It’s a bit of understatement to say that I was a fan. I was a HUGE fan of not just Apple the company and their products, but really of Steve Jobs. He embodied many of the things that I aspired to. He was, and still is, a great inspiration to me, and also someone I learned, and continue to learn, a lot of lessons from.
But then he sadly passed away on 5th October 2011 at the age of 56. He was taken from us too soon and in the nearly 15 years since then I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that the world would have been a better place with him still in it.
If Steve were alive today, he would have just turned 70 years old. I’d like to think that he’d be happily retired living a peaceful life somewhere out of the limelight, but I don’t think that was his style. And that’s kind of the point. Steve always was, and always would have been, strong-willed and highly opinionated. He was an unconventional thinker, with an incredible intuition and instinct for what consumers wanted before they knew themselves. He also had a deep emotional connection to product design and user experience. He wanted to delight, evoke joy, and encourage curiosity.
These are the things that I miss the most, and what I think we need in 2025 more than any other year in the last 15.
“Don’t be trapped by dogma”
I think Steve would have both loved and hated the state of technology in 2025. He’d absolutely love the incredible possibilities, but absolutely hate what the industry has become. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the post-Jobs era we’ve seen the prioritisation of engagement metrics over human experiences. Optimisation over integrity. And maybe worst of all, quarterly returns over transformative vision. Too many companies are just reacting to their competitors rather than leading with purpose. There’s not enough bravery. There’s not enough delight.
This is exactly the kind of dogma that Steve would have rejected, and by doing so he would have set an example for the rest of the industry to follow. Steve saw technology as a liberator of human potential, not as something to capture human attention. There’s no doubt in my mind that he would have been incredibly critical and vocal about the large digital platforms that have risen to such dominance over the last 15 years.
“…that’s what a computer is to me… the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”
But what of those incredible possibilities? Obviously I’m referring to AI, and specifically generative AI. I think Steve would be in his element right now - he was always attracted to revolutionary changes and there’s arguably nothing more revolutionary than AI. He liked these changes because they were hard, and getting generative AI right is hard. He would have relished this challenge.
Generative AI is the purest extension we’ve ever seen of Steve’s idea of what a computer is. He believed that computers were the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever invented. He thought of them as an extension of the human mind, and something that amplified human potential.
Steve was often quoted as saying that computers were the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds. I really love this quote, but it’s often misinterpreted. On its own, the quote seems to be about speed, but when you read it in context it’s actually about efficiency. The bicycle wasn’t remarkable because it made humans faster; it was remarkable because it allowed humans to expend far less energy to achieve far more.
This is generative AI. It’s the most remarkable tool we’ve ever invented and it will amplify human potential far more than computers ever have. But, like Steve’s quote, we can’t allow ourselves to misinterpret it - Generative AI is not about making humans faster, it’s about allowing humans to achieve far more.
"You've got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology — not the other way around."
One of the challenges we’re facing is that the most cutting edge technology that humanity has ever invented is currently trapped behind a one dimensional chat interface. You type, it types back. With some you speak, it speaks back. That’s about it.
I completely understand how we got here. OpenAI trained GPT-3 as part of their research into Artificial General Intelligence. They then fine-tuned it for chat and decided to put a simple user interface on it to see how people might use it. ChatGPT was a research preview, not a consumer product. But that research preview blew up, taking everyone by surprise. That’s how November 30th 2022 happened and the rest is history.
But in the last two years the interaction model has hardly moved on. All the frontier AI companies have just copied that 2022 research preview’s user interface. They’ve made the mistake of starting with the technology, not the consumer experience. This was understandable in early 2023 but less so in early 2025.
One thing I passionately believe is that technology is a mirror on humanity. This has never been more true of a technology than with generative AI - it’s trained on human data, it can create like humans, and it makes mistakes like humans. So where’s the humanity in how we interact with this technology? Where’s the delight? Where’s the emotion? Where’s the joy?
Maybe it’s still too early. There are certainly glimpses of more human-like interactions in the advanced voice modes that have been released over the last 6 months that have enabled generative AI models to express themselves with emotion. But speech interfaces aren’t productive. They’re great for quick interactions but mostly useless for more involved tasks. We’re going to need more unconventional thinking like Steve’s to crack this.
“Technology is nothing. What's important is that you have faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them.”
Another challenge we’re facing with generative AI is one of trust. I speak to a lot of large organisations about what their strategy is, what their ambitions are, and how they’re embracing AI. Of all the organisations I speak to, it’s the absolute minority that have given all their employees access to one of the frontier enterprise models and are encouraging play and experimentation. Most haven’t got anywhere near that yet and are still in a ‘testing’ phase with a handful of people working with generative AI models to prove out use cases and ‘value’.
This is absolutely the wrong approach for a general purpose, transformative technology like generative AI. With something this broad you just can’t identify use cases top-down in an organisation. Especially in large, global organisations with complex structures, multi-disciplined teams, and a wide variety of specialist departments. I’m not even sure you can identify use cases in a meaningful way bottom-up, because everyone’s role is different and everyone has their own way of working.
But what I do know is that we have a lot of smart people in large organisations, who if you give them generative AI tools would do wonderful things with them. What organisations need to embrace is collective learning, so that interesting and useful ideas are shared and everyone can learn from each other’s experiences.
"“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works.”
Yet another challenge is how the models are built. Copyright issues, environmental issues, bias, interpretability, safety - you name it. What the models can do is amazing, but there are lots of challenges with the data they’re trained on and even understanding how they actually work.
One of my favourite anecdotes from Steve is something he often said he learned from his father, who was a carpenter. He said that a true craftsman wouldn’t use a piece of plywood on the back of a beautiful chest of drawers, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it. A true craftsman would use a beautiful piece of wood on the back because for them to sleep well at night the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
Of all the frontier AI companies, I think Anthropic is probably the closest we have to an Apple of AI. This is because they care about how the models work, not just about what they can do. They’re more focused on research and safety than any of their rivals, and have done the most work on interpretability and figuring out what makes the models tick.
But, there’s still a lot more work to be done and more care to be had on how generative AI models are built. That care and attention is something Steve would be a huge champion of.
“Here’s to the crazy ones“
The “Here’s to the crazy ones…“ ad encapsulates what Steve Jobs was all about better than anything I could possible write. The original version wasn’t narrated by Steve, but I think his version is better. He wrote the script, which is a reflection of his own personal manifesto, and using his narration gives it more power.
We’re at a significant inflection point with technology in 2025 and I think we’ll soon see the consumer adoption of generative AI accelerate as it starts to deliver on its incredible promise. That’s why I’m missing Steve Jobs right now more than ever. We need the crazy ones to help us humanise the technology and ensure that it amplifies our creativity rather than replacing it.
What made Steve special was that he knew that the most powerful innovations happen at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts - where engineering meets humanity, and where function meets beauty. If Steve were with us today, I believe he would challenge us to think different about AI. He would push us to create experiences that delight. He would demand that we build models with craftsmanship and take as much care over the bits we can’t see as the bits that we can see.
One of Steve’s great gifts to the world was showing us that technology could have soul. That attention to detail matters, and that simplicity is the ultimate expression of sophistication. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves of these lessons and carry the torch that Steve gave us. We need to stay hungry for what generative AI could be, not just what it is. And we need to stay foolish enough to believe we can make it more human, more joyful, and more magical.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
And I really miss the one who showed us how.
“Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.”
Steve Jobs
I really needed to read this today. Thanks Sean.
Wonderful piece Sean. Steve inspired you and you've inspired me with these words.
Thank you.