Computer interfaces have evolved from mainframes to smartphones. Portable personal computers, graphical user interfaces, and always-available mobile devices gradually made technology more convenient and accessible.
Today, many assume computers must become even more convenient and physically intimate. Many people believe AR glasses or brain–computer interfaces are the next step. They ask: what if a person could execute a task the moment a thought arises?
But is convenience really what holds people back from meaningful action? Do any of us truly wish computers were even more present in our lives?
People are too overwhelmed to take action
People are not blocked because they lack access to technology. If anything, they are blocked because they have too much of it. Continuous streams of information and contradictory signals make our thinking incoherent and exhaust us. People are overwhelmed.
People want to make progress in their lives. They want to solve their problems. Yet, in this scattered and depleted state, they can't process and synthesize their thoughts and form a clear, coherent plan.
If we were to plot it out, we would see that most people are stuck in earlier levels of decision-making. They have some thoughts about what they may want to do or what they should consider. However, most people get stuck in that early phase and only a few reach clarity to take action.
For example, most people already have a lot of information about what they should do to improve their health, but there is an internal conflict that prevents motivated action.
They move through loops like:
"I should eat more salad, but I don't enjoy it. Maybe I should learn to make better ones, but the last recipes I tried weren't good. This supplement ad looks promising—but do I really want to spend $50 on it? Meanwhile, everyone on Instagram looks healthier than I do. I'm failing at what I'm supposed to be doing."
When we reach out to technology with these thoughts, we end up feeling even more confused, even less clear about what action to take.
AI agents make taking action even easier
A complementary shift is unfolding in parallel: AI agents are rapidly becoming capable of executing complex tasks on our behalf. Many of the cumbersome actions we perform today—navigating menus, sending emails, coordinating with intermediaries—will soon be delegated to autonomous systems.
If you can tell an AI agent to transfer your investments between two accounts and trust it to execute that task, why would you need any of the visual interfaces, clicks, forms and logins?
These AI agents are increasingly automating the execution of tasks.
As a result, our time and cognitive effort will shift toward interpreting the world and making sense of our own lives.
Our main work will be to reflect, deliberate, and synthesize. However, in our overwhelmed state, bringing clarity is what we have been getting worse at.
We need solutions that bring clarity
What we need are tools and solutions that help restore clarity, coherence, meaning, and motivation. They must give us space to work through conflicting thoughts, examine our intentions, and experiment with different ways of living.
In this cultural and psychological landscape, pushing technology closer to our brains is not the answer. We don't need more information, faster, nor do we need tools to take unintentional actions.
The forces that created this state — ever-increasing convenience and constant technological stimulus — cannot guide us forward anymore.
People don’t process things out loud with each other anymore
Historically, people made sense of their thoughts by talking to one another.
Conversation offered a way to untangle thoughts, test interpretations, and find meaning. In those exchanges, we received three essential forms of support: attention, knowledge, and articulation. Someone listened, offered perspective, and helped us put our thoughts into words.
This is a very fundamental process. We are born to speak. It is one of the most sophisticated cognitive processes we have. We need to talk things through to make sense of them in the physical and social context we are in.
Today, that function has eroded.
People have less time and far less attention to give. They are more stimulated and lonelier than ever before. The result is a shared state of overwhelm and isolation. We are all stuck. We need to feel heard before we can listen to others.
If humans can no longer reliably provide that depth of attention at scale, something else will have to step in.
AI companions start to fill that gap
At this moment, LLM-based AI assistants entered our lives.
We can speak to them for as long as we wish. They offer unbroken attention, possess broad knowledge, articulate ideas clearly, and can retain substantial context about who we are and what we've discussed.
Most people started using them as sophisticated search engines, but very quickly, the nature of our interactions evolved. People found themselves sharing personal uncertainties, dilemmas, and aspirations.
What began as AI assistants rapidly evolved into AI companions. "Therapy/companionship", "organizing my life", and "finding purpose" became the top three use cases for AI.
By the summer of 2025, half of U.S. teens were speaking with AI companions regularly, and one-third reported that these companions felt as good as—or better than—their human relationships (Common Sense Media).
AI companions are the next interface
These AI companions are now shaping how people handle their lives: they sit with us in difficult moments, help us sort competing priorities, and offer a non-judgmental place to speak. They help us get unstuck from our overwhelmed and isolated state.
That is precisely what we needed an interface for.
There are far more people and many more moments when people need to process their thoughts than they need a new technological interface to execute those decisions.
We started using AI companions as the interface for all our needs.
ChatGPT is only the first generation of these tools. More capable and specialized AI companions are emerging every day.
They will also integrate with AI agents in the background. We will start interacting with them before we reach clarity on what to do about our investments. We will talk to our financial companion in an unstructured way. We will share our thoughts, concerns, aspirations, and talk it through. Once we make the decisions, the AI companion will use AI agents to carry them out.
In that world, we will reach out to technology when we feel bad or conflicted about something or when we feel overwhelmed. But, instead of doom-scrolling on social media and get even more stimulated, we will talk through our thoughts with our AI companions and leave feeling better and more motivated, with our thoughts clarified, and with our problems resolved.
In 5-10 years, we will spend hours every day interacting with these AI companions, maybe as assistants, friends, coaches, or partners.
They will be the next interface for technology.