Time Magazine's Best Inventions of 2023 Award for Humane's AI Pin
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
This is a device looking for a problem to solve and failing miserably.
But even if there weren't such a difference, I'd argue that just because a bad thing exists doesn't mean we shouldn't fight against more of that bad thing.
> Hell even at tables of most restaurants.
What sort of restaurants are these? I can't remember seeing one at the table of any restaurant I've been to.
Regardless, my main point still stands. Just because this stuff exists in some places doesn't mean we should accept more of it.
…but 20 years later, our cities were changed by the widespread arrival of cheap two-wheeled battery powered personal transport devices with almost the same footprint and handle post.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorized_scooter#E-scooters
And now I think about it, I recon a Segway would solve several of the problems that e-scooters have.
If we've not all been turned into paperclips and/or got chips in our brains and/or global thermonuclear war, I can believe the tech improves to enable the hype.
By `problems that e-scooters have` you mean being light, mobile, cheap, and not dorky?
Edit: just found this gem:
"So there may be a way to capture more of the market Segway hoped to reach: make a version that doesn't look so easy for the rider. It would also be helpful if the styling was in the tradition of skateboards or bicycles rather than medical devices." [1]
I had an electric scooter for 2 days before flying face first into the street at 30mph. Thankfully I was wearing a mips helmet and only broke my arm and my nose
I just don’t think a Segway would every really fall sideways at speed.
I think the only thing "dorky" about Segways is the PPE, which should really also be worn by anyone on an e-scooter.
Segway's really seem to have found their niche as more of a toy than means of transport in the form of tourist Segway tours. They are at least fun and do work well, even if a bit ill-conceived!
Agreed that a mix of scooters/bikes and pedestrians on the sidewalk isn't ideal, but better than the alternative of having the kids on the road, since scooters and bikes (esp. driven by kids) don't mix well with cars and trucks either.
Other countries solve this better with safe bike lanes, etc.
I really wish that the police would enforce the ban better, though. Accidents on the sidewalks are pretty common, and I've even been yelled at by bicyclists for daring to walk on the sidewalk.
People need to stop falling for the hype-bullshit-industrial complex. Manufactured attention is the only reason a publisher would give positive attention to a device that replicates the functionality of a bluetooth earbud at a cost of $700 plus $25 a month.
I didn't get the feeling that anyone was falling for Humane's modest hype. The coverage has generally been pretty skeptical.
No one seemed to believe that Humane made a quantum leap over Alexa & Siri, which both suck.
EDITING since downvoters who didn't read the article may not know that "*(Investors in Humane include TIME co-chairs and owners Marc and Lynne Benioff)", hence, this hype was pretty fake
Time magazine owners are investors in the device.
It points out the curiosity that investors in Humane are influential in Time's decision of what to call a Best Invention of 2023.
To be clear: I think Time's awarding of this honor has already aged like a fine dog turd in summer sun. The reason it was submitted was because Gruber does a better job at snark than I do.
I would never get a (v1) Humane pin but, all things considered, is a somewhat decent product that had to go through it's mandatory share of R&D, product design, manufacturing, etc...
One thing is to provide a review like "you know these are the current limitations of the thing, etc..." another one is to just bash it like a spoiled child. Marques has spoken much more favorably of much worse performing products.
Anyway if you want the moralestapia's review of Humane, I think it opened up a new category of products and it's pretty decent for a first release. It doesn't give me any benefit over a regular smartphone right now, but I can definitely see hundreds of millions of these devices being worn by people (and dogs and whatnot) in the next decade (maybe not from Humane, who knows). I also really like the idea of "Ambient Computing", they did not create it but they embraced it, and that is quite nice.
Good lord, so many people I'd have to avoid being around. I really hate this future we're building.
Humane shipped dog shit and got dog shit reviews. Big deal.
Sympathy for them is profoundly misplaced: they tried to dump a bag on the public, and you're getting mad at the people pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.
The current limitations seem to be that it doesn’t work?
He did say that the product had potential, if it achieved its own vision. But also reviewers fairly review the product at hand, not what the product could evolve to be.
Definitely not a price people are looking to pay for something that might be useful someday
But for $700 up front, and $24/month, you think Humane "did not deserve" a bad review? For $700 and a subscription, one does not get to be "aspirational", that shit better work. Apple released a device 17 years ago for very similar pricing, the world thought it would flop, and that device actually worked as advertised.
> the world thought it would flop
My personal bubble was absolutely raving about the iPhone. (Although I personally was heavily flirting with the Palm Pre at the time)
But a quick flip to another Wikipedia page says it received mostly positive reviews, so maybe my bubble needs recalibrating. :-)
By "that", do you mean, "an honest assessment of the product that is being sold for $700 + $24/month"?
It's great that it opened up a new category of products, but you're not purchasing the category of products, you're purchasing a specific product. If that specific product does not succeed, then you don't give it an attaboy because it's a cool idea.
"the laser projector adds X more development months, X less hours of battery life, and X more costs to manufacture due to higher power needs therefore bigger battery, more heat management.. should we launch v1 without it? We can just push-notify your phone if we detect they need a display and they're reaching for their phone, they swipe notification and we take them to exactly what we were trying to show them. Or we can show it on their watch and it would serve as a forcing function for us to build out the voice UX to try and do more with voice."
"I get that we're introducing a new ux modality but shouldn't we give user's a pathway that blends between already heavily embedded habits (smartphone, watch) to ours? User's should be able to carry on existing txt conversations from their phones, call from their existing phone numbers, hear notifications from their phone, etc. In fact- these could be great hooks for us to get them used to using our natural language UX more frequently."
"I get that the device needs to look like beautiful jewelry but metal is heavier- can't we find a way to make a fully plastic enclosure look high-end?"
"Our software stack isn't ready! We can put compute and llms closer to the edge to reduce latency, train 'micro-llms' for very specific tasks that will run faster and cheaper, etc. etc."
For all of these hypothetical contentions I can equally imagine very valid reasons for choosing the paths Humane has chosen. Letting these objections always drive the product development could have resulted in a much worse outcome. There's a plethora of anecdotes about Steve Job's refusing to compromise on the many facets of the original iPhones design but if I had to guess there are less stories repeated about how many compromises he was ok with.
It's been notoriously difficult to introduce new consumer product categories- if it was easy or more obvious the Apple watch would already be at-parity with 80-90% of the features (which one would assume is what will happen in short order, watch & airpods as proxies to an embedded+edge llms on iPhone).
I can understand viewpoints from both those who are trashing the Humane ai pin and those excited about it but one thing I'm happy to see is a team of this caliber making bold moves (and a investment ecosystem to support it). With v1 out (remember, a lot of hardware startup never make it this far) and the community responding it will be interesting to see how deftly they can navigate rapidly iterating and improve the ux.
What will see, eventually, is similar devices from other companies that are not trying to build their own ecosystem but are happy to be a peripheral of an existing ecosystem. The will also probably compromise on design more to make it smaller, lighter, and cheaper. And even then it will be niche.
> And now that it has shipped, and appears poised to go down in history as an Edsel-like infamous bomb
Is there a better link I can read?
YouTuber trashes Humane AI Pin, sparks firestorm over damage to startup
Humane AI Pin: much-hyped gadget rocked by bad reviews
Humane Ai Pin Review: Too Clunky, Too Limited
Humane AI Pin review: the post-smartphone future isn’t here yet
Humane AI Pin review: not even close
The Worst Product I've Ever Reviewed... For Now
The Humane AI Pin solves nothing and makes me feel stupid
__________
Like i don't know, authors need to be able to assume their readers have some context and the ability to independently research the things that they don't understand.
To be more specific: the 3D gestures interface seems great to me. I'm not interested in the AI assistant, much less at that price point, when it's within reach of my 130€ phone. But that particular interface could be reused in a cheaper device.