Where have we seen that before?
That was my first thought upon reading this week’s coverage of the new Ai Pin from the startup Humane, with features including the ability to project an interface onto the palm of the user’s hand.
Oh right, Microsoft Skinput!
As shown in the video below, from 2010, Skinput was a research project that projected light onto a user’s skin, using sensors to distinguish among the waves that run through the arm or hand to detect different inputs.
Developed in partnership with Chris Harrison of Carnegie Mellon University, the Skinput project proved once again the tech truism that Microsoft is frequently not wrong about its tech ideas, but rather too early.
Perhaps the company under Satya Nadella has shaken that reputation, given its impeccable timing in the new wave of AI, with a major assist from OpenAI. For what it’s worth, Microsoft and OpenAI are partnering with Humane and providing the underlying AI and cloud technology, Reuters reports.
Humane is positioning the Ai Pin as a way to move humanity beyond the smartphone, while also taking voice interactions beyond Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant. It will be released next year for $699 with a $24 monthly data subscription through T-Mobile, the Bellevue, Wash.-based wireless provider.
Humane, founded by two former Apple employees, is using a different approach than possible back in 2010, and presumably it’s in a much better position to make the concept work, given all of the advances in AI, sensor technology, and human-computer interaction in the meantime.
To be clear, Skinput was a Microsoft Research project, not a product. It was intended to point to the future, and in that way it could be viewed as a success, given that a similar approach is now coming to market.
However, as the New York Times notes, “The tech industry has a large graveyard of wearable products that have failed to catch on.”
And Humane’s Ai Pin already has its skeptics: “While there are some undoubtedly novel new features in its interfaces, I think ‘AI hardware’ may turn out to be a dead end,” writes Casey Newton of Platformer, who was part of a small group of reporters who got to try out the device at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.
At the very least, if history repeats itself, the Ai Pin will give comedians some new material. Microsoft Skinput was mentioned on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” quiz show back in 2010. “At long last,” joked host Peter Sagal at the time, “the internet will be used primarily by people who are touching themselves.”