The Hard Thing About Hardware 📧
Brutal. Just brutal. That's the best way to describe David Pierce's review of Humane's new AI Pin for The Verge. And the other reviews of the device aren't much better. While some of the issues stem from the ridiculous and folly PR strategy the company deployed leading up to the launch – think: this changes everything – and more can be chalked up to the device just failing to do what it sets out to do way too often, there's a broader question about the role of hardware in our new AI epoch.
That is to ask: do we really need new hardware at all?
At a higher level still, the answer is yes. While smartphones currently completely and utterly dominate the world and our lives, there will always be a push to figure out "what's next". Apple has built a nearly $3T company on this premise. And that's good, they'll keep pushing such envelopes. But the more granular question here is if AI specifically warrants some sort of new hardware paradigm?
The inverse of this situation is usually the case: we await the next new thing in hardware because such devices may unlock the potential for new services and thus, companies to be built. This obviously happened to an amazing extent with the iPhone and Android. And the Mac and PC before that. (The iPad? Less so. The Apple Watch? No. The Vision Pro? Not yet, perhaps never.) But the thinking here is that AI is the new platform that could unlock not only new software companies, but new hardware ones as well. Hence, Humane. And Rabbit. And whatever Sam Altman and Jony Ive are cooking up. Etc.
(I should note, I'm obviously talking about consumer hardware here – there are a lot of chip companies, for example, being built on the other side of all these equations.)
One problem here is that AI seems likely to permeate basically everything, to some extent. It's perhaps hard to see it now in these early days, but AI may very well be the new website, meaning while there are some things that are built thanks to this new technology layer, it's also just a table-stakes layer that every company and service implements in some fashion. So the real question is what can a specific part of the AI stack do that wasn't possible before, and does a new piece of consumer hardware supercharge such capabilities?
It's one of those questions that is going to be impossible to know for sure without trying. And so in that regard, Humane and other early movers here clearly deserve kudos, for showing what not to do, if nothing else. But my instinct would be that most of the beneficiaries on the consumer hardware side of AI are going to be many of the existing players. Notably, of course, the smartphones. But perhaps even more so, the Apple Watch and AirPods. Devices which are smaller and can benefit from a new computing paradigm that isn't just about an app on a screen.
Many of these current hardware plays, and certainly the devices created by Apple, also have a scale advantage so as to make whatever AI they're using better, faster. And, of course, they have a distribution advantage which allows them to manufacture, ship, and sell hardware in a way that no startup is going to be able to come close to, let alone match.
That's all mildly depressing to hear/think about if you're a startup and/or investor. The big guys win again. But there are perhaps ways to play here, it just likely has to be at such a smaller scale and scope to start. To pick on Humane again – and, to be clear and fair, they were working on their project long before the explosion of ChatGPT onto the scene – I probably wouldn't do an AI pin with a camera to start (and certainly not with a superfluous projector!). I would probably start with a super simple voice-only pin. One that's tied to your phone which you're going to have on you anyway. You tap it, you ask it questions, you get your information, you go about your day.
Yes, an Apple Watch can do something similar now, but the advantage there can be leveraged as a weakness too: because that device can do so much more and is better known as a health tracker and/or notification device, whereas the AI element via Siri is largely a laughing stock, a new AI pin could be billed as just a simple, fun way to interact with AI at a tap. That's it. That's the product. It's almost like a toy. And that's the point. And that's the path.
From there, you add the camera in v2. You eventually add cellular capabilities. You get the picture. (Though ideally not through that projector.) There's a risk it ends up like the Pebble Watch, which was great back in the day – I had one! – and now is sort of lost in time with the rise of the Apple Watch. But startups remain hard, you have to execute, fast. And again, use the big players size against them.
Lastly, I would just say that OpenAI and some of the other model-makers probably have an advantage in executing the above because they can tailor their models to such use cases. But who knows. This is all evolving so rapidly that maybe interacting with a voice bot isn't even that interesting a few months from now. Maybe any consumer hardware play comes from a connected camera. Or yes, Ray-Bans. Or something along those lines. Or maybe something entirely different.
Just start small. And perhaps tangential to something that seems obvious. Like Square back in the day. A credit card swiper that plugs into a headphone jack. Now it's a $50B public company that streams music (to the AI Pin, no less) and builds crypto wallets. We all get distracted at scale, I guess. Not getting distracted by everything you can do can be a huge advantage. Still, hardware is hard.
Briefly...
AI-Music Arms Race: Meet Udio, the Other ChatGPT for Music – Back on the software side of things, last week I linked to Suno, the AI music generator which was all kinds of fun. And this week, of course, there's a new player in town. This is great for consumers, but for investors it's wild. One minute you're investing in image generation, then it's on to music, and then on to video. Dozens of players in each category, constantly shifting and one-upping and changing models and directions. As Harry Potter Balenciaga gives way to C3PO/Gambino.
The Composers of 'X-Men ‘97' Had to Evolve the Show’s Sound – The show, currently streaming on Disney+, is fantastic. It's truly a continuation of the original, which I grew up watching (also available to stream), but subtly updated and better; surprisingly adult-oriented. And the best part, per the link, is the sound. I really think it may be the best theme song of any show, ever. I know that sounds crazy. But it's such an absolute earworm. And the thought put into this aspect alone is rather wild.
Apple Plans to Overhaul Entire Mac Line With AI-Focused M4 Chips – If it feels like Apple just updated their machines to M3 chips, it's because they did. And actually a number of machines are still on M2 chips. But we're apparently already on the verge of an M4 update now as well. Unclear if this is a push from Microsoft, or from the AI arms race, or both. But like AI itself, it's a whirlwind.
My Missives...
M.G. Siegler
Meta buying a major book publisher to get data for its AI -- is one idea!
M.G. Siegler
Legal battle notwithstanding, Skydance taking over Paramount could be compelling...
M.G. Siegler
Let's give the Jon Snow standalone show room to breathe -- and remake GoT season 8...
M.G. Siegler
IMAX isn't getting the type of "future of cinema" love it should be...
Quoteable...
"The whole A.G.I. rhetoric is about creating God. I don’t believe in God. I’m a strong atheist. So I don’t believe in A.G.I."
-- Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral, the AI startup seemingly carrying the weight of all of Europe on its back. Well, that's one definition – or non-definition...
Some Thoughts On...
🤖 Apple's search for the "next big thing" starts anew
🍪 Microsoft seems to be feeling confident in new ARM chips...
🎞️ Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis
🦦 Apple's "Ferret" tech could be key to its AI aspirations
🗣️ Alexa is about to shift, will developers be along for the ride?
📌 David Pierce's evisceration of Humane's AI pin...
Quickly...
- Long rumored, now confirmed: The Night Manager is coming back – for two new seasons, no less! I can't believe it has been 6 years since the John le Carré story was made into a miniseries. Tom Hiddleston will return, of course.
- Also coming back? Heroes – for a second time.
- Huey Lewis can no longer listen to nor play music due to Ménière’s disease, which is tragic. But he's learning to live with it, and has a new musical celebrating his catalog.
- Showtime will officially shut down this month – I still don't understand why 'Paramount' isn't the company while 'Showtime' is the streaming service. It's such a perfect name. Then again, 'HBO' is now 'Max' so... Maybe Skydance can fix this?
- Though the fact that four board directors at Paramount just stepped down at once ahead of a Skydance deal perhaps doesn't speak too well of its prospects for sailing through...
- Peter Higgs, the namesake of the literally fundamental Higgs boson, passed away this week at age 94. The day he won the Nobel prize he found out from someone on the street as he was coming home from a quiet lunch of soup and trout.
- Ferries are so back! Official order of preferred commute travel: 1) Ferry 2) Train 3) Subway 4) Bike 5) Walk 6) Car 7) Bus. No comments at this time.
- It's truly wild how badly the MLB has messed up the new jersey (not the state, the actual new jerseys) situation – of course, they're fully passing the buck to Nike, who is passing it to Fanatics, who is passing it back to Nike... Everyone just looks sweaty all the time!
- Remember when people thought it was crazy that Facebook bought Instagram for $1B? It's probably approaching $50B in revenue a year now. And roughly 30% of Meta's entire business. No one is laughing anymore... It's a bigger business than YouTube!
- VC "dry powder" has nowhere to go says the FT, due to the IPO window remaining largely shut and the M&A window almost completely shut due to regulation. And valuations still in the midst of being reset in private markets because of capital conservation practices. Good thing for AI... 🫧🫧🫧
- Kobo's first color e-readers look great – where on Earth is Amazon?!
- One place they're not is in the robot vacuum business, which remains silly and "sad" per Andy Jassy.
- As dire as things may be for Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis, he can still command a Cannes festival slot, because he's won the Palme d’Or twice.
- Spotify is going to start letting people remix popular music, allowing for things like speeding up tracks. Which sounds awful, quite literally. TikTok continues to ruin everything. Get off my lawn.
- The Nolan brothers almost went with The Riddler instead of Bane as the main villain in The Dark Knight Rises...
- ESPN strikes a nine year deal with Peyton Manning's Omaha Productions for the 'Manningcast' and various other projects – who wants to be a broadcaster when you can own your own broadcast?
- Code found in some iOS builds suggest one of the AI features to come at WWDC will be a 'Safari Browsing Assistant'... What that means isn't entirely clear, but it could be something like this...
- Other things hopefully coming at WWDC: an update to the ridiculous 5GB entry tier for iCloud storage. It's 2024.
- And hopefully some fun retro game emulators!
- Noe Valley's (where I lived for many years in San Francisco) million-dollar toilet is getting a "blowout" event for its unveiling next week
- My preferred way to mark the passing of O.J. Simpson is through old Norm Macdonald footage, but his NYT obit is well worth the read for the various moments in time he was tied up in that were historic, mainly in awful ways, of course, but events so many of us lived through, in real time.
- The Onion also with the nail in the... O.J. Simpson Allowed To Remain Living After Coffin Doesn’t Fit
One Last Thing...
