Rupert Manfredi – Demoing the AI computer that doesn’t yet exist
March 5, 2026
What happens if you take the idea that AI is going to revolutionize computing seriously?
You might argue we’re already doing this as an industry: we’ve spent untold billions on frontier models; hype is at fever-pitch; and it seems every app on your computer now has a chat sidebar, soon to be home to an uber-capable AGI.
But I fear we are still missing answers to some basic questions, like: what does an AI-native computer actually look like? What does it feel like? How do I use it? With a truly revolutionary technology, iteration can only take you so far — in order to leap towards this future as an industry, we need a clearer vision of it.
We’ve had the privilege of having Rupert Manfredi speak several times at our conferences now, including late last year, where he talked about the ideas he explores further in this essay. Right now we’re at the end of a 50 year trajectory of human computer interfaces. As I’ve observed elsewhere, they continue to be essentially text-based and passive. They present to us applications that are constrained sets of functionality. Little sandboxes on which we work on information which can be challenging to share across other applications.
But the power and capability of generative AI technologies means this trajectory may be coming to an end and Rupert and his team at Telepath are thinking about what comes next.
