There really isn't anything of substance in this article. Just a low-quality complaint about AI and AI devices with such hot-takes as:
> You will notice that many of these tasks are just interacting with the lazy Silicon Valley dipshit treat ecosystem that already exists.
Honestly I'm hesitant about AI devices as well but dismissing it entirely is very Luddite-like. Will these smart AI devices succeed? Who knows... It's a risk but I can absolutely see areas where these devices will succeed - like bringing tech to the tech illiterate (or even just illiterate).
And Rabbit's price-point puts it in a very competitive position to be the iPhone of AI devices. Worth watching to see how these things continue to develop.
It’s pretty stupid that apparently we need a separate device because Apple watches over our hardware with loving grace. This should be a drop-in Siri replacement, but the only way that will happen is if Apple deigns to buy them, and then I still won’t have choice.
Luddites aren’t anti-tech but pro-worker, so being skeptical of AI is a fine thing to Ludd.
Luddites aren't pro-worker, they're pro-worker's-status-quo. They want workers to be artificially insulated against change at someone else's expense, which is really to the long-term detriment of workers.
The author is a self-deprecating gamer, not a Luddite. He runs a YouTube channel on gaming called "Highight Reel". In reading the review of the presentation I did not detect any predictions about the future success or failure of the "Rabbit R1", except some line about whether he thinks the Apple and Google app stores will accept an app. Instead, he is just asserting that this thing is not for him. He is giving his opinion. IMO, his review is entertaining and refreshing considering the garbage put out by "tech journalists". Making predictions is low brow "content". Like reading horoscopes.
Think of the ophthalmologist who wears glasses but sells you LASIK surgery. (He's skeptical of it due to an intimate understanding of the risks.) And now they're complaining that a type of LASIK surgery is being inflicted on everyone, as all consumer devices shoot beams at your eyes to auto-correct your vision.
This site is a bunch of ex-Gawker, ex-Vox and ex-Vice people submitting articles en masse to places like Reddit and HN. Why would it have anything of substance?
I think it's correct to say it is Luddite like to complain about a worse interface to the pocket computers we all already carry. As the article correctly states - what's the point? Why waste resources building these weird little AI gadgets that could be reduced to an app on all the devices we already have.
I mean, I get it, someone thinks they're going to be the AI iPhone and become the next Apple. What I think they're missing is many people enjoy using their phones to watch cat videos on Tik Tok, and very few people want to use their communicator badge to sell bitcoin.
Have you ever seen anyone struggle to even use an iPhone? I have. These interfaces aren't completely natural enough for everyone to grok. As I stated, I saw a potential use-case with the illiterate - tech or otherwise. I think this is valid reason enough, but not everything has to be some major innovation vs the previous one.
This is a startup and tech community. What's the point of Dropbox when "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem"?
Just because there's alternatives doesn't mean this product doesn't have a space in the market.
Informed tech discussion needs to scrub "Luddite" from its vocabulary as some kind of "gotcha" criticism. And not only that, serious study of the Luddite movement will actually inform today's conversations as we continue to see the rollout of bogus technologies which are a sign of enshittification & VC hype rather than meaningful progress.
For those of you who argue that a device like this is useless I urge you to visit someone with Parkisons, essential tremors, ALS, rheumatoid arthritis, limb injuries etc as well as very low vision and observe the difficulty they have interacting with the vision + multi-touch interface of their phones.
I expect iPhones to have better accessibility designs, controls, and accessories for these people than this, and most will already have iPhones. It doesn’t help that it looks like it’s marketed primarily for crypto zoomers.
That's the neat thing about phones. You can program them to interact with you via touch and voice(and even camera in apps like Google lens) without having to purchase a new piece of hardware dedicate to accessibility.
A voice app might be ideal for a subset of these groups, but my experience observing others using voice interfaces has not been encouraging. Many people, especially the elderly, are hard of hearing, have an accent that is misunderstood by technology, and/or speak with a incompatible cadence. People also need time to process the response, but with voice it's happening at the device's timeframe, not the user's.
I agree with you that generally people who complain about assistive devices do not consider any form of disability in their analysis. But the way that the consumer tech industry is shaped makes selling assistive devices really hard. Investors only want to invest in things that will be the next iPhone which makes actual assistive tech a really tough industry because the market is too small. So companies broaden try to broaden their reach but in order to do that they sacrifice the resilience, durability, reliability that those under-served communities really need. Most abled people can handle the 80% accuracy of a voice assistant, but for someone who needs an assistive device, that 20% failure rate can be brutal. The bar is so much higher to help those communities, and most companies wont bother.
Basically, if you want to make a medical assistive device, you kind of have to be all in on it, instead of trying to convince everyone that your device is the future of human-computer interaction (because its probably not and you'll just forget and ignore those communities)
Nice, you pulled out the "but think about disabled people" tactic, that's usually a conversation ender. Unfortunately, that's not who they are selling this $1000 device that mimics the existing capabilities of a phone to, based on their marketing.
Were people with disabilities mentioned as a target market?
I often hear on HN how Apple's lockdown of iOS is justified because grandma/grandpa need it that way. The only grandpa I've ever seen featured in an Apple product presentation is Tim Cook.
IPhones have similar voice activated functionality.
And where it doesn’t, an app can add these exact features to devices people already own, since the LLM isn’t running on device on the rabbit (it’s far too small)
Also this product definitely isn’t being positioned as an accessibility device.
Did you miss the part of the article where the complaint is that current voice assistants already do just about everything that was demonstrated? "Play some music. Who performed this song?".
I'll stand by the argument that the device is useless, because it does not appear to bring anything new to the table, "think of the children^Wdisabled" arguments aside.
I dislike and object to the scope of this device as much as the author.
It's not a popular view, but I hope Teenage Engineering is acquired by a very large company soon so that they can be relegated to functioning somewhere as a harmless novelty devision.
This way they will get a big pay day and be treated like a prize, while their influence to create proprietary devices for the landfill is effectively quashed.
> I hope Teenage Engineering is acquired by a very large company soon so that they can be relegated to functioning somewhere as a harmless novelty devision.
I don’t think that’s a common outcome of being “acquired by a very large company”.
Very large companies tend to only run large projects, even if they run them as hobbies. They simply cannot have small divisions.
As a simple example, if BigCo made this thing, they’d want to translate it in a gazillion languages, vet it for not stepping on some country’s or minority’s toes, set up support pages, have their IP lawyers go over it, etc.
I’ll let rich people test this thing out for me. Looking forward to all the news, articles, blog posts etc. of people’s experience (good or bad) using this thing. Wish I could get some kind of RSS feed about successes/failures of this thing.
Teenage Engineering does interesting and good work. Similar to Kano, they have very good modern design ideas and they produce actual devices. That's the best thing about this useless evil thing. It exists in the world and can provide inspiration for others to work on.
Another positive-ish thing to say would be is that this device is likely going to increase in value. Not because its popular but because it is going to be rare.
The author seems to be on the fence regarding this device, although there are some subtle clues in there that he may be _leaning_ towards not liking it. They're hard to spot though.
It does beg the question of why it's implemented in hardware though, and not just an app on your phone.
This is giving me flashbacks to Web 2.0. We won’t need web sites anymore! Everything will be an API and we can have our own custom front-ends to all these services!
It sounds great on paper. If I were selling widgets, I might want an API so people have yet another avenue to buy widgets and put money in my pocket. But at that point I’ve lost control of the widget-buying experience and I can’t collect as much data on the audience of widget buyers.
Public APIs disappeared as quickly as they showed up and companies focused on partnerships. You can’t ask your voice assistant to order you a pizza from the local joint, but if you say “I want a Pizza Hut pizza” we’ve got you covered.
I expect this product to go the same way. People will find a way to block their browser automation and the universe of things it can do will shrink until it’s a glorified timer and to-do list. But if you want a medium stuffed crust and a side of wings, we’ve got you covered.
This is an imperfect glance at the future. The apple watch is another: my gf interacts with hers mostly by voice, and uses it instead of her phone for most things.
With the limited bandwidth of voice, your interaction with the phone will be tiktokified: some algos will decide what’s spam, what’s legit, what you should see right now. Unless you can afford a flagship phone, your phone will be as worthless as google search.
I myself have stated I feel bringing tech to the tech illiterate is usually a mistake because those people are largely a security hazard to any large IT enterprise. Teaching dumbasses to use tech is how exactly how even a DECADE after The iloveu bug emailing malware to huge corporations members and spear phishing them with chained malware was how most companies got hit because its next to impossible to teach John over there in marketing not to at least ask his fellow workers if they really sent that email before downloading every attachment and executing it as well as every Excel spreadsheet that demanded you enable macros and enabling them. For OVER A DECADE, phishing emails with chained malware were how companies got hit because the tech illiterates refused to learn.
Like, when you let the morons in, they become a Security Hazard.
But if this device, can keep tech illiterates, from using and interfacing with the tech we need to secure, All the better.
Readit News
> You will notice that many of these tasks are just interacting with the lazy Silicon Valley dipshit treat ecosystem that already exists.
Honestly I'm hesitant about AI devices as well but dismissing it entirely is very Luddite-like. Will these smart AI devices succeed? Who knows... It's a risk but I can absolutely see areas where these devices will succeed - like bringing tech to the tech illiterate (or even just illiterate).
And Rabbit's price-point puts it in a very competitive position to be the iPhone of AI devices. Worth watching to see how these things continue to develop.
Luddites aren’t anti-tech but pro-worker, so being skeptical of AI is a fine thing to Ludd.
Think of the ophthalmologist who wears glasses but sells you LASIK surgery. (He's skeptical of it due to an intimate understanding of the risks.) And now they're complaining that a type of LASIK surgery is being inflicted on everyone, as all consumer devices shoot beams at your eyes to auto-correct your vision.
Dead Comment
I mean, I get it, someone thinks they're going to be the AI iPhone and become the next Apple. What I think they're missing is many people enjoy using their phones to watch cat videos on Tik Tok, and very few people want to use their communicator badge to sell bitcoin.
This is a startup and tech community. What's the point of Dropbox when "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem"?
Just because there's alternatives doesn't mean this product doesn't have a space in the market.
He uses a dedicated GPS device in his car and it speaks directions very slowly. Seems to work for him.
Basically, if you want to make a medical assistive device, you kind of have to be all in on it, instead of trying to convince everyone that your device is the future of human-computer interaction (because its probably not and you'll just forget and ignore those communities)
I often hear on HN how Apple's lockdown of iOS is justified because grandma/grandpa need it that way. The only grandpa I've ever seen featured in an Apple product presentation is Tim Cook.
And where it doesn’t, an app can add these exact features to devices people already own, since the LLM isn’t running on device on the rabbit (it’s far too small)
Also this product definitely isn’t being positioned as an accessibility device.
I'll stand by the argument that the device is useless, because it does not appear to bring anything new to the table, "think of the children^Wdisabled" arguments aside.
It's not a popular view, but I hope Teenage Engineering is acquired by a very large company soon so that they can be relegated to functioning somewhere as a harmless novelty devision.
This way they will get a big pay day and be treated like a prize, while their influence to create proprietary devices for the landfill is effectively quashed.
I don’t think that’s a common outcome of being “acquired by a very large company”.
Very large companies tend to only run large projects, even if they run them as hobbies. They simply cannot have small divisions.
As a simple example, if BigCo made this thing, they’d want to translate it in a gazillion languages, vet it for not stepping on some country’s or minority’s toes, set up support pages, have their IP lawyers go over it, etc.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
Another positive-ish thing to say would be is that this device is likely going to increase in value. Not because its popular but because it is going to be rare.
I admire your dedication to finding positive things, but if this particular cloud-dependent chunk of plastic appreciates in value I’ll eat my Audrey.
It does beg the question of why it's implemented in hardware though, and not just an app on your phone.
Deleted Comment
It sounds great on paper. If I were selling widgets, I might want an API so people have yet another avenue to buy widgets and put money in my pocket. But at that point I’ve lost control of the widget-buying experience and I can’t collect as much data on the audience of widget buyers.
Public APIs disappeared as quickly as they showed up and companies focused on partnerships. You can’t ask your voice assistant to order you a pizza from the local joint, but if you say “I want a Pizza Hut pizza” we’ve got you covered.
I expect this product to go the same way. People will find a way to block their browser automation and the universe of things it can do will shrink until it’s a glorified timer and to-do list. But if you want a medium stuffed crust and a side of wings, we’ve got you covered.
With the limited bandwidth of voice, your interaction with the phone will be tiktokified: some algos will decide what’s spam, what’s legit, what you should see right now. Unless you can afford a flagship phone, your phone will be as worthless as google search.
Like, when you let the morons in, they become a Security Hazard.
But if this device, can keep tech illiterates, from using and interfacing with the tech we need to secure, All the better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8s9uzPIqQ4
Yuki did nothing wrong.