Look, I\u2019m a Humane AI Pin doubter<\/a> as much as the next person. And I still think the wearable, AI-powered assistant suffers from a case of this-thing-could-have-been-an-app. But I finally got to spend a little face-to-face time with the pin this morning, and you know what? It\u2019s a darn cool gadget. It\u2019s just buried under a layer of marketing so thick that it\u2019s hard to appreciate what it actually could be if Humane wasn\u2019t so self-serious.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you spend time on Tech Threads or the like, you probably already know what the pin does<\/a>: you clip it to your shirt, talk to it, and it uses generative AI to answer. It\u2019s a standalone device with its own SIM card, and there\u2019s no screen \u2014 just vibes. That, and a little laser that projects menus and text onto your palm so you can interact with mortal trifles like Wi-Fi settings and media playback controls.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The idea, reiterated as I watched a couple of Humane employees run through various demos, was that it\u2019s meant to help keep you connected while unplugging a little bit \u2014 less staring at screens and more living in the moment. AI helps fetch relevant bits from your calendar and email, and answers your questions when you\u2019re curious about the world around you. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s all very lovely, but let\u2019s be real: this thing isn\u2019t a philosophy, it\u2019s a gadget. Gadgets are fun, helpful, and frustrating \u2014 and all of the above seems to apply to the Humane pin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The AI Pin was genuinely impressive at times. There\u2019s a <\/strong>vision feature that will use the camera to scan the scene in front of you when prompted, analyze what\u2019s there, and describe it out loud. <\/strong>I stood in front of a Humane spokesperson as he tried out this feature, and frankly, the pin nailed it. It described <\/strong>Mobile World Congress as \u201can indoor event or exhibition with people walking around.\u201d Easy enough. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n But it also pointed out the name Qualcomm on the signage behind me, and obviously reading the badge around my neck, identified me as \u201ca person wearing a lanyard from the The Verge<\/em>.\u201d One too many the\u2019s, but pretty impressive when you consider I wasn\u2019t standing all that close to the pin and the lighting was dim.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The gesture navigation was also impressive \u2014 more fluid and responsive than I thought it would be. I wasn\u2019t allowed to put the pin on myself, and it\u2019s hard to get into the right spot to project the laser onto your own hand since it\u2019s really a single-user device. I tried. But a couple of Humane employees demoing the product, who obviously had lots of practice with it, navigated the projected menus quickly and easily just by tilting their hands and tapping two fingers together.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the pin isn\u2019t immune to the thing that gadgets often do: frustrate the hell out of you. Most of the AI is off-device, so there\u2019s a solid few seconds of waiting for responses to your requests and questions \u2014 not helped by the convention center\u2019s spotty connectivity. It also shut down on one occasion after briefly flashing a notice that it had overheated and needed to cool off. The employee demoing the pin for me said that this doesn\u2019t happen very often, and that the continued use of the laser for demonstration purposes probably did it. I believe that, but still, this is a device meant to sit next to your chest and go with you into lots of different environments, presumably including warm ones. Not great!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The laser projection is clearer than I imagined it would be, but it\u2019s still essentially light projected onto the palm of your hand. Hands aren\u2019t uniformly flat, and they\u2019re hard to keep perfectly still. Text kind of dances around in front of you, and while it\u2019s not difficult to read, it is<\/em> harder than reading, say, text on a smartphone. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s also impossible to get a sense of what it\u2019s like living with the thing in a convention center hall. Could a cotton shirt support its weight? How easy is the laser to see outside in direct sun? Would people understand why the \u201ctrust light\u201d is illuminated? Does the Pin occasionally make things up, the way some AI tends to? I have a lot more questions than answers, but I guess at least I have more than zero<\/em> answers now that I\u2019ve seen it with my own eyes. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n My early impression of the Pin is that there\u2019s something<\/em> there, but it\u2019s not the<\/em> thing. And the trouble is, all of Humane\u2019s marketing has built it up to be the thing.<\/em> It was first introduced at a TED talk, for pete\u2019s sake: that\u2019s like ground zero for people who take themselves too seriously. Humane\u2019s Sai Kambampati told me that the AI Pin isn\u2019t intended as a smartphone replacement. But it has its own data connection, its own monthly subscription fee, and its own smartphone-esque price of $699. And it\u2019s… not<\/em> supposed to replace your phone? <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Whatever\u2019s ahead of us in mobile computing, I have a feeling it\u2019s not exactly the AI Pin as I saw it demonstrated today. There\u2019s a lot more testing I want to do when the pin officially arrives in April<\/a>. In the meantime, I didn\u2019t see the future exactly, but I did see a darn cool gadget \u2014 just don\u2019t take it too seriously.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n