Humane’s Device Preview at TED ⇥ ted.com

Last month, we caught glimpses of Imran Chaudhri’s preview of the device being developed by Humane. Chaudhri presented this sneak peek at the TED conference in Vancouver, and the full presentation was published today.

While it is important not to rush to judge a device which none of us have used, I feel like its debut in a TED Talk is worrisome. It is a conference that has become synonymous with catchy hacks and apparently counterintuitive thinking which have little basis in reality. That is not a great sign.

Also, and this is a little thing, TED says (PDF) “speakers may never use the TED or TEDx stage to pitch their products or services”, and that “if it feels like an advertisement, it probably is”. Chaudhri’s talk is all about how great artificial intelligence is going to be, but it is all structured around a device debut which feels like a supercut of iPhone launch presentations.