Seriously the roadmap at Humane’s office must just be an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. This isn't the first time we've seen this with products; compare the PADD on ST:TNG with the iPad.
Anyone who has asked me about AI over the past two years has likely been bored to tears as I discussed how Star Trek previewed many of the technological advances we’ve seen over the past 60 years. The tv writers of Star Trek were influenced by science fiction writers of the 50s and 60s. This was the dawn of the mainframe computer, and culturally, people were really beginning to think about what computers would be able to do for us in the future.
Star Trek imagined what technology would be available 300 years in our future, what AiPin shows us is that these ideas would actually only need about 60 years of innovation to start to come to fruition.
So how is the AiPin like Star Trek Communicator?
First the OS is called CosmOS. A not so subtle reference to space.
General Interaction
The team at humane obviously took inspiration from from Star Trek for this one, the main interaction methods are the same as on the show, either a verbal cue or a tap. In the demo video they are even wearing this device as the same spot on their shirts.
Translation
In addition to being forward thinking technologists Star Trek writers are also TV writers that have to deal with the constraints of creating a show about the future in an era when we it was challenging to visualize that future. They often leveraged technology as a way to explain things from their universe that don’t make any sense, like why the crew of the enterprise could instantly understand any alien they came in contact with. Introducing the Universal Translator, built into the Communicator badge of every member of star fleet. This device would, in real time translate what an alien was saying, compare it against a massive database of language patterns and in play back for the wearer what was saying. AiPin demonstrated this in the video above leveraging chatGPT’s translation knowledge and using the built in speaker to translate for the wearer. It’s not as seamless as on the Tv show, but we have 240 years to get to that point…
Scanning
The Star Trek Communicator doesn’t scan items directly, they use tricorders on the show, but the spirit of this idea is clear in the scanning function of the AiPin. In fact this may be a killer feature for this device, being able to use a camera that is connected to the internet/ai without having to access a screen is an incredible way to keep people interacting with their environment over technology.
Location Detection
The AiPin demos weather warnings to wearers when they are out in the real world, this is another idea that is often used as a plot device in Star Trek, where the characters location is calculated by the Communicator and they need to beam someone away from an impending storm or danger.
When you put it all together what I find most interesting about the AiPin is that this product is a logical evolution of speech as the upcoming modality for most human/computer interaction. It won't replace phones and screens, but it will start to make a dent in a marketshare that has been nearly 100% owned by screen based interaction. On Star Trek we often saw actors integrating with the computer verbally, this let the show make the computer a character, it also was likely due to the fact that it’s not as interesting to watch someone interact with a screen as it is to watch actors interact with each other, just like in real life!
This evolution of what we’ve been playing around with in speech interfaces like Siri, Google Voice, Alexa is what’s truly exciting. Adding the components of a phone paired with OpenAI’s tools adds the next level and demonstrates what is hopefully going to lead to a more human way to interact with technology.
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