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Humane's Daily Returns Are Outpacing Sales (theverge.com) 45
Things aren't working out well for Humane, a heavily-funded startup that launched an eponymous AI device earlier this year. Despite significant funding from prominent Silicon Valley figures, the product has been grappling with negative reviews -- and now more pressing issues are emerging. An anonymous reader shares a report: Shortly after Humane released its $699 AI Pin in April, the returns started flowing in. Between May and August, more AI Pins were returned than purchased, according to internal sales data obtained by The Verge. By June, only around 8,000 units hadn't been returned, a source with direct knowledge of sales and return data told me. As of today, the number of units still in customer hands had fallen closer to 7,000, a source with direct knowledge said.
At launch, the AI Pin was met with overwhelmingly negative reviews. Our own David Pierce said it "just doesn't work," and Marques Brownlee called it "the worst product" he's ever reviewed. Now, Humane is attempting to stabilize its operations and maintain confidence among staff and potential acquirers. The New York Times reported in June that HP is considering purchasing the company, and The Information reported last week that Humane is negotiating with its current investors to raise debt, which could later be converted into equity.
At launch, the AI Pin was met with overwhelmingly negative reviews. Our own David Pierce said it "just doesn't work," and Marques Brownlee called it "the worst product" he's ever reviewed. Now, Humane is attempting to stabilize its operations and maintain confidence among staff and potential acquirers. The New York Times reported in June that HP is considering purchasing the company, and The Information reported last week that Humane is negotiating with its current investors to raise debt, which could later be converted into equity.
I RTFA (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
The idea is to be a sort of a Star Trek pin. You poke it and ask it a question, or to do some computer task like schedule an event in your calendar, and it does that.
Problem is that we already have a device on us at all times that does just that, but has a much better interface for this purpose. Smartphone. And it's exceedingly obvious that this company wanted to basically kill the smartphone with their pin, as it doesn't actually connect to your smartphone, instead going to great pains to generate it's own UI, maintain it's own connection and so on. Because it's in direct competition with the smartphone, and as long as your smartphone is on you... there's really no reason to have this pin.
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They would have made a lot more money if they'd just made a bluetooth pin that funneled your voice requests to Google AI and let it be. Almost no development required, and probably would have sold in the millions, especially if they licensed the communicator pin designs from Paramount. Hell, I would have bought one from each flavor of Star Trek (ToS, TNG, etc).
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They would have made a lot more money if they'd just made a bluetooth pin that funneled your voice requests to Google AI and let it be. Almost no development required, and probably would have sold in the millions, especially if they licensed the communicator pin designs from Paramount. Hell, I would have bought one from each flavor of Star Trek (ToS, TNG, etc).
Bluetooth Star Trek communicators already exist. They are all over Amazon.
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They may exist, but not on Amazon, not at the moment. It sounded like something I'd like, so I went looking. All the badges I could find are non-bluetooth. Heck, even Temu, site of "who cares about copyright" doesn't seem to have them.
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They would've made nothing with that, as almost every BT earpiece now has google assistant/siri functionality built in. And had for quite a few years.
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They would have made a lot more money if they'd just made a bluetooth pin that funneled your voice requests to Google AI and let it be. ...
Almost agree. That would have been nearly the same as: https://shop.startrek.com/prod... [startrek.com] :-)
Go ahead and buy it now
IMO, it did need more than simply bluetooth mic and speaker, but not much more. A camera (as the Humane Pin has), and tie it into an app on the phones, rather than putting full cellular hardware and processing on the pin. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a patent minefield for this, whereas a standalone device may have avoided much of that, but I'm just stabbing in the dark.
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Almost forgot the built in projector... mic, speaker, camera, AND a little laser/led projector.
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I believe it uses your cellphone for its connection to the web, so doubly useless. just use your phone to begin with.
Nope, it has its own cellular modem. The manditory subscription of $24/mo includes a voice and data plan from T-Mobile. https://humane.com/subscriptio... [humane.com]
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Take off the tinfoil hat. "oooooo camera!" It's not on all the time. It couldn't be (power). It also has a built in projector so you have it display an email or whatever, and it'll project it onto your palm.
Plenty of valid reasons to dish on it. Having a camera is not one. Every phone these days have several, multiple on every tablet, a bunch of them on every modern car, etc etc...
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I wouldn't care if the camera was on or not. I would have no way of knowing that.
Yes, you would. It has a light that shows what it's doing. Green=Capture, Pink=Phone, Orange=Mic, White=Scan.
FYI, you have to touch it to have the mic or camera go active. Tap and hold for voice input (not just tap... tap and hold). Two finger double tap for a photo. Two finger tap and hold for video.
Also, this device would likely be banned in many workplaces, such as those that handle confidential documents.
Banned in places with confidential documents? No shit. Your phone would be banned too. A lot of places literally ban paper, pen and pencil as well. That has not stopped the adoption of multi-camera arrays on al
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And many offices that handle confidential documents (as in the plebs' personal info) don't have their employees lock up their phone. .. This kind of thing is usually reserved for government offices that handle CLASSIFIED data (different security level)
You are ill informed. Loads and loads of entry level employees at call centers have to lock up their phones and can't even bring pen and paper onto the floor - just one example.
I would dare say most don't have this requirement.
Then they should be fine with the AI pin as well. And if they're not, it's not glued on your shirt - put it in your pocket while at work if they're luddites.
" multi-camera arrays on all flagship phones." The difference is that the phone cameras are not always pointing straight ahead like this badge camera is.
Right... every time you see someone that may be talking on their phone, they can be recording video out the side, and you wouldn't think twice about it. Or all the times when peo
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"but there are reasons why AR glasses haven't taken off, those reasons including people threatening to use physical violence against those wearing such a device."
And those people threatening violence are Luddites, and moronic. Also stupid and hateful. They have no expectation of privacy in public, nor should they.
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In most nations, there is in fact expectation of some privacy in public. US is an outlier in this regard.
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The idea is to be a sort of a Star Trek pin. You poke it and ask it a question, or to do some computer task like schedule an event in your calendar, and it does that.
I guess someone thought that made it a good idea.
Even a moment's thought, or, you know, actually watching Star Trek reruns, should have dispelled that idea.
"Computer: do yadda yadda in strangely verbose detail and a terrible UI ... because 1. this is a TV show, and 2. this is the 1960s and not many people actually know what a computer can and can't do."
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Good news: you aren't missing anything.
Nobody else knows why they would pay $700 for it either, which is why they're all getting returned.
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It isn't 'just' $699 but also has a monthly subscription cost of about $20/month.
When they first announced it, they didn't say what the cost would be, so it seemed like it may be cool, but, yeah $700 + $20/month? no, nowhere near that cool. No
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The whole point is "first to market!" That means you forgo important stuff, like QA, and focus on critical activities, like marketing. Actually knowing what the device is or what it should do is just one of those things that has to be ignored if they want to get the product out the door quickly...
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It's only human.
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"Nice friend you adopted there..." (Score:4, Funny)
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You know, the last few months there have been enough ambiguous company names in Slashdot titles that I have been confused several times and only clicked on the link to see what they meant. The problem is that words in titles are capitalized, but so are proper nouns, and there's no clue outside of context what some of the words mean.
Right now I think there are just too many startups that pick common words as their company name.
Say I made a startup called Trust. Now I can confuse the entire world, "Trust Is
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You might be able to. If your education was in something useful there's likely a Saudi prince or warlord or something somewhere that would pay it off in exchange for your indentured servitude.
When a business says "convert debt into equity" they mean they're going to borrow money and pay it back with stock. The debt the lender owns gets converted into equity, which they also own.
No suprrise (Score:2)
Thy promised things they, and in fact nobody, can deliver.
Re: No suprrise (Score:2)
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Yes. Apparently they did not even find enough people that wanted what they promised.
Just a scam, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no way this was an ernest attempt at a device, given the stupidly obvious issues with the interface long before the first crappy test hardware was assembled or line of code was written.
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If it was a scam they wouldn't be offering returns.
Who do you think was being scammed? Certainly not the consumers, who can return their devices.
I guess it's the investors who were being scammed? But they are supposed to be savvy businessmen, who wouldn't fall for something like that, so it can't be them either.
I don't see a third party to scam, do you?
potential acquirers (Score:2)
Hate to break it to Humane, no one is going to buy that dogshit. If you can convince someone with money that there is value somewhere, which you cannot do, they will pay pennies on the dollar at best.
Returns? Why do they have returns? (Score:2)
I'm kinda shocked anybody bought one. The initial concept seemed like a bad $30 add-on you might keep with your phone. At the price they offered it at, plus the $20 a month "because we can" forever payment to keep using it, I'm not sure how they got anyone to buy one. I suppose there's always those "gotta try the new tech" folks out there, but if you're so blind you can't see the issues with this device up-front, you probably shouldn't be an early adopter for any newer tech.
New tech can be cool, but this de
Silicon Valley fad (Score:2)
All the rich kids had to have one and 7000 make too much to bother doing a return.
So the question is how many active subs do they have?
Aaaaannndddd... (Score:2)
HP, you say?!!? (Score:2)