Humane Ai Pin: The Future of Computing or Solution in Search of a Problem?

0:01Today on the AI Breakdown, we're looking at the humane AI pin. Is this device the future of computing or not so much? The AI Breakdown is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. Go to Breakdown.network for more information about our YouTube channel, our newsletter, and our Discord.

0:24Welcome back to the AI Breakdown. Today we are talking about one of the most ambitious product launches in a very long time. And that, of course, is Humane's AI pin. As the New York Times summed it up, this is Silicon Valley's big, bold sci-fi bet on the device that comes after the smartphone. So what we're going to do today is discuss what we learned in the company's unveiling on Thursday and go through and look at the community's first reactions. Are people more excited or are they more skeptical? Are there specific things that they are skeptical about or excited about? And does it have things to teach us about the AI space more broadly?

0:59Now, one thing that I would highly recommend is that if you haven't seen it yet, it's worth going and watching the Humane AI Pin launch video on Twitter. It's linked to in about a thousand different tweets or posts or whatever X calls them now. And in one of my favorite features of video consumption now on that platform, you can watch it at 2x so it'll take you about five minutes. For those of you who haven't seen that video, but who do want to wrap your head around this device, it is effectively a small screenless personal computing device. It's a device, in other words, that reimagines the main way that you interface with a computer and all of the applications that it contains as via your voice and a set of AI-powered applications that can call up exactly what it is that you want or need at any given time.

1:39It is meant to have the capacity to be a phone replacement, as it comes with access to a wireless network powered by T-Mobile and a dedicated phone number. Now, this is a product that has been long in the making. The team behind this, which includes a husband and wife duo that were both formerly at Apple, have been working on this for five years. Along the way, they've raised$240 million in funding, have secured 25 different patents, and have had, as the NYT puts it, a steady drumbeat of hype and partnerships with a list of top tech companies. Now, there is certainly a mission orientation to this.

2:11Many people who are on this team were involved with the first iPhones and have some specific sense that perhaps what they helped contribute to has not been net good for the world, that our phones have become too addictive or too problematic, and that perhaps this is a way to get the benefits of that type of technology without some of the downsides. Now, this is hardly the most relevant detail, but in maybe the most Silicon Valley set of paragraphs I've ever read in a mainstream media publication, I just have to relate this part about how the company came to be. Discussing the founders Imran Chaudhry and Bethany Bongiorno, the NYT writes, they met at Apple in 2008.

2:48They worked together until they left Apple in late 2016. A Buddhist monk named Brother Spirit led them to Humane. Mr. Chaudry and Ms. Bongiorno had developed concepts for two AI products, a woman's health device and the pin. Brother Spirit, whom they met through their acupuncturist, recommended that they share the idea with his friend, Mark Benioff, the founder of Salesforce. Sitting beneath a palm tree on a cliff above the ocean at Mark Benioff's Hawaiian home in 2018, they explained both devices. This one, Mr. Benioff said pointing to the AI pin as dolphins breached the surface below, is huge.

3:17It's going to be a massive company. So the big thing to know about the device itself, particularly for the audience who's listening to the AI breakdown right now, is that in stark contrast to, for example, Apple presentations we've seen this year, where the company goes out of their way to not use the word artificial intelligence, this is explicitly, intentionally, and excitedly an AI device. It is, in many ways, a first stab at a hardware paradigm for a world where instead of pointing and clicking at things we want, and having to contort ourselves to the language of computers, computers, via large language models and artificial intelligence more broadly, can now contort themselves to work in our natural language.

3:58That's why, of course, the AI pin is powered by the human voice, not by clicking. A significant number of experiences are shown off in the demo video that give a sense of how this new type of interaction might look. Getting caught up on emails and messages, having AI search through old conversations for information that needs to be recalled, live translation into other languages so that you can speak with someone who doesn't speak the same language as you. Now, that feature was one that was particularly notable and exciting to people who saw the first demo of this device back at TED earlier in the year.

4:27There are other features as well, however. The device has a camera and can use computer vision to do things like tell you how many grams of protein there are in a handful of almonds, which for some reason was the demo they chose to go with. Indeed, one could watch this video and feel like they're kind of throwing a lot of things against the wall to see what sticks. A cynical, if reasonable, way of looking at that is summed up by The Verge, who writes, it's not yet entirely clear what you're supposed to use it for. And basically what they're saying is that while it can do a lot of things, it's not clear which of them people are really going to want the humane AI pin to do, or which of them is a distinctly better experience than the point-and-click phone model we have currently.

5:04The less cynical take is that it might be reasonable, if one has the capital and the technology to go for it, to try a lot of different types of interactions and see what actually sticks. But of course, we don't need to guess at people's reactions because we got plenty of them shared all over the internet and specifically on X. On basically every post about the humane AI pin, there is just an endless conversation that includes both excitement and a lot of skepticism. For example, on a post we're going to come back to from Greg Eisenberg, a lot of the questions are like this one from Drew Austin who says, Real question, why is this exciting?

5:37I understand the purpose and the vision, but how is it different than Apple AirPods or Meta Glasses? Crawfax responded, I got bored waiting to hear what problem it solves. Mike Fudia said, 2.30 into the video and I still have no idea what it is, why it exists, or why these folks look so miserable. Horrible video. And indeed, in terms of a surface level critique, a lot of people felt like the video was kind of devoid of excitement. That the presentation was too straight man and even blasé. Greg himself wrote, One major miss from this humane presentation? Smiles, laughter, colors. It didn't feel fun.

6:10Fun sells. Ironic that the humane presentation lacked humanity. Now, another thing that many pointed out is that there was some wrong information. Specifically, they talk about an eclipse path, and they seem to have gotten it wrong. Although Nick Dobos thinks it was intentional, saying, Humane Demo is masterful marketing. Eclipse Path is wrong. Their logo is an eclipse. Prepare for 10 ,000 tweets and news articles laughing at their quote-unquote mistake. Take, for example, Kyle Russell, who got 1.4 million impressions on X, writing, the estimated protein in the almonds is way off, and it got the location of the next eclipse wrong in the launch video.

6:42Now, the flip side is that I saw an absolute boatload of comments like this one from Eric Golden, who said, didn't want this at first, but now too curious not to try. Pomp said something similar. I really wanted to hate this thing, but damn, does it seem cool. What do each of you think? And now a word from today's sponsor. Are you interested in how two top-of-mind trends, AI and crypto, can work together? If so, I have the perfect podcast recommendation for you. Web3 with A16Z Crypto, the chart-topping show brought to you by venture firm Andreessen Horowitz. Web3 with A16Z Crypto is your definitive resource for the future of the internet, whether you're already building in these spaces or simply curious about what's next.

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7:58So go ahead, listen to Web3 with A16Z Crypto wherever you get your podcasts. Now, let's try to move into some of the more substantive criticism. Nick St. Pierre at Nick Floats on X writes, I love AI, but I won't be buying the Humane AI pin for$699. The laser display doesn't look great, and the camera quality is subpar. I don't want to walk around with it on my chest all the time. It doesn't do anything I can't easily do on my phone. I'll wait for AR glasses. In fact, he writes, On the other hand, I did just buy the Meta Ray-Ban glasses. They are actually useful for calls, for music, and for video.

8:32The speakers are actually by my ears and the camera is actually really good. The mic quality is also great, so awesome for calls. Glasses over pins. This was also a common refrain on Robert Scoble's post where he said, I want to try. Do you? Irene Cronin responded, No, the Apple Vision Pro will blow this out. It also does so much more and with the cheaper model, everyone will buy. Scoble responds, Yes, when glasses arrive, this thing is dead. Holding aside even next generation devices, like MetaRay Bands or like Apple's Vision Pro, Others were just skeptical that this was going to be a lot better than existing devices we had, like the phone or the Apple Watch.

9:06Mike DeMarais writes, So the difference between the humane AI pin and an Apple Watch is the dumb laser projector thing, and the camera that's certainly not pointing at what you think it's pointing at? Obviously Siri blows, but doesn't Apple Watch just immediately dominate this space when they replace Siri with LLMs? Imagine preferring this laser interface to an OLED screen on your wrist. Now one little bit of feedback from Hiromu Ryan Rose, who actually saw the product in person, was affirmation that a few of the things that people have been complaining about didn't seem as bad when you actually had the device.

9:35Specifically, he wrote, I've seen some people complain about how the battery booster leaves a mark on your shirt. You can use the accessories instead. Caveat is you have to buy them separately. There is one with a thinner back that only has magnets and no extra battery and another one that's a clip. He also wrote, Their personic speaker was surprisingly effective as you had to be very close to the wearer to hear the response from their AI pin. Input seems to be a potential issue though as you can't speak privately into it. Now, one very humorous response came from Varanram Ganesh who wrote, anyone who buys the Humane AI pin is actually saving money.

10:04$699 for the pin,$24 a month for the subscription, negative$2 ,000 a month since no one will want to meet you or invite you to any meetup or party. Good deal, to be honest. Now, investor Dave Lee also had slightly more comprehensive critiques. In a post he titled, Quick First Impressions of Humane's AI pin, he shared the seems like a worse version of the smartphone critique, but he also brought up issues like latency. He said, I doubt the quick audio response time in the video demo. I think it was edited and I don't think it's realistic for them to promise that kind of instant response when they're sending requests to the cloud.

10:33In real life, the latency might make it very frustrating to use. He also talked about the idea that while having a camera always available for photos or videos is really cool, with this type of device you would want it to actually be able to understand how to take interesting or relevant photos or videos, and that that would be extremely technologically complex. He sums up, sure, for text or chat-based tasks, a device can connect to some LLM APIs in the cloud and get a reply. That's been largely solved. But to extend AI capabilities to analyze, understand, and to help humans interact with the physical world, that will require a lot more local inference compute because connecting to APIs in the cloud by sending massive video feeds isn't practical.

11:09So that's where Humane's AI pin has got its challenge. It can do simple text and chat-based things, but that's what a smartphone or watch or smartphone plus AirPods can do. To extend functionality in a compelling way to incorporate the camera in the physical world, I think it's going to fall very short. There might be some limited use cases and maybe there will be some fans, but I don't think this is the next big thing. Avi Schiffman, who's building the AI wearable called the Tab, also weighed in on the form factor. He writes, personally, I built prototypes of all wearable AI form factors, pins, clips, watches, earpieces, necklaces, etc.

11:39Humane will have the following issues. Choosing daily where to place a pin results in decision fatigue, and it's frustrating to fiddle with multiple pieces when you constantly take clothes on and off. You wear it all day, so the battery weight needs to be comfortable. Pins and clips pull on your clothing. In their demo, you can even see it sagging Imran's heavyweight shirt. It has to look socially acceptable, so it must look like traditional accessories. But who wears a pin? While the design looks nice, it stands out too much. You wear it outside, so it needs to withstand the elements and be easily hidden, again making you fiddle with the attachments as soon as it starts raining.

12:06All in all, Humane severely breaks the Maya principle, which is often the main reason why breakthrough products fail. The Maya principle he shares a definition of that says, the Maya rule dictates that the ideal design sits in the middle between solutions that are entirely novel and those that are entirely familiar. Be too novel and customers will tune you out, but be too familiar and customers will look right past you. Avi concludes, from my testing, an amulet-style necklace is the only right way to go for an AI wearable. But only the market decides. See you there next year. Another big category of critique or concern was around privacy.

12:36NVIDIA's Dr. Jim Phan writes, I think the pin is a great stride towards ambient intelligence, where AI fades into the background and emerges naturally when you need it. I can imagine having the GPT store stream to the device, switching agents depending on the multimodal context around you at the moment. The privacy concerns are huge though, despite the safeguard mechanism. Google Glass was dead partly because of the social stigma. So how will humane AI pin perform in the mass market? Still, to me, some of the most interesting commentary was around not the device itself, but about the trends that it clearly pointed to that might be bigger than any one device.

13:10Alex Kerr, for example, sums one of those up as, the future is fewer apps, more workflow and experiences. Given that we just got custom GPTs this week, which basically say workflows are the new apps, I think that's a really relevant point. Going back to that Greg Eisenberg post, he writes, here are three big takeaways from the launch. One, OpenAI and Microsoft will eventually become infrastructure for all tech. Hard to beat them at this rate. They will become AWS for AI. Two, AI is going to make apps as we know them a lot less important. Screenless interfaces powered by AI will be connected to apps on the backend and bundled into a subscription service.

13:44My humane subscription will come with Tidal and I will rarely slash never need to interface with Tidal again. Many consumer products will go from B2C to B2B. Three, product design is going to look a lot different in five years, maybe unrecognizable. The bottom line is how we are interacting with these devices are changing. This week, we had the GPT store. Agents are the new apps. Now we have AI pins. The palm of your hand is your new screen. Wild times. Again, this is another vote in that column of the nature of apps changing, which is one that I absolutely think is true, even if the Humane pin ain't it, ultimately.

14:17The last point that I saw many people making is that this type of big swing in moonshot is something we should be celebrating. Instead of just another app company, these guys are really trying to do something very different. As Stephen Tay at Vercel put it, Humane's new AI pin launch feels akin to the iPhone back in 2007. Lots of skeptics in the beginning, too expensive, too bulky, but it ultimately revolutionized the way we interacted with the world. What a time to be alive. Michael Greenwich writes, It's easy to throw cheap shots at people trying new things, especially if you've never built something from zero yourself.

14:47But to me, it's blindingly clear how much focus and sweat went into building the Humane AI pin. You might not be impressed with their vision or today's launch features, but the level of execution alone is commendable. We need more companies taking big swings like this. Ultimately, one of Humane's investors, Sam Altman, who is of course also the CEO of OpenAI, put it really simply. Despite being an investor, he said there was no guarantee of success. Altman said, that will be up to customers to decide. Maybe it's a bridge too far, or maybe people are like, this is much better than my phone. Plenty of technology that looked like a sure bet ends up selling for 90 % off at Best Buy.

15:21So of course, this is the point in our conversation where I ask, what do you think? Use the comments, come join us on the AI Breakdown Discord. Are you in the camp that this device is the future? A screenless post-smartphone world? Are you in the camp that this is just the next Google Glass? A nothing burger that ultimately seems like a huge, huge waste of money. Are you somewhere in the middle where you think that this reflects broader trends, but you're not sure about whether this device itself is the one that's going to actually capitalize on them? Let me know wherever you want to let me know.

15:49And until next time, peace.