The device pictured is the Rabbit R1, an alleged “AI assistant” that’s supposed to do all the shit that the original pitches for Siri and OK Google were supposed to do; “Order me an uber”, “Find me a restaurant nearby”, etc. Turns out it’s just chatGPT with a few autoclick scripts bolted on. Not only does it work worse than a smartphone for any given task, it also works worse than existing non-AI voice assistants.
Pretty sure quite a few people got in on the R1 because it was cheap ($200) and designed by Teenage Engineering which people fucking love for some reason.
I unapologetically despise TE. Their synths are underpowered, overpriced bleep bloop squonk boxes with intentionally obscure UI because “aesthetics”, but their cult following just eats that shit up when there are a bazillion other, cheaper, more capable devices out there. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that they had a hand in this disaster of a device and I hope their reputation suffers for it.
Exactly. And people fucking loved those things back when I was more active in the music scene. Having one was like a talking point. People would pull them out in the middle of conversations at gigs. Never mind that you can get a used Volca for not much more, that does more with a better UI, and most of them do actual MIDI, not just sync. But you don’t see people walking around with those in their pockets because Korg don’t have a fucking cult.
I mean the main transgression here is that it’s literally just a slighly altered android ROM that hides the fact that it runs Android. It could literally have been a free app on your smartphone.
A unitasking device is fine, as long as it’s doing something that could not be done by the multitasking device we already hurt the environment to create. Or it does so more power efficiently, or even offload a task that is burdensome for your phone to another device. This does none of those things, it just sends your voice request to chatgpt.
It also has dog shit battery life, so that’s another knock.
I’m out of the loop what tech gizmo startups? Are people buying unitasking devices that a smartphone can do?
The device pictured is the Rabbit R1, an alleged “AI assistant” that’s supposed to do all the shit that the original pitches for Siri and OK Google were supposed to do; “Order me an uber”, “Find me a restaurant nearby”, etc. Turns out it’s just chatGPT with a few autoclick scripts bolted on. Not only does it work worse than a smartphone for any given task, it also works worse than existing non-AI voice assistants.
The things were recently released but idk if anyone has actually bought them l.
Pretty sure quite a few people got in on the R1 because it was cheap ($200) and designed by Teenage Engineering which people fucking love for some reason.
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I unapologetically despise TE. Their synths are underpowered, overpriced bleep bloop squonk boxes with intentionally obscure UI because “aesthetics”, but their cult following just eats that shit up when there are a bazillion other, cheaper, more capable devices out there. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that they had a hand in this disaster of a device and I hope their reputation suffers for it.
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Exactly. And people fucking loved those things back when I was more active in the music scene. Having one was like a talking point. People would pull them out in the middle of conversations at gigs. Never mind that you can get a used Volca for not much more, that does more with a better UI, and most of them do actual MIDI, not just sync. But you don’t see people walking around with those in their pockets because Korg don’t have a fucking cult.
Pocket operators were cool. OP-1 is cool if it weren’t so overpriced.
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I mean the main transgression here is that it’s literally just a slighly altered android ROM that hides the fact that it runs Android. It could literally have been a free app on your smartphone.
A unitasking device is fine, as long as it’s doing something that could not be done by the multitasking device we already hurt the environment to create. Or it does so more power efficiently, or even offload a task that is burdensome for your phone to another device. This does none of those things, it just sends your voice request to chatgpt.
It also has dog shit battery life, so that’s another knock.