Time Magazine's Best Inventions of 2023 Award for Humane's AI Pin

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/04/15/claim-chowder-time-humane

by mikestew • 2 years ago

56 62 2 years ago

causi2• 2 years ago

AKA "The worst product I've ever reviewed" according to Marques Brownlee.

People need to stop falling for the hype-bullshit-industrial complex. Manufactured attention is the only reason a publisher would give positive attention to a device that replicates the functionality of a bluetooth earbud at a cost of $700 plus $25 a month.

browningstreet• 2 years ago

hype-bullshit-industrial complex

I didn't get the feeling that anyone was falling for Humane's modest hype. The coverage has generally been pretty skeptical.

No one seemed to believe that Humane made a quantum leap over Alexa & Siri, which both suck.

EDITING since downvoters who didn't read the article may not know that "*(Investors in Humane include TIME co-chairs and owners Marc and Lynne Benioff)", hence, this hype was pretty fake

causi2• 2 years ago

Submitting its reception of Time's "best invention of the year" to HN is an example of someone falling for it.

moralestapia• 2 years ago

I saw that video (as everyone did) and I'm on the camp that Humane did not deserve that.

I would never get a (v1) Humane pin but, all things considered, is a somewhat decent product that had to go through it's mandatory share of R&D, product design, manufacturing, etc...

One thing is to provide a review like "you know these are the current limitations of the thing, etc..." another one is to just bash it like a spoiled child. Marques has spoken much more favorably of much worse performing products.

Anyway if you want the moralestapia's review of Humane, I think it opened up a new category of products and it's pretty decent for a first release. It doesn't give me any benefit over a regular smartphone right now, but I can definitely see hundreds of millions of these devices being worn by people (and dogs and whatnot) in the next decade (maybe not from Humane, who knows). I also really like the idea of "Ambient Computing", they did not create it but they embraced it, and that is quite nice.

JohnFen5• 2 years ago

I can definitely see hundreds of millions of these devices being worn by people (and dogs and whatnot) in the next decade

Good lord, so many people I'd have to avoid being around. I really hate this future we're building.

bevekspldnw• 2 years ago

Deserve? They are asking $700 up front and then $24/mo just to keep it working. MKBHD job is not to do PR for tech companies, it’s to tell his viewers if they should spend their hard earned cash in a product.

Humane shipped dog shit and got dog shit reviews. Big deal.

Analemma_• 2 years ago

Humane is not a scrappy little underdog. They have a quarter-billion in VC funding, more than enough to know that this product simply was not even remotely fit for purpose at this time, but they chose to release it anyway (for seven hundred dollars!), almost certainly because they wanted to get some sucker dollars while the AI hype wave was at its peak.

Sympathy for them is profoundly misplaced: they tried to dump a bag on the public, and you're getting mad at the people pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.

vineyardmike2• 2 years ago

One thing is to provide a review like "you know these are the current limitations of the thing, etc..."

The current limitations seem to be that it doesn’t work?

He did say that the product had potential, if it achieved its own vision. But also reviewers fairly review the product at hand, not what the product could evolve to be.

mikestew5• 2 years ago

It doesn't give me any benefit over a regular smartphone right now...

But for $700 up front, and $24/month, you think Humane "did not deserve" a bad review? For $700 and a subscription, one does not get to be "aspirational", that shit better work. Apple released a device 17 years ago for very similar pricing, the world thought it would flop, and that device actually worked as advertised.

bryanlarsen• 2 years ago

MKB's review may be beneficial for them in the end by establishing a low baseline. In comparison to the MKB review of V1, V2 and V3 reviews may be glowing and help sell product.

mcphage• 2 years ago

I'm on the camp that Humane did not deserve that.

By "that", do you mean, "an honest assessment of the product that is being sold for $700 + $24/month"?

It's great that it opened up a new category of products, but you're not purchasing the category of products, you're purchasing a specific product. If that specific product does not succeed, then you don't give it an attaboy because it's a cool idea.

m3kw9• 2 years ago

GPT3.5 turbo wrappers are gonna get steamrolled

drexlspivey• 2 years ago

They must be using at least GPT4.5 since it can see images right?

ben_w2• 2 years ago

It reminds me of the Segway: Lots of hype, "meh" reaction for the reality…

…but 20 years later, our cities were changed by the widespread arrival of cheap two-wheeled battery powered personal transport devices with almost the same footprint and handle post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorized_scooter#E-scooters

And now I think about it, I recon a Segway would solve several of the problems that e-scooters have.

If we've not all been turned into paperclips and/or got chips in our brains and/or global thermonuclear war, I can believe the tech improves to enable the hype.

rrr_oh_man4• 2 years ago

And now I think about it, I recon a Segway would solve several of the problems that e-scooters have.

By `problems that e-scooters have` you mean being light, mobile, cheap, and not dorky?

Edit: just found this gem:

"So there may be a way to capture more of the market Segway hoped to reach: make a version that doesn't look so easy for the rider. It would also be helpful if the styling was in the tradition of skateboards or bicycles rather than medical devices." [1]

[1] https://paulgraham.com/segway.html

mikestew5• 2 years ago

I own several electric scooters. That said, "not dorky" is not a feature I think of, especially when my middle-aged ass is riding it.

dartos2• 2 years ago

Balance for one.

I had an electric scooter for 2 days before flying face first into the street at 30mph. Thankfully I was wearing a mips helmet and only broke my arm and my nose

CuriouslyC• 2 years ago

Scooters have been dorky since forever. The semi-cool people who try to make scooters look impressive just end up looking try hard.

ben_w2• 2 years ago

Small wheels suffer more from irregular ground than do large, and the foot placement in a Segway looks less accident prone (not seen stats).

I think the only thing "dorky" about Segways is the PPE, which should really also be worn by anyone on an e-scooter.

HarHarVeryFunny2• 2 years ago

E-scooters are really much more practical than Segways (as well as a lot cheaper) due to being narrow rather than wide - much better suited to being ridden on the sidewalk.

Segway's really seem to have found their niche as more of a toy than means of transport in the form of tourist Segway tours. They are at least fun and do work well, even if a bit ill-conceived!

poloniculmov• 2 years ago

As a pedestrian, please don't use scooters on the sidewalk.

jamesmcintyre• 2 years ago

If I'm putting myself in the shoes of the founders or executive team- just wondering how many parameters being dialed differently could have shaped the launch for the better (or worse). I'm imagining all the stakeholders arguments:

"the laser projector adds X more development months, X less hours of battery life, and X more costs to manufacture due to higher power needs therefore bigger battery, more heat management.. should we launch v1 without it? We can just push-notify your phone if we detect they need a display and they're reaching for their phone, they swipe notification and we take them to exactly what we were trying to show them. Or we can show it on their watch and it would serve as a forcing function for us to build out the voice UX to try and do more with voice."

"I get that we're introducing a new ux modality but shouldn't we give user's a pathway that blends between already heavily embedded habits (smartphone, watch) to ours? User's should be able to carry on existing txt conversations from their phones, call from their existing phone numbers, hear notifications from their phone, etc. In fact- these could be great hooks for us to get them used to using our natural language UX more frequently."

"I get that the device needs to look like beautiful jewelry but metal is heavier- can't we find a way to make a fully plastic enclosure look high-end?"

"Our software stack isn't ready! We can put compute and llms closer to the edge to reduce latency, train 'micro-llms' for very specific tasks that will run faster and cheaper, etc. etc."

For all of these hypothetical contentions I can equally imagine very valid reasons for choosing the paths Humane has chosen. Letting these objections always drive the product development could have resulted in a much worse outcome. There's a plethora of anecdotes about Steve Job's refusing to compromise on the many facets of the original iPhones design but if I had to guess there are less stories repeated about how many compromises he was ok with.

It's been notoriously difficult to introduce new consumer product categories- if it was easy or more obvious the Apple watch would already be at-parity with 80-90% of the features (which one would assume is what will happen in short order, watch & airpods as proxies to an embedded+edge llms on iPhone).

I can understand viewpoints from both those who are trashing the Humane ai pin and those excited about it but one thing I'm happy to see is a team of this caliber making bold moves (and a investment ecosystem to support it). With v1 out (remember, a lot of hardware startup never make it this far) and the community responding it will be interesting to see how deftly they can navigate rapidly iterating and improve the ux.

wvenable• 2 years ago

With v1 being basically DOA -- and not just for software reasons but fundamental design and cost reasons -- I doubt we will ever see a version 2 from Humane.

What will see, eventually, is similar devices from other companies that are not trying to build their own ecosystem but are happy to be a peripheral of an existing ecosystem. The will also probably compromise on design more to make it smaller, lighter, and cheaper. And even then it will be niche.

TheBlight• 2 years ago

If I understand this correctly, the idea is for us all to wear cameras and microphones pinned to our chests and pay them for this honor?

schainks• 2 years ago

Mass surveillance is best propagated through "nifty" consumer devices.

bhhaskin3• 2 years ago

I mean we already have cameras and microphones in our pockets & homes. Hell even at tables of most restaurants.

JohnFen5• 2 years ago

The cameras and microphones on our phones are hard to use to record others with surreptitiously, and there are pretty strong social mores against doing so. A pin (or eyeglasses, or other such wearables) is a beast of an entirely different color.

But even if there weren't such a difference, I'd argue that just because a bad thing exists doesn't mean we shouldn't fight against more of that bad thing.

Hell even at tables of most restaurants.

What sort of restaurants are these? I can't remember seeing one at the table of any restaurant I've been to.

mvdtnz• 2 years ago

Obviously there's some missing context here. Dude is making a huge assumption that we know what the hell he's talking about with

And now that it has shipped, and appears poised to go down in history as an Edsel-like infamous bomb

Is there a better link I can read?

ahahahahah2• 2 years ago

Sure: https://www.google.com/search?q=humane+ai+pin+review

ahahahahah2• 2 years ago

Like it's not even hard to find this information, you don't even need to click. The headlines I see are:

YouTuber trashes Humane AI Pin, sparks firestorm over damage to startup

Humane AI Pin: much-hyped gadget rocked by bad reviews

Humane Ai Pin Review: Too Clunky, Too Limited

Humane AI Pin review: the post-smartphone future isn’t here yet

Humane AI Pin review: not even close

The Worst Product I've Ever Reviewed... For Now

The Humane AI Pin solves nothing and makes me feel stupid

__________

Like i don't know, authors need to be able to assume their readers have some context and the ability to independently research the things that they don't understand.

narag3• 2 years ago

Try this review, he highlights the positive aspects, but then concludes that execution is subpar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TitZV6k8zfA

oco101• 2 years ago

His review is called "The Worst Product I've Ever Reviewed... For Now" maybe be subpar in understatement

ado__dev• 2 years ago

Humane AI pin has the same problem as all other voice-first devices. Discoverability is trash. So many basic things don't work reliably and in the case of Humane don't work at all (setting timers for example). Talking to a device makes you look like a total dork. It's slow. Add AI indeterminism to it and you got a recipe for potentially the worst product ever. And they're asking for $700 + $25/mo for this.

This is a device looking for a problem to solve and failing miserably.

atleastoptimal• 2 years ago

all these AI wearables underestimate just how useful cell phones are

rfwhyte• 2 years ago

Yet more fuel on the bonfire that is the fact that basically all tech journalism these days in thinly veiled "Sponsored content" that places the interests of advertisers above the interests of the reader. The trust consumers once had in the institutions that were supposed to be working for their benefit has been utterly and completely eroded in service of clicks and short-term profit. Every website we visit, every online review we read, every social media post we see and every YouTube video we watch has been bought and paid for, and the concept of "Journalistic integrity" has been willingly sacrificed at the alter of corporate profits. We can't trust anything anymore and it's all just another stage in the great late stage capitalism enshitification of everything cycle.

vunderba• 2 years ago

Voice as the primary form of interface is going to WORK fantastic when you're at the library, in a crowded subway, in a noisy environment, etc etc. But don't worry because it'll have a projector that I'm sure will look fantastic in any environment outside of a dimly lit theater.

kkoste• 2 years ago

Don't worry about that. Everyone else will also have an AI Pin. So everyone(except me) will be yelling into a microphone. I support this wholeheartedly. This is the kind of chaotic dystopian future I want.

Time Magazine's Best Inventions of 2023 Award for Humane's AI Pin

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