Hello, welcome to your weekend.
It’s been 10 years since the movie Her introduced us to an ambiguous future where a man falls in love with his AI-powered digital assistant. Guess who liked that movie? Yes, Sam Altman, father of ChatGPT. “The things that Her got right were very prescient, like the whole interaction models that people use AI with,” he said earlier this summer.
So it’s no surprise that OpenAI’s CEO is doing everything in his power to make his speculative story our reality. As Julia reports in her report on the future hardware wars of AI, Altman is the largest shareholder in the startup Humane, which will unveil its wearable, screen-free digital assistant, Ai Pin, on November 9.
Altmans is also a backer of Rewind, which makes an AI audio recording pendant that users wear around their necks. And as The Information first reported last month, he recently spoke with former Apple designer Jony Ive about creating an AI iPhone.
Does Hedge bet a lot, Sam?
The rush to create the AI form factor of the future is on, and there’s no telling which company or tool will win. Humane is one of the first out of the gate with something completely new: a device the size of a saltine cracker that can understandably answer questions, project images onto your hand, and take 180-degree videos of your surroundings. record you
Do people need these features on a device that is not a phone? Are the phones themselves going to be replaced like so many obsolete Discmans and Polaroids? And as Julia writes, is society ready for devices that know us as well as we know ourselves?
Altman certainly thinks so. Well, you’ll soon know if consumers agree.
Now to this week’s stories…
The competition for artificial intelligence-based hardware has officially begun. Humane, a secretive startup with over $240 million in funding, is about to unveil its wearable Ai Pin. Julia has information about how the device may destroy the technology forever and burn like so many hardware bets before it.
Blood sugar crash: Has continuous glucose monitoring reached its peak?
Non-diabetics are using glucose monitoring devices more than ever in hopes of losing weight and increasing energy. But Annie reports that some of the technology’s early adopters are starting to move away from CGM.
Over two days of interviews and panel discussions, the reporting team engaged in lively conversations about artificial intelligence, social media, work-life balance and, in the case of pop star Paris, the glory of transcendental meditation.
Note: Andreessen Horowitznot muchpessimistic yield
In case you missed it, this month Marc Andersen published a controversial blog post titled The Techno-Optimist Manifesto. In it, he argued that societies fixation on doomsday negativity leads to technological stagnation. This week, Crunchbase ran the numbers to see just how tech-optimistic his firm Andreessen Horowitz is these days. Not much, obviously! According to Crunchbases data, a16z has invested in 112 startups this year, its slowest trading year since 2020. Of course, this decline coincides with a general downturn in the investment market. Andreessens actually beat out competitors like Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SoftBank and Tiger Global. Ironically, founder innovation can have the unintended effect of making the competition work harder. Julia
Game: Spider-Man in the Outer Quarters
Going from Brooklyn to Manhattan just got a whole lot easier in Spider-Man. Last week, Spider-Man 2 launched on PlayStation 5, the follow-up to 2020’s hugely successful game. Within the first few minutes of the game, it’s clear that the sequel lives up to the hype: while the original confined your whimsical senses to Manhattan, the new games map is much larger, allowing you to explore multiple areas of the city. Turn between Brooklyn and Queens. There are still bad guys to fight on every block, from gangsters on the run to the Sandman, but Ive spent hours walking up Broadway trying to find the candy store or my old apartment. Consider staying in this weekend and do some virtual vigilante justice. New York City is a hell of a time for web slingers. Margaux
Attention:It’s the season of disruption in fast fashion
It’s becoming New York’s pop-up season, with brands without brick-and-mortar stores hosting nationwide activations to encourage holiday shopping and test merchandise. Joining this year’s pop-up parade is Cider, an Andersen Horowitz-backed fast-fashion company that hopes to one day rival Sheen. (Both brands hail from China.) The dresses, which average between $20 and $25, are at Soho’s Instagrammable red-heart department store at 33 Howard St. ) will be exhibited. In another example of e-retailers betting that online popularity is trending IRL, Cedar hopes to attract Gen-Z shoppers. Sheen also recently started a collaboration with Forever 21, bringing his clothes to some of the retailer’s stores. For Cider, Shins is a giant that’s hard to disrupt, but the company never had a space in Soho. Instant
It makes you think
Who runs the world? The girls (especially Lauren Sanchez and her besties who attend WTF.)
Until next weekend, thanks for reading.
John
#device #rule
Image Source : www.theinformation.com