Down the A.I. Rabbit Hole
The anti-app device that should have been an app
In my predictions post, I surmised that A.I. would have a big year in 2024. I know, groundbreaking stuff; thanks for the standing ovation. You can sit down now.
One area that I expected to blow up was A.I. devices or, more specifically, pointless A.I. devices. I wrote,
“We’ve already had a neckless and a pin. A.I. stuffing is set to continue and will continue so long as A.I. remains the buzzword of the moment and gets investors wet in the pants. Much like the rush to make devices’ smart’ or the buzz of IoT devices, the next wave is incoming, with A.I. set to be the new tech frontier for 2024.”
Well, no sooner than those words had been sent out into the ether did I stumble upon the launch of Rabbit’s r1 device.
The release video was exactly as you’d expect a modern showcase to be — it was like Apple, just not. You know the drill: founder wearing black, minimal backdrop, fancy visuals of the product with moody black shadows, and, of course, lots of hand gestures. In one departure from the Apple playbook, they did include a cringeworthy Rickroll.
I’ll be fair and start with some positives — it’s nice to see hardware devices making a bit of a comeback (less cool that they all have to be…
