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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

It's amazing how (based on polls, like https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/polling-reveals-th...) the public dislikes it when it's shoved down its throat in unrelated programs and products (as opposed to them explicitly using an LLM or content generation program), but companies keep shoving it and even making a big deal out of doing so.

Perhaps the best thing about 2026 Apple is how "behind" they are in "AI Integration". And even them have shoved useless features like "Image Playground" on us.

Anyway, time to find another peripherals vendor.

Who asked for AI on hubs and chargers?

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> Traditional call noise canceling relies on those small onboard neural networks and can have difficulty isolating your voice in very noisy environments, which results in ambient noise leaking through or voices getting highly compressed, making it difficult to hear. Anker says the larger neural network available on the Thus chip, plus eight MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) microphones and two bone conduction sensors to focus in on your voice, in its yet-to-be-announced earbuds will have significantly cleaner call audio, regardless of the environment.

Anyone who likes good noise cancellation, which is a lot of people.

Back in the day we just called it ML. But now you have to stop for a minute to read and determine what they’re talking about, because “AI” is primarily a marketing term.

Early in the article it explains that these devices already had small neural nets on board. The advancement is that they can now put larger neural nets on board.

The best noise cancellation has to be adaptive. Neural nets help this work well. If making the product work well is "shoving it down your throat" then I don't know what to say.

The public presumably didn't hate the products before this chip and before knowing they had some form of AI on board.

> Anyway, time to find another peripherals vendor.

Why? You don't even understand what the AI functionality is for or the fact that it already existed. You just get triggered by reading articles like this?

>Why? You don't even understand what the AI functionality is for or the fact that it already existed. You just get triggered by reading articles like this?

Because if it this is just adaptive NC using some NN, I still dislike vendors using terms like "AI" to jump on the bandwagon.

And of course because I already have a huge adversion to actual generative AI shoved down my throat in products I use, including macOS/iOS (thankfully lesser), and Windows/Office (much more), and content creation programs.

And don't get me started on generative AI slop shoved down my throat in HN submissions, YouTube, and every major platform, from X to Substack, and even into places it should never have even touched, like Art Technica, which I've been reading for a quarter of a century.

So, yes, excuuuuuuse me, for not liking such announcements, even if they're not about generative AI.

According to the article, it's used for noise cancelling and calling that can better isolate voice from background noise. It's not an AI assistant or an LLM. These are totally different and the public's feelings on LLMs do not apply to their feelings on active noise cancelling.

They're not putting them on hubs and chargers, Anker make more than that. In the article it says that they're being used first in earbuds.

I distinctly remember a comment chain here, I think from last year, where someone made a remark they would never implement AI features, they wouldn't touch that tech "with a 10 foot pole" because of the public perception and backlash. Another comment immediately chimed in with skepticism about the general public having a negative view of AI.

I genuinely believe that the people pushing these features live in an algorithmic bubble. The internet supposedly connects us all, but I have to wonder how much hidden segregation goes on behind the scenes.

VCs

> Who asked for AI on hubs and chargers?

USB-C and hdmi cable issues are right up there as causes of frustration for me. But me day the external minute works, next it doesn’t.

Having cables fail in new and unexpected ways with AI sounds amazing.

AI is polarizing.

The rest of the world outside of the US and Europe loves AI. China is embracing it fully.

Why is our Western media making the public hate it so much? It's almost as if it's a top down edict from all the news giants to constantly dump on AI and make it sound like it'll kill you.

If we maintain this view, we're going to get steamrolled. And we'll have deserved it.

It isn't needed in every device. I don't need ai in a plug, or in a charging bank. I am perfectly capable of making a decision myself. I can use a piece of software without AI being helpful. Often I just want easy to use items that I have full control over and this lumping AI into everything is removing that.

It kind of seems the opposite to me. I'm seeing so much marketing budget and and positive media exposure. It's the people that don't like it because of what it is and what it represents.

I would love to see this supposed "positive media exposure".

All I see are doom and gloom forecasts, "bubble" talk, and how bad it is for the environment.

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