Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Humane AI Pin review: not even close

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 104 posts

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#71

Post by Marsymars »

sitzkrieg wrote: post #67
paxys wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sleek and shiny. It powers on. The battery lasts. It has some unique input/output mechanisms. They have been able to solve manufacturing challenges at scale. All that should be more than enough to get it to a 4. I can imagine significantly worse devices deserving a 1 or 2.

a product that doesnt work but looks cool gets a 4? this is part of the problem. there isnt much more left to be worse

Well there are various smart watches in the "tens of dollars" range on AliExpress. Maybe The Verge could do a review of one of them?

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#72

Post by Marsymars »

jgrahamc wrote: post #30
vouaobrasil wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email on a computer? Voice and in person? A telephone that you plug into a wall?

Got it. So you don't use things like WhatsApp. I find WhatsApp and Signal incredibly useful and are probably the biggest reason I use a smart phone.

I find those useful too, but use them 99% on a desktop PC. Phone use is relegated to scenarios where there's a message that I'm expecting or need to send that can't wait until I'm home.

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#73

Post by fesc »

bronco21016 wrote: post #7

I think it’s obvious that the current crop of models are just not quite there yet. The ability to give them “tools” that interact with the things we want to interact with is just going to take time. Ideally it would be a model that just “gets it” similar to the ideas Adept AI are pursuing by interacting directly with the UI. The bigger issue with this thing though… why does it need to be its own device? It’s not goin…

Some YouTuber talked about this and I think they were pretty on point: Of course for consumers this could all happen in some app on the phone.

But a 3rd party app will always be less integrated, have less permissions than functionality included by the manufacturer.

And for all this AI integration wide access is pretty much required as you'd want it to access your photos, notes, all kind of apps, etc.

This way manufacturers would have too much leverage over companies developing that kind of AI, as they could always develop better features than them with their own AI agent.

I think Apple Watch is a pretty good example of that already. Third party watches will never be as good as Apple Watch just because Apple won't let them.

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#74

Post by TillE »

potatolicious wrote: post #27
nashadelic wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think is voice and image is pretty high density and that's the future of most/all consumer interfaces with AI, no?

Voice is very high density as an input modality , but that's a double-edged sword. It's fantastic for expressing complex requests that would otherwise be a lot of effort/time consuming on a less-information-dense interface. But voice has a higher "floor" for ease of use. It's easier to tap a button to confirm than it is to speak "Yes, ok" out loud. It's also more socially appropriate in more circumstances. The other…

The ideal form of the flight booking interaction is that it's basically a computerized travel agent. So it could theoretically ask questions or listen to your objections and refine the request that way.

That could be fine, it's probably more comfortable than using a complicated website at least for some people, but again this is a feature you stick in a phone app, not a dedicated hardware device.

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#75

Post by TillE »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #35
braymundo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a hot take: most people (hell, me included) don't want to stop using their smartphone.

Of course not, because it's an addiction. Drug users say the same.

It's a portable computer that does a bunch of useful things. I really don't understand the fraught relationship some people have with their phones. Just don't install social media apps and other time-wasters?

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#76

Post by jerlam »

ergl wrote: post #58
wepple wrote: post #3

I suspect anyone who works in tech is completely unsurprised. Sure, the tech exists to make this thing possible, but it requires an Apple-sized company to execute on it, and even then it’s utility would be doubtful There’s been a lot of pulling back on smart speakers because they’re not quite where they need to be - and this promised far far more than a smart speaker from a tiny new company. The question is: did they…

Anyone that has used Siri would tell you that not even Apple could make this work

Half of this review is my exact same experience when trying out the Apple Watch eight years ago.

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#77

Post by potatolicious »

TillE wrote: post #74
potatolicious wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice is very high density as an input modality , but that's a double-edged sword. It's fantastic for expressing complex requests that would otherwise be a lot of effort/time consuming on a less-information-dense interface. But voice has a higher "floor" for ease of use. It's easier to tap a button to confirm than it is to speak "Yes, ok" out loud. It's also more socially appropriate in more circumstances. The other…

The ideal form of the flight booking interaction is that it's basically a computerized travel agent. So it could theoretically ask questions or listen to your objections and refine the request that way. That could be fine, it's probably more comfortable than using a complicated website at least for some people, but again this is a feature you stick in a phone app, not a dedicated hardware device.

> "The ideal form of the flight booking interaction is that it's basically a computerized travel agent. So it could theoretically ask questions or listen to your objections and refine the request that way."

And that is startlingly worse as a UX than the status quo.

An agent can apply some contextual filtering to improve the initial choices offered to the user - but they can do that in a GUI as well, and I would strongly argue that's better served in a GUI than via voice.

"Given your check-in time and transit from the airport, I think the following 3 flights make sense... [painstakingly list all 3 flights verbally]."

"Oh ok uh can you say the second one again? Was that out of JFK or Newark?"

... etc. Whereas a GUI is easy to parse and presents choices side-by-side in a way that's easy to compare.

This is the dissembling I'm talking about when it comes to some LLM proponents - the idea that the user having to perceive, compare, and analyze information just goes away, poof because the agent will just... make it no longer necessary.

It's a fundamental misunderstanding of these domains and use cases.

I'll generalize my prediction a bit more: an intelligent agent applying its contextual knowledge to a GUI is likely going to be overwhelmingly better as a UX than an intelligent agent that largely interacts verbally.

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#78

Post by [deleted] »

sdenton4 wrote: post #48
wepple wrote: post #3

I suspect anyone who works in tech is completely unsurprised. Sure, the tech exists to make this thing possible, but it requires an Apple-sized company to execute on it, and even then it’s utility would be doubtful There’s been a lot of pulling back on smart speakers because they’re not quite where they need to be - and this promised far far more than a smart speaker from a tiny new company. The question is: did they…

I think they just want to advertise all the patents they filed and get bought.

[deleted]

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#79

Post by rsynnott »

paxys wrote: post #39
dbbk wrote: post #13

A 4/10 is way too high for this review, when the conclusion is it barely ever works and instead "just buy an Apple watch".

It's sleek and shiny. It powers on. The battery lasts. It has some unique input/output mechanisms. They have been able to solve manufacturing challenges at scale. All that should be more than enough to get it to a 4. I can imagine significantly worse devices deserving a 1 or 2.

Their conclusion seems to be that no-one should buy it. That, surely, should be a 0.

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#80

Post by invig »

bronco21016 wrote: post #7

I think it’s obvious that the current crop of models are just not quite there yet. The ability to give them “tools” that interact with the things we want to interact with is just going to take time. Ideally it would be a model that just “gets it” similar to the ideas Adept AI are pursuing by interacting directly with the UI. The bigger issue with this thing though… why does it need to be its own device? It’s not goin…

Apple and Google will do that, no one else will be allowed to. Even if you could get the necessary device permissions (you can't), you're going to get sherlocked and be dead next year when Apple and Google bake whatever interesting thing you did into the OS and all apps get it for free.

You're at such a disadvantage on iOS and Android that it's a fools errand to try and build that app.

Post reply on HN