Smartphone replacement could be smart brooch – 12/11/2023 – Tech

Inside a former horse stable in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, a wave of soothing sounds emerged from small flashing devices pinned like brooches to the chests of employees at a startup called Humane.

There were just a few weeks left before the startup’s gadget, the Ai Pin, was revealed to the world — the result of five years, US$240 million (R$1.2 billion) in funding, 25 patents, a constant wave of hype and partnerships with leading technology companies including OpenAI, Microsoft and Salesforce.

Their mission? Nothing less than freeing the world from smartphone addiction. The solution? More technology.

Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, husband and wife founders of Humane, imagine a future with less reliance on the screens that their former employer, Apple, made ubiquitous.

Artificial intelligence “can create an experience that allows the computer to essentially stay in the background,” Chaudhri said.

They are advertising the brooch as the first artificially intelligent device. It can be controlled by voice commands, touch or laser projection from a screen in the palm of your hand. In an instant, the device’s virtual assistant can send a text message, play a song, take a photo, make a call or translate a real-time conversation into another language.

The system relies on AI to help answer questions (“What’s the best way to fill the dishwasher?”) and can summarize incoming messages with the simple command “Update me.”

The technology is an improvement over Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. It can follow a conversation from one question to the next without needing explicit context. It is also capable of editing a single word in a dictated message, rather than requiring the user to correct an error by repeating the text from beginning to end, as other systems do. And all this in a device that resembles the badges used in “Star Trek”.

For technology experts, it is an ambitious project. For the uninitiated, it’s a science fiction fantasy.

At Humane, there is great anxiety about the coming weeks. The technology industry has a large graveyard of wearable products that have failed to become popular. Humane will begin shipping the pins next year. They hope to sell around 100,000 brooches, which will cost US$699 (R$3,430) in the US and will require a monthly subscription of US$24 (R$118) in the first year. (Apple sold 381,000 iPods in the year after its 2001 launch.)

For the startup to be successful, people will need to learn a new operating system called Cosmos and be willing to get new phone numbers for the device. (The pin comes with its own wireless internet plan.)

They will need to dictate messages instead of typing them and exchange a zoom camera for wide-angle photos. They will need to be patient as certain features, such as object and video recognition, will not be available initially. And the brooch can sometimes fail, as occurred during some of the company’s demonstrations for the New York Times.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said in an interview that he expects artificial intelligence to be “a huge part” of how we interact with computers. He has invested in Humane, as well as another AI company, Rewind AI, which plans to create a necklace that will record what people say and hear. He also discussed the possibility of teaming up with former Apple design chief Jony Ive to create an AI device with a similar ambition to Humane.

Humane has the advantage of being the first of these AI-focused devices to become available, but Altman said that doesn’t guarantee success.

“That will be up to customers to decide,” he said. “Maybe it’s too big a step, or maybe people think, ‘This is so much better than my phone.'”

“Many technologies that seemed like a sure bet end up being sold for 90% off at Best Buy,” he added.

iPhone’s fault

Bongiorno, 40, and Chaudhri, 50, have a marriage of contrasts. He shaves his head and speaks in the soft, calm voice of a yogi. She flips her long blonde hair over one shoulder and has the enthusiasm of a team captain. They both dress in black, like Steve Jobs.

They met at Apple in 2008. Chaudhri was working on the human interface, defining the gestures and movements that control iPhones. Bongiorno was a program manager for the iPhone and iPad. They worked together until leaving Apple at the end of 2016.

A Buddhist monk named Brother Spirit led them to Humane. Chaudhri and Bongiorno had developed concepts for two AI products: a women’s health device and the brooch. Brother Spirit, who they met through their acupuncturist, recommended they share their ideas with their friend Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce.

Sitting under a palm tree on a cliff above the ocean at Benioff’s Hawaiian home in 2018, they explained both devices. “This one,” Benioff said, pointing to the Ai Pin brooch as dolphins leaped in the waves below, “is going to be huge.”

“It’s going to be a huge company,” he added. Humane’s goal was to replicate the usefulness of the iPhone without any of the components that make us addicted: the dopamine rush of dragging to refresh a Facebook feed or swiping to see a new TikTok video.

They secretly experimented with hardware components and built a virtual assistant, like Siri or Alexa, working with custom language models based in part on that offered by OpenAI.

The most futuristic element of the device — the laser that projects a text menu onto the hand — started out inside a box the size of a matchbook. It took three years to miniaturize it to the point where it was smaller than a golf ball holder.

Humane has established an Apple-inspired company culture, including its confidential nature. During the experimentation phase, the startup created intrigue by announcing high-profile investors like Altman and making grand—if vague—public statements about building “the next big change.” [na relação] between humans and computers”.

The company also maintained Apple’s obsession with design details, from the device’s rounded corners to the white compostable packaging and Japanese-style bathrooms in the company’s office.

But Humane has moved away from Apple’s rigid, demanding culture in a few ways. The company encouraged team members to work together, question plans, and speak up.

José Benitez Cong, a longtime Apple executive who considered himself retired, joined Humane, in part, to redeem himself. Benitez Cong said he was “disgusted” by what the iPhone had done to society, noting that his son could imitate the swiping motion at 1 year old.

“It could be something that would help me overcome my guilt about working on the iPhone,” said Benitez Cong.

Holding the light

A frightening sound filled the room, and two dozen Humane employees, sitting around a long white table, focused on the sound. It was just before Ai Pin launched, and they were evaluating its rings and beeps. The brooch’s “personic” speaker (a mix of “personal”, personal, and “sonic”, sonorous) is essential, as many of the features depend on verbal and audible touches.

Chaudhri praised the “assertiveness” of one of the sounds, and Bongiorno praised the “more physical” sounds of the broach’s laser. “It looks like you’re actually holding the light,” she marveled.

Less reassuring is that hissing sound that plays when sending a text message. “It looks bleak,” Bongiorno said. Others around the table said it felt like a ghost, or like you had made a mistake. Someone thought it was a Halloween joke. Bongiorno wanted the sound when sending a text message to be as satisfying as the sound of the trash can on one of Apple’s old operating systems.

The device is arriving at a time when excitement and skepticism about AI are reaching new heights every week.

Industry researchers are warning of the technology’s existential risk, and regulators are eager to crack down on it.

But investors are pouring money into AI startups. Before Humane even launched a product, its backers had already valued it at US$850 million (R$4.2 billion).

The company has tried to promote a message of trust and transparency, despite spending most of its existence working in secret. Humane’s Ai Pins have what the company calls a “trust light,” which flashes when the device is recording. (The user must tap the pin to “wake it up.”) Humane said it does not sell user data to third parties or use it in training its AI models.

In the months leading up to its presentation, Humane had expectations. In April, Chaudhri showed off the brooch’s laser projector during a TED talk. (People later accused him of faking the demo, but he assured them it was real.)

In September, remembering the launch of the Apple Watch aimed at the fashion world, supermodel Naomi Campbell wore the Humane brooch —almost imperceptible— on a gray Coperni blazer on the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week.

AI app store

Humane supporters have an easy way to dispel skepticism — they invoke the first iPod. That clunky device had just one function, playing music, but it laid the foundation for the true revolution, smartphones. Similarly, Humane imagines an entire ecosystem of companies building features for its operating system — an AI version of Apple’s App Store.

But first, raisins. In a demonstration at Humane’s office of a feature that will be released in a future version of the product, a software designer picked up a chocolate chip cookie and touched the brooch on his left breast. When it beeped, he asked, “How much sugar is in this?”

“Sorry, I couldn’t find the amount of sugar in an oatmeal raisin cookie,” the virtual assistant said.

Chaudhri ignored the mistake. “To be fair, I have a hard time telling the difference between a chocolate chip cookie and an oatmeal raisin cookie.”

Humane’s ambition to disrupt the smartphone is audacious, creative and even irrational; the kind of thing Silicon Valley is known for but, critics lament, in recent years has devolved into incremental frivolities like selfie apps and robot pizza trucks.

But even after months of using their Ai Pins all day, Humane’s founders can’t completely disconnect from their screens.

“Are we using our smartphones less?” asked Chaudhri. “We’re using it differently.”