Scathing review from David Pearce at The Verge on Humane’s AI Pin. Personally, the idea of an AI based assistant that’s always with you is appealing, but it needs near-perfect implementation to convince people to carry yet another device. I reckon we’ll see these types of assistants gaining traction as apps on our existing smartphones and smartwatches long before dedicated devices take off.

As the overall state of AI improves, the AI Pin will probably get better, and I’m bullish on AI’s long-term ability to do a lot of fiddly things on our behalf. But there are too many basic things it can’t do, too many things it doesn’t do well enough, and too many things it does well but only sometimes that I’m hard-pressed to name a single thing it’s genuinely good at. None of this — not the hardware, not the software, not even GPT-4 — is ready yet.

It’s a shame as the Humane AI Pin is aesthetically appealing and gives off futuristic vibes. It’ll be interesting to see how positive the reviews of Teenage Engineering designed Rabbit R1 are when they come out and whether its decision to ship with an on-screen interface proves more useful. The AI Pins push towards ambient computing certainly feels like a bigger leap into the next generation of computing, but if the hardware and software aren’t ready as Pearce’s review suggests then this product was bound to fail.

Whatever happens with the AI Pin, let’s hope it’s just another small step towards all of us getting a pair of those Black Mirror contact lenses.