Humane AI Pin To Become $699 Paperweight Post HP Acquisition

[GGforever]

The AI Pin - Humane's first, and last product - received an overwhelmingly negative reception at launch, and that's putting it mildly. The device was hindered by poor usability and an extremely laggy operating system that made even the simplest of tasks an absolute chore. The product, unsurprisingly, was criticized by almost every reviewer who touched it, and rumors regarding a potential acquisition of Humane soon began to circulate. Now, HP has seemingly finalized a $116-million acquisition offer for the startup that once raised over $230 million, and valued itself at $1 billion. It appears that HP wants almost all of Humane's assets - with the notable exception of one key product, the AI Pin.

As such, once the calendar reaches the 28th of February, the AI Pin will cease to function. The servers that the AI Pin utilized for communications will be shut down, rendering the AI Pin unable to access customer's cloud data, make phone calls, send AI queries, or text messages. Customers who bought the Pin in the last 90 days will be eligible for a full refund, whereas those who bought the ill-fated gadget before that will soon have an arguably good-looking fashion accessory that will probably still be able to tell them the time. After all, the product's build quality and design was the lone aspect of the AI Pin that received praise. It remains to be seen how HP puts Humane's R&D to use, although considering the AI hype that is engulfing the consumer tech industry, it wouldn't be surprising to see HP leverage Humane's tech to carve out its own niche in the AI-assisted personal computing space. Of course, that is contingent on HP's implementation being better than what Humane pulled off the last time around.



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[jak_2456]

This and several other incidents (like the Spotify Car Thing) should really make consumers question whether or not they truly own their stuff. I will not be surprised if the community figures out how to jaibreak the Humane, though.

 

[ZoneDymo]

newsflash, it was always a paperweight

 

[Assimilator]

If you bought this stupid crap you deserve to lose your money.

You also deserve to have this device shoved up your ass.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Um, what even was it?

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

Um, what even was it?

It was a pin you'd put on your shirt, that had a camera and...almost smartphone...built into it. The idea, or at least the pitch, was that instead of staring at a screen you were "in the moment."

A couple of things they suggested were:
1) Asking if you could eat food, after having provided data on food allergies. IE, someone asking if they could eat a soup, and getting back something like "no, it contains gluten and you are allergic."
2) Taking pictures.
3) Identifying things you are looking at. IE "what is that type of flower?" getting a response.
4) Lists. IE, add a box of cereal to my groceries list. You'd then query your list at the store.
5) Price comparisons.

The problem is that a lot of this was demonstrated, then immediately called a beta or alpha feature. The hardware has a tendency to overheat...a lot. The people working on it were led by a couple of former Apple designers...so yeah. If you have a few minutes, search the video from Krazy Ken on youtube for this. It's quite good.


Oh...and did I mention the thing overheated? I say it again, because the thing was notorious for zero battery life and being silly hot to be pinned to your chest. It's "most features are in beta," long delivery time, and truly bizarro story of being put up for sale only as their product started to actually ship is...quite the doozy.


-Edit-
How could I forget the best part. The "interface" was a projected image onto your hand, that you'd need to have the other hand gesturing to control. It was like watching the future, as designed by people who thought the lense flares from Star Trek are what made it futuristic. Good lord, it was funny to watch.
-Edit end-

 

[SRB151]

What else would you expect from HP? EVERYTHING they buy, they run into the ground. Compaq took a while to dispose of, but their recent track record is usually much swifter. The bought Palm and released the tablet only to fire sale it within a month. Then took over a bunch of companies to be the next great services company. They've even tossed overboard all the hardware that made HP its name before the PC boom (calculators, test equipment, etc). Probably the only reason they still make pc's is to fund all of these dead end ventures.

 

[trsttte]

Why did HP even bought this? Nice golden parachute for the Humane execs, they rushed out a garbage product and still get to lead a department on a huge pc oem.

I will not be surprised if the community figures out how to jaibreak the Humane, though.

It's not even worth it, this was a pure scam. The similar rabbit r1 was shown to be running AOSP with a cheap SoC, this should be quite similar.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

What else would you expect from HP? EVERYTHING they buy, they run into the ground. Compaq took a while to dispose of, but their recent track record is usually much swifter. The bought Palm and released the tablet only to fire sale it within a month. Then took over a bunch of companies to be the next great services company. They've even tossed overboard all the hardware that made HP its name before the PC boom (calculators, test equipment, etc). Probably the only reason they still make pc's is to fund all of these dead end ventures.

From what I can tell, there's nothing to mourn here. It's kind of hard to run into the ground something that has already crashed and burned.

The story I heard was the HP/Compaq merger kind of being like Boeing/McDonnell-Douglass. HP had an engineering culture, but the Compaq suits got into many of the decision-making roles, and proceeded to continue to make the kind of moves that made Compaq a takeover target in the first place. I think part of the reason they ditched the historically HP stuff yet still make PCs is because HP post merger is not HP: It's Compaq with HP branding.