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Comment by chatterhead | Hacker News Reader

These are going to be the thing. Google glasses were too "smart" looking and frankly ripped off Steve Mann's design way too much. Magic Leap needs consumer options immediately with a focus on what Steve was doing with his glasses; truly altering reality.

This is going to be so powerful. When you have AI/AR you no longer need to learn. You can go directly from welding the perfect weld to performing the perfect adenectomy.

AI/AR is going to eliminate experts. It's going to be awesome.

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Both welding and surgery are great examples of tacit knowledge, that is to say, knowledge that can't be easily transferred. Sure the theory of both might be efficiently learnable, but studying for it isn't going to make your first weld any less awful past a point. You may "know" what to you, but your hands aren't going to be able to do the right things with the right timing. You still need to practice the skill to learn it.

Why use hands? Why not a videogame controller? We have two whole generation well trained on precision videogaming.

You are correct nonetheless. It still requires skill; but that vastly shortened learning curve means access and affordability in everything from manufacturing to healthcare; just have to keep the next Google/Microsoft/IBM out of it.

> Why not a videogame controller?

For the same reason you can't effectively teach marksmanship using call of duty.

It's not just about precision of position, it's about precision of timing. Intuitively knowing what to do, precisely when it's appropriate to do so, as a result of combining numerous sensory details. If you know exact details about the metal you're welding and the machine you're welding with, you could program that in, but human bodies are too varied, surgery is damn hard. I'm bullish on AI these days and I still say the actual hands-on part of a majority of surgical procedures is a ways off from automation. Maybe one day, with enough data from tele-surgical procedures, you might be able to get that intuition into an AI. But I think we'll sooner be able to generate feature length movies from whole cloth with nothing but a one-sentence prompt than have most surgeries have the important moment-to-moment hands-on decision-making done by machine.

They already had a consumer product and it failed in the marketplace. We had one at work and I used it. It was decent, but not earth-shattering by any means. A colleague of mine worked for them and claimed they really do have some amazing tech, but they haven’t been able to bring it down to the consumer level yet. I’m not clear on whether that’s what they’ll be offering as a business offering.

Strong disagree; magic leap missed the magic boat, the Ship of Relevance has now sailed and they aren't on it!

I'm still bummed, really wanted a better Google Glass. But it's been years with literally nothing to show us.

I wouldn't be so sure. Magic Leap doesn't even have OpenXR support yet, and you can't revolutionize the AR industry when you refuse to put up table stakes.

You ever wonder if people have enough self-awareness to hear themselves talk?

I guess I can only let people smash head-first into the wall going at top speeds. Buckle up.

Google Glass was directly taking from Starner's work. You're getting your history wrong.

I wasn't aware of that. Thank you; just assumed Mann's was ripped off because he was so prominent in the space and well known.

https://www.theregister.com/2013/03/02/steve_mann_on_google_...

This article is what provoked the assumption.

Having worked with Steve for a while, I can assure you that he believes he was ripped off. Only a judge can decide for sure.

Didn't know this either. For anyone else curious, Starner + AR go back to the 90s [1]

[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/google-glasss-thad-starner-wears-t...

The person Chatterhead cites actually has work that goes back substantially earlier, but it's important to point people to the right direction so blame for Glass isn't misattributed.

In the dark future there is only war between the Thadbots and the Manndroids!

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