Steve Jobs predicted Generative AI in 1985 🤯
"My hope is that someday — when the next Aristotle is alive — we can capture their worldview in a computer. And someday, a student will not only be able to read what Aristotle wrote, but also ask him a question — and get an answer." – Steve Jobs, 1985
Here’s what strikes me:
We don’t need to wait for the next Aristotle.
ChatGPT already makes this possible. A GPT can be trained on Aristotle’s body of work as a domain-specific model — so students today could literally “ask” Aristotle questions.
In my view, that’s both incredible and unsettling. Jobs envisioned this nearly four decades ago, and now we’re living it. But the more I think about it, the bigger questions come up:
👉 What would Steve Jobs say about OpenAI’s ChatGPT?
👉 How would he feel about Apple’s current AI strategy, with Siri still unable to compete against today’s leading AI tools?
As I understand it, Jobs wasn’t just predicting a tool. He was predicting a new way of learning — an interactive future where knowledge becomes alive. Today, that vision is here. But it might also be just the starting point.
Because if we can converse with Aristotle today, what stops us from training models on Steve
Jobs’ worldview, or Mandela’s leadership, or even creating entirely new digital thinkers that history never gave us?
That’s not just fulfilling Jobs’ prophecy. That’s redefining what knowledge, memory, and identity even mean.
So I keep coming back to the same question:
What would Steve Jobs do?
And perhaps even more intriguingly: What would Steve Jobs say, if we asked an AI trained on his words?
#AI #GenerativeAI #ArtificialIntelligence #FutureOfAI #Education #TechDebate #IrreplaceableAI