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Humane AI Pin review: not even close

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Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#81

Post by invig »

tomgp wrote: post #62
danpalmer wrote: post #59

This and the Rabbit R1 are both trying to reduce the amount we use our phones, but I think this presents a fundamental misunderstanding of the jobs to be done on phones and how we actually use them. There are broadly two use-cases of phones: content consumption, and utility. The former sucks time to increase "engagement" and has a bunch of social issues around it, the latter does not. Both of these devices are trying…

I think there's something in this. Watching the video made me realise that my main irritations with my phone are born of the bit where I have to navigate through a minefield of distrations to add an item to my todo list, or check my calendar, or send a text message. All the "what bridge am I looking at stuff" is cute but feels like solving a problem I never really encounter. Anyway, I'm guess I'm going to try and use…

I don't want to unlock to the home screen, I want to unlock to Apple Notes or Notion or whatever your favourite flavour of notes app is.

Being allowed to replace the home screen with some app would be game changing for making the device feel helpful rather than like the little universe of chaos that is is. Let me access other things from the app switcher.

Alas, we will never be allowed to do that.

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#82

Post by MyFirstSass »

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 as a single dev who browsed r/locallama a bit the past 6 months could put together a crude small AI sys with or without say a 3b model that could:

Set an alarm,

Create a reminder,

Or even attempt some of the more advanced features like querying local business.

The fact that it can't even set an alarm or create a reminder? Like what the actual?

Solo devs are already doing way more advanced stuff than this, it doesn't even take a small startup.

What takes an Apple sized company is creating something that can access many other platforms, buy for you, put together bulletproof many step processes and execute on them safely etc. But most of these failures are like basic basic stuff.

I do not understand how they can release a product like this.

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#83

Post by MBCook »

rcarmo wrote: post #12

I'm surprised they made it so much worse than, say, Siri on an Apple Watch (which is something I've been using for years, and which might well become my only phone if Apple ever allows me to fully manage a watch from an iPad mini).

A BRAND NEW Apple Watch SE with cellular is $330 (and it goes on sale sometimes). You’ll have to add it to your cell plan which is usually $10 a month.

Siri works great for a lot of the basic use cases that didn’t work in the video. Reminders, notes, alarms, messaging. Honestly I’m guessing it would work just as well for some of the knowledge questions that they asked.

Except if you do that you get an Apple Watch. It tells the time too. It also counts your steps, tracks your heart rate, functions as an exercise/fitness tracker, does a better job of showing your notifications, can stream music from services other than Tidal, can actually show Photos and Web results and emails (although the screen is obviously tiny).

It doesn’t have a camera though.

So that’s $370 less for the device and $15 less per month? For something that already works way better? And doesn’t seem to run the risk of burning you and constantly turning itself off due to overheating?

Hey look! That’s saving enough money that you could actually buy a second Apple Watch and still come out ahead.

Wow this is a dud. I wasn’t expecting it to set the world on fire. I wasn’t even expecting it to be good. I did not imagine it would be THIS bad. The two things I use Siri for more than anything else or reminders and texting. And this thing can’t do either one.

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#85

Post by whywhywhywhy »

danpalmer wrote: post #59

This and the Rabbit R1 are both trying to reduce the amount we use our phones, but I think this presents a fundamental misunderstanding of the jobs to be done on phones and how we actually use them. There are broadly two use-cases of phones: content consumption, and utility. The former sucks time to increase "engagement" and has a bunch of social issues around it, the latter does not. Both of these devices are trying…

> because Uber are incentivised to make it easy

Yep you nailed it with that, however what do you think incentivizing success on "social networking, communication" looks like? Because it looks a lot like finding ways to increase engagement and scrolling.

I left out federation because normal people don't even know what it is and if they did they wouldn't care about it.

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#86

Post by whywhywhywhy »

sobellian wrote: post #32

Another company that raised hundreds of millions pre-PMF (indeed, pre-product) and then releasing a dud. I still remember wondering how Clinkle raised so much money. Look how far we've come since then!

I mean the team has a lot of ex-iPhone and ex-iPad people so its not like a random bet on nothing, you're betting on if part of the magic that made those products left the building with these people. Easy to say it didn't now we've seen it but still.

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#87

Post by whywhywhywhy »

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…

> why does it need to be its own device?

For AI to augment the lives of to the extend the iPhone did it's essential for it to be always on listening and able to act effortlessly.

Only Apple, Google and major android makers can deliver this experience.

There is however a window of opportunity for a team with the right talent to get there first if they're able to build their own device in time.

Apple are too privacy conscious to send all the data up to the server so we need to wait till they can build chips to do that locally or figure out a way to bend their own rules enough that makes it seem privacy focused, they also have a much weaker ML team so there is extra runway there while they choose who to acquire to fix that.

Google while extremely strong ML team its too academia brained to productize AI currently so need to wait for them to solve that, they also just suck at shipping products in general. They'll get there in the end but it's safe to say they'll only get there once someone else has shown how it should be done then they'll just clone it.

You have about 3 years before Apple solves this, so if you get yours to market and succeed in that time you capture a segment of the market before that happens.

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#88

Post by whywhywhywhy »

MBCook wrote: post #83
rcarmo wrote: post #12

I'm surprised they made it so much worse than, say, Siri on an Apple Watch (which is something I've been using for years, and which might well become my only phone if Apple ever allows me to fully manage a watch from an iPad mini).

A BRAND NEW Apple Watch SE with cellular is $330 (and it goes on sale sometimes). You’ll have to add it to your cell plan which is usually $10 a month. Siri works great for a lot of the basic use cases that didn’t work in the video. Reminders, notes, alarms, messaging. Honestly I’m guessing it would work just as well for some of the knowledge questions that they asked. Except if you do that you get an Apple Watch. It…

> Siri works great for a lot of the basic use cases that didn’t work in the video. Reminders, notes, alarms, messaging. Honestly I’m guessing it would work just as well for some of the knowledge questions that they asked.

It just doesn't or people would be using it and people wouldn't be as excited about LLMs as they are. Comparing Alexa/Siri style, it works if you know the right trigger words and how it expects you to ask the question, also just does that one thing you can't follow on and expand on it is just a completely different world to what an LLM agent can do.

Apple Watch and Siri are dead products for good reasons.

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#89

Post by danpalmer »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #85
danpalmer wrote: post #59

This and the Rabbit R1 are both trying to reduce the amount we use our phones, but I think this presents a fundamental misunderstanding of the jobs to be done on phones and how we actually use them. There are broadly two use-cases of phones: content consumption, and utility. The former sucks time to increase "engagement" and has a bunch of social issues around it, the latter does not. Both of these devices are trying…

> because Uber are incentivised to make it easy Yep you nailed it with that, however what do you think incentivizing success on "social networking, communication" looks like? Because it looks a lot like finding ways to increase engagement and scrolling. I left out federation because normal people don't even know what it is and if they did they wouldn't care about it.

I don't know exactly what success looks like in social networking and comms. I suspect it looks a lot less like Facebook/Instagram, and a lot more like WhatsApp/Telegram, anecdotally, I enjoy chatting with friends and family on WhatsApp because the conversation is the whole product. I enjoyed Path too when it was around, although never got enough of my family on it for it to properly stick.

The problem with social networking is that the only viable business model so far has been ads, and without the high-intent you get from (e.g.) search engines, you have to instead optimised for engagement and keeping people around to make it up in volume of ad delivery. At least with services the revenue isn't ads based, or is less so. There are some things in the middle like Netflix/Spotify who want you to consume more, and have some ads, but I suspect most people don't want to reduce their music listening, and are happy enough with the amount of TV they watch (at least relative to social networking where I think it's very common for people to want to consume less).

Re: Humane AI Pin review: not even close

#90

Post by ninkendo »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #88
MBCook wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A BRAND NEW Apple Watch SE with cellular is $330 (and it goes on sale sometimes). You’ll have to add it to your cell plan which is usually $10 a month. Siri works great for a lot of the basic use cases that didn’t work in the video. Reminders, notes, alarms, messaging. Honestly I’m guessing it would work just as well for some of the knowledge questions that they asked. Except if you do that you get an Apple Watch. It…

> Siri works great for a lot of the basic use cases that didn’t work in the video. Reminders, notes, alarms, messaging. Honestly I’m guessing it would work just as well for some of the knowledge questions that they asked. It just doesn't or people would be using it and people wouldn't be as excited about LLMs as they are. Comparing Alexa/Siri style, it works if you know the right trigger words and how it expects you…

> it works if you know the right trigger words and how it expects you to ask the question

I don't think we should discount this. There's something to be said for a product that works in a specific way, and if you use it in that way, it actually works. I don't need Siri to divine my hidden meaning regardless of how casually or ambiguously I phrase something... but I do want to know the phrase that works 100% of the time, and then I'll use that 100% of the time, and I'll be happy.

What I hate is how Siri fails at even that basic requirement a lot of the time. It's the worst for HomeKit scenes: "Set the scene 'In The Basement'" bounces between working and failing with an inscrutable error, release to release. Sometimes just saying "In the basement" works, other times it lists all the lights in the basement and asks me what it should do. I have a "Bed Time" scene that starts lullaby music in my kids' bedrooms, but sometimes Siri thinks "Bed Time" really means "Good Night", and turns off all of the lights in my house instead. Which is super great when my wife is in the kitchen trying to prepare things and suddenly the whole house goes dark.

For me, the biggest problem with Siri and other assistants is the opposite of what you describe: The product is sold as "natural language", which really means that it fuzzily matches what you're saying to its discrete list of features, and that fuzziness is only partially accurate, leading to broken use cases some non-zero percent of the time. LLM's are likely to be even worse here... maybe you've used a certain phrase every time you wanted it to do something, then some model update comes along and it decides to do something else with this phrase, and you'll have to constantly re-discover what works every time it updates.

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