“In that case, if you don't take precautions and lose your device, it could be accessed,” Su says, “but that's a very extreme case.”
Ultimately, Hsu has bigger ambitions for the company than work-focused devices, but he's careful to point out that work-focused devices are the company's focus right now, and he's aware of the anxiety that this may cause.
“We have a grand vision: what would happen if users could record all of their daily conversations, even decades from now,” says Su. “We would constantly listen to them and learn about them, getting to know their personalities, preferences, and interactions over time. One day, we'll be able to use AI to recreate ourselves and create a true digital twin. This is kind of a grand mission, and we think it would be amazing if we could help users connect with their many memories.”
It's clear that AI has the potential to profoundly change how humans behave. But some advocates and experts have expressed concern about what will happen when these functions are entrusted to AI devices, especially those designed to be worn full-time.
In an interview for a previous article about AI gadgets, Jody Halpern, a professor of bioethics and medical humanities at the University of California, Berkeley, likened the trend of delegating human capabilities to AI devices to relying on services like Google Maps to avoid the need to keep track of directions.
“Maybe there are aspects of human development that just don't happen anymore,” Halpern says. “Just as we don't develop a sense of direction, we might not develop the social-emotional depth of engaging with people who are different from us and being empathically curious. If we have this constant sense that something is listening to us and watching us, then in a sense we never learn how to be in touch with ourselves.”
All this philosophical babble aside, it's still unclear whether people are actually willing to invest in such a device in the first place. While Proud has a compelling use case, it's entering a crowded field where it must compete with other devices and the thousands of apps on the smartphones people already carry around with them all day.
And users may find that the boring old tools they already use are more mature and effective than these fancy inventions.
“Everything ChatGPT does is inferior to other things designed for that purpose,” Ghosh says. “I think the main problem is that people assume these systems are more accurate than they actually are.”
