Must admit I’m surprised by the aggressiveness of it all. It’s almost like an echo chamber where people have decided it’s ok to pile on
There's no malicious intent in producing glossy promos videos of a device you know a priori does not (and cannot) work, becaue it violates a few laws of physics? I feel like some folks around here have become very innured to false advertising
But it's not a "scam" to release third-rate hardware after overhyping it. Magic Leap and many other startups did the same.
"Scam" should be reserved for actual fraudulent startups like Theranos and Outcome Health.
Not at all strange. The problem is that scam has certain meaning and if we use scam more liberally we dilute the meaning.
If every company is a scam(as almost everyone intentionally overhypes or does something similar to humane), then no company is a scam. Is google a scam as they scripted the gemini video?
That video was more of a fraud than a scam, but I think we're just splitting hairs at that point.
[1]: https://www.nps.gov/teachers/classrooms/the-wright-brothers-...
>Digital Library, “birds of a feather” identified inside sea of information so communities and groups could be tracked in an organized way
"Highlands Forum", DLI (NSF, NASA and DARPA), MDDS program, In-Q-Tel etc
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...
Language is not something you can manipulate so easily and you absolutely cannot fight language changing, but also I promise that no one is diluting the meaning "scam".
But like sure, tilt at that windmill.
They're all scammers.
is it incredibly bad at doing such things? yes.
is a smartphone a much better device at doing all the things the AI pin does? yes as well.
So i wouldn't call it a scam, its just a bad product.
And I can't trust that site. An example:
3,129 days since Elon Musk said Teslas would have 1,000 kilometer (621 mile) range within a year or two. (9/23/2015)
"My guess is probably we could break 1,000 kilometers within a year or two. I'd say 2017 for sure."
Q: When will we break the 1000km range mark for an electric car?
M: A thousand kilometers, hmm. Well, it depends under what circumstances for a thousand kilometers. As it is, the record right now for Model S is 800 km. That is the furthest that anyone has driven a Model S...
Q: So we could be close?
M: Yeah, we're pretty close. Now, in order to do that they did drive at a relatively slow speed. So, you know, we're taking, I think they drove maybe at 40 or 50 km/h or something like that. But I think, my guess is probably we could break a 1000km within... a year or two?
Q: Okay, so within 2016 maybe even?
M: I say if you say 2017 I'd say 2017 for sure.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl5vLC3Xlgc&feature=youtu.be...
2: https://electrek.co/2017/08/04/a-tesla-model-s-100d-just-dro...
As one of those people, it's pretty bad, especially at navigation which Navigate on Autopilot was very good at
Can't wait for his BS about record number of activations this quarter after he force activated it on the fleet
That said, if it weren't for all the lies and hype, we'd probably all be blown away by what it can do
If you sell someone a cherry pie to be delivered tomorrow, take nearly a decade, and end up handing them a bag of cherries and a dusting of flour with a label of "cherry pie" on it, you didn't meet your promises.
It's one of the number one reasons I'd never work for him. Every failure is your fault and every success is his. Yet all he contributes is tweets
Musk is a lazy ketamine addict. He doesn't do anything other than tweet at himself from his alt accounts and fail upward, disproving meritocracy in the process.
> Why don’t you think it’s fair or accurate to credit founders with the work their companies do?
Also do you have any evidence for the either of the two attacks on Musk?
It's the random people constantly looking for excuses to not believe his successes ("he doesn'thave much to do with SpaceX" or "he stole Tesla"), as well as idiotic article headlines ("Elon Musk's SpaceX does X" etc) that have made up those ideas.
- he can identify incredibly good companies and products, and (usually) is able to lift them up, fund them, and leave them mostly be. It's not him running Tesla day-to-day (nor was tesla started by him), nor is it him running SpaceX, nor...
- at the same time, everything that he's involved in directly is just abysmally stupid
Also I doubt Musk had much to do with the brain implant other than being someone to push people forward and being a bag of money for it. Did he design the implant? Did he insert it? Did he code it?
Probably most people are sad he went from cool sci-fi CEO to weird divorced dad energy on bird website CEO.
He places a lot of bets, though, and that some of those bets may pay off in no way takes away from the fact that he engages in pretty scammy behavior.
In my view, his SOP is pretty much exactly what Theranos tried to do: fake it (scam) until you make it.
3,129 days since Elon Musk said Teslas would have 1,000 kilometer (621 mile) range within a year or two. (9/23/2015)
"My guess is probably we could break 1,000 kilometers within a year or two. I'd say 2017 for sure."
Q: When will we break the 1000km range mark for an electric car?
M: A thousand kilometers, hmm. Well, it depends under what circumstances for a thousand kilometers. As it is, the record right now for Model S is 800 km. That is the furthest that anyone has driven a Model S...
Q: So we could be close?
M: Yeah, we're pretty close. Now, in order to do that they did drive at a relatively slow speed. So, you know, we're taking, I think they drove maybe at 40 or 50 km/h or something like that. But I think, my guess is probably we could break a 1000km within... a year or two?
Q: Okay, so within 2016 maybe even?
M: I say if you say 2017 I'd say 2017 for sure.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl5vLC3Xlgc&feature=youtu.be...
2: https://electrek.co/2017/08/04/a-tesla-model-s-100d-just-dro...
One hypermiler reporting a long range under perfect conditions is not how any normal buyer is going to interpret that claim.
If one wants to lie by twisting what he said, what happened or putting purposefully out of context to gain clicks or drive up hate against the guy, that is another thing. You should not do that. Nowhere he said what the site or you are implying.
I'm tired how people are getting radicalized because they hear absurd things ("pizzagate") and instead of doubting it they believe it and become outraged. If you actually hear people talking, they are usually much more reasonable than what they seem if you just take a few of the most negative phrases out of context.
It takes a lot of effort to undo fake news. A few more examples from that website:
"Rocket Fuel Solves Climate Change", an absurd extrapolation on what was probably a tweet about ISRU for Mars.
And this juxtaposition that makes you think he just sold what was paid to them, when instead it is 10% of what they had bought previously if you actually follow the link:
Hodl [Link]
1,120 days since Elon Musk promised to hold bitcoin instead converting it. (3/24/2021)
"Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency."
Elon Musk in a Tweet
1,087 days since Elon Musk converted $272 million to fiat currency. (4/26/2021)
As reported by Nate DiCamillo in yahoo! finance
If you're claiming things about your product or service that aren't true (even if they may become true eventually), and especially if you're faking evidence to support your lies, you're scamming.
Humane AI would never have been able to raise 230+ million had they been truthful about what could be built with the current state of technology. Did the investors understand that you have to recharge the Humane Pin every 2 hours? Did the investors know their laser projection press photos are photoshopped? Did the investors know the laser projector doesn't meet the advertised resolution? The Humane Pin is science fiction.
In many ways the Humane Pin is like Theranos. Holmes probably didn't mean to defraud people. She just raised money for a product that couldn't be built with the current state of technology.
But then, I'm not a VC. I guess they go off vibes?
Get one person to fall for 'just trust me bro' and the hype train follows.
Then she should've stopped at some point. But she didn't. She kept on making claims that she must have known were not truthful. At that point, at the latest, "didn't mean to" becomes a bit of a hollow word.
No one is literally saying that an individual contributor at Humane is a "scammer" just because they happened to have worked on a project that arguably takes perfectly good sand and subtracts value from it. That happens. A lot. Sometimes you intend to make a product, and you end up working on an empty product-shaped object. Heck, sometimes, say in healthcare, the drug or device you hoped would help people not only does nothing, but actually causes harm. That doesn't mean you were foolish to have started work, but simply because you started with "good intentions" doesn't mean a product belongs on the market.
Humane is charging $700 for a device with $24 monthly subscriptions. If someone thinks that such an offering is worthless, or nearly so, it is hardly surprising if they use "aggressive" language to warn people away.
If there is anything unusual or unsettling it is that some people in tech seem to feel that it is "unethical" to treat tech companies as anything less than bold innovators, irrespective of what that they ship. If someone is despairing over past week's discourse, one only can imagine how they'd deal with something like Apple's "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" commercials.
That triggers a bunch of memes, from emperor’s new clothes to pride before a fall. Add in a general societal distrust of tech and AI, plus the age-old derision for geeks/nerds, and Humane could not have set themselves up better for fiasco if they had tried.
I do think it was all well meaning and earnest, not at all a scam. But their over-the-top marketing for v1 of an experimental tech gadget was really clueless.
Segway walked so Humane could run.
As a college student I remember the lead up to the Segway reveal on Good Morning America. I was so excited for it that I set my alarm for 6AM to watch it. I remember being so confused and annoyed. Fool me once...
https://www.wired.com/2001/01/ginger-may-be-motorized-scoote...
No.
Their PR and marketing was AWFUL to build the level of hype they did around the product they released.
If you're releasing a scooter for mall cops and tourists you don't go on Good Morning America to advertise it as a world-changing technology.
They advertised the release of a world-changing technology and released nothing like that.
Takes me back to a time when you were still able to shroud things with mystique and excitement. The Matrix, Blair Witch Project, and the PlayStation 2 with the emotion engine were all larger than life. Cloverfield was the last of that kind.
But it is something novel that requires serious research. Even if the result is disappointing, it is novel enough to not make the it a “scam using old te vc projection”. That was the point of my rhetorical question before.
I am defining “serious for a consumer product company”. Putting that in a small device seems quite a feat.
If you define “serious” as “particles colliding” or “drugs that cure some type of cancer”, then no.
Keep in mind that I am using “serious” as opposed to “scammy”. I thin this pin is far from a scam.
You speak with such confidence. Always a reliable red flag that you don’t know what you are talking about.
Instead of pitching a practical and attainable product, one has to aim for the moon in order to get the VC $$$$. The wilder, the better.
Call me crazy, but as a society we’ve decided that “possible” is too boring.
While many VC funded companies only want to get bought out (instead of actually being a freestanding successful company), I strongly feel there are a sizable subsection of “founders” that don’t even want to get bought out…
They only just want to play the game and collect high salaries along the way…
Sadly, they aren’t even to blame. Too many Fortune-50 executives just try not to embarrass themselves long enough to collect insane levels of compensation.
Is a wonder that VC founders do the same?
Too many startups are really just “playing house” — really flashy website, monochrome headshots of executive team, multiple officies, plethora of partner logos… Only missing substance and a real product.
Like how phone scammers are often themselves trapt in a system beyond their control [1].
Or even case in point with this thing. Maybe the owners aren't malicious, but if not, they are clearly somewhat being scammed themselves by AI hype, to the point they are willing to invest so much in the chatbot box, tie their entire business presumably to one current API or another, however bad an idea we know that is.
There are just many long chains of debt, confusion, hyperstition that are knotting around us, with no clear source. One person's scam turns into another's "innovation" before turning again back into a scam for the end user.
If we are really getting ready for the AI future, we need to get used to being wronged and taken advantage of by technically blameless entities, whose intent is logical, capitalist, and at least nominatively "benevolent."
The era of morality itself might soon turn to something else! In a world so predetermined and calculated, where there is such advanced science around influencing thought, cybernetics, etc, how does it even make sense anymore? Or at least, how is focusing on something like intent here even satisfying anymore beyond saying "bad people do bad things"?
1. https://www.propublica.org/article/human-traffickers-force-v...
> Humane’s website and other promotional material have a series of fake still images (“Photoshopped” images overlayed on hands). While even these pictures are pretty low-resolution (much less than a true 720p image), they turn out to be much better than what is seen in the videos of the Humane projector.
Now they are getting the Fisker treatment.
The hardware itself seems to be decent-ish, albeit suffering from the usual first-gen issues. The AI-focused software stack is currently quite bad, but software is easy to update. Pair it with a smartphone, allow 3rd party apps, and it's essentially an alternative to a smartwatch. You lose the screen, but you gain a camera. I'd probably be quite tempted to buy a gen2 myself, even if all the AI stuff doesn't work out.
This seems to be a really common occurrence recently - I know the internet can be mean, I've been on it since the peak of IRC, but it seems way more intense these days. The moment something is marked as the bad thing, hordes of people absolutely pile onto it out of nowhere.
Is this something I've just not noticed, a more people online thing, long term effects of covid (the virus itself and/or the lockdowns), a result of whatever algorithm tweaks Elon has been making, are people just pissed off in general, etc?
It feels bizarre how aggro the internet has become!
I think psychology might call this Splitting, which honestly seems to describe the business model of social media platforms these days too, so maybe there's a connection there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)
Off topic but using as an example of this: This tweeted photo, showing a pub in the UK that allows dogs, but bans children. Bit edgy, sure, but look at the bloodbath in the replies/quotes! It's absolute chaos!
This isn’t “out of nowhere”. Humane and their AI pin have been marketed an d talked an kur all over Internet tech spaces for a very long time. I’ve been seeing talk about the Humane AI pin in these same channels (YouTube, Twitter, tech websites) frequently since they were funded.
People have been forming opinions and skepticism for a long time. The key thing that changed is that the product finally transitioned from hypothetical to reality, and suddenly everyone’s thoughts were confirmed all at once.
This is nothing like your photo of a pub getting talked about on Twitter for a brief moment. AI and AI hardware have been a hot topic for years and Humane has been pushing marketing materials and demos on social media for a long time.
They made themselves the center of the conversation. Now the rubber hits the road and they have to deal with being the center of the conversation without having the substance to back up their big social media push.
The real mob mentality is all of the people who are arriving late to this multi-year buildup and trying to scorn the reviewers and critics.
Hype artists and bad faith actors thrive on amnesiac audiences, and it’s about time we were all a bit less credulous.
Putting this one down to "words are lossy compression for thoughts"