Negative criticism is amusing, as Anton Ego so astutely observed. And I had a lot of fun this week watching Marques Brownlee’s polite demolition of the Humane AI pin, which he described as “the worst product I’ve ever reviewed.” Not just a solution in search of a problem, but a future in search of a present.
Humane’s product, a big AI-powered pin that sits on your lapel and operates through voice and gestures rather than having any kind of screen, is riddled with problems. Some of these appear to be temporary issues that will be fixed in version 2.0, such as battery life, slight overheating, and slow query response times. Others are more basic: Will a projector interface coupled with gesture controls ever be comparable to a touchscreen for ease of use, especially among older demographics (or even for anyone in outside the bubble of early adopters)? Maybe that’s what computing will become one day, but for now, a wearable AI that replaces your phone holds little appeal.
It did, however, get me thinking about how the concept could work. The problem is that Humane tried to remake the computing experience from the ground up. This means you have to persuade customers to learn a new interface and control system and leave behind all the comforts and benefits of the technology they are used to; namely the smartphone, around which the world has revolved for around fifteen years. Instead of doing this with a badge the size of a watch, why not use a watch… the size of a watch?
Human
Human
Human
When it launched, the Apple Watch shared some of Humane’s novelty issues, but it’s been around for almost a decade now and the world largely understands the concept and workings of a touchscreen smartwatch. Additionally, in terms of general life niche rather than interface specifics, the Apple Watch has replaced a roughly 200-year-old product: the muscle memory for rolling up a sleeve and peeking at a small face is ingrained in us almost from birth, and potential clients won’t be put off by the idea of looking weird… which, by the way, I’m convinced, is much more of a cost driver consumption than anyone admits. None of this applies to a weird gadget on your chest with a camera pointed at people’s faces. It is is going to attract all the wrong types of attention.
The Apple Watch isn’t currently sold as an AI device in the same way that the Humane pin is, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely stupid. Thanks to Siri, I just asked my Series 9 the height of the Eiffel Tower and I got a precise answer and a photo. I asked him when the next Manchester United match was and got a bad answer. (A postponement appears to be the cause of the confusion.) But this level of inconsistency is also about the same as the Humane AI pin, and shows that the Apple Watch is already an AI device, but that it just isn’t super reliable. .
Fortunately, it’s likely that AI will improve a lot in the near future: where iOS leads, watchOS usually follows. Many of the technological advancements Apple is set to announce at WWDC this year will benefit its product ecosystem as a whole, with millions of us desperately hoping that Siri is about to get smarter on Mac, HomePod and Apple Watch as well as on the iPhone. And any tasks processed through Apple’s cloud servers should benefit from the company’s broader advances in AI.
The Apple Watch already offers AI features, but watchOS 11 could take it to the next level.
The Apple Watch already offers AI features, but watchOS 11 could take it to the next level.
Jim Martin / Foundry
The Apple Watch already offers AI features, but watchOS 11 could take it to the next level.
Jim Martin / Foundry
Jim Martin / Foundry
Mind you, when we talk about the cloud, Apple is showing promising signs of recognizing the benefits of on-device processing. While the Humane AI pin responds to almost all requests by contacting the company’s servers, meaning delay and potential outage if there is a connection problem at either end, iPhones of this year will take responsibility for processing many transactions themselves. Again, we don’t know if or when the Apple Watch will follow suit, but there’s a good chance that Apple will eventually apply the same principles across its entire product portfolio.
The Apple Watch has a more discreet form factor than the Humane pin, a more familiar control scheme, a screen you can actually read things on, and much better battery life, while its AI capabilities don’t are not far behind at the moment and are likely to take a leap forward in the near future thanks to its creator’s greater development resources and current focus on AI.
But the real “secret sauce” that the champion has over the newcomer is its integration with the iPhone. With admirable but reckless ambition, Humane aims to create an autonomous device that would replace smartphones and has therefore made the decision not to connect to them. This means that your AI PIN (which currently has no third-party apps) does not have access to text messages sent to your phone number, your calendar, your smart home devices, your Uber, Spotify and Amazon accounts , or any other number. other key data sources that the smartphone naturally and intuitively brings together in one place. The Apple Watch, on the other hand, is plugged into all of that.
It’s not hard to imagine, a few years down the road, the Apple Watch finding a new niche as a wearable AI companion. It’s already the least restrictive of all Apple products: when I need to set a timer, I instinctively do it on my watch rather than on my phone, because there’s no need to take it out of my pocket: it is already there. If Siri improves and regains our trust, which is admittedly a big if, then all the other ingredients are in place.
Whereas the Humane AI pin doesn’t seem to have any future at all.
