The Humane AI Pin worked better than I expected — until it didn't

Look, I'm as skeptical of the humanistic AI pin as I am of the next person. And I still think the AI-powered wearable assistant suffers from a situation where this thing could have been an app. But I finally got to spend some face time with the pin this morning, and you know what? It's a darn cool tool. It's so buried under a layer of heavy marketing that it's hard to appreciate what it might actually be if Humane weren't so serious about itself.

If you spend time using Tech Threads or the like, you probably already know what the pin does: you pin it to your shirt, talk to it, and it uses generative AI to answer. It's a standalone device with its own SIM card, no screen – just feelings. That's in addition to a little laser that projects menus and text onto your palm so you can interact with dead details like Wi-Fi settings and media playback controls.

The idea, which came up repeatedly as I watched a couple of Humane employees conduct different demos, was that it's meant to help keep you connected while disconnecting a bit — less staring at screens and more living in the moment. AI helps bring up relevant parts of your calendar and email, and answers your questions when you're curious about the world around you.

This is all very nice, but let's be real: this thing isn't a philosophy, it's a tool. The tools are fun, useful, and frustrating — and all of the above seem to apply to the Humane Pin.

The AI ​​Pin was really impressive at times. there A vision feature that will use the camera to scan the scene in front of you when prompted, analyze what is there, and describe it out loud. I stood in front of a Humane spokesperson while trying out this feature, and honestly, the pin nailed it. described Mobile World Congress is an “indoor event or exhibition for people to walk around”. Easy enough.

But she also pointed out the Qualcomm name on the sign behind me, and reading the badge around my neck clearly identified me as “someone wearing a lanyard.” the edge“One too many, but pretty impressive when you consider that I wasn't standing near the pin and the lighting was dim.

Gesture navigation was also impressive — more fluid and responsive than I thought it would be. I wasn't allowed to put the pin on myself, and it was difficult to get into the right spot to direct the laser to your hand since it's really a single-user device. I tried. But the two Humane employees who piloted the product, and who had a lot of training with it, were able to navigate the displayed menus quickly and easily just by tilting their hands and tapping two fingers together.

But the pin isn't immune to what devices often do: frustrate you badly. Most of the AI ​​is off-device, so there's a few solid seconds of waiting for responses to your requests and questions — and that's not helped by the spotty connection in the conference center. It also turned off on one occasion after a notification briefly appeared saying it was overheating and needed to cool down. The employee who demonstrated the pin for me said that this doesn't happen very often, and that the constant use of the laser for demonstration purposes may be the reason behind it. I think so, but still, this is a device designed to sit next to your chest and go with you into many different environments, including warm ones. Not great!

The laser projection is sharper than I imagined, but it's still light projected onto the palm of your hand. The hands are not uniformly flat, and it is difficult to keep them completely still. The text dances in front of you, and although it is not difficult to read, it is… He is Harder than reading text on a smartphone, for example.

It is also impossible to feel what it is like to live with this thing in the hall of the convention center. Can a cotton shirt support its weight? How easy is it for the laser to see out in direct sunlight? Will people understand why the “trust lamp” is on? Does Pin make things up sometimes, the way some AIs tend to do? I have a lot more questions than answers, but at least I think I have more than that zero The answers now that I've seen it with my own eyes.

My early impression of the pin is that there is something There is, but it is not so the something. The problem is that all of Humane's marketing has built it up to be so The thing. It was first presented in a TED talk, for Pete's sake: This is like ground zero for people who take themselves too seriously. AI Pin is not intended to be a smartphone replacement, Humane's Sai Kambampati told me. But it has its own data connection, its own monthly subscription fee, and its own smartphone price of $699. And she… no Supposed to replace your phone?

Whatever lies ahead in mobile computing, I have a feeling it's not exactly the AI ​​pin I saw today. There's a lot of testing I want to do when the pin officially arrives in April. Meanwhile, I wasn't exactly seeing the future, but I did see a pretty cool gadget – but don't take it too seriously.

Photography by Alison Johnson/The Verge