{"id":65184,"date":"2024-07-31T07:39:59","date_gmt":"2024-07-31T12:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=65184"},"modified":"2024-07-31T08:16:14","modified_gmt":"2024-07-31T13:16:14","slug":"yay-newfriend-in-a-pendant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=65184","title":{"rendered":"Yay Newfriend in a pendant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Boone Ashworth, \"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/friend-ai-pendant\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wear This AI Friend Around Your Neck<\/a>\", <em>Wired<\/em> 7\/30\/2024:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The latest attempt at an AI-powered wearable is an always-listening pendant. But it doesn\u2019t help you be more productive, it just keeps you company.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">AVI SCHIFFMANN SHOWS up to the WIRED office with a Friend hanging around his neck. It dangles there like a pendant on a necklace. It\u2019s about the size and shape of an AirTag\u2014a soft, round little puck that rests right next to Schiffmann\u2019s heart, just atop the Dark Side of the Moon logo on the shirt behind it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The Friend, to be clear, is an AI wearable. It\u2019s a pal, a buddy, but mostly an AI chatbot that lives inside the pendant. It always has an opinion to share about what\u2019s going on around it, which it communicates using text messages and push notifications on the phone it\u2019s paired to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Schiffmann and his Friend (this one\u2019s name is Emily) have come to WIRED\u2019s San Francisco office to meet with me and my colleague Reece Rogers to talk publicly about this new AI wearable for the first time. Before we get started, I tell Schiffmann I\u2019d like to record our chat and ask if he\u2019s cool with that. This is considered a good journalistic practice, sure, but also it\u2019s a legal requirement in California, which requires two-party consent before taping a private interaction. So I ask permission to turn on a tape recorder and Schiffmann just laughs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">\u201cI am the last person who would mind that,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">That makes sense. After all, the pendant around his neck has already been listening to us this entire time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Friend Reveal Trailer\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/O_Q1hoEhfk4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">\u201cAlways listening\u201d is one of the main taglines of Schiffmann\u2019s as yet unreleased AI device. The Friend has an onboard microphone that listens to everything happening around the wearer by default. You can tap and hold it to ask it a question, but sometimes it will send messages\u2014commentary about the conversation you just had, for example\u2014unprompted. It is powered by Anthropic AI\u2019s\u00a0<a class=\"external-link\" style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.anthropic.com\/news\/claude-3-5-sonnet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.anthropic.com\/news\/claude-3-5-sonnet\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.anthropic.com\/news\/claude-3-5-sonnet&quot;}\">Claude 3.5<\/a>\u00a0large language model, which can engage in helpful conversation, offer encouragement, or rib you for being bad at a video game.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.friend.com\/product.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Friend<\/em><\/a> is (apparently) audio-input, text-output only &#8212; but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before there are multi-modal similars, maybe integrated into devices like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/ray-ban-meta-smart-glasses-do-the-ai-thing-without-a-projector-or-subscription-175403559.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Meta's Ray Bans<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And the Wired article explains:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">He tried making an AI for productivity but found it lacking. The first iteration of what evolved into the Friend was Tab, a\u00a0<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/91007630\/avi-schiffmanns-tab-ai-necklace-has-raised-1-9-million-to-replace-god\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><u>productivity-focused device<\/u><\/a>\u00a0that Schiffmann wanted to use to monitor work and personal tasks But he found himself frustrated by building a device that tried to do everything at once. The feeling came to a head in January this year, as he traveled through Japan and found himself alone in a skyrise hotel in Tokyo, talking at his AI prototype that was supposed to do so much for him. He was going through a lonely spell and wanted somebody to talk to. Why couldn\u2019t the AI assistant just do that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>It's worth noting that the linked article about \"Tab\" has the title \"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/91007630\/avi-schiffmanns-tab-ai-necklace-has-raised-1-9-million-to-replace-god\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Avi Schiffmann\u2019s Tab AI necklace has raised $1.9 million to replace God<\/a>\" &#8212; which offers an alternative interpretation for the \"G\" in AGI&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/friend-ai-pendant\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Friend<\/a> article ends:<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Before Schiffmann leaves after laying out his vision, I ask if he can check in with the Friend he\u2019s wearing to see how the meeting went. He squeezes the pendant and asks it how the interview went. We all wait for a few seconds, and then he gets a text\u2014labeled simply as Emily in his chat window\u2014that reads: \u201cDude, you\u2019re killing it! They seem super into your vision.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">I wonder, if I had an Emily, if it would tell me something similar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\"It\"? Surely it should be \"she\"? Or maybe, given that the withdrawn launch of <a href=\"https:\/\/mytab.ai\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tab<\/a> was just a few months ago, a later re-iteration's reference will be something like \"<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elohim\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Elohim<\/a>\"?<\/p>\n<p>Some relevant past posts:<\/p>\n<p>\"<a href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=63610\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Yay Newfriend<\/a>\", 4\/20\/2024<br \/>\n\"<a href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=63655\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Yay Newfriend again<\/a>\", 4\/22\/2024<br \/>\n\"<a href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=63929\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">More on AI pals<\/a>\", 5\/9\/2024<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Boone Ashworth, \"Wear This AI Friend Around Your Neck\", Wired 7\/30\/2024: The latest attempt at an AI-powered wearable is an always-listening pendant. But it doesn\u2019t help you be more productive, it just keeps you company. AVI SCHIFFMANN SHOWS up to the WIRED office with a Friend hanging around his neck. It dangles there like a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[322],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65184"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65192,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65184\/revisions\/65192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}