Five years after being established by former Apple executives, Humane will release its first product this year. The Humane Ai Pin is a wearable device that aims to sever our dependence on smartphones with contextually aware artificial intelligence.
Official details about the device are extremely thin on the ground, with the latest post revealing only the name and that it’s coming later this year.
But a recent TED Talk from Humane President Imran Chaudhri showed the kind of transformational use that the company has in mind.
In the video, embedded below, Chaudhri — formerly Director of Design on Apple’s Human Interface team — is able to outsource much of a smartphone’s workload to a screenless device on his chest with simple voice instructions.
That includes taking a call from his wife — Humane CEO Bethany Bongiorno (formerly a software engineering director at Apple) — via a projection on his hand, and getting calendar updates read aloud by the device.
The most impressive aspects arrive at the end of the video. In one memorable moment, Chaudhri shows the Ai Pin a Milky Bar and asks if he can eat it. The device informs him that the chocolate in question contains cocoa butter. “Given your intolerance, you may want to avoid it,” it chimes back.
Finally, Chaudhri’s words get translated into French on the fly. Impressively, the translation is delivered in his distinct voice and accent.
The future, or a fantasy?
The video still asks more questions than it answers. For one thing, the implementation feels a little bit too smooth to be believable in the on-stage demo. How did the Ai Pin know to translate Chaudhri’s words with no instruction to do so — and how did it know he wanted them in French, rather than Spanish or Italian?
But more fundamentally, while everyone is keen on reducing screen time in the abstract sense, actually replacing it with voice controls is a big ask. This is why nobody who has bought an Amazon Echo has subsequently chucked out their phone and laptop.
Certain functions work well, but what about hunting for a specific message, or general web browsing? A mini projector works okay for call information, but can it really project a readable map, say?
Screens are also very good for privacy. How many people will feel comfortable chatting to their Humane Ai Pin on the Tube or in a restaurant when sensitive data is involved?
There’s also the question of price. All we know at the moment is that the Ai Pin will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, like the majority of Android devices. That leaves a lot of possible price points.
Despite such questions, it remains a genuinely interesting piece of technology. It’s one that we’ll be keeping a close eye on in the months leading up to its release.
