Former Apple employees have founded Humane, a company that is promoting a vision of the future centered on artificial intelligence that goes beyond smartphones. The Humane Ai Pin, the company’s first offering, was unveiled today. According to company representatives, it is a “clothing based wearable device” that will be sold later this year and is powered by Qualcomm’s “advanced Snapdragon platform”, in addition to using a variety of sensors to provide “situational and ambient computing interactions”.
The exact purpose, appearance and cost of the Ai Pin have not been disclosed by Humane. So far, all we have is a blurry image of a square object about the size of a deck of cards. As there is no need for a pocket, its name suggests that it could be pinned to clothing.
The @Humane wearable doing English->French AI translation in your own voice… wow. (SOUND ON)
Video credit @ZarifAli9
Read the exclusive on the Humane wearable's features: https://t.co/TYRmtYPSYI pic.twitter.com/cmAWEU8DFS
— Ray Wong (@raywongy) April 21, 2023
Most of what we know about Ai Pin comes from Imran Chaudhri, co-founder of Humane, who showed a gadget on stage at the TED conference in April this year that was most likely Ai Pin. He uses it as a voice assistant to make phone calls, get automated summaries of his daily schedule, take pictures of chocolate bars to find out their nutritional content, and display a tiny green screen on his palm. But the demonstration did not explain how the Ai Pin actually worked, such as how Chaudhri’s words were instantly translated into French when he spoke English. How did he control the projection screen?
Humane’s introduction to the Ai Pin uses the word “AI” a lot, without explaining what it really means. Even stranger is the fact that the word “Ai” is not capitalized, which would indicate a specific meaning.
It is a bold attempt at a novel design and concept that could change the way we interact with technology, even if there are many unknowns. Humane has broken new ground in a world dominated by screens, and we will be watching.
