Friend.com – The Virtual Friend | Hacker News Reader

Friend.com – The Virtual Friend

friend.com

47 pointsblackdogie37 comments

When I saw the video I thought it was a parody. I'm still not sure if this is joke or not. It seems like a lot of effort for something like this and a strange use of the domain name. The T&C's look official enough. I did find this news piece "Avi Schiffmann’s Tab AI necklace has raised $1.9 million to replace God" https://www.fastcompany.com/91007630/avi-schiffmanns-tab-ai-...

Wait, so they raised $1,900,000 and spent $1,800,000 on the domain? https://x.com/AviSchiffmann/status/1818289810647191685

Maybe interest rates could still go higher

It is an asset that might be worth more later though so there is that. It is not $1.9m on an ad.

That said tryfriend.ai is available :)

Looks like they dropped the always-listening part and this iteration is push to talk.

According to the FAQ it's still always-listening.

https://www.friend.com/product.html

I can't fathom how much that domain must have cost

$1.8 Million, according to the founder.

https://nitter.poast.org/AviSchiffmann/status/18182898106471...

https://x.com/AviSchiffmann/status/1818289810647191685

I'm excited to see how this ends up like the rabbit r1, completely crashing and burning. This is going to be a trainwreck, there is no chance that the on-board AI works well and even if it did exactly zero people want this....

How out of touch do you have to be to think this is a product anyone would ever want near them? This is such a horrible idea I don't even have the correct words to describe it.

> What happens when I break the device?

> Your friend and their memories are attached to the physical device. If you lose or damage your friend there is no recovery plan.

Surely this is some kind of performance art.

I saw that and I thought it was kind of interesting since that suggests they're doing local inference. Funnily enough, it requires an internet connection, and stores as much information as they can process remotely according to their FAQ.

I feel like I'm in the target demographic for something like this. I want my phone to be worse. I don't want to look at my phone as much as I do. The fact that I can't use this without a phone makes it a non-starter for me.

If it runs out of battery power, does it die?

"My Friend is brain dead..."

I thought we already went down this rabbit hole. Do we need snarky responses from an LLM?

it's funny that yc's motto is (where I see these posts) 'make something people want' and launch after launch in the ai/crypto/metaverse era, I just don't see it. Or it's simply me who is out of touch

You got it wrong, I'm pretty sure the motto is "make people want something"

Interesting how much this undersells the product. I really thought I wanted it when I saw Avi's tweets about using his prototypes, where (for instance) it was coaching him on delivery and tone during a meeting. This proposition—just as a virtual friend—feels extremely on the nose in this era of tech, like we're just inviting "Her" to happen.

I'm still keeping my preorder, but I'm a bit more cautious.

Coincidence with Based Hardware's Friend name? https://basedhardware.com/

No it's a conscious and laughable attempt of theft

It's actually the complete opposite: https://x.com/AviSchiffmann/status/1818460679680278709

Funny, he got his come up from stealing someone else's work. Something about rotating tables...

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/covid-tracker-stole-reddit-wo...

On one hand, I'm hesitant to underrate another person's effort, knowing that months of effort went into this. on the other, I don't see this gadget producing the level of synchrony needed to maintain real-time convos.

Not all effort is worthwhile. I have to assume someone tried to bring it up and was silenced, or there was a culture where no negativity was allowed, letting bad ideas move forward without being challenged.

Even if it can respond in real-time, the responses seem to come back on the user’s phone. I thought AI hardware was being designed to let people pick up their phone less. This does the opposite. And if the user needs to pick up their phone anyway to read the reply, why not start the interaction from the phone?

It seems like this device would require something like AirPods, with message announcements, to make it more conversational. However, with the unprompted messages it sometimes sent, that could also be intrusive. Not to mention, having headphones in all day would get old fast.

Figuring out and delivering the real AI use case for the average person, beyond what is obvious today, will likely take years of effort, not months.

> or there was a culture where no negativity was allowed, letting bad ideas move forward without being challenged.

I mean, that’s the current AI bubble in a nutshell. It has ‘AI’ in the name, therefore it would be most improper to ask the emperor about his tailor.

And like, even if this somehow worked, and some people thought they wanted it, it would be a bad product. If I notice that the person I’m talking to is wearing a 24/7 surveillance device, I’ll, er, talk to someone else. It’s social pariah-hood in a box.

This, cannot be real.

Why was this not abandoned immediately as soon as the AI Pin and the Rabbit thing failed miserably.

Putting aside the questionable (and frankly dystopian) side of using AI for something like this, Apple, Google, and Microsoft are all building LLM's into their OS's. It would take, a day, maybe? to tweak the system prompt to do exactly what this is doing but built into your OS and not some other unnecessary hardware.

Also the product page is, kinda cringe. Like they somehow turned the time it takes for an LLM to process into part of the Marketing with "Pause" "Your friend will think for a moment and come up with something good to say".

This has to be a joke? Please, someone tell me this is a joke.

Also "Always Listening". For the love of god how do people think that is a good idea. Hope no one wears this to work and it hears and processes something that is non public information. I wouldn't trust the privacy with this one bit.

Edit:

The tagline "not imaginary", I am at a loss for words on that one. Thats... what is wrong with people.

Not only that, but if you have one then it's listening to me too. It's insane that people want a faceless blob that tracks everything or anyone around you does and creates a dossier (that can be sold or abused).

AI is at a point where unless there is another breakthrough they need orders of magnitude more fresh raw data to improve the models. Everything everywhere all the time. They don't just want it, they need it to grow.

SLAP a smile on that microphone and people will eat it like candy.

I feel like this is one of those, interesting in theory but practically there are major privacy concerns.

I mean I am not going to pretend that in its purist form, if there was something always listening and could chime in in at the right time with some contextual information or later on I could ask it a question about something that happened. That it would not be valuable. Think that Disney Smart House movie or Star Trek.

Like I said, in its purest form. If it somehow magically worked, no privacy issues, no data collection, all local, actually would reason unlike LLM's, etc etc etc. Like it sounds like a genuinely useful tool.

But, it falls apart as soon as we recognize that all of these tools are just going to he hovering up all of this data, privacy is non existent regardless of what they claim, and ultimately since we live in a capitalist society we can't just assume that this will only benefit us. It will be a weak point for any number of nefarious purposes.

Maybe one day we can truly have some tech like this that really truly acts like a second brain basically, to remember all the things that we maybe didn't process, didn't write down, whatever. But while I am sure we have the tech to do it, at least to some basic degree with LLM's. There are too many other reasons the tech is also not suitable for exactly this task.

> Hope no one wears this to work and it hears and processes something that is non public information.

Or interpersonal communications. I know that I would be extremely circumspect about what I'd be willing to say near someone wearing something like this, even (or especially) if that someone is a close friend.

Your "Friend" is the NSA unless this is all done on device.

fuck, how much is that domain worth? Was the thought process, we've had this multi million dollar domain for 20 years, we better build a product for it.

That's a spendy domain for performance art. At least, I hope it's performance art.

This is sad.

countdown til the android app running on the custom hardware is leaked

Nah, this is probably more just a Bluetooth audio device that heavily relies on an app to do the lifting.

What I want to know is how much money they have raised.

I read $2.8m

Jesus Christ on a plastic sign.

Pre-release, release, server shutdown, next business

Before we all hate, our parents probably thought our Digimons were ridiculous!

P.s I'm still going to hate

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