This and the Rabbit R1 are both trying to reduce the amount we use our phones, but I think this presents a fundamental misunderstanding of the jobs to be done on phones and how we actually use them.
There are broadly two use-cases of phones: content consumption, and utility. The former sucks time to increase "engagement" and has a bunch of social issues around it, the latter does not.
Both of these devices are trying to reduce the time we spend on our phones by addressing the utility aspect, but that's the wrong piece to focus on. The utility aspect is things like checking the time or calendar, booking an Uber, getting food delivered, etc. Many of these utilities however are essentially very optimised checkout funnels. Booking an Uber is really easy, because Uber are incentivised to make it easy. Same with ordering pizza. Taking a highly optimised flow and sticking voice on top isn't going to save time and is going to cause issues. These devices solve the wrong problem.
If a company really wants to improve the world by reducing phone usage (rather than just build their own platform to rent-seek on), maybe they should be looking at social networking, communication, federation, etc.
I think there's something in this. Watching the video made me realise that my main irritations with my phone are born of the bit where I have to navigate through a minefield of distrations to add an item to my todo list, or check my calendar, or send a text message. All the "what bridge am I looking at stuff" is cute but feels like solving a problem I never really encounter. Anyway, I'm guess I'm going to try and use Siri more, ubnlock my phone less.
Yep you nailed it with that, however what do you think incentivizing success on "social networking, communication" looks like? Because it looks a lot like finding ways to increase engagement and scrolling.
I left out federation because normal people don't even know what it is and if they did they wouldn't care about it.
I suspect anyone who works in tech is completely unsurprised.
Sure, the tech exists to make this thing possible, but it requires an Apple-sized company to execute on it, and even then it’s utility would be doubtful
There’s been a lot of pulling back on smart speakers because they’re not quite where they need to be - and this promised far far more than a smart speaker from a tiny new company.
The question is: did they believe they own hype or know it’s a sham?
There are a lot of assumptions that have to hold, for basic functionality of this product. For example: an always-on connection.
By the looks of it, this device uses 4g, and doesn't support 5g, so over time we might expect service to get worse as telecoms build out their 5+g networks and leave the 4g ones behind.
I as a single dev who browsed r/locallama a bit the past 6 months could put together a crude small AI sys with or without say a 3b model that could:
Set an alarm,
Create a reminder,
Or even attempt some of the more advanced features like querying local business.
The fact that it can't even set an alarm or create a reminder? Like what the actual?
Solo devs are already doing way more advanced stuff than this, it doesn't even take a small startup.
What takes an Apple sized company is creating something that can access many other platforms, buy for you, put together bulletproof many step processes and execute on them safely etc. But most of these failures are like basic basic stuff.
I do not understand how they can release a product like this.
Not even an Apple-sized company will be able to successfully execute on it if the customer doesn't want the device to begin with. Look at VR headsets, for example. All the biggest tech behemoths burning through billions haven't been able to make the device category work, simply because no one wants to sit at home with a bulky headset strapped to their head shut off from their family and the outside world.
Similarly a little box pinned to your chest projecting a display on your palm showing the weather makes for a good tech demo, but ultimately there is no real world use case for this device.
just look at it - perplexity wrapper with native hardware. perplexity has vision! and besides perplexity, it just uses some simple function calling to get weather etc. I can build that in a day.
as of the ultimate vision, it is not yet clear, and it would be dumb for anyone to get into this "AI phone replacement" business. There are far better use cases tho, which are clear to execute, like Schiffman.
They want to get enough attention to get acquired. Meanwhile I’m sure they believe their own hype to some extent, but it’s very easy to delude yourself when billions of dollars are on the line.
What I don't understand is, this device has been in development since 2018. Obviously the founders didn't intend it to be a ChatGPT wrapper many years before ChatGPT existed. So what was the original vision, and what made them do a half-assed last minute pivot and redo the whole thing right before launch?
Voice assistants long predate ChatGPT, so it was probably designed to use (possibly a custom, in-house) one of those, but then GPT-4 (and probably 3.5 below it) probably blew away whatever they were working on, and they switched.
It's sleek and shiny. It powers on. The battery lasts. It has some unique input/output mechanisms. They have been able to solve manufacturing challenges at scale. All that should be more than enough to get it to a 4. I can imagine significantly worse devices deserving a 1 or 2.
The fundamental issue with this tech is that they're trying to pair high density information with a low bandwidth input interface (less than a handful of finger gestures) and voice input which is flawed; you can't pause, backtrack to correct mistakes, and is highly dependent on external context.
This is honestly kinda glorious, a company that seems to want to use AI as every other word to get as many investors to give them money as possible shoehorns AI with a reputation for hallucination into an expensive device that isn't even close to the promise if what it could do.
That just screams a culmination of the last couple of years of "AI" and I am kinda loving that this happened.
Maybe, just maybe, Investors will finally realize that this isn't as magical of tech as the companies like to claim and can't be shoved into every single thing hoping for magical results.
I hope not but I would guess yes. It's insane to me that anyone even bought this thing. Their marketing couldn't even show it in a positive light. It got things wrong, it seemed pretty useless, and the whole presentation that I watched felt like they were being held captive and forced to do things. The thing is connected to T-Mob which, in my mind, is one of the worse networks out there. AND it's $700.
But they sold some. Why would people buy it? Who looked at any of that and thought "YES! Let's throw $700 away for this poorly developed toy?!"
I'm surprised they made it so much worse than, say, Siri on an Apple Watch (which is something I've been using for years, and which might well become my only phone if Apple ever allows me to fully manage a watch from an iPad mini).
A BRAND NEW Apple Watch SE with cellular is $330 (and it goes on sale sometimes). You’ll have to add it to your cell plan which is usually $10 a month.
Siri works great for a lot of the basic use cases that didn’t work in the video. Reminders, notes, alarms, messaging. Honestly I’m guessing it would work just as well for some of the knowledge questions that they asked.
Except if you do that you get an Apple Watch. It tells the time too. It also counts your steps, tracks your heart rate, functions as an exercise/fitness tracker, does a better job of showing your notifications, can stream music from services other than Tidal, can actually show Photos and Web results and emails (although the screen is obviously tiny).
It doesn’t have a camera though.
So that’s $370 less for the device and $15 less per month? For something that already works way better? And doesn’t seem to run the risk of burning you and constantly turning itself off due to overheating?
Hey look! That’s saving enough money that you could actually buy a second Apple Watch and still come out ahead.
Wow this is a dud. I wasn’t expecting it to set the world on fire. I wasn’t even expecting it to be good. I did not imagine it would be THIS bad. The two things I use Siri for more than anything else or reminders and texting. And this thing can’t do either one.
> “AI Pin and its AI OS, Cosmos, are about beginning the story of ambient computing,” Humane’s co-founders, Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, told me in a statement after I described some of the issues I’ve had with the AI Pin. “Today marks not the first chapter, but the first page
I firmly believe that AI is the future of user interface, but to believe that a device like this can displace a smartphone is just crazy. It's obvious that the phone manufacturers are racing to add deep AI integration into their operating systems. How is it better to have another device, when we all already have one that's suitable to host it in our pockets.
I think it’s obvious that the current crop of models are just not quite there yet. The ability to give them “tools” that interact with the things we want to interact with is just going to take time. Ideally it would be a model that just “gets it” similar to the ideas Adept AI are pursuing by interacting directly with the UI.
The bigger issue with this thing though… why does it need to be its own device? It’s not going to replace your phone so why not just have this all happen on your phone?
For AI to augment the lives of to the extend the iPhone did it's essential for it to be always on listening and able to act effortlessly.
Only Apple, Google and major android makers can deliver this experience.
There is however a window of opportunity for a team with the right talent to get there first if they're able to build their own device in time.
Apple are too privacy conscious to send all the data up to the server so we need to wait till they can build chips to do that locally or figure out a way to bend their own rules enough that makes it seem privacy focused, they also have a much weaker ML team so there is extra runway there while they choose who to acquire to fix that.
Google while extremely strong ML team its too academia brained to productize AI currently so need to wait for them to solve that, they also just suck at shipping products in general. They'll get there in the end but it's safe to say they'll only get there once someone else has shown how it should be done then they'll just clone it.
You have about 3 years before Apple solves this, so if you get yours to market and succeed in that time you capture a segment of the market before that happens.
Some YouTuber talked about this and I think they were pretty on point: Of course for consumers this could all happen in some app on the phone.
But a 3rd party app will always be less integrated, have less permissions than functionality included by the manufacturer.
And for all this AI integration wide access is pretty much required as you'd want it to access your photos, notes, all kind of apps, etc.
This way manufacturers would have too much leverage over companies developing that kind of AI, as they could always develop better features than them with their own AI agent.
I think Apple Watch is a pretty good example of that already. Third party watches will never be as good as Apple Watch just because Apple won't let them.
Apple and Google will do that, no one else will be allowed to. Even if you could get the necessary device permissions (you can't), you're going to get sherlocked and be dead next year when Apple and Google bake whatever interesting thing you did into the OS and all apps get it for free.
You're at such a disadvantage on iOS and Android that it's a fools errand to try and build that app.
These guys are probably not going to get a second try at this either with these types of headlines, and Sam Altman investing in or creating another device :(
I think most of the latency issues will improve as token generation does as will accuracy. The device is just a conduit, it represents the state of LLMs today, you can't ask for more from a I/O device.
Pretty sure a cellular apple watch is a better choice if you want to leave your phone behind and not get sucked into distracting apps. Cheaper and no $24 monthly fee.
On one hand, it's not surprising given where we are at with tech. But on the other, I still think it's really exciting. It gives us a glimpse into what the future post-smartphone could look like.
[+] [-] danpalmer|1 year ago|reply
There are broadly two use-cases of phones: content consumption, and utility. The former sucks time to increase "engagement" and has a bunch of social issues around it, the latter does not.
Both of these devices are trying to reduce the time we spend on our phones by addressing the utility aspect, but that's the wrong piece to focus on. The utility aspect is things like checking the time or calendar, booking an Uber, getting food delivered, etc. Many of these utilities however are essentially very optimised checkout funnels. Booking an Uber is really easy, because Uber are incentivised to make it easy. Same with ordering pizza. Taking a highly optimised flow and sticking voice on top isn't going to save time and is going to cause issues. These devices solve the wrong problem.
If a company really wants to improve the world by reducing phone usage (rather than just build their own platform to rent-seek on), maybe they should be looking at social networking, communication, federation, etc.
[+] [-] tomgp|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] whywhywhywhy|1 year ago|reply
Yep you nailed it with that, however what do you think incentivizing success on "social networking, communication" looks like? Because it looks a lot like finding ways to increase engagement and scrolling.
I left out federation because normal people don't even know what it is and if they did they wouldn't care about it.
[+] [-] wepple|1 year ago|reply
Sure, the tech exists to make this thing possible, but it requires an Apple-sized company to execute on it, and even then it’s utility would be doubtful
There’s been a lot of pulling back on smart speakers because they’re not quite where they need to be - and this promised far far more than a smart speaker from a tiny new company.
The question is: did they believe they own hype or know it’s a sham?
[+] [-] ergl|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ImPostingOnHN|1 year ago|reply
By the looks of it, this device uses 4g, and doesn't support 5g, so over time we might expect service to get worse as telecoms build out their 5+g networks and leave the 4g ones behind.
[+] [-] sdenton4|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] MyFirstSass|1 year ago|reply
Set an alarm,
Create a reminder,
Or even attempt some of the more advanced features like querying local business.
The fact that it can't even set an alarm or create a reminder? Like what the actual?
Solo devs are already doing way more advanced stuff than this, it doesn't even take a small startup.
What takes an Apple sized company is creating something that can access many other platforms, buy for you, put together bulletproof many step processes and execute on them safely etc. But most of these failures are like basic basic stuff.
I do not understand how they can release a product like this.
[+] [-] paxys|1 year ago|reply
Similarly a little box pinned to your chest projecting a display on your palm showing the weather makes for a good tech demo, but ultimately there is no real world use case for this device.
[+] [-] harryp_peng|1 year ago|reply
as of the ultimate vision, it is not yet clear, and it would be dumb for anyone to get into this "AI phone replacement" business. There are far better use cases tho, which are clear to execute, like Schiffman.
[+] [-] skywhopper|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] metalrain|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dbbk|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] internetter|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sim04ful|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nashadelic|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] poniko|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nerdjon|1 year ago|reply
That just screams a culmination of the last couple of years of "AI" and I am kinda loving that this happened.
Maybe, just maybe, Investors will finally realize that this isn't as magical of tech as the companies like to claim and can't be shoved into every single thing hoping for magical results.
Am I being too hopeful?
[+] [-] chankstein38|1 year ago|reply
I hope not but I would guess yes. It's insane to me that anyone even bought this thing. Their marketing couldn't even show it in a positive light. It got things wrong, it seemed pretty useless, and the whole presentation that I watched felt like they were being held captive and forced to do things. The thing is connected to T-Mob which, in my mind, is one of the worse networks out there. AND it's $700.
But they sold some. Why would people buy it? Who looked at any of that and thought "YES! Let's throw $700 away for this poorly developed toy?!"
[+] [-] palla89|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rcarmo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] MBCook|1 year ago|reply
Siri works great for a lot of the basic use cases that didn’t work in the video. Reminders, notes, alarms, messaging. Honestly I’m guessing it would work just as well for some of the knowledge questions that they asked.
Except if you do that you get an Apple Watch. It tells the time too. It also counts your steps, tracks your heart rate, functions as an exercise/fitness tracker, does a better job of showing your notifications, can stream music from services other than Tidal, can actually show Photos and Web results and emails (although the screen is obviously tiny).
It doesn’t have a camera though.
So that’s $370 less for the device and $15 less per month? For something that already works way better? And doesn’t seem to run the risk of burning you and constantly turning itself off due to overheating?
Hey look! That’s saving enough money that you could actually buy a second Apple Watch and still come out ahead.
Wow this is a dud. I wasn’t expecting it to set the world on fire. I wasn’t even expecting it to be good. I did not imagine it would be THIS bad. The two things I use Siri for more than anything else or reminders and texting. And this thing can’t do either one.
[+] [-] petesergeant|1 year ago|reply
That statement is several red flags.
[+] [-] concinds|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sobellian|1 year ago|reply
I still remember wondering how Clinkle raised so much money. Look how far we've come since then!
[+] [-] exitb|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bronco21016|1 year ago|reply
The bigger issue with this thing though… why does it need to be its own device? It’s not going to replace your phone so why not just have this all happen on your phone?
[+] [-] whywhywhywhy|1 year ago|reply
For AI to augment the lives of to the extend the iPhone did it's essential for it to be always on listening and able to act effortlessly.
Only Apple, Google and major android makers can deliver this experience.
There is however a window of opportunity for a team with the right talent to get there first if they're able to build their own device in time.
Apple are too privacy conscious to send all the data up to the server so we need to wait till they can build chips to do that locally or figure out a way to bend their own rules enough that makes it seem privacy focused, they also have a much weaker ML team so there is extra runway there while they choose who to acquire to fix that.
Google while extremely strong ML team its too academia brained to productize AI currently so need to wait for them to solve that, they also just suck at shipping products in general. They'll get there in the end but it's safe to say they'll only get there once someone else has shown how it should be done then they'll just clone it.
You have about 3 years before Apple solves this, so if you get yours to market and succeed in that time you capture a segment of the market before that happens.
[+] [-] fesc|1 year ago|reply
But a 3rd party app will always be less integrated, have less permissions than functionality included by the manufacturer.
And for all this AI integration wide access is pretty much required as you'd want it to access your photos, notes, all kind of apps, etc.
This way manufacturers would have too much leverage over companies developing that kind of AI, as they could always develop better features than them with their own AI agent.
I think Apple Watch is a pretty good example of that already. Third party watches will never be as good as Apple Watch just because Apple won't let them.
[+] [-] invig|1 year ago|reply
You're at such a disadvantage on iOS and Android that it's a fools errand to try and build that app.
[+] [-] benguild|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] criddell|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nashadelic|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] daft_pink|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] joshcsimmons|1 year ago|reply
Seems to echo the general reception to the first VR headsets.
[+] [-] nkotov|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] TradingPlaces|1 year ago|reply