What OpenAI’s prototype device shows about designing hardware with AI
Two people used OpenAI's Astra model to design a handheld device for talking to Codex. A contractor then made a small batch of prototypes. The most revealing part of OpenAI's November 3 account comes between those two steps. Getting from a design on a screen to something a manufacturer could assemble took several rounds of review. The prototype offers a concrete way to examine where an engineering model helped and where the people making the product still had work to do. Designing a board and a case together OpenAI describes an experiment that included the enclosure, the circuit board inside it, the user interface and the software connecting the device to Codex. Astra chose components and laid out the board to fit the enclosure. It also designed the structures holding the parts in place. Two team members worked on the design as a side project for less than a week. The contractor produced the prototype batch in less than a month, according to OpenAI. Those are two different i...