Tony Fadell

Engineer and designer; led the iPod and iPhone teams at Apple, founder of Nest Labs

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
every time I heard the word “smart” attached to anything, it means it’s pretty dumb, because no one knows what it really does. They just add “smart” as a prefix to say, “Oh, you must buy this, because it’s smart.” If they can’t tell you what it does and why it does it, don’t buy it just because it says “smart.”

Academy of Achievement interview, 5 February 2016 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 32 →
Terence Tao Mathematician; Fields Medallist, 2006
AI without validation is too unreliable to be of use in any serious application.
Recorded Quanta Magazine reporter, Reported interview, Quanta Magazine, 13 April 2026 source ↗
Daniel Ek Co-founder and former chief executive of Spotify
Many people talk about a willingness to have failures. I hate failures. I don't think you should strike to make failures. I think it's OK to make mistakes – but by the time they become real failures, you probably should have discovered them much earlier.
Recorded Slush conference, Helsinki, Music Ally, 30 November 2016 source ↗
Óscar Arias Sánchez President of Costa Rica, 1986–1990 and 2006–2010
Seeing that the past dictatorships were only capable of creating misery and crippling hope, how absurd to pretend to cure the evils of one extreme dictatorship by means of its opposite! No one in Central America has the right to fear freedom, no one is entitled to preach absolute truths. The evils of one dogma are the evils of any dogma. They are all the enemies of human creativity.
Recorded Oslo City Hall, The Nobel Foundation, 11 December 1987 source ↗
Dan Pallotta Founder of Pallotta TeamWorks; founder of the Charity Defense Council
This is what happens when we confuse morality with frugality. We've all been taught that the bake sale with five percent overhead is morally superior to the professional fundraising enterprise with 40 percent overhead, but we're missing the most important piece of information, which is: What is the actual size of these pies? Who cares if the bake sale only has five percent overhead if it's tiny?
Recorded TED2013, 1 March 2013 source ↗

More from Tony Fadell

View profile →

More on craft & work

Also answered this

Tobias Lütke, David Vélez, Steve Jobs, Reid Hoffman, Daniel Ek, Drew Houston

Search the directory for somebody in particular.

Explore further

Report this answer