For decades, HCI has been the cornerstone of how we design technology. We optimized screens, keyboards, mice, touch, gestures, and interfaces. We obsessed over usability, affordances, and pixels.
But in the age of AI, that framing is collapsing.
The computer is no longer the center of the interaction. What replaces it is something far more fundamental: human–to–human interaction, mediated and amplified by AI.
And paradoxically, the technology that enables this future will feel simpler than anything we've built before.
Human evolution—technological and cultural—follows a consistent pattern.
A single website with no design replaced an entire industry. The classified ad—a $100B business—was replaced by a free listing page. What mattered wasn't the format, but the connection between people.
Amazon didn't just sell books online—it learned what you wanted to read next. The store vanished; the relationship deepened. "Customers who bought this" was an early glimpse of AI mediating human taste.
Buying became so effortless it became invisible. One-click ordering, free returns, same-day delivery. The transaction disappeared. What remained? How well the brand understands you.
The interface is collapsing just as the newspaper did. You won't open an app—you'll speak, think, gesture. The technology will be so embedded in human interaction that it vanishes entirely.
Today, what matters isn't the transaction—it's the experience around it. You choose brands not because of inventory, but because of how well they understand you.
Technology always commoditizes. Their true advantage is the resolution at which they know humans.
If you know what I want, you can help me.
If you know what I need before I do, you can guide me.
If you know my context, you can remove friction I didn't even articulate.
Human attention remains the most valuable commodity on earth. And whoever understands humans best will continue to win.
We're entering an era where software is no longer handcrafted line by line by a few elite builders. Software now writes itself, improves through usage, learns from collective behavior, and reinforces its own evolution.
This is why today feels like a "wild west" phase—experimentation everywhere, instability everywhere—but the gatekeepers still matter. Not because of apps. Not because of features. But because of infrastructure, memory, and context.
Large Language Models are already commoditizing. Compute will commoditize. APIs will commoditize.
What won't commoditize is memory, context, and continuity of identity.
Today's AI products feel vertical—writing tools, coding tools, search tools, learning tools. But this is temporary.
The endgame is not thousands of vertical apps. The endgame is a horizontal human layer that spans everything. Ecosystems get kickstarted by giants—but breakthroughs often come from the edges.
The device of the future is not a screen. The device of the future is the human.
No external device comes close. AI doesn't replace humans—it augments them. Software no longer runs on devices. Software runs through humans.
Each human has a biological operating system, a learned behavioral system, and soon, a virtual operating layer. That virtual layer doesn't overwrite who you are—it amplifies you.
Human–Computer Interaction assumes a computer exists, a human adapts to it, and design bridges the gap. But in this future, that gap disappears. There is no "computer" to learn. There is no interface to master. Technology fades into the background.
Human–to–Human Interaction is the future. AI is the invisible layer that makes it possible.
The most successful technologies of the next decade will not feel technological at all. They will feel intuitive, personal, anticipatory—almost human.
And that is not the end of design. That is design returning to its original purpose: expanding what it means to be human.