😺 Humane's downfall

PLUS: What to expect from Apple's big AI reveal next week

Welcome, humans.

Meta announced a new AI tool for businesses that answers a customer’s questions over WhatsApp. TBH, we're not losing sleep over this, but gotta admit, we're big fans of WhatsApp. WhatsApp is like the social butterfly to an iPhone's undertherapized bully:

Opens the door to everyone in the group chat, not just blue-message elitists.
Lets you express yourself with any emoji—because life’s too rich for just hearts, thumbs up, and faceless hahas.

Here’s what you need to know about AI today:

Humane is on the lookout for a buyer after a disastrous run.
The FTC is probing Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI.
Apple might be building home robots.
OpenAI made progress in deciphering the black box of LLMs.

On the podcast: Why a former OpenAI researcher is sounding the alarm on AGI, ASI, and, yeah, even OpenAI. (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube).

A timeline of Humane’s disastrous launch.

Humane and its Ai Pin will become a Harvard Business Review case study on how not to launch a tech company:

2018: Ex-Apple duo Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, who also happen to be married, found Humane.
2021: The company emerges from stealth with $100M in funding.
2023 (March): Humane raises another $100M to “enable people to bring AI with them everywhere.”
2023 (September): Humane’s Ai Pin appears on the runway at Paris Fashion Week.
2023 (November): Humane begins pre-orders for its AI gadget.
2024 (April): Humane launches its Ai Pin, only to face really, really bad press:
- Engadget: “The Humane AI Pin is the solution to none of technology's problems.”
- The Verge: “Humane AI Pin review: not even close.”
- Marques Brownlee: The Worst Product I've Ever Reviewed... For Now.

Humane only clinches 10,000 orders for its Pin (the target was 100,000 in 2024).
One week later, Humane approaches HP about selling the company for more than $1B. No deal.
Humane taps Tidal Partners, an investment bank, to explore a possible cash infusion at a $1.1B valuation.
2024 (June): Humane emails AI Pin owners to “immediately” stop using the Pin’s charging case due to potential fire hazards.

What’s the biggie: Every tech player (phones, laptops, you name it) is puzzling over how AI will transform the way we interact with devices. Will AI run our apps? Appear on a brand-new gadget? Or simply be another app on our iPhones?

No one really knows, but we’re doubling down on our stance from last November:

“We’re bullish on Humane’s vision, but we’re gonna skip on AiPin…everything they’re building should literally just be iPhone/Apple Watch features…and probably will be.”

And we could see those iPhone/Apple Watch AI upgrades as soon as Monday at Apple’s WWDC conference, where it’s expected to unleash a flurry of AI improvements to iOS, including a monumental partnership with OpenAI (our bet: Siri gets a major upgrade courtesy of ChatGPT-4o).

You can tune into the conference here.

In related news: Yet another AI assistant that knows ‘everything about you’ popped up yesterday named Nox—you can check that one out here:

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Around the Horn.

The FTC is opening an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI.
Apple is reportedly exploring building home robots.
OpenAI published new research, “Extracting Concepts from GPT-4,” that sheds more light on the inner workings of LLMs.

Treats To Try.

Sirion is an enterprise AI tool for drafting, analyzing, and reviewing contracts. They just acquired Eigen Technologies, an AI data extraction tool.
Tektonic is building AI agents to automate repetitive tasks in sales and revenue workflows (raised $10M).
NotebookLM is an AI note-taking assistant from Google (now available in 200+ countries).
Greptile is an AI staff engineer that understands your codebases (raised $4M).
Mistral-finetune is a toolkit for finetuning Mistral’s models.