AI Is Not Your Friend
More AI CreepTech that’s damaging to society
I feel like we’ve had enough terrible AI hardware devices thrown at us to last a lifetime — and we’re only midway through summer.
There was Humane’s AiPin, an AI wearable marketed as a $700 “smartphone killer,” except it was so underwhelming and broken on launch that it only served to kill itself, leaving the founders trying to sell the company. Then there was Rabbit, another unfinished, barely functioning device that delivered very little of what it promised and did the few things it could do painfully slowly and very incorrectly. At least it was colorful.
Both cases proved the same point, one that was painfully obvious to everyone outside the AI bubble. No matter how beautiful or well-crafted a device is, without utility and real tangible use cases that disrupt the way we do things now in a positive, user-serving way, these devices are pointless. It’s the fundamental of design, something my lecturers used to drive home time and time again — start with the problem, not the solution.
Well, we now have another device to add to the graveyard.
‘Friend’ is the latest AI wearable — well, really, it’s just a fancy ChatGPT wrapper — that is trying to sell us a dream that’s more akin to a dystopian nightmare.
