[HN Gopher] Humane, a startup full of ex-iPhone talent, trying t...
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Humane, a startup full of ex-iPhone talent, trying to make phones
obsolete
Author : bilsbie
Score : 43 points
Date : 2023-10-01 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.inverse.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.inverse.com)
| bko wrote:
| > Humane is trying to realize the promise of "ambient computing"
| -- an artificial intelligence-driven computing experience that's
| personal and contextual -- by building a software platform and
| hardware line that doesn't rely on screens.
|
| Sorry, I think that's too many buzz words for me to comprehend
| and I can't take it seriously. Phones provide us some utility. If
| you can make some other interface that helps me ask for GPS
| directions or check my emails, sure. But if you're lumping in all
| this other crap, I know you're just selling vaporware.
|
| > Based on Chaudhri's explanation, Humane's chosen path lies in
| artificial intelligence. Building experiences around interactions
| with AI that fit around someone's normal life instead of forcing
| them to shape theirs around another screen. In Humane's words,
| the company is helping to build the "Intelligence Age," a new
| paradigm of computing based on journalist Walt Mossberg's idea of
| the "disappearing computer."
|
| What does this mean? I'm bored for the 40 seconds it takes me to
| catch and take an elevator. So I look at social media. Or I'm
| riding a bus or train. Or I just want to take a break from work,
| or get GPS instructions. How does Humane solve my problem (is
| there a problem)? By showing me a social media feed on my wrist
| instead of a screen? Sounds like a privacy nightmare to try to
| use AI and constant feed to estimate my fiber intake and predict
| when I'm going to need to entertain myself for ten minutes for it
| to preload my social media feed.
| m463 wrote:
| "Press or say 1 if you want directions"
|
| "Press or say 2 if you want to make a phone call"
|
| "Press 9 to repeat the menu"
| dcow wrote:
| You know that feeling when something is trying just a little
| too hard? That's hu.ma.ne. I mean look at the domain alone.
| It's nonsense. Compare it to the place they left: apple.com.
| Then there's the TED talk. What relevant _anything_ debuted via
| TED? Most things that get the TED treatment end up being
| vaporware.
|
| I think there's potential in the technology they're developing
| as a different type of watch-like device. But all this other
| cult-like nonsense is way overkill and if I'd have to wager I'd
| probably pass.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| >Humane is trying to realize the promise of "ambient computing"
| -- an artificial intelligence-driven computing experience
| that's personal and contextual -- by building a software
| platform and hardware line that doesn't rely on screens.
|
| This reads to me as along the lines of, "I speak aloud to an AI
| and it replies, rather than taking something out of my pocket",
| but 'ambient', 'artifical intelligence', and 'doesn't rely on
| screens' are carrying the weight there. The rest seem like
| features of such a system.
| bko wrote:
| So airpods with a better assistant? Or Google Glass? Just be
| up front and don't bs me
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Sorry, I think that 's too many buzz words for me to
| comprehend and I can't take it seriously._
|
| This seems pretty straightforward to me.
|
| "Ambient computing" and "no screens" imply a voice interface
| (think: earbuds, watch, Trek-like communicator), potentially
| leveraging augmented reality (think: glasses, windshield)
| if/when available.
|
| "Personal" and "contextual" suggest that interactions leverage
| all available signals instead of requiring that you explicitly
| share all necessary background info as a preamble, and also
| suggest a level of proactiveness (vs. today's mostly reactive
| user experiences).
|
| Maybe in that 40 seconds the device could remind you that you
| wanted to get pasta and suggest the most convenient place to
| pick it up, update you on recent headlines, ask if it should
| book your flu shot, or whatever. These seem like nice
| alternatives to doomscrolling.
| 15457345234 wrote:
| > "Personal" and "contextual" suggest that interactions
| leverage all available signals instead of requiring that you
| explicitly share all necessary background info as a preamble,
| and also suggest a level of proactiveness (vs. today's mostly
| reactive user experiences).
|
| Could you please elaborate
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Could you please elaborate_
|
| Sure, here's an example for "contextual": If I'm in my
| office and say, "Alexa turn on the light", it has no idea
| what I'm talking about. A contextually-aware device would
| use some mix of signals -- what Bluetooth devices are
| nearby, when my voice reached the mic compared to other
| devices within earshot, the sound of typing, etc. -- to
| determine where I am and do the right thing.
|
| Similarly, an example for "proactive": My family has used
| Alexa for years, and it hasn't noticed a single routine. I
| haven't bothered to manually program routines because I've
| decided I no longer want to invest time in anything that
| locks me into the platform. But a proactive device would
| eventually figure out that humans tend to need light in
| dark rooms.
| usrusr wrote:
| Anything smaller than a phone implies even more cloud bound.
| It might be "ambient", it might be "contextual", but it sure
| won't be "personal". As in my device, my data, my decisions.
| "Personalized", sure, but that's merely a distraction from
| the fact that you are operating a thin client with zero
| control. A browser allows you to scroll through offerings, a
| voice interface will send you right to the highest bidder.
| PumpkinSpice wrote:
| > If you can make some other interface that helps me ask for
| GPS directions or check my emails, sure. But if you're lumping
| in all this other crap, I know you're just selling vaporware.
|
| Not that I want to defend this particular startup, but if I
| described the functions of a modern-day smartphone to you back
| in the 1980s, you'd probably have the same reaction, right? A
| lot of random, unrelated crap lumped together!
|
| Most of the time, it goes nowhere. But just because somebody is
| trying to combine a bunch of hitherto-unrelated use cases
| doesn't mean that the idea is dumb.
| maronato wrote:
| I don't think that's an apt comparison. The smartphones of
| today allow us to do things unimaginable to people in the
| 80s.
|
| This startup doesn't seem to be creating any new use for the
| technology in your phone, just changing the way you interact
| with it from a glass screen to a projected screen on your
| hand or countertop.
| bko wrote:
| Jobs did a great job showing off the first iPhone. iPod +
| phone + Internet.
|
| And of course iPod was 1000 songs in your pocket.
|
| This is what made it successful. Not bs. We think about jobs
| as very head in the clouds and saying things like computer is
| really like a bicycle, but he was very practical and clear
|
| https://youtu.be/x7qPAY9JqE4?si=2OZiIU95haYTyiHn
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| Wouldn't bet a dollar on this company's vision. Smoke and mirror.
|
| They claim to obsess over design with their overly designed
| website, but the presmise and vision of the product seem so out
| of touch with reality.
|
| Also they've been around for a long while now and haven't shipped
| a thing except their laughable merch products with their
| obnoxious and trite slogans on them
| 15457345234 wrote:
| It's one of those cases where the more (of this article/press
| release) you read, the less you understand about what it is
| they actually do and what any of their products would actually
| look like.
|
| > haven't shipped a thing except their laughable merch
|
| Yeah that's a big tell
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I think pervasive ubiquitous & ambient computings are all in
| early phases, but have a long-run massive impact. We're in a
| lull, where the big players are realizing conversational chatbots
| for example aren't going to be a major profit driver anytime
| soon, but they also kind of know that there's existential risk to
| having nothing on this part of the platform map. But we're also
| seeing a world where multi-device control is expected, where we
| have expanded our computing horizons well past the single system
| single display model. And where new modalities like voice control
| and watch control are growingly expected. It makes sense for
| groups to pioneer here, for advanced players to try hard.
|
| Rather than cloud my mind with negativity - and yes I have plenty
| of doubts - some of the hints here have some promise. They seem
| to have a lot more respect for personal data, and the tech scene
| desperately needs some less shady players to redeem it's image &
| help us compute & connect.
|
| Their tech looking to use a laser projector for overlaying
| information seems like an interesting idea. VR and AR (XR) have
| been a major fixation for tech for a while, but wearing a display
| keeps having downsides, and the promise here of combining digital
| augmentations atop the real world, without so big a downside,
| seems promising to me. It would be cool to lookup weather or
| recipes or get other infographics quickly. I could totally see
| kit-ing out a room with a couple moderately priced projects for
| this purpose.
|
| There's a long proud history of post-display ubicomp in general.
| The Nomad wearable comes to mind as a prominent early device.
|
| There's some low-effort negative swipes sayiny 'if I can't
| teleconference on it it's no good to me' but we are surrounded by
| screens. Most of them aren't ours don't do our will, but part of
| the pervasive/ubicomp dream has always been to make these ambient
| peripherals more broadly available. Even if you do have such a
| hard fast need, I could imagine a world where it didn't
| necessarily have to be my own device that I carry that I needed
| to teleconference. I can imagine ubicomp winning, advancing
| enough, such that I would be well setup everywhere. Further, it's
| not hard for me to imagine a device which is mostly not screen
| oriented, which is mainly about other modalities, but which
| indeed does have a small screen to fallback on.
| latchkey wrote:
| This thing? lol.
|
| https://twitter.com/88Stash/status/1708284463271342113
| likeclockwork wrote:
| They're going to get so much VC money.
| w-m wrote:
| Earlier this year we built a live depth estimation system in our
| research lab. It uses a small laser projector with visible light
| and an event camera to estimate the depth of the projected
| points. You get a point cloud of whatever surface or object
| you're projecting on, while being free to project any content
| [0]. Also it's fast enough to process 1280x720 points at 60 Hz
| with a laptop CPU.
|
| Explaining this work and use cases can sometimes be a bit of a
| struggle. Maybe if "ambient computing" is established as a widely
| known buzzword, imma have to steal it to make that part of the
| job a little easier. Until now I was mostly going with mixed
| reality.
|
| [0]: https://fraunhoferhhi.github.io/X-maps/
| raphman wrote:
| Cool research that seems quite relevant for my own research.
| Thank you for sharing!
| camillomiller wrote:
| Until they show us something more than a boxy little calculator
| with clever product placement and an Aliexpress-sourced laser
| beamer, I claim vaporware.
| amelius wrote:
| What do you think the first iPhone prototypes looked like?
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| They didn't talk about them on any stage at that stage
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Countless smartphone users like to use Instagram, Tiktok,
| YouTube, mobile games, and so on, all things only possible with a
| screen. Meanwhile nothing could prevent Google and Apple from
| implementing the same kind of AI controls on their phones. The
| only thing that remains is the laser projector and it doesn't
| seem like people are excited about it.
|
| Many don't actually want a "world without displays", and goals
| like a better "human experience" look _vastly_ different between
| different people. I 'm guessing those startup founders like
| interacting with people and want tech to be in the background,
| meanwhile I'm the opposite. The smartphone in its current shape
| happens to be the compromise most users find good enough, and it
| doesn't involve a lot of voice-based commands even though they've
| been supported to some degree for years. Maybe this device is
| good, but it's not made for the mainstream user of 2023.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Sorry for being negative, but Humane as-is is going nowhere. It
| can't do video calls, it sucks. You'd have to have an iPhone and
| one of these. AirPods Pro 5 will do 99% of what this can do
| through voice.
|
| Sorry for saying something irrelevant, but I wish Apple would put
| e-ink (or equivalent) displays on the back of iPhones and iPads.
| amelius wrote:
| The iPhone 1 wasn't a very capable phone either.
| p_l wrote:
| the 3G upgrade that also introduced app store felt positively
| clunky compared to some phones then in use. Arguably
| explosion of the App Store quickly turned into major
| differentiator
| rvba wrote:
| The technology that came after Iphone 1 made it look
| uncapable, but at the time when it came out it was better
| than everything else - and it made you feel like you "live in
| the future".
|
| In my opinion some sort of this technology would be very
| useful. If not this, then something else. Being able to see
| the map on the car window, or a map when you walk, or
| information about products (something similar to Google lens
| but no hands).
|
| I can easily imagine warehouse workers using this to tell
| them which box of little chips to pick-up. Of course everyone
| talks about building completely automated warehouses, but
| still there are lots of non automatic ones.
| paxys wrote:
| Compared to its competition? It absolutely was.
| m463 wrote:
| People don't remember it didn't have any apps.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| > The iPhone 1 wasn't a very capable phone either.
|
| The original iPhone was one of the first phones to have
| visual voicemail. That alone made it a revolution compared to
| the phone experience before it. Before iPhone you dialed some
| voicemail box and had to listen through 4 messages before you
| got to the one you cared about. Yeah if you weren't there
| it's hard to understand how bad of an experience it was.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| It wasn't too shabby
| fidotron wrote:
| This looks like an attempt to commercialise the ideas in
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrtANPtnhyg
|
| Projectors have a killer problem which is they aren't very
| bright, and those that are bright enough to be useful are
| dangerous to everyone nearby.
| usrusr wrote:
| And even if you ignore the danger, battery draw would just
| kills all non-stationary applications.
| crooked-v wrote:
| This really reminds of the buzz around the original Segway
| release.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I wish they'd pair with an ear piece and the primary interface is
| the Ai talking to you.
|
| Then projection would be secondary.
|
| Also It would be interesting for privacy if the Ai updates its
| weights from everything it sees and hears but there's no way to
| get that data out of the device.
|
| You could still ask it to specifically take photos and recordings
| but that would be no different than a smartphone today.
| paxys wrote:
| Ear pieces and AI computing devices (your cell phone) already
| exist. Humane is entirely unnecessary to get to the experience
| you are describing. The company's entire selling point is that
| projection thing.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| https://hu.ma.ne/media/humanexcoperni
|
| So vague, too much buzz for me to understand...
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| This seems like a scam to me.
| Probiotic6081 wrote:
| I'll sell my Cicret Bracelet for one of those when it comes out.
| ellis0n wrote:
| The film "In Time" showed this feature back in 2011.
| maxk42 wrote:
| > Humane will reveal its first pass at its ambient computing idea
| in Spring 2023.
|
| Okay, so an outdated article that already shows the company is
| failing to keep its promises. These are a dime a dozen, I'm
| afraid.
| lgg wrote:
| I find the whole idea unappealing, but they did keep their
| promise and show off a prototype back in
| spring://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMsQO5u7-NQ
| spicybright wrote:
| There's been at least 2 attempts on kickstarter for this same
| idea. One traditional projection which is bulky as hell, really
| bad brightness drop off, and you can't see it in the light.
|
| Another was some kind of laser based thing that had the same
| issues.
|
| Oh, and a very old one, probably 2009 from MIT or something.
| It's a projector you wore on a long necklace that would project
| stuff on your arms and hands. That one actually worked decently
| in tech demos they showed. It could track your hands and arms
| so you could gesture out stuff.
|
| Still, I have very little hope this will pull through. Not sure
| how the iPhone devs can help much with the main hurtle being
| the hardware that doesn't exist or have a working proof of
| concept.
|
| Edit: I'm going to put my foot in my mouth on this one, I just
| say the ted talk in the adjacent comment and it seems to
| actually work. Smart they went with chest mounted vs bulky
| wrist watch.
| zie wrote:
| I'd rather the Apple Watch replace the iPhone. Apple doesn't seem
| totally against the idea, but they don't seem to be in any hurry
| either.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| An Apple Watch with cellular capabilities is that? I presume
| they want it connected to an iPhone at least to maintain iPhone
| sales, but you can leave the iPhone at home.
| vcg3rd wrote:
| As powerful as the Internet is, there has been fewer
| transformative technologies developed from 1950 to now than from
| the steam engine to 1950.
|
| Just a few: radio, radar, penicillin, automobiles, telephone,
| refrigeration ( _huge_ ), air flight, train transport, x-rays,
| and much much more.
|
| Rewrite the headline to "make phone calls obsolete" and it'll
| give you 1) an idea of how transformative voice transmissions
| were (and still are for families) and 2) an idea of how people
| forget what phones are actually good for.
|
| If I had to give up everything on my smart phone except one
| function I would keep the ability to speak to my mother,
| children, and grandchildren.
|
| Yes, I could use VoIP on my desktop if I wanted, but I don't want
| and I can't take my desktop with me. I can buy a GPS, radio/mp3
| player, camera,e-book reader and more to replace those functions.
| I would retain voice calls and give up only what? Social media? I
| don't use any. Email when not at home (yawn)? Surfing the Web?
| wizofaus wrote:
| Losing the camera function would be annoying, as would the
| ability to use it as a credit/travel card etc. - I'd have to go
| back to using dedicated devices for that. Whereas you're right
| - the ability to talk (/communicate) with people virtually
| wherever you (and they) are in the world is still what makes it
| a truly transformative technology with no adequate replacement.
| beebeepka wrote:
| > if only I could buy a modern phone without cameras.
|
| It's a travesty these things don't even have shutters. Taping
| over them works but is very inconvenient. They also tend to
| stick out of the chassis.
|
| It's boggling my mind they keep adding more cameras. I really
| have lost almost all touch with the world.
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