Apr 16, 2024 2 min read

On HumaneAI: should completely new tech products be judged by their promise or on their delivery?

I’m sure you’re following today’s main character on tech Twitter: HumaneAI.
The TLDR is that there’s a new AI voice assistant device on the market. It’s multi-modal, wearable, and built with some pretty cool engineering. Think of it like computing on the go.

It acts as a live voice search, shadows you on calls, can capture basic photos and video, etc. Plus, it can display a screen on your hand, in case you don’t want to talk out loud.

The kicker: it costs $700 plus an additional subscription free.

Note

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Many journalists, YouTubers, and tech enthusiasts have released their honest reviews of HumaneAI. The reviews are brutal and rely on comparing this new AI pin to our smartphones — that we all wished we used less of but only truly put away when we’re asleep.

We can’t forget we have smartphones because we use them all the time. In fact, do you even remember all the big and small things you do on your phone daily? Furthermore, the computing power and affordability of smartphones make them the poster child of the global and digital economy.

For any AI native hardware device to play in the same league, it needs access to rich data, it needs to be fast, and it needs to synthesize information in a way that feels like a step forward.

And it somehow needs to do all of this on a different interface, OS, and on a device other than the one we carry around all the time.

It’s an admittedly hard problem to solve.

You can’t limit the power of your software by trying to build it on top of older hardware, but at the same time, your newer hardware can’t be a container only for your AI native software.

HumaneAI is attempting to build in uncharted territory. It’s a novel attempt. However, there is a clear gap between the current product and its ideal/ future self — the execution lags far behind the idea.

As tech enthusiasts, should we support HumaneAI for bringing a new idea to the public, or should we be pragmatic consumers? Is it our responsibility to offer an honest critique or are we killing an audacious idea before it has found its footing?

What do you all think?

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