One month after launch of its "smartphone replacement," Humane already seems doomed.

Despite seemingly having nothing else in the pipeline and the AI Pin being dead on arrival, Bloomberg reports the company is “seeking a price of between $750 million and $1 billion in a sale.”

  • Nommer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    147·
    6 months ago

    So this is scam right? Overpromise on a product that doesn’t work then sell the company for some huge price because it’s cutting edge technology? Because it feels like a scam.

    • voracitude@lemmy.worldEnglish
      651·
      6 months ago

      Yeah, the product was a boondoggle. Trying to sell the company after that launch, with nothing else in the pipeline, is a scam.

    • mPony@lemmy.worldEnglish
      581·
      6 months ago

      remember how over the past few years almost everything brand new had the word “blockchain” shoehorned into it for no good reason?

      This is the same kind of thing. It’s an atrocious boondoggle. There must still be a serious amount of cocaine floating around Venture Capitalist parties, because one of those boys is gonna drop 500M on this company and think they bought the dip, when in fact they, themselves, are the dip.

      • xavier666@lemm.eeEnglish
        4·
        6 months ago

        I can’t even remember the last time when some hot new technology changed our lives significantly. I’m inclined to say Android because it was a new mobile OS and now it’s everywhere and various devices but even that is more than a decade old.

        • ඞmir@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          6 months ago

          Bluetooth ANC IEMs/earbuds were rare a decade ago, and now I see half the people around me wearing them all day

        • mPony@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          4 months ago

          oh, for a while there, it was close. things have changed even in the past 2 months since I wrote that comment.

    • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
      472·
      6 months ago

      Anything with “AI” in the title is a cash grab with very little actual technical worth except the models and training data.

      • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        6 months ago

        Pretty much anything with AI on the tin is a scam. Because when an AI product gets a useful valuable application, it immediately changes name to something else.

  • dinckel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    691·
    6 months ago

    This is the same as Ben Shapiro telling people to sell their houses once Florida goes under water from a climate crisis. To who? Neptune?

    • kat_angstrom@lemmy.worldEnglish
      75·
      6 months ago

      Nerds still are smarter than us.

      Unfortunately a cult of managers has arisen to rule over the nerds and they hype with an iron fist.

    • wirehead@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      6 months ago

      It’s important to realize that the nerd you saw on the news has always been someone wearing nerd as a costume and the entire history of technology is loaded with examples of the real nerd being marginalized. It’s just that in ages past the VC’s would give a smaller amount of money and require the startup to go through concrete milestones to unlock all of it so there was more of a chance for the founder’s dreams to smack up against reality before they were $230m in the hole with no product worth selling.

      • sundray@lemmus.orgEnglish
        4·
        6 months ago

        20 years ago, the big question VCs were asking their startups was, “How do we convince Microsoft to buy this company?” Simpler times, back then.

        • erwan@lemmy.mlEnglish
          7·
          6 months ago

          10 years ago it was “how do we convince Google to buy this company?”

  • Tiger Jerusalem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    411·
    6 months ago

    This is hilarious, scrambling to get a golden parachute and live off some trust fund from the sale. The sad part is that they will probably get that.

    • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      6 months ago

      That’s the worst part. They knew the product sucked, everyone knew the product sucked, this was always the plan. Ask for a billion get 200 million. That’s 100 for each founder. Go live on a private beach somewhere.

      • fukurthumz420@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        6 months ago

        it’s just rich people’s money that could be used to fund housing for the masses. let me know where that beach is so i can go drop off some karma.

  • ghewl@lemmy.worldEnglish
    372·
    6 months ago

    Their adoption plan was just wrong. Few people want to give up their phones, and the general public has had enough of a learning curve struggle with mobile phones. The device didn’t make sense, at least not in its current state.

    The AI bubble will burst soon, and when it does, real innovation will happen.

    • stealth_cookiesEnglish
      48·
      6 months ago

      They designed a product that doesn’t solve a problem that anyone has. On top of that they designed something that doesn’t even work well.

      • sundray@lemmus.orgEnglish
        7·
        6 months ago

        If they had a couple of unbeatable patents that they just couldn’t figure out how to turn into products, that’s almost forgivable – you blew your launch, so you sell out to a company who has the resources to make your ideas into something the public will buy. But as far as I can tell, these guys don’t really have any IP worth buying them out for.

      • erwan@lemmy.mlEnglish
        4·
        6 months ago

        And it was overpriced. I can see people buying a useless toy for 50 bucks, but not for $700.

      • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        I never looked into it, but assumed it was just like an “echo dot”. May deserves a premium for being smaller and belatedly powered, as much as $30?

  • EpicFailGuy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    262·
    6 months ago

    Who would have guess that another overpriced solution to a non existent problem that no one wants would have been a commercial failure …

    We are in a capitalist dystopia. We could be using AI to predict energy usage and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, or help in discovering new protein folds … but no … Timmy wants to look like a cool futuristic dude and he’s willing to pay $600 to look cooler than his peers

    • kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
      161·
      6 months ago

      We could be using AI to predict energy usage and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels

      That’s happening

      or help in discovering new protein folds

      That too.

      There’s always been barnacles on the ship of progress. That doesn’t mean it’s only barnacles.

    • fukurthumz420@lemmy.worldEnglish
      94·
      6 months ago

      these people live in a delusion, chasing star trek fantasies while the general population can barely afford rent. we are truly due for the chickens to come home to roost.

      i just hope a lot of innocent animals don’t get hurt in the process.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
        41·
        6 months ago

        Surely the Star Trek fantasy is doing the above stuff. Star Trek is all about how money doesn’t exist in the future

        The problem is they’re not creating a Star Trek future

    • guacupado@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      Yeah their videos were what everyone wants but their actual product was way more clumsy and primitive. Technology isn’t there yet for what these guys were trying to make.

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
    19·
    6 months ago

    I could see it being useful if it was an accessory to your phone. Not having to dig my phone out of my pocket to take a picture of something to look it up, or having a push-to-talk badge or pendant would make it more convenient, especially for folks like me who don’t wear watches. And with Bluetooth it would have decent battery life.

    But the damn thing can’t even set a timer.

    • vallode@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      6 months ago

      A lot of the form factor is already mostly available in smart watches. They have to, at the bare minimum, conver the bsse functionality of those before moving onto real time ai interaction that is never real time and is hardly a proper interaction.

      Progressive enhancement would be great here, smart watch in a pin form factor but with AI powered features when they make sense. Maybe some kind of super fine tuned orchestrator that know when to pass onto siri/assisstant vs. some cloud model (setting a timer requires simple parsing but a complex philosophical question can be offloaded to AI)

  • MystikIncarnateEnglish
    151·
    6 months ago

    I want to say up front that, I don’t feel any sympathy for the company, nor do I have any love for the ewaste they created.

    That being said, it’s a decent idea, and I would have liked to see where it went. Their implementation was completely wrong on do many points, but it was still a half decent idea. Basically having what Google assistant should have been, pinned to your chest like a comm badge sounds pretty cool. The laser projector for your hand was interesting, but very hokey, the data communication was poorly thought out, far too slow to be useful, the design wasn’t the worst, but still not great. The battery life was questionable at best…

    But the concept of what it was supposed to be able to do, was not terrible. Possibly the last terrible part of the product.

    Personally, I want a personal assistant. Since I’m not rich, I can’t exactly hire one. Having an AI assistant, that you talk to through a communications badge seems like a decent idea. I’d want it to basically run from my phone, mostly local to my phone, so my data isn’t pushed everywhere, but the tech isn’t quite there yet. Not enough TOPS, not enough memory, not enough storage for all the models; and certainly not enough battery to power AI running on your phone.

    I can see what they were going for but they fell so far short of the goal that it’s not really visible in what was delivered.

    I imagine the pitch meeting about this being something along the lines of a guy rushing in after watching Star Trek discovery, when they got the holographic comm badges, and going, I want to make that! With the Zora AI and everything! And then people jumping on the bandwagon, knowing full well that they’re not even going to come close.

    I hope everyone that works there gets new jobs in sectors that aren’t using AI as a parlor trick or buzzword to try to move units.

    Good bye, company I don’t care enough to remember the name of. We hardly knew you, and even that was probably too much interaction.