Inside an old horse stable in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, a wave of soft chirps emerged from small, flashing devices pinned to the chests of employees of a start-up called Humane.
It was only a few weeks before the startup’s gadget, the Ai Pin, was revealed to the world – the culmination of five years, $240 million in funding, 25 patents, constant hype and partnerships with a roster of the biggest tech companies. , including OpenAI, Microsoft and Salesforce.
Their mission? No less than freeing the world from its dependence on smartphones. The solution? More technology.
Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, husband and wife founders of Humane, envision a future with less reliance on the screens that their former employer, Apple, made ubiquitous.
Artificial intelligence “can create an experience that allows the computer to essentially take a back seat,” Mr. Chaudhri said.
They present the pin as the first artificially intelligent device. It can be controlled by speaking out loud, tapping a touchpad, or projecting a laser screen onto the palm of a hand. In an instant, the device’s virtual assistant can send a text message, play a song, take a photo, make a call, or translate a conversation in real time into another language. The system relies on AI to answer questions (“What is the best way to load the dishwasher?”) and can summarize incoming messages with the simple command: “Catch me up.”
The technology is a step forward from Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. It allows you to follow a conversation from one question to the next, without the need for explicit context. It is also capable of editing a single word in a dictated message, rather than requiring the user to correct an error by repeating the text from start to finish, as other systems do. And it’s a gadget reminiscent of the badges worn in Star Trek.
For tech insiders, this is fortunate. To outsiders, it’s a science fiction fantasy.
At Humane, there is deep anxiety about the coming weeks. The tech industry has a vast graveyard of wearable products that have failed to catch on. catch up. Humane will begin shipping the pins next year. He plans to sell about 100,000 pins, which will cost $699 and require a monthly subscription of $24, in the first year. (Apple sold 381,000 iPods in the year following its 2001 launch.)
For the startup to succeed, people will need to learn a new operating system, called Cosmos, and be open to getting new phone numbers for the device. (The pin comes with its own wireless plan.) They’ll need to dictate rather than type and trade a zooming camera for wide-angle photos. They will have to be patient because certain features, such as object recognition and videos, will not be available at first. And the pin can sometimes be buggy, as was the case in some of the company’s demos for the New York Times.
Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, said in an interview that he expects AI to be “a significant part” of how we interact with computers. He has invested in Humane as well as another AI company, Rewind AI, which plans to make a collar that will record what people say and hear. He also considered partnering with Jony Ive, Apple’s former chief designer, to create an AI gadget with similar ambition to Humane.
Humane has the advantage of being the first of these AI-driven devices to become available, but Mr. Altman said in an interview that was no guarantee of success. “It will be up to customers to decide,” he said. “Maybe it’s a bridge too far,” he said, “or maybe people say, ‘It’s way better than my phone.’ “A lot of tech that looked like a safe bet ends up selling for 90% off at Best Buy, I added.
iPhone Guilt
Ms. Bongiorno, 40, and Mr. Chaudhri, 50, have a contrasting marriage. He shaves his head bald and speaks with the soft, calm voice of a yogi. She sweeps her long blonde hair over one shoulder and has the enthusiasm of a team captain. They both dress in Jobsian black.
They met at Apple in 2008. Mr. Chaudhri was working on its human interface, defining the swipes and swipes that control iPhones. Ms. Bongiorno was program manager for iPhone and iPad. They worked together until leaving Apple in late 2016.
A Buddhist monk named Brother Spirit led them to Humane. Mr. Chaudhri and Ms. Bongiorno had developed concepts for two AI products: a women’s health device and the pin. Brother Spirit, whom they met through their acupuncturist, recommended that they share their ideas with his friend Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce.
Sitting under a palm tree on a cliff above the ocean in Mr. Benioff’s Hawaiian home in 2018, they explained the two devices. “This one,” Mr. Benioff said, pointing to the Ai Pin, as dolphins breached the waves below, “is huge.”
“It will be a massive undertaking,” he added.
Humane’s goal was to replicate the usefulness of the iPhone without any of the components that addict us all — the dopamine hit of swiping to refresh a Facebook feed or swiping to see a new TikTok video. They secretly experimented with hardware components and built a virtual assistant, like Siri or Alexa, working with custom language models based, in part, on OpenAI’s offerings.
The most sci-fi element of the device – the laser that projects a text menu onto a hand – started inside a box the size of a matchbox. It took three years to miniaturize it so that it was smaller than the size of a golf tee.
Humane has established a company culture that borrows from Apple, including its secrecy. During its experimental phase, the startup created intrigue by announcing high-profile investors like Mr. Altman and making grandiose — if vague — public statements about building the “next game changer.” humans and computing. Humane also retained Apple’s obsession with design details, from its device’s curved corners and compostable white packaging to the Japanese-style toilet in the company’s austere office.
But Humane has moved away from Apple’s rigid and demanding culture in some ways. The company encouraged staff to work together, question plans and speak up.
José Benitez Cong, a longtime Apple executive who considered himself retired, joined Humane, in part, to redeem himself. Mr Benitez Cong said he was “disgusted” by what the iPhone had done to society, pointing out that his son could imitate a sliding motion at the age of one. “This might be something that could help me overcome my guilt about working on the iPhone,” Mr. Benitez Cong said.
Hold the light
A haunting whistling sound filled the room, and two dozen Humane employees, seated around a long white table, focused carefully on the sound. It was just before the Ai Pin came out, and they were evaluating its ringtones and beeps. The Pin’s “personal” speaker (a company portmanteau of “personal” and “sonic”) is essential, as many of its features rely on verbal and audio cues.
Mr Chaudhri praised the “confidence” of a chirp and Ms Bongiorno complimented the “more physical” sounds of the pin laser. “It’s like you’re actually holding the light,” she marveled.
Less confidence: that whoosh that sounds when sending a text message. “It seems worrying,” Ms. Bongiorno said. Others around the table said it looked like a ghost, almost, like you had made a mistake. Someone thought it was a Halloween prank.
Ms. Bongiorno wanted the sound of sending a text to be as satisfying as the sound of the trash can on one of Apple’s older operating systems. “Like ‘thank you,’” she said.
The device comes at a time when enthusiasm and skepticism about AI are reaching new heights every week. Industry researchers are warning of the technology’s existential risk, and regulators are eager to crack down on it.
Still, investors are eagerly investing in AI startups. Before Humane even launched a product, its backers valued it at $850 million.
The company has tried to promote a message of trust and transparency, even though it has spent most of its existence working in secret. Humane’s Ai Pins have what the company calls a “confidence light” which flashes when the device is recording. (A user must press the pin to “wake” it.) Humane said it does not sell user data to third parties or use it to train its AI models.
In the months leading up to its introduction, Humane stoked anticipation. In April, Mr. Chaudhri showed off the pin’s laser projector at a TED talk. (People later accused him of faking the demo, he said, but he insisted it was real.) In September, echoing Apple’s launch of his watch, model Naomi Campbell wore Humane’s pin – barely noticeable without knowing it. to look for it – on a gray Coperni blazer at the Paris Fashion Week show.
AI App Store
Humane’s supporters tend to dismiss skepticism about its prospects: they point to the first iPod. This bulky, clunky device had only one use: playing songs, but it laid the foundation for the real revolution: smartphones. Similarly, Humane envisions an entire ecosystem of companies creating features for their operating system – an AI version of Apple’s App Store.
But first, the raisins. During a demonstration at the Humane office of a feature that will be rolled out in a future version of the product, a software designer picked up a chocolate chip cookie and stuck the pin in her left breast. As it came to life with a beep, he asked, “How much sugar is in this?”
“I’m sorry; I couldn’t look up the amount of sugar in oatmeal raisin cookies,” the virtual assistant said.
Mr. Chaudhri ignored this error. “To be honest, I have a hard time telling the difference between a chocolate chip cookie and an oatmeal raisin.”
Humane’s ambition to disrupt the smartphone is bold, creative and even irrational; the sort of thing Silicon Valley is supposedly known for, but which critics say has morphed in recent years into progressive frivolities, like selfie apps and robotic pizza trucks.
But even after months of wearing their Ai Pins all day, Humane’s founders can’t completely break away from their screens. “Are we using our smartphones less? » asked Mr. Chaudhri. “We use them differently.”
