Ask HN: What's the value prop for "AI wearables?"

1 points by slymersonn 2 years ago | 1 comment

I've seen a bunch of AI wearables come out, such as the Humane AI Pin, the Rewind Pendant, the Tab Necklace, etc.

The value proposition that gets thrown around with these devices is the promise of having a "second brain" there with you at all times, listening to your conversations, and gathering the context. Context being the most important part.

However, the goal for this is to be common and popular among "normies," and I'm not entirely sure if normies want to have a device that is essentially a conversation analyzer/summarizer.

Putting myself in the shoes of someone outside the tech bubble... they don't generally care about privacy, they only want something that provides utility. I say this because I know some may raise privacy concerns, but those concerns may not resonate with the average person. Therefore, trying to think like an average person, and I think what will win the market will be something that provides utility, and is a status symbol.

So this begs the question... what's the true value proposition for these devices? Is the one thing that will catch on with normies a proactive AI?

fragmede 2 years ago |

Throwing out privacy concerns, "normies" as you call them, interact with a lot of people, and don't remember every conversation word-for-word. Thus a smart conversation summarizer that's able to remind them where they met someone and what topic they connected on, and thus are able to seem like they have a better memory than they do, seems like it would be more useful than you believe. That's just as a conversation summarizer though.

I think the real value prop is in augmenting conversation. Siri/Google/Alexa do this poorly right now. I can ask them simple things, like what is 28*3, or what is the capital of France, and they'll answer. but try something more advanced and they fall flat, offering up a webpage to read on your phone. So currently, there's a break in a conversation while someone goes and looks stuff up on Wikipedia. Instead of going off and doing that, a pendant could maybe be a third person in the conversation to help the conversation along. There's also the connection to the outside world that may be enabled through an Internet connected device. Ie, voice control of smarthome devices to turn on lights and all that fancy stuff.

"note to self" is another use case, though the current voice assistants already do this (poorly). "add milk to shopping list" is very handy. having access to that around your neck (or wrist) instead of fumbling for you phone is very handy.

Will these devices pan out? I don't know, nor have I bought one.