I have between 5 and 8 phones on my desk at any given time. By “my desk” I mean a combination of tables and countertops throughout the house. So when I saw reviews for the Humane AI Pin start pouring in last week, I did what any logical person would do. I grabbed the nearest cell phone and tried to turn it into my AI wearable.
Humane wants you to believe that its AI Pins represent cutting-edge consumer technology. Reviews and pin guts are not. It appears to be using a 4-year-old Snapdragon processor and running a custom version of Android 12.
“This is a midrange Android phone!” I announced at my next team meeting, waving my midrange Android phone for effect. “Just download Gemini and stick it on your shirt!” Simple. boring. I said, give me 10 minutes and I’ll build you a more powerful AI gadget.
Hardware is hard, folks.
Ideally, I wanted an outward-facing camera and a suitable voice assistant that could be used hands-free. Putting my iPhone in my shirt pocket was an interesting solution, but it’s not suitable for beginners because a) my shirt doesn’t have a pocket, and b) Siri isn’t all that smart. did. So my first prototype was a Motorola Razr Plus strapped to the neckline of my shirt. Naturally, this didn’t work, but the reason was something I didn’t expect.
First, you can’t download Gemini from the Play Store on a flip phone. That was news to me. But even once I sideloaded it and set it as my default assistant, I hit another roadblock. It is very difficult to use the voice assistant through the cover screen of a flip phone. Razr wants you to flip your phone open before it does anything other than grab your attention with “OK Google.”
In fact, running Gemini in Chrome on the cover screen got me closer to what I was looking for. However, trying to launch Assistant by tapping a button on the screen didn’t work, nor was I able to interact with her Google Lens out of the corner of my eye. Gemini also misread the word “recycle” written on a toothpaste tube as “vesicles,” but she confidently told me that this was an old word for glasses. it’s not!
Prototype 2 was the same Razr flip phone running ChatGPT in conversation mode on the cover screen. This was not practical as it meant the app was always running and always listening. But I tried it anyway, and it was a weird experience talking to an invisible AI chatbot.
I want an AI that can do more than just brainstorm stir-fry ingredients for me.
ChatGPT is a good conversationalist, but once we exhausted the chatbot’s go-to dinner recipes and plant care tips, we quickly ran out of things to say. I want an AI that does more than just brainstorm stir-fry ingredients for me.
I ditched the foldable concept and bought a Pixel 8 and Pixel Watch 2 instead. I set Gemini as the default assistant on my phone and figured it would somehow apply to my watch as well. mistaken. But I had one more card. It’s a good old wireless earphone. Living on the cutting edge of technology, baby.
But what do you know? It worked to some extent. Google doesn’t fully support Gemini Assistant on headphones, so I had to keep Gemini open and running on my phone. But I took a photo of the Blue Apron recipe I was making for dinner, told Gemini to remember it, and put my phone on the counter. As we moved around the kitchen, I asked Gemini questions that usually require rereading recipes to answer, such as “How long do you roast vegetables?” “How should I prepare the fish?” He gave me the correct answer every time.
What was even more impressive was that I was able to ask off-topic questions. It helped me use ingredients from my pantry to recreate seasoning mixes I didn’t have on hand. When I asked why the recipe calls for dividing the sauce into two batches, I got an answer that made sense. And I did something that Humane pins can’t yet do: set a timer.
It wasn’t perfect. First, the Google Home pack sitting on my counter kept trying to plug in, so I had to unplug it. Gemini also said you can’t play albums on Spotify, but Google Home’s speakers have been making that work just fine. It’s been 10 years. At least the watch helped with that.
What started as a silly stunt convinced me of two things. One, we really think we’re going to use AI to do more things in the future, and two, the future of AI gadgets is just phones. It’s a phone!
I love gadgets, but I’ve lived through a time when camera companies tried to convince us that we needed to carry point-and-shoot cameras and cell phones everywhere. The phone won. The phone already has a powerful processor, decent heat dissipation, and sophisticated wireless connectivity. An AI gadget that works independently of your phone needs to understand all of this.
And you know what looks much stupider than a pin with a laser on your chest? earphone. Now people happily wear them all day long. And when it comes to wearables, the silly element is definitely key. I don’t see how a discrete gadget can beat something like a humble smartphone and earphones, or a MetaRay girlfriend van. There may be room in our lives and pockets for dedicated AI hardware. The gadget enthusiast in me welcomes that.But I think that’s more likely All the ingredients needed to build great AI hardware are right at our fingertips.