# AI and Ambient Computing, Zuckerberg and the Verge, Amazon and Anthropic  ## Metadata - Author: [[Ben Thompson]] - Full Title: AI and Ambient Computing, Zuckerberg and the Verge, Amazon and Anthropic - Category: #articles ## Highlights - The key to ambient computing, though — and this was the point I was trying to tease out with the opening about TMT and virtualizing space, time, and interactivity — is that there needs to be something to interact with continuously. No human can fill this role: yes, you can communicate with anyone anywhere, but not on-demand 24/7. Media can’t fill this role either: you can listed to or watch something at any time or any place, but it’s not interactive. Software is always available, but there is friction in terms of figuring out what app to use, actually launching it, interacting with it, etc. This is where generative AI is so compelling: it is the essential technological underpinning of continuous ambient computing. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbra1w1wm2nr7tadavd8xacv)) - That then leads to my second point: there is a necessity for new hardware to enable this sort of frictionless ambient computing. You can get an idea of what that ambient computing is like with chatbots — this is why the ChatGPT voice application was so compelling to me — but the app paradigm is not the right one. There is a hardware breakthrough waiting to happen just like the Internet created the conditions for the smartphone breakthrough to happen. In that context, Meta’s hardware investments are suddenly drastically more compelling than they might have seemed previously, and it makes sense that OpenAI is exploring the space ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbra2g8j0edqkk64pcj1ec4y))