this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023

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4 futuristic things the Humane Ai Pin can do as a smartphone alternative (mashable.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I am calling bullshit on all of their points.

No screen, but a projector to project on your hand? WTF? So not only will it far less information, but it will be a pain to use...
Voice commands? Meaning I will need to tell everyone around me what I am doing? Also calling bullshit on getting them to work in a busy area.
No it can't, there are no ways to detect nutrition from a picture of a peice of food
Privacy? Yeah, get back with me in 20 years when it has been proven to not sell, leak or have data stolen, then I'll be impressed.

In conclusion, this is as real as the Skarp laser razor is.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No it can’t, there are no ways to detect nutrition from a picture of a peice of food

Why not? at least to the extent that a human can. Some AI model recognizes the type of food, estimates the amount and calculates nutrition based on that (hopefully verified with actual data, unlike in this demo).

All three of these functions already exist, all that remains is to put them together.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Ok, if you take any book, keep it closed, how many times do the letters s, q, d and r appear in the book?

There is no way to know without opening the book and counting, sure, you could make some statisticsl analysis based on the language used, but that doesn't take into account the font size and spacing, nor the number of pages.

Since the machine only has a photo to analyze, it can only give extremely generic results, making them effectively useless.

You would need to open the food up and actually analyze a part of the inside with something like a mass spectrometer to get any useful data.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (9 children)

I agree with you, but disagree with your reasoning.

If you take 1lb of potatoes, boil and mash them with no other add-ins, you can reasonably estimate the nutritional information through visual inspection alone, assuming you have enough reference to see there is about a pound of potatoes. There are many nutrition apps out there that utilize this, and it’s essentially just lopping off the extremes and averaging out the rest.

The problem with this is, it’s impossible to accurately guess the recipe, and therefore the ingredients. Take the aforementioned mashed potatoes. You can’t accurately tell what variety of potato was used. Was water added back during the mashing? Butter? Cream cheese? Cheddar? Sour cream? There’s no way to tell visually, assuming uniform mashing, what is in the potatoes.

Not to mention, the pin sees two pieces of bread on top of each other… what is in the bread? Who the fuck knows!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

It isn't as magical (or accurate) as it looks. It's just an extension of how various health tracking apps track food intake. There's usually just one standard entry in the database for mashed potatoes based on whatever their data source thinks a reasonable default value should be. It doesn't know if what you're eating is mostly butter and cheese.

How useful a vague and not particularly accurate nutrition profile really can be is an open question, but it seems to be a popular feature for smartwatches.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If i had a big list or directory of a lot of well known books and how many times s, q, d and r appears in them then sure I would be able to make a very good estimate on how many there are from just looking at the cover of the book, with a slight variance being in the editing that version may have. Almost like how a specific type of food will likely have a certain amount of protein fibre etc, with slight variations based on how the cook prepared the food.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But then you have opened the books, missing the point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I didn't open the book, someone else looked into the book and wrote it down for me to then read when needed, just like how someone would put in the data for a program to look it up when asked.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That changes nothing, you had the book inspected and hot the data.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think you're missing what I'm trying to say.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No, you are hung up on trying to read the book without actually reading it.

That breaks the puzzle, since the device would not be able to anslyze the inside of an item of food from a pucture of the inside, and can only use highly generic data based on what it can assume from an image of the outside

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Re-read the first one I sent.

You can get a pretty good generalisation if you know what the food is. How do you think current apps for tracking nutrition work? All that this will do is just try and figure out what the food is from the picture rather than the user typing it in. Most foods you can tell what it is without "looking inside". I'm pretty sure there's apps that do that now, this isn't something new and groundbreaking.

And for nutrition you don't need to be 100% exact when tracking it. Because you can't be 100% even if you do know exact ingredients and how much of each one. Everything always has a variance. This method doesn't need to be perfect for it to meet the needs of most that will use it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I agree that you can get a generic value of nutrition from a photo of a simple, fruit or vegetable, but since a pie/cake contains soo much stuff that looks identical to other stuff, rendering any photographic analysis useless.

So yes, you can get some idea of the nutrition of some foods, but way too low to be useful.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

You have to talk aloud so that you're included in the distinct lack of privacy this thing has.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I hate it. I don't want to speak to people who are wearing one.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

I feel like that with being photographed. Being in a room full of smartphones, and associating me with them in a large database somewhere. Having someone's kids use tick tock on my home network. Etc etc. We are massively under corporate surveillance, and I despise it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm going to actively avoid people doing so, and I feel like others will as well.

If someone walks up to you and they're filming you on their phone, how would most people react?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Fortunately there's almost no chance of this thing getting off the ground

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

What if it looked like a Star Trek communicator?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What if it looked like Iggy Pop? Zac Efron?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I'm just imagining people walking around with smart Iggy Pop badges and having AI conversations with them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I... I've never really watched Star Trek. I think I could get into it but I've just never really sat down and watched it. I've probably only seen an episode or two in my whole life.

I'll see myself out.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ai Pin has a "prominent Trust Light" which turns on when the device is in use.

Let's all place bets: What will be the first mod or patch for this device? 🥷🏽

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Literally a piece of tape.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Those raybans that some have mentioned here will literally disallow you from recording or taking a pic of it detects something in the way of the activity light. We don't know what physical tampering may accomplish though.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's a neat idea, but frankly, I don't want or need other people hearing my business. It needs to pair with (smart?) earbuds.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Yeah, this whole product is an exercise in doing things not because it's more practical than what we already have but simply because we can... for $700 + $24/month... No thanks...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

It supports earbuds from watching a random YT video about it that popped up on my feed from the creators

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

For some reason this is making me wish Jobs were still around.

I’d hope he’d have some subtle burns about this product … maybe about how we’re visual animals and you can’t just throw out decades of progress on screen tech and call that innovation. Maybe something about how we’ve got one voice but 10 fingers and two eyes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

A built-in 13-megapixel ultra wide-angle camera can be used to capture photographs and videos I bet other people won't like the camera any more than they did with Google Glasses.

Photos can be viewed using the “Center” website on any web browser. Want to see photos? Gotta go to the website. All photos therefore shared. Along with notes, music listened to, reminders .... Nuh-uh!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Another tech that is going to be utterly irrelevant as AR glasses become a mainstream reality like it or not.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (6 children)

as AR glasses become a mainstream reality like it or not.

Just like the segway was going to change the way we build cities?

Or how cryptocurrencies will replace national fiat money?

Or how google glasses have already become a mainstream reality?

Or how everyone will watch TV in 3D all the time?

Or how everyone will play games in VR?

Just because a technology is possible it does not mean it will become ubiquitous.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Hey, I still believe VR is gonna happen... someday... :'(

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I mean, it's fun that a techbro thought "isn't the TNG combadge cool?" and actually went and made it, but this was a Youtube video, not a product launch.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The Meta Ray-Bans have a better path to success than this. (Honestly, if they weren't tied to Meta, I'd love to get a pair.)

Mike Elgan had a great piece of why this will not take off:

https://mikeelgan.substack.com/p/why-humanes-ai-pin-wont-succeed-676

He makes a ton of great points.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

deleted

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Nah

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