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Why Would I Buy This Useless, Evil Thing?

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Re: Why Would I Buy This Useless, Evil Thing?

#71

Post by chewmieser »

threetonesun wrote: post #51
chewmieser wrote: post #39

There really isn't anything of substance in this article. Just a low-quality complaint about AI and AI devices with such hot-takes as: > You will notice that many of these tasks are just interacting with the lazy Silicon Valley dipshit treat ecosystem that already exists. Honestly I'm hesitant about AI devices as well but dismissing it entirely is very Luddite-like. Will these smart AI devices succeed? Who knows... I…

I think it's correct to say it is Luddite like to complain about a worse interface to the pocket computers we all already carry. As the article correctly states - what's the point? Why waste resources building these weird little AI gadgets that could be reduced to an app on all the devices we already have. I mean, I get it, someone thinks they're going to be the AI iPhone and become the next Apple. What I think they'…

Have you ever seen anyone struggle to even use an iPhone? I have. These interfaces aren't completely natural enough for everyone to grok. As I stated, I saw a potential use-case with the illiterate - tech or otherwise. I think this is valid reason enough, but not everything has to be some major innovation vs the previous one.

This is a startup and tech community. What's the point of Dropbox when "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem"?

Just because there's alternatives doesn't mean this product doesn't have a space in the market.

Re: Why Would I Buy This Useless, Evil Thing?

#72

Post by sindriava »

karaterobot wrote: post #64
spanktheuser wrote: post #49

For those of you who argue that a device like this is useless I urge you to visit someone with Parkisons, essential tremors, ALS, rheumatoid arthritis, limb injuries etc as well as very low vision and observe the difficulty they have interacting with the vision + multi-touch interface of their phones.

Nice, you pulled out the "but think about disabled people" tactic, that's usually a conversation ender. Unfortunately, that's not who they are selling this $1000 device that mimics the existing capabilities of a phone to, based on their marketing.

This device is $199, stop lying.

Re: Why Would I Buy This Useless, Evil Thing?

#73

Post by izzydata »

SavageBeast wrote: post #8

It seems to me the author of this article is going to have a tough time in the coming brave new world. I do love the writing style and wit though and Im even inclined to agree. Still, AI-ALL-THE-THINGS is coming. Imagine a Siri/Alexa that actually DOES STUFF.

Actually doing stuff wrong is a whole lot worse than doing nothing at all. False positives for work that actually matters are not acceptable. In the world of move fast and break stuff style innovation like this device seems to be especially at this price point is bound to be disappointing.

For me to trust this it would need some kind of Lockheed Martin style engineering and 4 decades of development with mathematical proofs that it works and can't not work.

But in the end the device would cost $50,000 and be 35 years out of date.

Re: Why Would I Buy This Useless, Evil Thing?

#74

Post by rsynnott »

gnfargbl wrote: post #57

> (Takes picture of the contents of his fridge.) This is what I have in the fridge, can you make me a nice dish that’s low in calories? (It then pulls up a recipe without citing its source.) That sounds like... something that would make my life slightly better, in a non-essential but desirable way. Can my phone do this already? When will it be able to do it?

LLMs are, generally, _not good_ at making up recipes. Like, very not good.

Re: Why Would I Buy This Useless, Evil Thing?

#75

Post by mikestew »

spanktheuser wrote: post #49

For those of you who argue that a device like this is useless I urge you to visit someone with Parkisons, essential tremors, ALS, rheumatoid arthritis, limb injuries etc as well as very low vision and observe the difficulty they have interacting with the vision + multi-touch interface of their phones.

Did you miss the part of the article where the complaint is that current voice assistants already do just about everything that was demonstrated? "Play some music. Who performed this song?".

I'll stand by the argument that the device is useless, because it does not appear to bring anything new to the table, "think of the children^Wdisabled" arguments aside.

Re: Why Would I Buy This Useless, Evil Thing?

#76

Post by rsynnott »

SavageBeast wrote: post #8

It seems to me the author of this article is going to have a tough time in the coming brave new world. I do love the writing style and wit though and Im even inclined to agree. Still, AI-ALL-THE-THINGS is coming. Imagine a Siri/Alexa that actually DOES STUFF.

> in the coming brave new world

I think you're making a lot of assumptions about how all this stuff works out, tbh. I'm kind of assuming it'll be like the last three AI bubbles (that time in the late 90s when voice was going to be your primary interface to Windows vNext, the self-driving car/CV hype early last decade, and the brief chatbot mania of 2016 that was killed off with extreme prejudice by Microsoft Tay); much sound and fury, but probably rather limited lasting effects once the dust settles.

Like, it seems rather unlikely to me that that main way people book holidays in a decade will be by talking to a machine and having it select hotels and 'cool SUVs' (trick question, no such thing) for them. If nothing else, it is unclear how this would be meaningfully different from just choosing the first hotel from Expedia/whatever matching the search filter.

Re: Why Would I Buy This Useless, Evil Thing?

#77

Post by cfr2023 »

Someone wrote: post #60
cfr2023 wrote: post #34

I dislike and object to the scope of this device as much as the author. It's not a popular view, but I hope Teenage Engineering is acquired by a very large company soon so that they can be relegated to functioning somewhere as a harmless novelty devision. This way they will get a big pay day and be treated like a prize, while their influence to create proprietary devices for the landfill is effectively quashed.

> I hope Teenage Engineering is acquired by a very large company soon so that they can be relegated to functioning somewhere as a harmless novelty devision. I don’t think that’s a common outcome of being “acquired by a very large company”. Very large companies tend to only run large projects, even if they run them as hobbies. They simply cannot have small divisions. As a simple example, if BigCo made this thing, they…

Worthy considerations

Re: Why Would I Buy This Useless, Evil Thing?

#78

Post by SleepilyLimping »

chewmieser wrote: post #39

There really isn't anything of substance in this article. Just a low-quality complaint about AI and AI devices with such hot-takes as: > You will notice that many of these tasks are just interacting with the lazy Silicon Valley dipshit treat ecosystem that already exists. Honestly I'm hesitant about AI devices as well but dismissing it entirely is very Luddite-like. Will these smart AI devices succeed? Who knows... I…

This site is a bunch of ex-Gawker, ex-Vox and ex-Vice people submitting articles en masse to places like Reddit and HN. Why would it have anything of substance?

Re: Why Would I Buy This Useless, Evil Thing?

#79

Post by speps »

TomMasz wrote: post #30
thinkingemote wrote: post #5

Teenage Engineering does interesting and good work. Similar to Kano, they have very good modern design ideas and they produce actual devices. That's the best thing about this useless evil thing. It exists in the world and can provide inspiration for others to work on. Another positive-ish thing to say would be is that this device is likely going to increase in value. Not because its popular but because it is going to…

Their Pocket Operators are great although, as the article points out, the rest of their audio products are incredibly expensive for what you get.

The PO are still expensive for the hardware they have and the UX leaves a lot to be desired...
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