The philosophy behind Humane's AI Pin (ft. Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno)

An interview with the co-founders of that new product everyone's reviewing

[Montage begins]

Imran Chaudhri: This is the Humane Ai Pin. 

Mrwhosetheboss: It's been blowing up the internet over the last few months. 

Danny Gonzalez: One of the strangest products I've ever seen. 

David Pierce: It's a device made entirely for interacting with AI systems.

Look at this and tell me what it is. [10 seconds elapse and Ai Pin responds] The image contains a hand holding a green and blue stuffed animal. The stuffed animal is a Pokémon character named Bulbasaur.

Imran Chaudhri: Engagement comes through your touch, voice, gesture, or the laser ink display. 

Marques Brownlee: Is it going to track my hand around when I move, or do I have to have my hand in the perfect place?

Mrwhosetheboss: As I move my hand back, it knows that.

David Pierce: You're supposed to sort of roll your palm around, and I just cannot get it to work reliably. 

CNET Reviewer: There are times it's driven me fricking crazy. It's a fascinating concept, but I don't think it's fully there. 

David Pierce: More than once I've had the Pin itself actually overheat and tell me it needs to cool off before I can use it again.

Mrwhosetheboss: When I asked it how many chicken nuggets there are in a 20-chicken-nugget share box, it said without a hint of caution: The box contains fried chicken nuggets. There are 14 chicken nuggets in the box. 

Reviewer: The fact that it's its own number and not connected to your phone?

Nilay Patel: $700. $24 dollars a month. 

Marques Browlnee: That's a tough sell.

David Pierce: But even still, there are these moments when I do something that doesn't work, and I'm like, “Oh, it's going to be so cool when it does work.”

[In interview] It's certainly true that if you want to ask ChatGPT a question, the Pin is going to be a faster way to do it than your phone. 

David Imel: It's good that tech like this is being funded, because exploring new concepts and ideas and form factors is good. 

MrMobile: It's obvious how much thought Humane put into a device that you're going to wear every day.

CNET Reviewer: Am I curious to see where it goes? Yeah, absolutely. 

Danny Gonzales: Maybe someday this will be like a revolutionary product that changes the way we all interact with each other. Maybe we're just seeing some hiccups now, but a few product generations down the line, this thing is really going to take off. It'll be more refined. 

Reporter: There's a ton of examples of companies that were just too early to the tech, and I think this is the case here.

Mrwhosetheboss: I asked it, “What’s this tree in front of me?” It told me it's a Japanese maple. And there was something incredibly, uniquely satisfying about gaining that insight without needing to be interrupted from the moment with my phone. 

Reporter: There's times where you decide you don't want to bring your phone. 

Reporter: A mobile computer that it is impossible to doomscroll on? Good. That's good.

David Pierce: It occasionally does things that you're like, “Oh, I see it now.”

Demonstrator: Estamos casi listos para enviar la version final. [Ai Pin translates] We are almost ready to ship the final version. 

Imran Chaudhri: Catch me up. Yanir asked if you want to get Hook Fish with Sam this week. Michelle sent some notes about today's design sync. Andy and Adam are on their way over.

The trust light indicates when its input, optical, or audio sensors are active. 

Bethany Bongiorno: More transparent than the devices you have today.

Imran Chaudhri: Your data should be owned by you and only you. At Humane we call this next era of compute the Intelligence Age. 

[In Interview] Where do we want to be as a society? Where do we want to be as individuals? How do we want to progress? 

[Presenting] This is the possibility of reimagining the human-technology relationship as we know it.

[Intro animation plays]