It sounds cool, and the idea of asking questions about your day seems like it would be cool, but a few weeks later I’m finding myself forgetting to take it with me. The value just isn’t there yet. (And why have a clip on microphone when everyone already has a microphone in our pocket?)
It’s a cool toy though. Also a creepy toy since it can double as an eavesdropping device.
I have a feeling these AI companies will fall back to selling our data for advertising purposes once these companies realize their core products aren’t valuable enough for consumers to want to pay for the cost of it.
As for selling data if consumers don’t want to pay for it: I commit publicly to never doing this. I will shutdown the company and return remaining capital to investors if consumers don’t want to pay for what we are building. So far, so good, and we were actually cash flow positive a few of the last few weeks.
I actually like your Limitless meeting transcription tool and have a subscription for that reason.
I wish your focus was on the software but rather than the hardware.
#1 request is simply the ability to export my data so that I can more easily load it into other tools to ask questions against.
You have a treasure trove of all of my meeting transcripts for the past year but I’m really nervous they will be lost forever at some point.
Carmack has said that for VR/AR to get any traction, the headgear needs to come down to swim goggle size, and to go mainstream, it has to come down to eyeglass size. He's probably right. Ive would be the kind of guy to push in that direction.
I agree with the first 2 sentences, but not the last. Everyone and their grandmother knows size and bulkiness are big blockers to VR/AR adoption. But the reason we don't have an Apple Vision Pro in an eyeglasses form factor isn't an issue of design, it's an issue of physics.
Meta seems to have decent success with their Ray Bans, which can basically do all the "ask AI" use cases, but true VR/AR fundamentally require much bulkier devices, most of all for battery life.
Apple already tried a version of their headgear where an additional belt-mounted box and cable are needed. This was unpopular but necessary. It's up to Ive to make wearing a utility belt cool.
It just takes marketing.[1]
[1] https://previews.123rf.com/images/pressmaster/pressmaster110...
Engineering, not physics?
I doubt anyone would have believed you could have a phone with AI chips inside it that fit in your pocket 30 years ago.
People were already saying "Isn't it amazing that this computer that you can carry around in your hand is more powerful than a giant room of computers that NASA built to send astronauts into space" in the mid 90s, so while people wouldn't necessarily guess the details, I think they fully expected the technological advancements to continue apace.
This comment was written by Claude.
I know people for instance who could not think of anything more depressing than working with computers for a living. But hey, they do them and I do me. That’s the glory of things.
There's no such thing as "subvocalised conversation". It's a pervasive sci-fi term that has no bearing on real life.
(since Neil Stephenson's recent essay brought that quote up)
Make the same with apple watch to make hand gesture covering your ear like listening to something and then you don't even have to pickup phone from the pocket.
I think there is a lot of way how iphone, apple watch, airpods (case as pendant) could deliver the best UX but it doesn't matter as long as siri sux.
It might be an old guy finding a love for vinyl, but having a dedicated camera, a dedicated notebook, a dedicated music player ... makes making photos, writing down notes or listening to music somehow more ... meaningful to me. Maybe because I do not get distracted by the other 999 functionalities of the phone while I am trying to take photos, listen to music, or writing something down.
Why? Because looking at your wrist is much more efficient and fast than getting your phone out of the pocket.
A phone-connected 'AI necklace' to act as a trigger and communication device to an AI interface ( maybe even a small camera ) might be more convenient than fishing your phone out of your pocket as well.
I also am rolling back in certain areas, like writing instead of phone notes and such, but the idea of a wearable or portable chat bot device makes zero sense to me. It’s an added cost and yet another thing to lug around.
As it turns out though nobody seems to know _why_ they hired Ive or what they intend him to make.
Not sure it’s worth the hype but there are use cases. I do think it’s an interesting contrast with crypto, where there aren’t really.
Where is that AI? For example, if I usually eat between 2-4 PM, and I'm in the middle of time square, start suggesting places to eat based on my transaction history, or location history of restaurants I frequent. Something like that would be useful.
If I have to ask, I might as well look at my phone most of the time. It'd likely be faster in most cases.
I don't need something like that, where it must be queried to be useful, like asking it to read back my text messages, but I sure would love it if when my wife messaged me, it was smart enough to play the message unprompted if my headphones are already connected and active
The constant need to query for information, rather than have useful information contextually pushed to me, fundamentally limits its utility once the novelty wears off. Without a sufficient complexity threshold (and this assumes accurate information and trust) its more work to query for things than it is to simply do them.
From a consumer perspective, thats not great.
Obviously since we're in lage-stage capitalism and everything is designed to extract profit out of you, we can't give commercial systems all our private data...
(Of course, it's "non-LLM" AI, which isn't particularly fashionable right now, but if we really want smarter AI agents we need to stop treating all problems as solvable with large language models.)
But... I can already do this! My phone + CarPlay and/or my headphones actually works great. I don't see how a new device adds value or is even desirable. Unless you're going down the Google Glass/Meta Rayban path of wanting to capture video and other environmental detail you can't if my phone is in my pocket.
More than anything it would broadcast a fear of opening up and showing who you really are to other people. So instead of risking saying something silly, you replace your sense of identity with a generic chatbot. Super cool.
It's like, I can read Wikipedia myself.
Somehow I don't think anyone is going to be impressed by someone regurgitating chatgpt.
I've read that interviews with Stephen Hawking are excruciating because he'd take many minutes to "type" up his response. Of course people are still engaged because it's Hawking and the answer is from his brain, someone pausing to interact with an LLM would be a bore indeed.
What I'm saying is, have a little bit more imagination and imagine someone seemingly in natural conversation, who is actually an LLM. Could they be engaging? IMO quite a bit more engaging compared to someone reading Wikipedia out loud. Would it be artificial? It still is. But would the conversation partner notice? Maybe not for a while. Would I hate it? Of course...
For example, a man had an AI girlfriend in a movie and she hired someone to keep her in her ear and follow instructions on what to say and do, so that she could be physically intimate with her human by borrowing someone’s body. Stuff like this could be interesting, people acting as surrogates for AI or just using AI to augment their conversation skills.
I'll set alerts, an alarm, write on my hand, etc. and still forget that e.g. my kids have a half-day tomorrow… even when medicated.
I'd love to have a little voice in my head periodically reminding me of these things.
I can't but wonder though... are we slave to productivity?
What do we need this omnipresent help? I'm sure some people do. If you're CEO of a large company, if you are a doctor seeing hundreds of patients in a week, etc.
But me? An average middle age guy with 9-5 job doing white collar job at healthcare company?
I enjoy doing some things that are 'inefficient'. Is that a really a problem?
Now you just whip out your phone, look it up or ask an AI, get the answer and move on.
The second is more informative in a way, but so boring.
The point wasn’t knowing the fact, it was the discussion!
I feel like the most natural thing would be basically push-to-talk-to-AI:
1. Some sort of mic + earpiece that you can wear comfortably(e.g. airpods)
2. A wireless button that you can put on a ring to activate the mic in the most ergonomic way possible
3. Any time you press the button, everything you say gets sent to a running AI chat
Like a pin. With AI. And it would talk to you like a human, so we could call it the Humane AI Pin.
How did nobody thought about that?
1. It would be easier to use than a pin because it's connected to your hand. You can press it without anyone knowing that you are pressing it. You can presse it with a single hand in a comfortable motion. It doesn't fall around or look weird on your body. It also just be a ring because it only needs to connect over short-range to your phone.
2. Earbuds give you privacy, volume control, good mic quality, better battery life. Also again they are slightly more subtle than a large pin.
3. You don't make these stand alone hardware. You just have them talk to your phone and have it handle networking, camera, compute as needed.
Not at all comparable to humane AI pin...
No. They need all the data from your life.
They need to see what you see (camera somewhere), hear what you hear (hello microphones) and probably even more.
My bet is on some sort of tablet. Maybe kind of a book, or kindle, or something like that.
https://samueli.ucla.edu/speaking-without-vocal-cords-thanks...
So like a smartphone in your pocket connected to an earphone.
The whisper thing is nice. Sounds like a feature for next gen earphones.
Amazon Alexa already has this (albeit you need to whisper loud enough for it to hear), and replies in a whisper. It works with any earbuds, but is kinda useless until Alexa+ (LLM integration) is more widely available; and it would be nice to have it reply in a normal voice when using earbuds.
Silent speech recognition is already a thing [0], so pairing it up with an LLM would be straightforward.
One need is being able to talk to ChatGPT in a whisper or silent voice… so you can do it in public. I don’t think that comes from them, but it will be big when it does. Much easier than brain implants! In an ear device, you need enough data of listening to the muscles and the sounds together, then you can just listen to the muscles…
I assume they want to have their own OS that is, essentially, their models in the cloud.
so, here are my specific predictions
1. Subvocalization-sensing earbuds that detect "silent speech" through jaw/ear canal muscle movements (silently talk to AI anytime)
2. An AI OS laptop — the model is the interface
3. A minimal pocket device where most AI OS happens in the cloud
4. an energy efficient chip that runs powerful local AI, to put in any physical object
5. … like a clip. Something that attaches to clothes.
6. a perfect flat glass tablet like in the movies (I hope not)
7. ambient intelligent awareness through household objects with microphones, sensors, speakers, screens —