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Humane AI – Pico Laser Projection – AI Twist on an Old Scam (2023)
- jack_riminton 3y agoCalling it a “scam” is disingenuous, the product may be a bit crap for a v1 but their intention is to release people from the over-reliance on smartphones which is to be commended
- croes 3y agoIf they knew beforehand that the projection won't work as promised then that part qualifies as scam.
- jack_riminton 3y agoDid they know or did they have hopes that their first implementation could be improved upon? I'm open-minded they've done something fraudulent I just haven't seen the evidence
- dmitrygr 3y agoAs TFM mentions, pico-projectors have been around for a while and have not improved (physics does not care how much you want it). Thus no sane non-scamer would "hope that their first implementation could be improved upon" This company was not even in business of developing new laser display tech. So who would improve it for them? And why would they have not in the previous decades?
- croes 3y agoThey knew it at least before they delivered the first units.
- tomaskafka 3y agoI love this take on Humane as a s̶c̶a̶m̶ business reselling the last decade laser projection b̶u̶l̶l̶s̶h̶i̶t̶ dreams with adding AI (edited, the question of scam/not scam is not the point). And probably poisoning the well for other, simpler and laser-less personal AI devices as a side effect. Btw, you can buy a 60g wearable device whose hardware is prepared for 24/7 microphone listening, has ML accelerator, 24h battery life, and has, for some reason, kept free 16GB of storage that the user can't access and the OS doesn't use. It is called Apple Watch.
- bunnyfoofoo 3y agoFor the free space, you can actually sync music on Apple Watch and then connect AirPods to it when exercising so you can avoid taking your phone.
- tomaskafka 3y agoYes. Up to 8 GB. And then there's about 4-5 GB for the OS, something for the apps, and the second half is empty. For now at least.
- mark_l_watson 3y agoI like to leave my phone at home, and I load all sorts of content on to my Apple Watch. For me it is practical to have a lot of my favorite music permanently on my watch, then podcast and audio books are transient. If you have an Apple Watch, give it a try.
- threeseed 3y agoWords matter. We should reserve scams for the actual scams. Like we’ve seen with all the shitcoins, rug pulls etc in the crypto space. This is just bad product management in effect.
- realfeel78 3y agoThe term scam doesn't just mean the company has literally made nothing. People like you are how scammers keep getting away with scamming.
- tomaskafka 3y agoFair enough, I don't have enough evidence of the bad intent, so I edited the post.
- unobatbayar 3y ago> kept free 16GB of storage that the user can't access and the OS doesn't use. Sounds like it's used for data collection and surveillance.
- Havoc 3y agoSeems a bit much calling it a scam. That to me implies malicious intent which I don’t think is in place here. Bad/imperfect products happen even to well meaning companies. Must admit I’m surprised by the aggressiveness of it all. It’s almost like an echo chamber where people have decided it’s ok to pile on
- suyash 3y agoYes, that is bit much but the main point being this projection technology is nowhere novel, I have been playing with pico projectors and modern ones comes with Android OS so it's just a mini projector. However the only thing innovative here is natural voice interaction powered by modern AI but that also seems to be very slow for any practical purpose.
- soneca 3y agoIs the hand movement to control what is being projected on your hand as a menu “nowhere novel”?
- infecto 3y agoHonest question, is it much different than how VR headsets track hand movements and gesture in VR?
- soneca 3y agoFrom the reviews, it seems different and worse. But it is something novel that requires serious research. Even if the result is disappointing, it is novel enough to not make the it a “scam using old te vc projection”. That was the point of my rhetorical question before.
- infecto 3y agoDoes it require serious research? I am not trying to be difficult but I have seen write ups on basic hand gesture tracking from 5+ years ago.
- ZiiS 3y agoThey have got really positive (relatively) reviews though https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TitZV6k8zfA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TitZV6k8zfA "The Worst Product I've Ever Reviewed... For Now" at least a different league then the other scams listed.
- crote 3y agoIsn't his conclusion essentially "nobody should buy this"? Sure, it's "relatively" positive if you compare it to a literal scam, but still not exactly praising.
- frou_dh 3y agoTo me the gist of the review was that it's sluggish and lacking in features/integrations. Both extremely common attributes of 1st-gen products, and not particularly dramatic.
- realfeel78 3y agoNo. The gist is it's actually useless.
- chaostheory 3y agoThe comment was sarcastic. People need to use the /s
- chaostheory 3y agoThat was a much better review compared to this blog post.
- TrackerFF 3y agoHot take: AR via brain-implants will succeed before we get decent small laser projectors.
- ZiiS 3y agoNot a hot take. Even if you had impossibly perfect laser projectors, you do not have anywhere semi decent to project them.
- dgacmu 3y agoNow hold on, you could carry around a miniature white projection screen with you. Maybe about the size of a plating card but thicker, maybe a little bigger, but sized so you could comfortably hold it in one hand but still fit it in a pocket or purse. And then stiffen it a little so that it doesn't rattle around in the wind. Maybe add a grippy back? And it could double as an extra battery for the pin...
- ZiiS 3y ago... and cover it in OLED.
- shubhamjain 3y agoI take issue with the word "scam", but other than, a very well-done rebuttal. It's not just v1 issue, Humane is a product of the most brainless assumptions you can make: a) That a palm-size laser projector could work as a display. b) That awkward hand gestures are a great way to navigate UI c) That voice could work as a primary input. d) That people would be willing to pay $700 and a monthly subscription for a device that barely works. It's at par or even worse than Juicero. The team and its supporters should stop hiding behind "it's v1", and "we were trying to invent a new paradigm." The device has to be promising now, not in some imaginary future. And trying to invent shouldn't mean you're going to forgo questioning the basic foundational ideas.
- jsheard 3y agoAdd "putting an inductive charger against the users skin" to that. The heat issues aren't going to go away with the form factor they came up with, wireless charging isn't getting any more efficient.
- _the_inflator 3y agoThanks for the mention of Juicero. That was awesome in its own kind.
- Retr0id 3y agoI feel bad for the hardware engineers that worked on both. It seems like they did a great job under the design constraints they were given, too bad the product as a whole sucked.
- JohnFen 3y agoIt was exceptionally well-engineered. The people who worked on it should be proud of the machine they designed. The problem with it as a product was that it was worthless. Yes, it did what was claimed, but the machine and all that great engineering was completely unnecessary to get the insanely overpriced juice out of the bags.
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- pknerd 3y ago[flagged]
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y agoAh yes because light rays from lasers are fundamentally better than other light rays. Handheld projectors won't catch on until the next breakthrough in physics https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KbgvSi35n6o https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KbgvSi35n6o love with your heart, use your head for everything else
- JCM9 3y agoScam is a bit too strong IMHO. But yes it does just appear to be hacking together a bunch of long existing tech into a package that’s not particularly novel in the history of such things. If they’re guilty of anything it’s likely not adequately learning from why all the previous attempts in this space were big flops. That, plus the halo of arrogance that one feels from the marketing materials and presentations, setup a perfect storm for the likely unrecoverable PR dumpster fire they now find themselves in.
- close04 3y agoA lot of topic but I find it funny once I set aside the small spelling inconsistencies, that the author's name is Guttag and the founder's name is Bongiorno, which are almost "good day" in German or Italian. On topic, if the product is real but their marketing demos still show unrealistically different capabilities, then it's fair to call it a scam. Looking at the material provided, the marketing images show a usable device, and the real ones an unusable one in terms of contrast, resolution, and projection deformation. But because they do show real images I'd stop short of calling it a scam. You can after all make your own opinion based on reasonably realistic demos.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 3y agoPeople that perform well in corporate jobs, like these founders, often arent at all innovative or good product people. They just excelled at working with others and playing the corporate game
- lolc 3y agoThe blog post propagates the myth that you can't project black on skin. Even though the solution is blindingly easy: You scorch the skin quickly with the laser so it becomes black. If that isn't projected black I don't know what is!
- jkestner 3y agoMy combination tattoo gun/removal laser works. Just need some VC funding to get the size and refresh rate down.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago>If Humane really had better technology, why didn’t they release it as a software application rather than developing this terrible device? Because on smart phones you can't do always on recording or control the lock screen. The real game changer AI devices will bring is when they always on record which you can't do without controlling the hardware. Would have thought this was completely obvious.
- smat 3y agoThough this is an artificial constraint imposed by the platform holders (i.e. Apple and Google). Once they figured out how their new AI assistant needs to look like their own rules for 3rd party apps won’t matter anymore.
- pjerem 3y agoSince always on recording is also seemingly what kept meta and snapchat glasses from succeeding (and god thanks), that's a huge bet. Tis feature is the only thing that don't make it a subpar (and gadget - a cool one) smartwatch.
- goeiedaggoeie 3y agono, I don't think this is accurate. You can have processes run on a device in the background, you can pair bluetooth to it, you can send data back with it.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoThe annoying thing, to me, is having Steve Jobs, in the same row as the convicted fraudsters. I know that he's adding him, to compare against the fraudsters, but I'm not so sure the positioning is accidental. For the record, I think that SJ was one of the most successful bulshitters that has ever walked the Earth. He could not only convince a room full of geologists that the world was flat, but also sell them all tickets on a boat ride to the edge. It's just that he actually ended up (after numerous false starts), having an actual product. Several, in fact.
- stavros 3y agoAlso, the "they're wearing a black t-shirt, therefore they're scammers!" line of reasoning utterly fails to be convincing.
- datpiff 3y agoThat's not the point - "they're wearing a black t-shirt, therefore they are a business genius" is the dangerous assumption.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoThey're wearing a black shirt because they're bullshitting people into believing they're the next SJ.
- stavros 3y agoTo me, that's reading way too much into it. Maybe it's fashion that Steve Jobs started, but maybe it's just a black shirt.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoElizabeth Holmes famously (infamously?) modeled herself on SJ. I see no reason the others are not doing the same.
- bearjaws 3y agoWe need to invent "Touch Grass Driven Development" TGDD. These products are clearly built by people who live in the SV bubble. Nobody is going to use this pin in their day to day if you can't wear a seatbelt with it. Nobody is going to be able to easily use it outside. This is obvious to anyone who has been outdoors in the last decade.
- chaostheory 3y agoThey used to work at Apple so they feel that they can match Apple’s success but doing it the “Apple way”: internal iterations instead of early feedback ie the Build it and they will come strategy which is hard to get working outside of Apple. The only team I’m aware of that was able to do it successfully was Nest, but it later ended in disaster.
- aledalgrande 3y agoThe difference is Apple has incredible momentum behind it pushing the Apple way. It took them decades to get to this point (and Steve Jobs, the real one).
- iamleppert 3y agoJust look at the expression on the face of the woman in the leather jacket (I think its one of the co-founders?). She looks visibly uncomfortable, not smiling, and unsure of what she is selling. Whoever let the picture slip, well, it says everything about this product.
- liminal 3y agoThe launch looked like a hostage video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th3vzKTE0O8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th3vzKTE0O8
- iamleppert 3y agoCan you imagine working at such a cold, brutalist tech company? Devoid of any color or perceptible emotion or excitement? I think it says a lot about the character of the types of people who would give money to a venture like this. Probably brought up in uncaring, unloving homes themselves and now they feel it is their duty to inflict the harshness of their souls onto the rest of the world.
- hbn 3y agoI think the issue is just bad direction on that video. They released this "video handbook" a couple weeks ago that's much more human. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyPxwp3SxdU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyPxwp3SxdU If there's anything about their work atmosphere I've gleamed from seeing employees talk about the company over the past few months it's quite the opposite of a cold, brutalist tech company. It's cult-like if anything. They've been acting way too impressed by their own product, and now that it's out and reviews have panned it, they tweet about how we all need to be more "optimistic about the future" and similar handwaving. It takes real faith-like buy-in to be shipping something like this and not feel totally embarrassed.
- iamleppert 3y agoSadly I have worked for such places. At the top somewhere is someone with an ego so large it will always prevent them from taking any accountability or offering a shred of humility. If the market doesn’t like the product, they will blame the market before admitting to any defect in their own thinking. Narcissistic personalities are constantly rewarded in tech, they play right into the greed of VCs and unmask the fact most investors are completely incompetent.
- cooper_ganglia 3y agoI love the Humane AI pin as a prop in a sci-fi movie. Not so much for actual, everyday use.
- planede 3y agoIf this is not a scam, then they must be betting heavily on going beyond class 2 for the laser so it will be usable outdoors. 1mW is very low, and my back of the envelope calculation says that it's equivalent to a display to around 120 nits, with the generous assumptions of 1. It's a green laser (it isn't) 2. It's projected onto a white surface, (again, it isn't) 3. 9cm^2 of projected surface area (3cm x 3cm) Maybe they can modulate the brightness by the amount of stuff present on the projected screen, and maybe even have an outdoor mode, where they use light fonts, that are displayed on a higher brightness, so the overall energy emitted still classifies the device to be class 2. Still, 1mW must be very very limiting here, a 120 nits display is nowhere near usable outdoors, let alone a 120 nits display that reflects the outdoor light just as well as the projector's. Why on earth they aren't using a green laser if they are limited to class 2 is beyond me though.
- sbarre 3y agoThere are hands-on reviews out there of this thing (The Verge and others) and they all say the projector is next to useless in outdoor light.
- refulgentis 3y agoI don't understand, isn't the laser green in demos and reviews?
- planede 3y agoMaybe. In the article the photoshopped images look like as if it was green, but the screenshots from the demo videos look blue to me. The article says that it's cyan. Of course white balance could be way off in any of those pictures.
- ActionHank 3y agoIt may not be a scam in that they delivered more or less what they promised. That said, like most AI startups right now it is a cash grab that might pan out as a longer term product, but likely not.
- EVyesnoyesnoyes 3y agoHui, i didn't realize they got $230M from real companies like Microsoft and LG. Wow wtf. How?
- azinman2 3y agoThe founders were really important people in design at Apple. That seems worth the bet.
- noiseinvacuum 3y agoGenuinely curious, are there any examples of successful products build by ex-Apple Design team members?
- HumblyTossed 3y ago> Humane’s projector lacks color and grayscale depth. Humane’s display a monochrome cyan (blue-green). There is no ability to even highly anything with color. Secondly, they demonstrated very limited grayscale depth; they showed just “on,” “off,” and a half-level. Even if grayscale is theoretically possible with the Humane projector, the ability fo see a grayscale image is severely hampered by using skin as a screen and the lack of contrast due to ambient light. Not to mention blue is the hardest color to see already. These people are idiots.
- antimatter15 3y agoFor dimly-lit environments, the human eye's peak sensitivity for scoptopic vision is around 498nm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotopic_vision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotopic_vision) which is blueish-green.
- planede 3y ago> Scotopic vision occurs at luminance levels of 10−3[5] to 10−6[citation needed] cd/m2 They should have more than enough brightness to be clearly visible in those light conditions on almost any visible wavelength they chose for the laser, so it's weird if they optimize for this instead of the outdoor performance.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoAnd yet, yellow is the most easily visible color at night... However, apparently I'm the idiot because red, not blue is hardest to see due to various reasons. At night we are all but blind to it.
- imglorp 3y agoIs this ready to use? No. But I'd like to point out what may be novel UX ideas here that are worth improving on. * raise your hand in front of device to activate the projection * move hand to increment/decrement a number * close hand to tap With image recognition, other gestures with the projection hand like tapping fingers or touching the image with the off hand would allow other interactive inputs.
- nick238 3y agoI like the Captain Disillusion quip about these things: "What began as a primitive box with a light source projecting low quality pictures onto a matte surface, has been developed for over a century into a high resolution, self-illuminating, interactive panel so thin and light, it's easily integrated into powerful mobile devices we can take with us wherever we go. "And now the developers of the [originally Cicret, here HumaneAI] want to take the next logical step: detaching the image from the mobile device, lowering its quality, and using a box with a light source to project it onto a matte surface."
- bombcar 3y agoCaptain D's videos on these pieces of junk were my introduction to him, so I count the whole thing as a net good.
- colinng 3y agoIf only all tech news were this way. Then I’d waste no cycles on hot garbage.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y agoYou can already do it! Subscribe to CD, log off HN, and live your life. I will too, in fact.... just one more comment...
- ironmanszombie 3y agoThank you for the introduction. I finally have proof that all those "videos from the future" are fake. I knew they were, just didn't know what planar tracking was. On another note: the Humane AI is released. Maybe the scam is that it's damn slow?
- alangibson 3y agoThis thing is just such a manifestly bad idea. You'd have a much more functional solution if you added a camera to a Jawbone, with all the AI stuff running as an app on your phone. The laser projector is such nonsense that it can easily be deleted.
- aledalgrande 3y agoOMG thanks for reminding me of Jawbone, fond memories...
- m3kw9 3y agoNot a scam, just bad product execution. They want a AI world where that becomes the UI but it turns out to look like a pain in the ass to use. Maybe in 5 years and if they add an AR google. You still need visual input and reading on your hand is worse than holding a phone, you need AR
- rasz 3y agoWhats old is new again. Ritot Watch successfully managed to scam $1.4m ten years ago with zero consequences. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ritot-the-first-projection-watch#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ritot-the-first-projectio... 10 years is just the right amount of time for a new generation of victims who never heard about it. $200 million is impressive, those arent rookie numbers anymore.
- jasonjmcghee 3y agoKickstarter / indiegogo feels different because it's just random people, as opposed to huge LPs proxied by VCs
- dang 3y agoRecent and related: MKBHDs for Everything - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40059835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40059835 - April 2024 (173 comments)
- agos 3y ago> For the Humane’s introduction video, they pinned it on a heavy leather (or leather-like) jacket to give support (what do you do in the summer?). this is just the usual Silicon Valley bias, with leather jacket weather year round (I'm only half joking)
- Nathanael_M 3y agoI sat behind a department head of theirs on a plane once. He was ranting to the flight attendant about how inefficient their baggage storage solution was because of how he had to check his carry-on. The flight attendant very calmly said "That's an interesting idea, sir." as he was mid diatribe about the lack of integrated sensor technology in overhead bins. He ended with a "I'm going to Tweet about this, this is totally ----ing unacceptable." A few minutes later he stood up to take pictures of the overhead bins and the flight attendant made sure he had a good clear view. "Let me help you, gotta get a good pic for the gram". Mr. Humane, with all the indignant condescension he could muster, said "Uh, it's for Twitter, not Instagram." Flight attendant responded "Ooh, Twitter, my apologies." I found the tweet while waiting for take off. I wonder if he ever got around to disrupting the space. This is what I get for connecting in San Francisco. The flight attendant did give me a dozen packs of those little ginger-snap cookies, though, so I may be biased.
- devindotcom 3y agoBiscoff, I hope? Love those.
- Nathanael_M 3y agoWoah, I never thought about the brand. Can I just buy these things? Will eating them on the ground ruin the magic?
- giantrobot 3y agoYou can buy them in stores. Be warned though that eating them too often can ruin them. They're an awesome random treat but a little much when you have a whole package of them. Learn from my mistakes.
- BonoboIO 3y agoI thought buying 1kg would be a good choice. After 100g I was like, now I don’t want to eat them for a long time :D
- modeless 3y agoKarl Guttag is right about everything having to do with displays and optics. It's very much worth subscribing to his blog if you want to know this stuff long before everyone else (note that this article was written last year before anyone had reviewed the device).
- homefree 3y agoI mostly feel bad for them. I generally hate pile ons on principle and HN tends to be nasty about anything new even when it is wildly successful so nastiness here is no signal (and hardware is hard, it's good for people to try new things, etc.). AI is a new capability and there is an opportunity for new hardware that can use it. That said, the Humane marketing reminded me of Magic Leap and I find it irritating. Particularly the big build up to what was going to be 'new information' and then it was an ad with no information. When the marketing is so divorced from what's delivered I think people are often nastier about it. The irony to me is that in a lot of ways they're trying to be Apple, but without Apple's strategic thinking - it's more cosplaying Apple. Ben Thompson had a good write up today in Stratechery that touched on some of this: when the iPhone came out it worked with Mac and windows - the dominant computing platforms of the day! They didn't try to immediately create a standalone device from the get go and they had iterated on a narrow use case with the iPod for several years already to perfect some things. Also - people love their phones! They may make overtures otherwise, but observe their behavior. This is a lot more akin to what rewind aka limitless is doing. Start small/focused with a good product that solves a well tested use case while working with the existing platform (mobile) then leverage that to grow and build an ecosystem as you go. There's so much about the Humane product that is strategically poor/user poor: a separate phone number, terrible battery, the extreme cost, etc. etc. even if the product actually worked (it doesn't) it's strategically DOA. You don't get to mars by starting a company and building a mars rocket - you have that as the end goal and a path to get there that requires doing a ton of other stuff first so you have a shot at achieving that goal. Any company that achieves great things builds a machine to build the machine - otherwise you just get a expensive art project if the product even works at all. Still they did build and ship something and I like their industrial design so they deserve kudos for that. Plus I like to see people experiment so it's good when people try even if they fail, but I don't think it's helped by pretending something isn't a failure.
- concinds 3y ago> The irony to me is that in a lot of ways they're trying to be Apple, but without Apple's strategic thinking - it's more cosplaying Apple I hope this is the main lesson people will take from Humane. Not the "scam", "AI hype", "laser bullshit" angles. The top execs fundamentally deluded themselves into thinking that "the process is the product". During their stealth startup years their marketing was almost entirely "we're from Apple, we're perfectionists, we believe tech should feel like magic". They did Jony Ive-style videos. They talk about "intent", "craftsmanship", "design". And now they're adopting the reality distortion field. But they're merely cosplaying Apple, without the substance. They made a "less-intrusive" smartphone-killer that relies on the most intrusive input method ever! No product-market fit, no viable go-to-market ($700 + $24/mo). It's Helene Deutsch's "as-if personality", but as a startup. The execs confuse appearances with reality. Liz Holmes copied the clothing, they're copying "the philosophy", but misunderstood its essence. They're almost Shakespearian characters, but the employees should leave now before it meets a tragic end.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoI could see a few situations where I could use something like this, for example for reading a book projected on a chair in front of me in the airplane, instead of carrying a ebook reader. It would only need to recognize one command - 'turn page". But it would need a stabilization tech, so the image does not move when I move.
- mark_l_watson 3y agoI am disappointed by the really harsh criticism of what seems to me a product researching new ideas. I see so many tech articles where writers give lame business ideas too much praise and exposure. The attacks on Humane AI seem weird, comparing other product reviews. I actually was tempted to pre-order one of these devices many months ago but decided my Apple Watch was a practical solution to the problems this device is meant to solve. Anyway, I guess we will never get to see what version 2 of this product would have been.
- Mikho 2y agoHere is a novel idea: why doesn't humanity instead of projecting a laser on a hand somehow create a small screen with high enough resolution and even bright colors that could be attached to a hand and every time one raises a hand it turns on to display information? Oh. Wait...