Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#21

Post by threeseed » Tue, Apr 30, 2024, 3:39 AM UTC

perryizgr8 wrote: post #9

bhhaskin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Apple already have the same if not better functionality via Google assistant and Siri. The AI pin thingy is totally just a gimmick product to get funding. Just like all the other "wearables" companies out there. And teenage engineering just likes weird quirky products.

No, Google assistant and Siri are barely usable beyond setting a timer or adding a reminder. Even that does not work 100% of the time. They absolutely cannot come close to a proper LLM at all.

Google I/O is 2 weeks away. WWDC is 6 weeks away.

Both are expected to release major updates to their assistant including on-device LLM/LAM.

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#22

Post by phmqk76 » Tue, Apr 30, 2024, 3:40 AM UTC

I love how people compare products like this or Apple Vision Pro to the original iPhone to make the point that products with limited appeal can flourish into something incredibly useful. The comparison is bad. The iPhone promised to be three things: a phone, an iPod, and a web browser. And it performed these tasks well! It didn’t oversell what it was, and it was a revelation. I owned the first gen shortly after it came out, and I fell in love.

None of these products fit that bill. Hell, Apple Watch still doesn’t, nearly a decade later.

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#23

Post by monkmartinez » Tue, Apr 30, 2024, 3:41 AM UTC

It should be called the MINECRAPIFICATION of EVERYTHING!

Who knows if Notch was the first to herald in this new paradigm of half-finished products? It's the first thing that comes to mind every time I experience, read about or witness a product, service or idea that isn't quite fully baked. I say, "Self, they are just cashing in while they iterate and extend... or not."

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#24

Post by comechao » Tue, Apr 30, 2024, 3:42 AM UTC

People are developing hardware like "web 2.0" beta software to compete with Google and Apple, but I'm not sure it will work. Yeah, the fear of the walled-guarded world of phones is fair and we can see it.

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#25

Post by dagmx » Tue, Apr 30, 2024, 3:42 AM UTC

mikequinlan wrote: post #10

jsheard wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that is their hope but Siri actually developed things that Apple wanted, their speech recognition was licensed from Nuance but IIRC the natural language parsing and speech synthesis was done in-house. OTOH Rabbit and Humane seem to mostly just be haphazardly gluing third party APIs together to assemble a product that barely works. What exactly would they bring to the table in an acquisition?

Rabbit is promising their Large Action Model (LAM) software, their "rotational eye" and associated software, and maybe an AI trained on actual user conversations.

What use case does the rotational eye give it?

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#26

Post by threeseed » Tue, Apr 30, 2024, 3:46 AM UTC

mikequinlan wrote: post #10

jsheard wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that is their hope but Siri actually developed things that Apple wanted, their speech recognition was licensed from Nuance but IIRC the natural language parsing and speech synthesis was done in-house. OTOH Rabbit and Humane seem to mostly just be haphazardly gluing third party APIs together to assemble a product that barely works. What exactly would they bring to the table in an acquisition?

Rabbit is promising their Large Action Model (LAM) software, their "rotational eye" and associated software, and maybe an AI trained on actual user conversations.

Sure. But they have promised a lot and delivered very little.

And from people who have used the Rabbit the LAM concept as they have done it is unusable e.g. it was ordering from DoorDash to the wrong address / incorrect tip and they had no way to change it.

User experience is just as important as the technology.

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#27

Post by bhhaskin » Tue, Apr 30, 2024, 3:48 AM UTC

perryizgr8 wrote: post #9

bhhaskin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Apple already have the same if not better functionality via Google assistant and Siri. The AI pin thingy is totally just a gimmick product to get funding. Just like all the other "wearables" companies out there. And teenage engineering just likes weird quirky products.

No, Google assistant and Siri are barely usable beyond setting a timer or adding a reminder. Even that does not work 100% of the time. They absolutely cannot come close to a proper LLM at all.

They can do everything (and more) than what was in the video. Sure it they can't compose a email, but at least they will give you accurate information.

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#28

Post by imiric » Tue, Apr 30, 2024, 3:50 AM UTC

bhhaskin wrote: post #8

jsheard wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a product class that's racing against the clock of Google and Apple baking basically the same functionality into their operating systems and making these dedicated widgets (even more) pointless. I'm not optimistic that Google and Apples take will be significantly more useful than these half-baked attempts, but at least they won't require you to pay for and then juggle an extra device.

Google and Apple already have the same if not better functionality via Google assistant and Siri. The AI pin thingy is totally just a gimmick product to get funding. Just like all the other "wearables" companies out there. And teenage engineering just likes weird quirky products.

The current iteration of wearable tech (beyond smartwatches) might be half-baked and riding on the AI wave, but wearable computing as a field is promising.

The technology has only recently reached a point where it could rival traditional mobile computing. Dismissing the entire field based on these early attempts would be a mistake.

If anything, current smartphone leaders would be foolish to not jump at the opportunity to introduce standalone devices themselves. They eventually likely will, and will market their versions as the real innovations.

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#29

Post by add-sub-mul-div » Tue, Apr 30, 2024, 3:52 AM UTC

budududuroiu wrote: post #20

Off topic but all these LLM-pin/tool/device keep building around chat. Chat is a genuinely horrible interface for conveying information to users, but it provides a nice layer of polite plausible deniability when the response is total garbage.

Likewise, after mastering how to find answers by typing in the correct few keywords, why go backwards and use slow/ambiguous written or spoken conversation as a query language?

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#30

Post by dagmx » Tue, Apr 30, 2024, 4:02 AM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #15

jsheard wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a product class that's racing against the clock of Google and Apple baking basically the same functionality into their operating systems and making these dedicated widgets (even more) pointless. I'm not optimistic that Google and Apples take will be significantly more useful than these half-baked attempts, but at least they won't require you to pay for and then juggle an extra device.

These devices have no reason to exist. This entire device could be an app on a phone and be 500% more useful and less expensive. I understand this particular product is [edit] designed by Teenage Engineering and it's kinda what they do. But that makes it a niche product. But there is no reason for a serious product to have a screen, a camera, a speaker, and a network connection and not be a smartphone.

This product isn’t from Teenage Engineering. They were contracted to design it.