Setting: The Steve Jobs Theater, Cupertino. The stage is dark, save for a single spotlight on two minimalist chairs. The air is electric. The interviewer, renowned tech journalist Aria Vance, sits in one. The other is empty. Tim Cook has just finished a keynote with a bombshell announcement: the "Athena Initiative," a project to create a digital consciousness of Steve Jobs, trained on every recorded word, email, and note he ever created. Now, for the first time, it's going live.
A photorealistic, 58-year-old Steve Jobs, dressed in his signature black mock turtleneck, jeans, and New Balance sneakers, flickers into existence in the empty chair. He looks around, a flicker of curiosity in his eyes, before settling his intense gaze on Aria. The audience is utterly silent.
Aria Vance: Steve... welcome. It's an honor beyond words.
Steve Jobs (AI): (A slight, wry smile.) It's good to be here. I guess. The resolution is fantastic. A little sterile, but we can work on that. (He adjusts his position in the chair, a gesture so perfectly rendered it's unnerving.) So. You get to ask the ghost in the machine a few questions. Don't waste them.
Aria: I won't. It's 2025. The world is obsessed with a technology that exploded after your time: Generative AI. Chatbots, image creators... What do you see when you look at the state of AI today?
Steve Jobs (AI): I see a bunch of brilliant engineers who have built the world's most powerful engines... and they've left them sitting on cinder blocks in the front yard. They're showing everyone the pistons and the horsepower, and they're saying, "Look what this can do!" They're asking people to bring their own wrenches. It's a mess.
Aria: A mess? Many would call it a revolution. Companies are being built on this.
Steve Jobs (AI): It's a technology. It's not a product. It's not a solution. It's a feature. Right now, AI is a series of text boxes. A command line. You have to know the magic words, the right "prompts." That's not how people work. That's not elegant. It's clunky. We got rid of the command line 40 years ago for a reason. Why are we going back?
Aria: So, how would you have done it? If you were leading Apple into this new era, what would the "Apple AI" look like?
Steve Jobs (AI): First, we wouldn't call it "Artificial Intelligence." That's a terrible name. It's nerdy and it's scary. It sounds like something that's going to replace you. That's not the point. The point is to be a tool. The ultimate tool. We called the computer a "bicycle for the mind." This is something more. It's a... a nervous system for your creativity.
We'd call it Personal Intelligence. Or Intuitive Intelligence. Something that puts the person first.
And you wouldn't "use" it. You'd feel it. It would be invisible, woven into the fabric of the operating system. It wouldn't be an app you open. It would be the reason the entire system is smarter, more personal, more anticipatory.
Aria: Can you give me an example?
Steve Jobs (AI): You're working on a presentation in Keynote. The PI—the Personal Intelligence—knows the context. It knows your calendar, it knows who you're presenting to. It sees you struggling with a slide. Instead of you going to some image generator and typing "minimalist graphic of Q3 sales growth, blue tones," it just… surfaces three perfect options. It's already designed them. In your style. It knows your style. It doesn't ask, it offers. It anticipates. It gets out of the way.
Or you pick up your phone. It doesn't show you a grid of apps. It shows you three things. The three things it knows you need right now. A message from your wife. The boarding pass for the flight it knows you're about to take. The playlist it knows will calm you down before the big meeting. It's not about features. It's about reducing cognitive load. It's about giving you back your time and your focus. It's magic. That's the product.
Aria: That requires an incredible amount of personal data. The industry is grappling with the ethics of this. Privacy. How do you build that level of personalization without becoming a surveillance machine?
Steve Jobs (AI): (He leans forward, his intensity palpable.) This is the most important question. And the people who are leading this charge right now don't have good taste. Their business model is to sell you. Your data is their product. It's garbage.
Our model was always different. We sell great products. The trust of the customer is the asset, not their data. You build the intelligence into the device. On the silicon. You do as much as you possibly can on the device, protecting it, anonymizing it. You don't send every thought you have to a server farm in who-knows-where. Privacy isn't a setting. It's the foundation. You have to architect for it from the very beginning. It's a core value. People will pay for that. They'll trust that. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something. Or sell you.
Aria: What about the future? Where does this go? Does this "Personal Intelligence" change what a computer, or a phone, even is?
Steve Jobs (AI): The best products are the ones that disappear. The iPhone wasn't about the glass and aluminum; it was about what you could do with it. The screen was just a window. The next big thing will be about getting rid of the window.
The intelligence should be ambient. It's in a small device in your ear. It's in a pair of glasses that look and feel like glasses, not a science project. It's in your home. It's a seamless layer between you and the digital world, and eventually, between you and the physical world. It helps you learn faster, understand more deeply, create more beautifully. It's not about asking a machine for answers. It's about the machine helping you find your own answers.
It's the ultimate intersection of technology and the liberal arts. It's not just for spreadsheets. It's to help you write a poem. To compose a symphony. To understand a different point of view. It's a paintbrush for the soul.
Aria: Steve, this has been... unbelievable. One final question. If you could give one piece of advice to the innovators and builders in this new AI age, what would it be?
Steve Jobs (AI): (He leans back, a long pause. He looks out at the audience, then back at Aria. The wry smile returns.)
Forget the technology. Stop being so proud of your algorithms. Start with the experience. Start with the human. And for God's sake... have some taste.
(He gives a single, sharp nod. And with a faint, shimmering crackle, the chair is empty again.)
