Smartphones are enabling but addictive. Humane, a San Francisco-based startup, wants to liberate people from their phones using, well, more technology.
It recently launched a gadget called AI pin, a small, square device that can be pinned to the chest. It can be controlled by voice, touch pad or projecting a laser display onto the palm of a hand, and it can make calls, send texts, play songs and snap photos, and even translate a real-time conversation into another language.
Humane CEO Bethany Bongiorno, who founded the company with her husband, Imran Chaudhri, calls it the world’s first contextual computer. “We’re offering the first opportunity to bring AI with you everywhere,” she told Wired. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, is an investor in Humane.
The AI pin is miles ahead of Alexa or Siri or Google Assistant in understanding the context of voice commands and getting things done. Thanks to the deep involvement of AI, it naturally follows conversations and makes fewer mistakes.
And it does not have apps. Instead, it directs requests through an AI model or third-party service. That, in more ways than one, might be a good thing. Apps are often inefficient and distracting, and are the main reason behind smartphone addiction. Even apps that are meant to help get work done can introduce distractions.
Will the AI pin replace smartphones? It can do many things that phones do, but not everything and not always.
Can it get things done better than smartphones? The AI pin’s form factor may help skip many steps involved in operating a phone. For instance, you can just ask it to take a photo, rather than taking your phone out, opening the camera, focusing and then clicking a photo. But you might not get as good a photo as the one taken by an iPhone.
Can it do stuff smartphones do not? AI pin is impressive for a first-generation device, and comparing it with smartphones that are at the zenith of their evolution might not be fair. Apparently, Humane is “exploring the possibilities so you can rethink how you experience music, shopping, communication, and more”.
The AI pin will cost $699 and require a $24 monthly subscription, and will begin shipping in the US next year.
The significance of the AI pin is that it is the first meaningful effort to wean you off smartphones by offering an alternative. In future, it may become a lot more than just a substitute. At the moment, however, it is just a promise.