It’s Saturday in South Park. Kids are squealing. A man shadowboxes behind me. Sitting across from me on a not-so-clean bench are Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri, partners in both life and work. They are co-founders of Humane, the San Francisco company behind AI Pin, arguably the first AI personal computer. (Also: What is an AI Pin? ) We were meeting to discuss the next step in the company’s evolution. And what better place than the fabled South Park—erstwhile home to Twitter and Instagram, before they moved to a bigger future?
They launched about six months ago. Their promised device, the AI Pin, was supposed to free us from the tyranny of the phone and its screen. The square screenless device is a tad bigger than a smartwatch. It magnetically clips to your clothes. It looks like something right out of a “Star Trek” future. Press the device and ask it to make appointments or call an Uber.
What came into the hands of reviewers and eventually customers was nowhere close to the nirvana many had imagined. The gulf between the promise and reality had reviewers frothing at the mouth. One very influential reviewer called it the “worst product he had reviewed.” Others were equally or even more brutal .“The problem with so many voice assistants is that they can’t do much — and the AI Pin can do even less,” The Verge reported. The device had poor battery life, and heating issues, the laser display was subpar, and more importantly, the device felt quite laggy. The biggest cardinal sin, though, was that it didn’t really have a killer app in the traditional sense. For me, “AI” was that killer app.