About Humane-the-wearable

Have you heard of Humane's AI Pin? It's a neat wearable device and even a neater concept – straight out of Star Trek!

Here are the specs: https://hu.ma.ne/aipin/details and a demo:

It made quite a splash and was the subject of several lively online discussions. Here are my notes (Nerd alert!):

Humane form factor

This looks like an interesting new form factor, in addition to olde good 

1. typewriter / notebook / desktop (physical keyboard + screen + mouse)

2. notepad (aka smartphone / tablet, touchscreen)

3. headphone (AirPods and such)

4. smartwatch

5. XR glasses (not a helmet, please!)

6. lapel (Humane, voice interface + hand gestures + projector)

There are also smart speakers… never mind. 

There is lots of talk about XR glasses and/or smartwatches replacing notebooks and smartphones - I don't think this is going to happen. Many use cases are better handled on a laptop or smartphone. But some / many use cases will migrate to wearables 3-6. 

It's instructive to think about Humane in terms of a trusty human executive assistant. These are great for many tasks. But some tasks you'll want to do yourself. Examples:

• reading a book - you don't need an assistant, you do need a notepad (paperback format)

• watching a movie - same

Some tasks require a different form factor. Examples:

• health monitoring - you need another wearable that touches the skin, 3-5

• mapping out a route - you need a good screen

• already mentioned reading a book or watching a movie

Also, some tasks are great for an assistant but require a screen to collaborate with them on. Examples:

• planning a road trip - I'd love to be able to discuss it with an AI travel agent using a screen and headphone

• designing a house

• designing a product with visual UI

And think about all situations where talking is inconvenient or socially awkward, and you'd prefer a good old screen + keyboard (physical or touchscreen)

So, I want my personal compute in all 6 form factors, notebook or smartphone, plus some set of wearables.

Anyway, what's special about the Humane AI Pin form factor?

• It's conveniently tappable

• Enables hand gesture-based control

• It has a wide-angle camera that has context awareness

They demoed a couple of use cases that benefit from this form factor/placement: easy tap activation, calorie counting… But some demoed use cases can be done just as conveniently with other wearables, like AirPods or Watch.

What else? I don't think it's a particularly good placement for speakers, a mic, or a compute. And I am skeptical about the utility of the projector and expect a gesture-based interface without visual feedback to be quite limiting. So… perhaps it should not be a $700 + $24/mo device but a smartphone peripheral? 🤔

AI maturity

Look, ma, no apps! No screen!

The demo is excellent, a teaser of the brave new UX. I suspect the AI models needed to power it IRL aren't quite ready yet. And it's not only about LLMs - speech-to-text and visual object/gesture recognition also need to perform flawlessly. I expect lots of mistakes and edge cases. But these will improve, and hopefully quickly.

Hardware

Humane seems very demanding on its battery, processor, camera, and projector. I'm afraid these in V1 will cause some disappointment.

Anyway… will you get Humane AI Pin v1?