I tested the Humane AI Pin - It's not good.

this is the Humane AI pin that has been blowing up the internet for the past few months with the combined intelligence of sophisticated AI plus the entire internet, all presented in a way that you can still be fully present in a moment and not stagnate. for the hassle of working with intrusive and addictive phone apps and just gave it a try. I spent about 4 hours using it and talking to CEO Iman and I don't think I've ever wanted to love a piece of technology so much and still can't figure out who Mr. Who is from YouTube, find YouTube videos.

AR Man, also known as MOS, is a popular YouTuber who focuses on technology, which makes him old, so here's how he rolls. He catches on your clothes and stays there in standby mode. most of the time and only when you decide you want to interact with it do you put your finger on this touchpad and talk, for example, when do you think humans will settle on the Moon? Humans are expected to return to the Moon in 2024 and have the first families on the Moon by 2084, okay, that's great. I guess he can make music in a pretty clever way.

Could you play me some of Mozart's greatest hits? And then this is volume, but those are still basic requests. The benefit of Being an AI-powered assistant, you can also do things like look at this food and tell me what it is. It is a white cardboard box with a clear plastic lid. The box contains fried chicken nugets. Do you want to see the best party trick? Although in the century, bring your hand to the front, the built-in camera will see that hand and a laser projector housed inside the pin will shoot your screen at it, so this is my home menu, the way the controls work, rotate your hands to select something like that.

If I hover over my home widgets for example and then pinch which one to click I can toggle between them, the pin also has a depth sensor so when I move my hand back it knows and can show you some context, literally, behind the scenes. menu based on what you're doing right now, so if I just took a photo, for example, and I want to preview that photo, raise your hand, you'll see the photo, push your hand back and it'll give you the menu that allows you to choose what you want to do with that photo, like share it or delete it, and as soon as you finish something, clench your fists to go home or just put your hand down, the pin will know and stop the projection. almost immediately, so okay?

Well, I'm really sorry to say this because Iman, the CEO, was very nice in person and was a great host to us, but no, I don't think so. This is a really interesting category and I have Ideas about how this could be a pretty

good

thing, but as of now the Humane pin is an incredibly poor proposition just before I get into that, although I want to give credit where credit is due, there are a few things about this that they are correct. and they make you realize the potential to begin with. I think they've hit the nail on the head with the hardware, as long as you decide you're okay with wearing a chest pin then you probably won't find a better one, it's much smaller and lighter than me.

I was expecting it and it has three different types of backings that go inside the clothing and attach magnetically. One is a super lightweight latch for delicates, so it doesn't pull much. One is the standard battery booster, which is a little bit thicker and also. wirelessly charges the Humane pin's internal battery and then you have the bulkier one which is the clip that can be manually clipped around your clothing and I have to say all my first impressions with this before turning it on were great, the build is feels top notch. Each pin is carved from a solid block of aluminum and the charging case has a really sturdy hinge with no signs of flexing.

I think it looks pretty, it doesn't have big flashy logos, it's quite sleek and futuristic and this confident light that indicates what it does at any time for you and also I guess for other people around you is perfectly integrated. The magnets are very strong. I even tried running with him. I mean, yes, it moves a little if you're wearing a baggy t-shirt. -shirt but I wasn't at all worried about it falling off and here's the finishing touch which I think is pretty clever: the base of the pen is a continuous touch panel, so while you don't have a traditional smartphone screen, if you have. some of that physical contact experience that you've developed all that muscle memory for, so you can use this, for example, to swipe up and increase the volume or double tap to take a photo or hold with two fingers to enter in interpreter mode, which I'll talk about in a moment, but the best part is that it means there are no trigger words that you don't have to start every interaction with, Hello Human, and that's really cool and there were times where I saw what I could do.

I asked him what this tree in front of me is and he told me it's a Japanese maple and there was something incredibly and uniquely satisfying about getting that Insight without needing to be interrupted from the moment with my phone it felt like a cheat code because , let's be realistic. as soon as your phone gets involved that becomes your attention every time you take a photo with your phone you are completely focused on getting the perfect frame every time you want to look up at something you are actually looking at your hand instead experimenting o Another example was the only time we used The Interpreter translation feature and it really worked well.

Hello Imron, it's a pleasure to meet you. The point is that I see it, I see the vision and I see little twinges of something magical, but when you really boil. It all comes down to the practicality of using this and using it every day. I can't see a single angle from which it makes sense. I mean, the first thing is the price. This is a $700 device and $700$ as a one-off maybe just. It's digestible and you get everything you need to use it. They also include two of the battery boosters in the box, which between them are enough battery for a full day of use, but here's the problem: there's very little AI processing going on.

The device needs an internet connection, and because it needs an internet connection, not only does it basically do nothing when you're in the middle of nowhere, but it also needs its own completely separate data plan, so It's a $700 pin. plus a $24 a month subscription on top of that plus taxes and fees and yes, that $24 also includes unlimited AI requests on top of that data, but $24 a month is, I mean, it's double what I'm paying for my phone contract yes I want to go abroad and still use the pin which is a big part of its appeal because of this whole translation feature, on top of that there is an additional fee and the worst part is that I specifically asked about this at the time when you stop paying. that monthly fee the device stops working so let's say I use this for 2 years where I paid $700 for the device $600 for the subscription $200 in additional taxes another $100 for roaming fees and only to end up another $100 for the clip and latch , since they don't come with it even after a $1,700 investment in this product as soon as I stop paying for my subscription because I mean, would you plan to pay for it for the rest of your life?

Probably not, but at that point Humane is basically saying that your PIN becomes such a fine paperweight that it's very expensive, but if your ability matches that, then maybe it's justifiable. What Imran, the founder, was telling me is that the pin has the ability to run not just one but many majors. Current AI models, like GPT 4 for example, which is a very powerful AI that generally requires its own paid subscription to use, has it on the go all the time, which is definitely not to be sniffed at, so it's a Of the things I was saying you used it when you drive, your phone will be in your pocket, your Focus will be on the road, but you have access to the entire Internet of knowledge, so you'll just decide: I want to learn something about sleep habits today. . for example, and this pin can provide that knowledge to summarize and communicate to you, and this is actually the first moment where I thought, oh, that's interesting, when Risha, my fiancé, goes on any kind of long trip, it often happens a

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half hour before trying it. find a good podcast to listen to during it and even then, they often go off topic or aren't exactly what she expected, but this is the world's information curated exactly based on what you're asking to hear at any given moment. that might solve it, plus the AI ​​pin understands the flow of a conversation.

This isn't like old school Siri, where you just reintroduce the topic every time you shout a new command at it, you can speak in a very human conversational way. and he answers me, so my head started spinning with the possibilities of this idea of ​​a personal teacher wherever you want, but then I tried, hey, I'm having trouble sleeping lately. I only have 5 hours and I keep waking up. the night, what should I try to do? Discuss sleep tips to improve sleep quality. You can try the following. Be consistent with your sleep schedule. Make sure your bedroom is quiet, dark, and at a comfortable temperature.

Remove electronic devices from the bedroom. Avoid large meals. Caffeine and alcohol before. At bedtime, what I think it lacks is that conversational tone that makes it easy to understand and follow. You know, when you're listening to a podcast and it's a human being speaking with human intonation. Yes, the fact that I don't have it makes it difficult. I do, so we're working on some of that at the moment the conversation piece that we're looking at, I'm opening up the microphone for, um, follow questions like that, yeah, so the bubble burst pretty quickly, not only is it much harder to understand. than a real person, AI doesn't have that natural intonation and it's only without that that you realize how important it is, but it also takes a lot of time and this wasn't a one-time thing, everything in the pin seems to take time, call Aaron.

Oh there you have it, only after experiencing it myself did I realize why in the promotional material for the composition they fill all the silences by talking, they make it sound like Jenz and the good thing is that you can make it more formal or informal, or even do it. fun stuff Oliver, how are you doing? because if they didn't fill those silences it would be very uncomfortable. Now it's hard to say at this point why everything takes so long, even simple things like sending a text or a call, should be instantaneous. answers offline, but they are far from it, so either this is just a really slow device or the speech processing itself must also be done online or this is just the device that registers online every time you ask something just to make sure I'm still paying the monthly fee, whatever the reason, it's a huge source of friction.

Could you give me a synonym for the word cool and a channel sub would find synonyms? Synonyms for the word great include fantastic, marvelous, talented, tremendous, and wonderful. I'd go with Marvel if human intonation and speed were the only problems, although I'd be very happy to give Ain the benefit of the doubt because in the long run they are things that can be fixed, but I think the real problem with this product is very much deeper. On top of that, to begin with, it boggles the mind, which has become this term to describe how AI can present false information as if it were fact, for example, one of the advertised features is that you hold a food item in front of you and it He says how he finds himself in it. how much sugar or how many grams of protein, but look when I asked him how many chicken nuggets are in a shared boox of 20 chicken nuggets, he said without a hint of caution, the box contains fried chicken nuggets, there are 14 chicken nuggets in the box, interesting 14 well I think it's because it can only see 14 yes, so how the hell are you going to trust the nutritional recommendations of a device if it doesn't even know how much food there is?

I mean, I talked to Imran about this and he said well, it's not a medical device and the feature is in beta and that's fair enough, but what it is is either an announced feature or it needs to improve very, very, very quickly, which Which I don't think is going to happen. because of the natural limitations of what this thing can see or needs to make you more aware of its limitations so that you know that you shouldn't take what it says at face value, the idea in theory of, say, liking the look of this. chair and that the PIN can not only tell you what it is but also save the answer to your notes is attractive, but when you actually try to do it, you realize what the limitations of this form factor are that you can't see. exactly what you are looking at so I asked him this exact question about the chair and he gave me a recommendation but then I realized that the recommendation he gave me was a different chair in the room and that's because when he gives you an answer, you have no way to affirm that it is thecorrect answer, unlike when you do the same thing using Google Lens on your phone, where you can make sure you are capturing the correct chair and then you can physically verify that you have correctly identified one thing that Imran What was talked about was the incoming AB to buy things using this, but since there's no real screen here, would you want to buy things on this?

What if I intended to order two of something, but the AI ​​pin mishears me and takes it as 20? What would happen if? He doesn't understand the size or color of what you want and actually asks for an alternative variant. There are so many things that could go wrong that you would really want to see a complete purchase page with all the information and you can only do that on his phone, but you also have to talk to him because there is no physical screen to type on his key input method , the default mode is voice and there are many times where I can think of situations where I wouldn't want to do that, for example if you are in an art gallery or a library or, more commonly, in a gathering of people, What if you are texting with your partner and not?

I don't want to broadcast your intimate conversations, any search requests that might be remotely private, you either tell the world or you'll have to pull out your phone anyway and have the same problem in a noisy environment like a concert or a busy train. I can tell you for sure that on the London Underground you won't be able to hear me clearly unless I shout, so it's now starting to become a pretty big problem if the fact that the pin costs you as much as a high-end flagship smartphone . wasn't enough, can you see this growing number of additional obstacles that you still have to overcome, like having a permanently required internet connection, the large time lapse between the time you ask it to do something and the time it does it , from 5 to 10c? period where you're not sure if it's thinking or has failed, the answer is a fairly even 50/50 split and then the additional restriction that arises from there being many different environments in which you can't or won't use it and that without even talking about what I think is the biggest limiting factor of the app situation.

It is quite clear that one of the key features of this AI pin is the ability to live this apple-free lifestyle so as not to be a slave to all of these. apps fighting for your attention and to bring together all these previously isolated separate functionalities into one seamless experience and I really want to say that I respect the vision. I love the idea of ​​being completely connected without having to bend down as much. that meta can track my behaviors and target ads to me accordingly, so I salute you for trying, but given how entrenched we already are in these apps, I think this Vision only works if this device can still, on some level, communicate with those apps, like it can say Hey, send them a WhatsApp message that says this or post a tweet that says this, but it can't do that when you message someone, it's not a WhatsApp, it's not an iMessage, it's just a direct SMS message when you take a photo, you know?

I was saying that when you move your hand back it gives you the option to share that photo, yeah well since there's no Apple Airdrop and there's no Android Quick Share the only way to share it is to text it to that person with a link to download. It's like imagining after a party, you know, when people say, Oh, can you send us the photos that you took and then you send them a link via SMS so they can download those photos one by one in the Humane Web Center? I'm going to think you're some kind of time traveler and not in a good way, oh yeah, so the Humane Web Center is where the entire contents of your AI PIN are backed up every time you're docked and connected to Wi-Fi.

And in a way, it's cool that the company says that you get unlimited storage as part of the cost of your subscription and that this Web Center is a place where all your photos, your videos, your notes, all the requests that you've asked of it. It all comes together, but that also defeats the whole purpose, okay, if the point of the pin is to make you trust apps less, but at the same time they tell you that it's not designed to replace your phone, then you're still going to use all the apps. on your phone, Google Drives, Evernotes, and you'll still have to keep paying for those subscriptions, but now you have a whole extra set of Humane apps that your stuff will be even more spread out if this pin comes up.

Before the first smartphone, who knows, maybe it could have set the precedent for a new type of computer with a new way of working, but now we are in a world that is based on the smartphone and since I don't see a world where a smart device that doesn't actually connect to any of your existing smart devices is useful as is, it seems like the only Style smartphone app that currently works on the pin is tidal for music and I can see why that is so limited because I mean so much on the developer side because there is very little incentive to create apps for a platform that you can't easily advertise on and you can't easily convert people to your other services, but also for the user, I want I mean, think about the apps you use, how many of them?

It would actually be useful if you didn't have a screen like you didn't want to buy apps. You would miss a lot of the content of what you are looking at when you are on Amazon, for example, you need to see how there are a lot of reviews, you need to see what those reviews say, maybe scan some of them, you want to be able to see the options for the date of delivery and, more importantly, if they charge you to get them faster by losing almost all sense of sight. you lose 90% of the information you need to do useful things and sure you could ask for the PIN to dictate the entire web page, but that would be exhausting and much slower.

The company is currently working on Google Calendar integration so you can ask your PIN who's in my next meeting, what time it starts, how long it lasts, but if you really want a clear and instant image of not only your next meeting But all day long, the app on your phone can give you everything together. in seconds, the same is true for all your social media apps, it's true for any type of banking, it's true for any form of visual media and the list goes on and just to clarify, yes, you have some kind of screen here, everything this laser thing but the inherent nature of what it is naturally limits what it can do it's monochrome it's quite low resolution and it's also not that bright to the point that outdoors it's very hard to see and the official advice is actually using the other hand to grab it great, thanks and actually now we really think about it, is it fair to say this counts as hands free?

Yes, technically there is nothing in my hands, but at the same time my hands are definitely not free, in fact, quite the opposite, the laser does. don't aim again where your hand is, there is a specific place where it shoots, you need to hold your hand there and keep it as flat as possible, your hand is basically your projector screen, so the more wrinkled you keep it, the worse your image quality will be. I really feel like doing this for 5 minutes is, ironically, a lot less comfortable than just holding your phone because you can hold your phone in any position, you can rest it on your lap or on a table and you can just keep moving it and yes, the Humane pin has a surprising amount of features considering there's no physical hardware like being able to react to emoji messages, but then at that point where you're reaching out and scrolling and tapping multiple times there surely comes a point where it actually it'll be quicker to get your phone out and do it there and that brings me to the gestures, you know, things like turning your hand.

I totally believe they are things. which you will get used to. I don't think it's fair to say that they're just not good after using them once and I also totally understand that you're not going to use your handheld screen as much as you would. You may be using your phone's screen, but what you can't deny is that the total amount of effort required to perform any given action is greater with the pin, as if you think about what it takes to hover over something with your phone. , is this if you think about what it takes to hover over something in the Humane pin is this if you think about what it takes to click on something is this if you think about what it takes to click on something here is that if you think about what it takes to click on something go home with one swipe, if you think about what it takes to go home it's a total squeeze now why do I keep comparing it to everyone's phone modes?

We've already established that it's designed to be a separate device that doesn't replace a phone well. because I don't think I've ever seen more overlap in capabilities between two separate categories of computers because look, this is an Android phone, the Humane AI pin at its core also runs Android. This phone has a Qualcomm chipset inside. Humane pin also has a Calcom chip inside. They didn't say exactly which one, but based on the size of this thing and the small batteries, I'd say there's a good chance it's nowhere near the power of your phone's chip. be your camera, but your phone already has a camera that doesn't have the limitations of the pins, such as having a single angle limited to 13 megapixels and only being able to take 15c 1080p videos and then to top it off, they all feature everything the pin Humane AI can currently do and everything it will ever be able to do all the translation features all the AI ​​features and the ability to ask it questions and remember things all the vision things like how they demonstrated it you can put a walkman in front of it and ask it in what year it was manufactured. you can put a shoe in front of him and ask him who designed it. your smartphone can do it all too because fundamentally the Humane pin is just phone hardware with a fancy new way of interacting with it to try to counteract the fact that there's no physical screen, the only advantage of this: you're basically paying that extra $700 monthly subscription plus and having to juggle battery boosters and keeping another device charged is that your Humane AI pin is on your chest, your phone isn't, it's just the fact that it's there now, so It's like it would make a lot more sense to me, you're already paying every month for a data plan on your phone, you've already paid a lot of money up front for the enormous processing power of your phone, so surely a pin Much more useful would be a pin that, instead of duplicating all that, but making it worse, can connect to your phone. and use what you already have, I mean that's exactly how SmartWatches already work and it would mean that the pin would be much cheaper, your subscription cost would be minimal because you would only need to pay for the AI ​​side and not the data again and all your stuff is in one place, like when you take a photo with your PIN, you can rest easy knowing that it will appear in your phone album and sync to your iCloud or whatever and it might actually be more capable because being able to take advantage of the greater power and applications that any flagship phone released in the last 2 or 3 years probably already has.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that this type of product won't work for anyone. and I'm very happy to try to use it long term to see if that changes my mind, but that's just me telling you that I'm hopeless unless, of course, Google comes in and acquires the company and then integrates it. correctly on Android which could be interesting