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I'm skeptical of any hardware play here - As Marques Brownlee has said a lot when trying new ai hardware, "Smartphones are kinda OP."

Phones have gotten really good through incremental improvement and keeping some backwards compatibility so they were always useful at every point in their evolution. It's hard to imagine another device for ai that isn't just better served as an app.

I'm (very) skeptical too, though if you were going to use this device (app) heavily, and it wanted to be always on, and power hungry, it needs more permissions than "an app" might allow, and it needs more battery too. Most likely it would still connect with the phone, but it would be like external GPS is for digital cameras - does one-ish function and does not drain the battery of the main device.

So maybe what they'll really get everyone to do is walk around with a second battery that bypasses some permissions, in terms of always listening or always using a camera. "Just an app" can never do that.

Funny enough people stopped buying external GPS for digital cameras because... your phone can do that now, as an app

I had to ask chatgpt what OP meant there. It had overpowered as in "gaming culture, where an overpowered (OP) character, weapon, or ability is unusually strong"

I'm not sure they are overpowered for real life uses like filming video or playing games - people still pay like $1000 to get a good one because the cheap ones don't perform as well. Which is a problem for Humana pin like devices because the cameras etc will probably be rubbish compared to the the ones people have on their phones.

Waiting for them to come out with a screen-less phone so you just have to interact with it for absolutely everything.
No, they won't. We already have devices that we carry with us that can do anything that their gadget will ever be able to do. This is design in search of a problem that (a) most people don't want to solve, and (b) doesn't do anything better than a cheaper alternative.
I think this will be a huge success for OpenAI!

They'll raise loads of money.

Then the gizmo will flop but they'll have the money.

Are they going to raise more than the 6 billion they reportedly spent on acquiring Ive and his team, because they have Ive and his team?
one key distinction is that pre-iphone people desperately wanted the thing. nobody I know wants this
Most successful Apple products were nicer versions of thing that were already out there like phones and laptops. It's hard to get anywhere in a category where people aren't already buying stuff. I guess the ipad was an exception but it was kind of a large iphone without the phone call bit.
"Force AI into your life..."

A lot of the messaging and marketing around AI is so negative and dread-inducing. "Adopt this or you'll fall behind!"

If AI is so great, shouldn't it be sold on its benefits, like any other product?

At least with a gizmo you'll have to choose to buy it. Unlike it being inserted into web services.
I mean the best that this thing can be is some sort of pin or remote the size of an iPod shuffle that you speak to and speak back to you and has a camera right I mean, how attractive can you really make that? That doesn’t sound like the most amazing product the world has ever seen to me.

You know does sound cool? Xreal glasses with whatever the maximum FOV can be shoved into the design of conventional glasses with some cameras and speakers. And that let me continue to connect to whatever device I want.

My old Oculus Quest is filled with software that doesn’t work anymore.

AI that doesn’t interact with the world or websites or apps is boring.

Sooo, the Humane Ai Pin? It flopped, and they went bankrupt.
You mean something like Humane AI Pin? I'm fairly sure they are aware of it and would come up with something better.
I thought there was a thing where they're trying to put cameras on ear pods imagine it has 180 view, merges it with the other half 360 deg view around you

I could see the features, you hear a ding: says someone's following you

Of course your hair could obscure it so idk... I had thought about clothes with a camera on the back eg. shoulder or collar

It doesn't seem that appealing to me either, but on the other hand I have terrible intuition for popular products, I thought GPT 3.5 was stupid and that the iPhone was dumb, so being bullish on this is probably a good idea.
Ive has stated that he's skeptical of wearables. Altman said something like, "This product will be the third thing you place on your desk, after your phone and laptop."
It could be a ring, morsing you answers and giving you electrical shocks whenever you anger the AI overlord.
Why do you think they aren't working on smart glasses?
What are the odds this “io” thingy will be a new ChatGPT and not a new Loopt or Worldcoin?
Maybe it'll be smart glasses. The retina scanning could be built right in. Solve image recognition puzzles in real time, get rewarded with some Worldcoin.
This is going to disspear like Google Glass but be more expensive and less popular.
Video aside, has there been any serious attempt to do everything with audio only?
Alexa? Apparently there are 600 million out there.
Maybe your life, not mine, I promise you that.
> They promise that their gadget will free us from technology

One cannot be free of technology by introducing more technology. To be honest, I think most of this recent junk we've been seeing hasn't really made life a lot better. It's almost as if we started a culture of innovation which was based on making life more comfortable, and now that we have, we have to keep the machine going but into the realms more and more pointless than ever before.

In fact, if I look back at the last 20 years, yes technology has gotten a little better, but very little of it (especially in the computer sphere) has really added new enjoyment to life. I mean, if computer innovation had stagnated 20 years ago, we wouldn't have as nice monitors, screens, or processors maybe, but would any of us be any worse off except for a few fringe cases?

And what did we get in return? A push for even more efficiency, which isn't even a good thing. AI datacenters that need gigajoules of energy to run when we desperately need to save energy.

People like Sam Altman and Jony Ive really are shining examples of the pathological sickness we have to ignore the good things in life for the trivial.

I was thinking about this the other day too. In the last 10 years has technology actually made my life better? I had surgery recently and it seems like medical technology is much better. But day to day consumer tech? I was actually happier with that stuff 10 years ago than I am now.
They will not rest until humanity has become as depicted in WALL-E: the ultimate brainless consumers. Unable to concentrate or focus or form an original thought. WALL-E might be the most prescient sci-fi movie ever made.
> There’s a moral imperative of somehow celebrating making something with people that you think is important and curious and special.

This nonsense from a speech Ive gave (in celebration of designing a few expensive jackets that were not really different from other expensive jackets) sticks with me. It is a pathology when you become this delusional.

https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/moncler-jony-ive-lovefrom-co...

If innovation stagnated 20 years ago we wouldn’t have Baldurs Gate 3, etc
>> They promise that their gadget will free us from technology

> One cannot be free of technology by introducing more technology.

So they're blatantly lying to our faces, then? Or, more charitably, they're so full of themselves that they aren't registering their own contradictions.

> most of this recent junk we've been seeing

What are you thinking of?

> And what did we get in return?

Almost two hundred years ago, a bearded philosopher proposed that technology would simply make money move even faster to the pockets of the ultra-rich and leave the rest of humanity poor. He was ignored. We're now witnessing the results.

Jony Ive is a great designer, but not a great product designer. He needs a strong product visionary like Jobs behind him, something the Sam Altman is not. I call it a flop.
This all feels like a charade designed to justify ever-higher valuations. Jony Ive likely gets insanely wealthy, even more than he did at Apple, just for lending his name. OpenAI gets a wave of “free” press, with headlines touting how they’ve brought the world’s greatest designer on board. And by the time it’s clear that none of it led to anything meaningful, a few years have passed, and the company is bigger than ever.
Agree 100% - seems like they made Jony an offer that no one could refuse.

I also feel like Humane would've kept going if they really thought there was something there, and the fact they killed it makes me think they probably explored the idea space didn't find any easy wins.

Is Jony really going to be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat when good founders couldn't find any?

Maybe, but I'd bet against it.

Sam Altman wants to make Her real, I assume has only seen the trailer.
Jony Ive is talented, but we saw what happens when he doesn’t have a Steve Jobs to keep him in check: he dives headfirst into self-parody. And Sam Altman is no Steve Jobs, no matter what he fancies himself. I don’t predict anything worthwhile coming out of this partnership.
Is this like when everyone was going to get an Apple Vision Pro?
I've still got to catch up with all this AI thing. I really don't have the time.

But some teams I work with have lost interest in fixing our current issues and seem hellbent on implementing AI everywhere.

I'm waiting for the moment everybody sobers up and realizes there are other things that need work.

I'm sure the governments (and corporations) of the world are extremely excited for the day when most human's filter their thinking through AI.