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The Humane AI Pin Launches Its Campaign to Replace Phones

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Re: The Humane AI Pin Launches Its Campaign to Replace Phones

#131

My gut tells me this is going to crash and burn in a hilarious way. Not only is it worse than holding a smartphone while being less useful, street kids are going to pull these off people at a phenomenal rate, leaving people with just unhappy memories alongside a battery pack swimming somewhere inside their jumper.

> street kids are going to pull these off people at a phenomenal rate, leaving people with just unhappy memories alongside a battery pack swimming somewhere inside their jumper.

I can't believe I didn't think of this.

Imagine a dev conference for these things... The first headline would be "Humane AI Pin Developers Cleaned Out". A group of bad actors could (would) just run down a line/through a room and snatch these one after the other with nothing more than a weak magnet slowing them down.

Yes they can be locked down but even with Apple and Google-level measures implemented over the years phones still get stolen to be sent to China (or wherever) and parted out for pennies on the dollar for the thief. There's also the usual problem of a lot of this being opportunity/impulse crime and a lot of criminals are just going to think "I don't know what that is, looks expensive", grab it, and see what they can get for it later.

This is probably the best example of the "Silicon Valley elites in their bubble disconnected from the real world" tropes that are always floating around.

Re: The Humane AI Pin Launches Its Campaign to Replace Phones

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a video demonstrating the laser display (laser part is about 3 minutes in): https://vimeo.com/882968794

Is that real or CGI? I looked at it for a long time and I didn't find any smoking gun (perhaps too much shacking, it looks like fake shacking). I've seen too many videos of Captain Disillusion, in particular https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbgvSi35n6o

Looks badly enough for me to believe it

Re: The Humane AI Pin Launches Its Campaign to Replace Phones

#133
post #114

$700 + $24/month for an uglier plastic name badge + police body camera. No thanks Also: To put on the Ai Pin involves placing a magnetic battery pack on the inside of a shirt or other piece of clothing, and letting a magnet on the Pin itself hold the system in place. It’s altogether about 55 grams, or 2 ounces, nearly the weight of a tennis ball. People with pacemakers should consult their doctors about potential mag…

imagine someone bumping into you and the battery gets slightly dislodged, your $700 does-95%-less-than-an-iphone device has now shattered on the floor

Shattering on the floor shouldn't be normal for a device you carry around. Apple fooled you into thinking glass was a premium material.

Re: The Humane AI Pin Launches Its Campaign to Replace Phones

#134
post #61

Yay privacy out of the window... AI wants to see and hear everything with access the Internet. Otherwise its hell of an interesting concept! Reminds me of the Robot Assistant in "flubber"

(i'm an investor in the company.) this is probably the most privacy-forward hardware device on the market—you have to physically be making contact with the device for it to begin listening (at which point an LED is prominently visible) and it will stop listening as soon as you break contact.

Is this done physically/electrically?

Echo devices, for example, were sold as having a "hardware mute switch" from day one. Sure enough, teardown after teardown[0] has confirmed the hardware mute switch actually physically disables the mic (cuts power to the ADC, mic lines, etc).

If this is implemented in software it's no different than a phone and worse than an Echo.

[0] - https://electronupdate.blogspot.com/2021/01/amazon-echo-flex...

Re: The Humane AI Pin Launches Its Campaign to Replace Phones

#135
post #61

Yay privacy out of the window... AI wants to see and hear everything with access the Internet. Otherwise its hell of an interesting concept! Reminds me of the Robot Assistant in "flubber"

(i'm an investor in the company.) this is probably the most privacy-forward hardware device on the market—you have to physically be making contact with the device for it to begin listening (at which point an LED is prominently visible) and it will stop listening as soon as you break contact.

That might be nice, but this simply refers to the information capture window, how about the bigger problem being all your data being beamed to OAI servers ?

Re: The Humane AI Pin Launches Its Campaign to Replace Phones

#136
I like the idea or such a thing, but the actual form factor just has Google Glass vibes. I doubt anyone wants to wear a HAL on their shirt.

It would be cool to have a personal assistant on your body capable of setting appointments, answering questions, contacting people and what not without having to look at and tap a screen. Audio interface is a fantastic use case of LLMs. But I wouldn't do it unless the device was fully hackable. FOSS software, available hardware schematics, these should be bare minimum requirements today, alas they're not. At least with Android the software is available for hacking.

I like the idea of the laser projector, there are times you need to display something visual but interfacing with a phone for that requires a phone, which negates most of the hardware requirements for the device, and interfacing with existing wireless protocols and phone UX is infeasible. It's a good stopgap while we wait for real holographic techtechnology, but only works if it is not a primary interface. The primary interface has to be voice or there's no benefit to it at all.

The form factor is unattractive. First, there's the issue that voice interaction provides no secrecy in public, just as a holographic visual interface would not, then it clips to a shirt and looks like a shoplifting prevention clothing tag with a camera. If it cannot adapt to loose clothing and moving around unpredictably it doesn't make sense to attach it to clothing and needs to be attached to the body in some way.

Socially acceptable accessories are a problem. To be candid, people want to get laid, and walking around with a helmet on your head or a small computer where your pocket protector should be get in the way of this. A watch or glasses are fine, so long as they're not overly obvious in signaling that they're a nerd toy. The problem with a watch is that you can't do the laser display thing without using up two hands. The problem with glasses is that the technology to display high resolution overlays in your field of view doesn't exist yet. The problem with the laser display concept itself is that you need a hand to use it, the same hand you could use to hold a phone with a much better display. So it doesn't really offer an advantage. This form factor is basically a phone in your shirt pocket, camera facing out, with a worse display.

I like the idea, but all in all this does less than a phone running an LLM with a Bluetooth earpiece and mic. I don't think this kind of wearable technology is going to take off until you can get a full computer into glasses that don't look silly with a good resolution display in them that can overlay on your normal field of view. That is a long way off. Even just a personal area network that puts the processing power in a bracelet or candy bar in your pocket, that is, earpiece and display glasses as accessories to existing personal computing, are not coming very soon. It's going to be a while before such wearables are viable.

Re: The Humane AI Pin Launches Its Campaign to Replace Phones

#137
I bet there is a mobile/desktop app in the pipeline.

This pin is a great input/sensing device feeding an AI which gets an incredible amount of information about the owner’s context.

Combined with an old good computer (desktop/smartphone/tablet..) this could be scary revolutionary:-)

Re: The Humane AI Pin Launches Its Campaign to Replace Phones

#138
post #61

Yay privacy out of the window... AI wants to see and hear everything with access the Internet. Otherwise its hell of an interesting concept! Reminds me of the Robot Assistant in "flubber"

(i'm an investor in the company.) this is probably the most privacy-forward hardware device on the market—you have to physically be making contact with the device for it to begin listening (at which point an LED is prominently visible) and it will stop listening as soon as you break contact.

Physically make contact as in, tap it with your hand TNG style? Or worse, hold contact with your hand? How do you project the laser display and talk without using both hands? Is the hand criss crossing difficult I'm this situation?

An LED comes on... Is it bright? Can you see it direct line of sight from your eye to your shirt without fussing with it? Is the LED just there for others to know the owner isn't recording the conversation?

Can the camera passively watch in hardware with a firmware update? Is the physical contact for audio capture in hardware or software?

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