Humane unveils AI Pin – a contextual computer with a mini projector | Hacker News Reader

Humane unveils AI Pin – a contextual computer with a mini projector

hu.ma.ne

19 pointsBjoernKW33 comments

I've read "AI", "superior", "exciting" and "qualcomm" about a dozen times, yet there is absolutely _zero_ information on what this thing is or what its capabilities/limitations/intended purposes are.

It's like altcoin landing page but for AI

Roadmap:

- whitepaper

- marketing

- full waitlist

- website redesign

- whitepaper v2

...

- token

Exactly. You follow the link you get what is basically an image as landing page. Then you have to click on it to get to a small article/text, which doesn't tell you much either about what the actual product is. Somewhere in the text is a TedTalk video which shows and explains a little more. But when I see a link that is "whoah look at our new product" I expect more than a tagline and a picture

you can click on it???

Well that was far from obvious.

Very in-humane

I watched (okay, skimmed) the demo (okay, ad) and from what I can tell, it's a phone with no screen that you clip to your shirt and interact with verbally. The demo includes receiving a phone call, language translation, summarizing a meeting, and looking up a product (by UPC?) to see if the speaker is allergic to it. I assume it's OpenAI on the backend due to the speaker mentioning how excited Sam Altman is about it.

I can see what they're going for, if I had an always-on device hoovering up my data I can imagine an AI using it to do cool stuff. But the only way I'm wearing a 24/7 body cam is if the data is going to open source software on hardware I control, and AFAIK this is neither, so no thanks.

Seems to me like the Juicero of AI. A piece of performance art satire masquerading as a product announcement.

This item appears with so much backing hype and attention. Yet I am not sure I have seen enough substance behind this yet.

Will be very interested to see reviews and more physical examples of this product.

Putting “ai” in the name is a terrible decision, almost seems like a last minute decision to make a premature product marketable in the current climate. Coming from the “ex-Apple” team they call themselves, they should have know better and gone with just “pin”.

Huh, you're right. I tried both names in my head and "The Pin" sounds exactly like an apple product (in a good way), while "The AI Pin" sounds weirdly cheap and gimmicky.

I wonder if “pin” was considered too generic though. Humane Pin also has the awkward formatting of a noun phrase. (a pin that is humane, not that it makes sense really)

Their demo is truly bad and they fail to show anything useful that you can do. Whole thing looks weird.

I do believe such wearable tech will find use in the future, just not the way they present it.

Plus pacing of presentation... maybe they are engineers and don't know how to present things, but so far I didn't see anything compelling about this.

It does look like a parody indeed. I don't know how they got investors to give money for this.

There is a Ted talk demo of this product https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMsQO5u7-NQ

Hosting an infomercial for a product that no one has had the opportunity to review must be a new low for TED.

It’s interesting I can’t find the Elizabeth Holmes TED talk in full anywhere. Even in the documentaries the clips have been cut to carefully exclude the logo.

Calling it a demo seems a bit of a stretch. The clearest red flag comes at 7:03, when the device translates his speech into French without him asking for it to be translated. This screams of "staged."

Given the device lacks a ship date, price, or overview of how it works beyond hand-waving "AI," I'd say the Ted Talk was the live version of a concept video, and just another PR move to get anything out there a month ahead of Apple's Vision Pro unveiling.

This reeks of vaporware. The press release says nothing about what's it's for. I'm rooting for them but confused about the use case.

But it’s AI! Using sensors! With Qualcomm! What more do you need to know? /s

It reminds me of Segway back in late 90s. Hailed as "the next big thing" by millionaires who invested in it, it was a mysterious device that nobody even knew what it would do. We all know how it ended

What does this device do?

I spent way too long digging through all the marketing and I still don't see what the features are!

My prediction: This will be a flash-in-the-pan with gimmick features and no real functionality. This is a device nobody needed and nobody asked for.

Second prediction/observation: Former Apple is to Designers as Former Google is to Programmers.

Maybe investors care more about the former Apple thing?

I've been in so many job interviews where the interviewer tells me "Our engineering team has a lot of ex-Google and ex-Facebook people" or tells me about how their founder went to Harvard and the CTO went to MIT.

That's always made me less interested in the company. What, am I supposed to feel less valuable because I don't have any of those credentials, despite what I've done in the industry and my skills being a fit for the position? Plus, a lot of these teams are just building CRUD apps anyway, and many of them turn out worse than those built by teams composed of the little people who went to state schools and use Java.

Maybe its just their wierd maketing, but I am having a hard time seeing how this is a really compelling product.

Doesn’t look like it enables any usecase not currently supported by Apple Watch.

The website reflects all their arrogance.

Is this a parody?

There is no information on this website.

There is at the very least the information that ‘hamburgers’ are out and ‘plus icons’ are in.

How to channel "Her" and "the design is very human" at the same time...

This is particularly spooky given last night was the first time I saw the White Christmas episode of Black Mirror... Has this AI been ethically broken in?

Reminds me of a crypto startup. Classy marketing, virtue signaling, huge team, and a placeholder for vaporware that we’re all supposed to take seriously.

Is there a Juicero app for this or do I still have to squeeze the bags myself? I can't see the UI and squeeze the bag at the same time.

https://hu.ma.ne/media/humane-names-first-device-humane-ai-p...

"Humane, Inc. today announced its first device will be called the Humane Ai Pin, the latest detail to be revealed ahead of its launch later this year. The Humane Ai Pin is a new type of standalone device with a software platform that harnesses the power of AI to enable innovative personal computing experiences.

The connected and intelligent clothing-based wearable device uses a range of sensors that enable contextual and ambient compute interactions. A selection of these interactions were recently previewed for the first time publicly in Imran Chaudhri’s TED Talk, “The disappearing computer — and a world where you can take AI everywhere”.

Humane is collaborating with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. for this unique device and form factor. Humane’s first device will be powered by an advanced Snapdragon platform from Qualcomm Technologies.

Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, Co-Founders of Humane, commented: “We are excited to reveal our first device will be called the Humane Ai Pin. Our Ai Pin presents an opportunity for people to take AI with them everywhere and to unlock a new era of personal mobile computing which is seamless, screenless and sensing.

We are also delighted to reveal we are working with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. Humane and Qualcomm Technologies have a shared vision for a future of technology which is powered by AI. Qualcomm Technologies’ experience in powering new products is unparalleled and we are proud to have them support our device.”

Dev Singh, Vice President, Business Development of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. commented: “We are proud to be collaborating with Humane and that this first-of-a-kind clothing-based wearable device will be powered by Snapdragon. Humane’s Ai Pin will deliver a superior AI experience and feature an assortment of on-device AI capabilities. Its revolutionary and sleek form factor is packed with powerful performance so that it can make sense of real-time contextual information and provide the wearer with a new and exciting experience. We cannot wait to see where they take this device.”

Ziad Asghar, Senior Vice President, Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. says, “Humane’s Ai Pin will deliver a superior AI experience. With the advent of Generative AI, Humane’s Ai Pin and user experience takes excellent advantage of some of the key strengths of on-device AI and uses real-time contextual information to provide the user with exciting, personalized AI use cases. We share Humane’s vision of bringing AI with you everywhere and delivering on-device AI to everyone. We cannot wait to see where they take this device."

Snapdragon is a trademark or registered trademark of Qualcomm Incorporated. Snapdragon is a product of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries."

Maybe wouldn’t need to reproduce this text here if this was the link on the story in the first place.

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