Over a month since its launch, some say that the Humane AI Pin may just be the beginning of the world's transition to an era of less screen time.
The sail off of this $699 wearable technology could grant users a self-sufficient life where advanced AI technology is integrated into their daily lives with every piece of information available on the device with no screen attached to the lapel of their wears.
According to Humane, the production company of AI Pin, this wearable tech is an embodiment of their vision to "integrate AI into our everyday living while enhancing our abilities in the world without overshadowing our humanity".
You can say that they aim to present a whole new way for humans to communicate and interact with the world intricately and at all levels without the need for so many screens.
Is that possible?
Many have termed it "a potential smartphone killer". But if you ask me, I see it nowhere being near the truth. Let's see for ourselves what the prospects of AI Pin are.
What is AI Pin?
AI Pin is the brainchild of two very talented Apple ex-employees, Imran Chaudhri (hardware designer) and his wife, Bethany Bongiorno (software engineer) aimed at liberating humanity from smartphone addiction.
The AI Pin is a small, lightweight, and screenless wearable device that combines AI technology, sensors, and a projector and is designed to provide users with a variety of functionalities that are both natural and intuitive when the device is interacted with.
The AI Pin has the functions of a smartphone but as opposed to smartphones, it has no home screen or digital interface that can be looked at. It is like a tech pixie – a tiny powerhouse that marries artificial intelligence with the unassuming charm of a pin and strips away all the interface cruft from the fabric of your daily life.
Thoughts are flying – without a screen, how do you operate the AI Pin?
A touch on the device powers it on and it switches on at the sound of your voice or your hand gestures. You can talk and say what you want to know or do, and the device will act in response to your demands automatically. AI has grown more efficiently over the years, undergoing a metamorphosis from simple text commands to chatbots, to oral interactions.
We've seen AI personas like Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft's Bing, play personal assistant roles to users. However, Humane makes its AI Pin an AI that you can carry anywhere effortlessly and with all convenience while giving you a more personalized interaction and experience.
How Does AI Pin Work?
In a 10-minute video, co-founders, Chaudry and Bongiorno detailed the full capabilities and technologies of the AI Pin.
The gadget is a technology basically for talking not typing. Hence, it makes use of language models and not applications.
Ending an era of apps, Humane's operating system, the cosmOS, runs a cloud-based AI-powered inventory called 'AI Bus" that understands what you need, picks the right response/data, and calls up the AIs and tools you need at the moment, so you no longer have to search for, download, or manage apps.
Its unique features include:
- A Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset (Snapdragon processor with a dedicated Qualcomm AI engine), is crucial for AI technology because it is super fast and ensures optimum performance.
- An in-built network connectivity built right into Humane's network and connected by T Mobile. Every owner of the pin gets a special phone number.
- A wireless connectivity that enables users to integrate, control, and interact with various smart devices, and access online services.
- An ultra-wide RGB camera that scans objects and images immediately for necessary data and takes gorgeous pictures and video just by a double tap on the device.
- Depth and motion sensors are super smart and fast in tracking and recording your surroundings or detecting your hand gestures and interpreting them.
- A trust light indicator built directly into the Atkins hardware via a dedicated privacy chip and it indicates when the input optical or audio sensors are active, which ensures full transparency and data security.
- A laser ink projector that displays a visual interface of the AI Pin on the palm of your hand.
- A beacon light that notifies you when there is something new for you, like messages, services, etc.
- A special speaker that creates a 'personic' sphere bubble of sound that can be reduced or increased.
- A perpetual power system that consists of two pieces – battery boosters and a battery charger which helps in achieving all-day battery life.
The AI is powered by GPT-4 and uses natural language processing to listen to, understand, and interpret user interactions. By interacting with the device either by a voice, gesture, or touch command, the AI can assist in tasks such as:
- Managing schedules, arranging meetings, answering queries, providing recommendations, summarizing important or daily messages, etc.
- Monitor health and fitness metrics, including heart rate, sleep quality, step count, daily calorie counting, etc.
- Find out information about events like the next lunar eclipse, map directions, songs to play, restaurants to visit according to your preferences, etc.
- Carry out transactions. Pay bills, buy items, order for products/meals, etc.
- Live translations of languages. The AI acts as an interpreter in a bi-lingual conversation, interpreting the receiver's language to you in your language and interpreting your language to the receiver in his/her language in your intonation.
and many more.
A Review of the AI Pin
The wearable device sounds like such a thrill device, that anyone would rush to get one to try it out. I am very much intrigued myself. But is this acclaimed "do everything" AI gizmo truly capable of living up to its expectations?
Let’s start by analyzing the design and features in respect to other devices.
AI pin is a small thin, sleek, and lightweight hardware with a smooth glass surface, easily pinned to your lapel; the device is very comfortable for your daily activities and almost forgettable. Much more convenient to use than your smartphone in your hands, your wristwatch strapped to your hands, your AirPods stuck in your ears, or the Ray-Ban Glasses on your face.
If this wearable device can totally replace the mentioned devices especially smartphones, then it is an easy sell; but this is improbable as these devices have uniquely positioned themselves in the lives of their users, such that, it will take the AI pins some more years to play catch up in order to convince users that it is a better alternative.
But Eras do come to an end, don’t they??
The laser ink display that projects some details like battery life, temperature, music, location, time (and so much more we are yet to find out) on the palms, which can be operated with simple hand and finger gestures, is quite an impressive feature for a wearable device with no screen.
The perpetual power system with 2 extra hot swapping batteries (or battery boosters) for longer battery life that could last weeks without charge, may just be able to score some extra points if I do not have to swap the boosters during my day's routine. But sadly, it seems not as Chaudry, in the promotional video, opined: "...and this is how we achieve all-day battery life".
Can someone tell me why exactly a device so small would exhaust 3 batteries in approximately 24 hours? That certainly does not give a lot of confidence in the device and has to be improved on.
The privacy feature dares to be exceptional; it has no 'wake words' that ensure that the AI is not always listening or recording everything about your life (to cause an AI apocalypse/takeover in the future. lol). It only comes on and is active at its user engagement or voice.
In addition, the prominent Trust Light indicates that the sensors are active and could be recording so you can keep whatever you have to keep private. If this is compromised, the pin shuts down automatically and needs Humane's professional service to get it functioning again.
The bad side, you cannot contact Humane's professional services until you visit Humane's Care Centre, which is also the center you need to use to manage the AI Pin. To get in touch with the center, you have to resort to your smartphone or PC. (Haha! Play catch up, buddies! You can't completely get rid of your smartphones.)
Where AI is concerned, there is still a tough call as to whether the technology is perfectly intelligent and wholly accurate. Humane's debut of the AI Pin served as a low blow to its 5 years of development as it features inaccuracies due to its AI slip-ups or fabrications.
First, our hazy AI tells Chaudry that the best view for the next solar eclipse would be in Australia when in all common sense, the best view for the eclipse, which is the 'Great American Eclipse' would be in no other place than America. A huge slip-up, right?
Next, after Chaudry asked how many grams of proteins the handful of almonds he held was, AI replied 15 grams. WRONG! According to dieticians, you have to engulf at least 60 almond nuts to get 15 grams of protein.
If we have to depend solely on this AI when using the AI Pin, how sure can we be about the information it provides us?
Confidence drops to 50%.
This brings me to the price. $699? And a $24 monthly TMobile subscription to have access to unlimited calling, texting, and data connectivity to OpenAI's AI models and Microsoft? May not be outrageous for some technologies, but consider a small wearable device pinned to your lapel with no screen, I call that horrendous!
Okay, it would be a fair price if it could auspiciously take the place of smartphones in our day-to-day lives by at least 70% and didn't have so many faults. This is its first entry into the market, which means there should be a lot of feedback and reviews that would lead to a couple of updates and upgrades for future models. Buying a debut device at such a price could only be out of curiosity.
Can the AI Pin survive the test of time?
Wearable devices like Narrative Clip, a life-logging device designed to also sit on the user's lapel and take pictures at 30-second intervals, held on for 4 years until it dissolved. However, it would be demeaning to compare the AI Pin to the discontinued tech as it has more use cases and holds more promise.
The Humane couple and ex-Apple geniuses are confident in the future of the Pin. Bongiorno calls it the "world’s first contextual computer" and believes it will have a mass appeal - A computer Beyond Touch…. Beyond Screens
Amidst all the criticisms, I must acknowledge that this is a first-of-its-kind gizmo – a screenless, seamless, and sensing AI-powered voice-controlled gadget that does not require connectivity to another smart device to operate.
The advent of smartphone technology reduced our dependency on desktop and laptop computers. Likewise, the arrival of the AI Pin technology can greatly reduce our screen time by cutting down our clinginess to smartphones.
No one can tell the future; it is too early to predict as the technology is in its premature state. But just as the first iPhone was released in 2007 and continued to pass through different phases of development to become more sophisticated, the AI Pin is also very capable of this kind of development and growth, especially with the advancement of AI technologies.
Are the chances of bigger corporations engulfing Humane and its AI Pin?
I can't say for sure. But unapologetically, Humane has the backing and is heavily funded to a ton of $200 million by A-list companies pushing technology around the globe. Some of these companies include OpenAI, Microsoft, Qualcomm Technologies, TIDAL, T-Mobile, Salesforce, and others.
Competitors are sniffing at this technology and taking wild guesses regarding its future – Google, Meta, etc. However, Humane's greatest competitor could be…(your guess is as good as mine), Apple Inc.
Apple's fascination with AI makes them a force to reckon with. They are known to have a radical approach that dominates the market and keeps them at the top as a tech giant. They also play a smart game of acquisitions or competitions. If they can't acquire, they release a strong contender into the market.
A pin that has the potential to overshadow the smartphone in our daily lives is not a novel idea that Apple can pass by and ignore. To stay on top of the game, they could watch the pun's prospects in the market and be whipping a checkbook in no time or releasing a more sophisticated version in few years down the line.
You can't be too surprised if you hear iPin after a successful acquisition or iClip as a daring competition.
(Note: This is solely a prediction from a personal point of view)
In all cases, it is not for us to know. Humane could become an unprecedented force leading the technology of AI voice-controlled wearable gadgets and reshaping the way we interact with AI and technology.
(P.S: Once Humane becomes a fully registered and public company and releases an upgrade of the AI Pin, I'll be taking up some shares. There is good potential here.)
Final Words
The world is buzzing with new and newer technologies every day. However, the AI Pin is a pacesetter that proves that it is not another neoteric attempt to make wearable tech a trend but a revolutionary voice-controlled device that will liberate users from the addiction to screens even in a tech-infused world.