Title: The Lost 2025 Interview
Setting: A sparse, sunlit room. A single black leather chair.
Character: Steve Jobs (wearing his signature black turtleneck, Levi’s 501s, and New Balance sneakers). He looks healthy, animated, and intensely focused.
Interviewer: It’s… surreal to be sitting here with you. The world has changed so much since 2011. We’re in 2025 now. The biggest story is Artificial Intelligence. What would Steve Jobs make of this moment?
Steve Jobs: [Leans forward, clasping hands] It’s fascinating. But let’s be clear about one thing first. People keep asking me about "AI" as if it’s this alien entity that landed from Mars. It’s not. It’s just the next evolution of the bicycle for the mind.
Remember that old quote I loved about the efficiency of the human being versus the condor? The condor is the most efficient animal, and the human is way down the list. But give a human a bicycle, and they blow the condor away.
For forty years, the personal computer was that bicycle. Now? The bicycle has an engine. A massive one. But the problem is, right now, the engine is smarter than the handlebars.
Interviewer: That’s a powerful image. So, do you think the industry is on the right track?
Steve Jobs: [Pauses, looks down, then up with intensity] No. No, I don’t.
Look at what the big companies are doing. They are obsessed with the specs. "We have a trillion parameters." "We have a model that writes poetry." Who cares?
Right now, we have these things—these Chatbots. They are ugly. They are clunky. You type into a white box, and it spits back text. It’s the command line interface all over again! It’s a step backward. We spent thirty years building graphical user interfaces so you could see what you were doing, so you could touch it. And now, in 2025, we’re back to typing commands into a prompt? It’s absurd.
It’s the classic "technology versus liberal arts" problem. The engineering is incredible. The neural networks are miracles of mathematics. But the humanity? It’s missing.
Interviewer: So, how would you fix it? How do you make AI "human"?
Steve Jobs: You don’t make the AI human. You make the tool invisible.
If I were building a product today, I wouldn't build a "Chatbot." That’s a dead end. I would build a system that knows you. Truly knows you.
Imagine this: You’re walking down the street. You’re thinking about a project. You don't pull out a phone and type, "Summarize this document." That’s rude. That’s friction.
Instead, you just talk. Or maybe you don't even talk. The system knows your context. It knows who you’re meeting with, it knows what you read this morning, it knows your heart rate. It anticipates the question before you ask it.
It shouldn't feel like you’re talking to a computer. It should feel like you have a partner. A partner with perfect memory and infinite knowledge, but no ego. It’s there to amplify your intent.
Interviewer: There is a lot of fear, though. Fear that AI will replace creativity. That it will replace designers, writers, coders.
Steve Jobs: [Smiles slightly] You know, when we introduced the Macintosh, people said it would kill creativity. "It does the work for you," they said. "It’s cheating."
Technology never kills creativity. It kills mediocrity. And that’s painful.
If you are a mediocre writer, yes, AI is going to replace you. If you are a designer who just moves pixels around without understanding the "why," yes, you’re in trouble.
But if you are a creator with a point of view? This is the best time in history to be alive.
I’ll give you an example. Imagine you want to make a movie. Today, you need a camera crew, actors, lighting, millions of dollars. In 2025, with the tools we have emerging, you can describe a scene, and boom—it’s there. Does that mean everyone is a Spielberg? No. Because Spielberg has taste.
AI gives you the components. It gives you the bricks. But it cannot give you the soul. It cannot tell you what to build, only how to build it. The "what" is still the domain of the human spirit.
Interviewer: So, the "Soul" is the differentiator?
Steve Jobs: Always.
The problem with Silicon Valley right now is that it’s run by engineers who don't appreciate the humanities. They think the goal is to build a machine that is smarter than us. That’s not the goal. The goal is to build a tool that makes us smarter.
You look at the current AI models... they hallucinate. They lie. They have no moral compass. That’s a design flaw. It’s not a bug in the code; it’s a bug in the intent.
We need to bake values into these things. We need to say, "This is the line you do not cross." But to do that, you have to have values yourself. And I look around, and I see a lot of people chasing stock prices, not truth.
Interviewer: If you were running Apple today, what would the "AI iPhone" look like?
Steve Jobs: [Laughs] I can’t tell you that. I’d be giving away the roadmap.
But I’ll tell you this: It wouldn't have an app for AI. The AI wouldn't be an "app." It would be the OS. It would be the fabric of the device.
You wouldn't go to a "search engine." You wouldn't go to a "chat app." You would just live. And the technology would fade into the background.
Right now, the technology is screaming for attention. "Look at me! I’m intelligent!" That’s insecure. True confidence is quiet. It just works.
Interviewer: One last question. Do you think we’re ready for this?
Steve Jobs: Ready? We’re never ready. We weren't ready for the phone. We weren't ready for the PC.
But that’s the point. You don't ask the customer what they want. They don't know. You show them.
And once you show them something that removes friction from their life, something that gives them a little bit of superpower... they can’t imagine living without it.
We’re at the dawn of the most explosive creative period in human history. It’s messy right now. It’s ugly. But we’re going to figure it out. We’re going to put a dent in the universe.
[He leans back, smiles, and looks out the window at the sun.]
Steve Jobs: Or, at least, we’re going to try.
