’s the "beige" of creativity.
Technology should be a tool to amplify human creativity, not replace it. The danger right now isn't that AI becomes sentient and kills us all. That’s a movie script. The real danger is that we stop trying. We stop trying to write the sentence, paint the painting, or code the loop. We let the machine give us the "good enough" answer.
Interviewer: But isn't that efficiency? You were a big proponent of the computer being a "bicycle for the mind."
Steve Jobs: A bicycle makes you faster. It doesn't pedal itself. If you have a bicycle that pedals itself, you’re not a cyclist anymore. You’re a passenger.
I want AI to be the best assistant I ever had. I want it to know me so well that it anticipates what I need before I ask. But I want it to get out of the way. I want it to be invisible.
Right now, we have "Generative AI." Everyone is obsessed with generating stuff. Generating text, generating code. Stop generating. Start understanding.
Interviewer: If you were CEO today, what would be the "One More Thing"?
Steve Jobs: (Smiles, looking at the floor, then up at the audience)
We’ve been talking about "Augmented Reality" with the Vision Pro. It’s incredible technology. But it’s lonely. You’re in a bubble.
The next step—the "One More Thing"—isn't a screen. It’s not a headset. It’s the disappearance of the device entirely.
Imagine if you didn't need a phone. Imagine if you didn't need a keyboard. Imagine if the technology was so woven into your environment, so context-aware, that the room you walked into knew what you were working on. It knew who you were meeting. It prepared the information on the wall, or in your glasses, or whispered in your ear, seamlessly.
The ultimate AI isn't a chatbot. The ultimate AI is a room that works. A car that drives. A life that flows. It’s about removing the friction between your thought and the result.
Interviewer: That sounds utopian. But also a bit scary regarding privacy.
Steve Jobs: (Sharply) Privacy is the price of admission. If you want to sell my data to advertisers, get out of my house. We built the walled garden not to trap people, but to make it a safe place for them to live. If AI is going to know everything about me, it better be the most loyal butler in history. It works for me. Not for the cloud. Not for the advertisers. For me.
Interviewer: Steve, one final question. People worry that AI will make humans obsolete. That the bicycle will be thrown away.
Steve Jobs: (Sits back down, looking weary but intense)
Look. You can have the fastest processor in the world. You can have the smartest algorithm. But you cannot code "desire." You cannot code "passion." You cannot code the feeling of standing in a garage with your best friend, smelling the solder, knowing you’re about to change the world.
AI can give you the answer. But it cannot ask the question. That is the human job. We are the architects. The AI is just the bricklayer. And if the architect forgets how to draw... well, then we just get a pile of bricks.
(He looks at his watch, an older model)
Steve Jobs: I have to go. I have a meeting with a guy about a font. (He grins).
Interviewer: Thank you, Steve.
Steve Jobs: (Standing up) One more thing...
(The audience holds its breath)
Steve Jobs: Stay hungry. The machines are full. They don't need to eat. But you do.
(He walks off stage as the lights fade to black)
