This TED talk was not what I was expecting. Instead of a flashy demo of the product we got a foundation and principles for building Ai driven devices. I have a lot of questions but here are my initial thoughts.
Video link: youtu.be/gMsQO5u7-…
The good.
First, I thought this was a typo but Humane references “Ai” instead of “AI”. Is there a difference? Is “Ai” not an acronym forArtificial Intelligence? Maybe this is the name of the product. Ai. And the next version could be Aii. It is probably explained somewhere but I haven’t bothered to look.
Second, I like the idea of technology being transparent. I think society as a whole can benefit with more face to face interaction without a screen in between. I also relate to this especially after recently attending my daughters’ piano recital and recording it on my phone but wanting to also just be present and enjoy the moment .
Third, I agree that AI (Ai?) will transform our lives in ways we can’t imagine right now. I think the demo showcasing the translation into French using his own voice and manner of speaking was impressive and much more personal than a generic assistant like Siri or Google Assistant. This also demonstrated the ability for the technology to be less visible and obtrusive during a human to human interaction.
The demo about personalized recommendations was also interesting in that each user will have their own Ai and it will learn and evolve to make better recommendations for the individual. This reinforces Humane’s Ai principles of security, privacy, and trust.
The bad.
Everything above sounds great. However, when I think of how this will fit into my life I don’t see it. What does this replace? My iPhone? My MacBook? My Apple Watch? Or is this something in addition to those things that replaces some of my “compute” experience when I’m around people?
The demos didn’t demonstrate privacy as commands had to be spoken out loud. That is much less private to speak a sentence out load than to silently type it into a message. And while summarizing emails is helpful for prioritizing - it doesn’t reduce the number of emails I need to reply to in a thoughtful manner.
The end.
I feel the truly revolutionary AI powered device will be on the face with glasses. Glasses with an earpiece can take us so much further along the path to replacing a phone while improving our social interactions securely and privately. Maybe it is my lack of imagination but I just can’t see a place in my life for Humane’s Ai based on what was demoed.