Not surprised at all. This and the Humane Pin both seemed like a quick cash grab before phones integrated all the new AI goodness. I'm expecting we'll see that window close by the time I/O and WWDC wrap up this year, so they had to move fast.
Humane was founded in 2018, well before ChatGPT was released in November 2022. If you look online you can find some articles about patent applications they made well before ChatGPT was released that give you an idea about their idea for the product at the time, e.g. https://9to5google.com/2022/01/07/humane-android-ar-wearable...
Developing the hand tracking, laser projection system, voice recognition, etc. is very hard, especially considering the power constraints on the device. They spent years working on this and when LLMs hit the scene they realized that the original product idea was going to be severely lacking if they didn't integrate this technology. This caused a big internal pivot to more closely integrate with these LLMs. I'm not sure which they're using, presumably they're paying for GPT-4 access or something like that. It's understandable why they felt like they had to do this, and why it feels like a rushed integration. The bottom line is that they were way too optimistic with the hardware capabilities when they started working on the product, and the last minute rush to integrate with LLMs to at least improve the software capabilities to kind of close the gap is what we're left with. It's not a great situation, but I also think it's unfair to characterize it as a "cash grab".
However, from what I can tell they were searching for a problem to solve instead of coming with a distinct, compelling, articulable vision of what they wanted to build
I feel like all these companies are really hamstrung by the fact that they don't have enough access to our phone's features. There's no way to build a Siri competitor if you're not Apple or Google, the APIs to send and read texts, make calls, control music apps etc just don't exist.
Chat GPT integrated with your phone's operating system is a lot more useful than pure Chat GPT. I wouldn't be surprised if Open AI gets dethroned by Apple and Google because of that fact alone. It doesn't matter how good your model is if you're not allowed to use it due to anticompetitive practices.
If anything deserves antitrust scrutiny, it's the locking down of private APIs, not some petty disputes about App Store fees.
But 100% everyone should be able to build and swap the agent on their device. but it's not your device. its apples. they let you use it. Same with YouTube and our data. it's not really ours. try get your YouTube watch data. it will take 2 weeks by then its 2 weeks old. you can do nothing with that data.
much bigger conversations needed that are not happening.
To take one example, at 14m30s, the CEO is shown using the device to book a trip to London. This is presented as a live demo, but it's clearly simulated.
But, he does imply that you can book from the device, which is completely insane. How do you deal with flight selection with multiple layovers? Seat choices? DOBs? KTNs? Phone numbers? Frequent flyer number? Payment? Travel insurance? Disability accommodations?
What could possibly be the overlap of people who travel enough that this is all worth setting up, who don’t already have their own personal assistant?
A certain degree of smoke and mirrors to generate hype around ground-breaking tech is the norm, not the exception. This doesn't necessarily mean that the product itself is a scam.
I feel like that's a little different. The Macintosh demo was obviously a "sizzle reel", not an example of how the machine would normally behave in use. No one would have watched the demo and expected the computer to talk to the user when turned on.
A more interesting reference point might be the iPhone intro, which wasn't "fake", but did rely on a carefully orchestrated sequence of events to avoid known bugs.
When the r1 address replies to him, it attaches a new spreadsheet, and he opens it on-stage. But the spreadsheet it sent, that they then show on screen, has not filtered any candidates to LA-only. (The column next to their names shows labels on screen like "NYC", "Austin", "Miami", "Seattle", etc)
https://youtu.be/22wlLy7hKP4?si=tBt9szqE_AbJPRqW&t=1169 (exact timestamp)
Little did he know two developers were sweating their nuts off as everything on his screen was coming from an old PC stuffed in a closet in a bedroom thousands of miles away, fed down a ratty cable modem.
"Cash grab" as in Elizabeth Holmes grabbing $700m from Theranos investors.