alt Hacker NewsIt's easy to point and laugh at a failed product with puzzling features, but I have respect for what Humane tried to do. They attempted to produce an AI product and get it to stand on its own two legs (metaphorically). They didn't have an annoying CEO grandstanding about the amazing tech while handwaving away hallucinations and common bugs, something Valley leadership does way too much of.
They didn't start with a VC-friendly strategy of free-then-paid to acquire market share. There was an off-putting monthly subscription right at the start. No confusion about what this product's business model or target customer was.
Contrast that to the ham-fisted way Apple, Android and Microsoft are attempting to bootstrap their AI offerings by jamming it into successful hardware products and sneaking users into it with dark patterns to opt them in.
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> They didn't have an annoying CEO grandstanding about the amazing tech while handwaving away hallucinations and common bugs, something Valley leadership does way too much of.
I dunno:
"Humane AI Pin founders banned internal criticism" https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/report-humane-ai-pin...
"The Disappearing Computer — and a World Where You Can Take AI Everywhere | Imran Chaudhri" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMsQO5u7-NQ
>They didn't have an annoying CEO grandstanding about the amazing tech while handwaving away hallucinations and common bugs, something Valley leadership does way too much of.
From The New York Times' coverage of the company (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/technology/humane-ai-pin....):
> Many current and former employees said Mr. Chaudhri and Ms. Bongiorno preferred positivity over criticism, leading them to disregard warnings about the Ai Pin’s poor battery life and power consumption. A senior software engineer was dismissed after raising questions about the product, they said, while others left out of frustration.
> One [issue] was the device’s laser display, which consumed tremendous power and would cause the pin to overheat. Before showing the gadget to prospective partners and investors, Humane executives often chilled it on ice packs so it would last longer, three people familiar with the demonstrations said.
> When employees expressed concerns about the heat, they said, Humane’s founders replied that software improvements reducing power use would fix it. Mr. Chaudhri, who led design, wanted to keep the gadget’s sleek design, three people said.
> In January, Humane laid off about 10 employees. A month later, a senior software engineer was let go after she questioned whether the Ai Pin would be ready by April. In a company meeting after the dismissal, Mr. Chaudhri and Ms. Bongiorno said the employee had violated policy by talking negatively about Humane, two attendees said.
I'll agree with you on that, but I think there's a really important thing that we have to also say about their business model: they developed and launched a product they knew couldn't live up to its billing or its price point. It shouldn't ever have made it beyond its conceptual investigation. Put it on the back burner, try again in five or ten years.
No, instead, they had two annoying CEOs who grandstanded their own egos.
> They didn't have an annoying CEO grandstanding about the amazing tech while handwaving away hallucinations and common bugs, something Valley leadership does way too much of.
Did you forget that they released a video that proudly demonstrated the AI pin hallucinating the date of the eclipse? They then went back and memory-holed the mistake: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/13/23959473/humane-will-be-...
In every single public appearance, Imran was clearly trying to project an image of some Zen master version of Steve Jobs. I think you have a massive misread of this company and the hubris of its founders.