The Limitless pendant doesn’t scream “AI”. When Dan Siroker, CEO of the corporate behind the new device, picks it up and shows it to me on Zoom, the round, rubbery gadget jogs my memory more of an old-school clip-on Fitbit. But what Siroker actually shows me is a device that will be clipped to your shirt or held on a string around your neck and is designed to record every thing you hear and then use artificial intelligence to assist you remember it and make sense of it.
The Limitless pendant is an element of the complete Limitless system that the corporate is launching today. (Oh, and in case you are wondering: yes, that is largely a reference to the movie.) Siroker’s last AI product, Rewind, was an application that ran in your computer and recorded your screen and other data to assist you remember every tab, every song, every meeting, every thing you do in your computer. (When the corporate first announced the Limitless pendant, it was actually called the Rewind pendant). Limitless has similar goals, but as an alternative of just running in your computer, it goals to gather data within the cloud and the actual world and make all of it available to you on any device. The rewind feature remains to be available for individuals who want a completely local, single-machine solution – but Siroker says the cross-platform possibilities are much greater.
“The primary work that needs to be done initially is meetings,” Siroker tells me. “Preparing you for meetings, transcribing meetings, sharing meeting notes and summaries in real time.” For $20 a month, the app captures audio out of your computer’s microphone and speakers, and also permits you to access your email and calendar. With this mixture – and ultimately all the opposite apps you utilize at work, says Siroker – Limitless can do a lot to assist you track your conversations. What is that new app that somebody mentioned on the board meeting? What restaurant does Shannon think we should always go to next? Where did Jake and I find yourself after we met two weeks ago? Theoretically, Limitless could obtain this data and use AI models to return it to you each time you ask for it.
Siroker and I talk the day after the primary reviews of the Humane AI pin appeared, and he tries to differentiate his company’s approach from comprehensive artificial intelligence tools. “We try to do a few things exceptionally well so that they’re not a mile wide and an inch deep,” he says. “You know, we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel with lasers.” Its plan is to integrate with all of the apps you utilize and put Limitless in those apps; you must find a way to take notes in Notion or get motion items in Slack, he thinks, as an alternative of getting to modify to a different app entirely. “Why would I even make you log into my cloud app when I could just ask you to show me what you’re already using?”
Is it just me or does this thing appear like a tiny pair of AirPods Max headphones? Image: Unlimited
But just a couple of minutes later, Siroker’s ambition gets the higher of him and he begins to assume a a lot better future for Limitless. (I mean, this thing known as Limitless – no “don’t do too much” false humility allowed here). “You know, of course it’s going to have general fun facts, perplexities, OpenAI stuff,” he says. “The next step will be proactive, not reactive. I have access to your email, I have access to your Slack messages – when you get a message that the context of your past will help answer, I can just give you that draft.
He says that when Limitless explains it, it will involve AI agents that will actually do things on your behalf, so that Limitless will be able to know everything about you and do everything for you, and everything will be amazing.
After a minute, Siroker catches himself. “But this is a much more difficult problem to solve.” Meetings for now.
The first version of the Limitless system itself is nothing unusual. Virtually every meeting tool includes AI capabilities to extract key points and motion items; transcription apps are a dime a dozen; there’s a whole industry of startups seeking to make a couple of bucks a month to make your meetings a little more practical. Siroker is confident that Limitless will handle it well, partly because Rewind has been doing well for a while, but ultimately the AI encounter is probably going a feature, not a product.
The Limitless pendant, which fits on sale in August, may change the situation. The $99 device is designed to be all the time with you – Siroker claims its battery lasts 100 hours – and uses beamforming technology to more clearly capture the person chatting with you, slightly than the remaining of the café or auditorium. An LED light illuminates while recording, and the Limitless pendant also has a “consent mode” that detects new voices and doesn’t record them until the software hears them consent to recording. (It’s value noting that this mode is disabled by default.) Everything you record will likely be uploaded to Limitless, mixed with other data and shared via the app.
When I ask Siroker why it was value constructing a device to work together with his software when voice recorders exist already, he says getting good real-world audio is the important thing to being greater than just AI for Zoom calls. He also once more references the Humane AI pin — specifically, a review of the product published in The New York Times that ends by saying that there is something nice about a handy form factor and hopes for a future version of the product, “perhaps a cheaper one through which camera and laser are missing. This future iteration, Siroker says with a laugh, is essentially the Limitless pendant.
Make no mistake: Limitless is completely intended to be an AI gadget of great importance, as fully functional and powerful as anything from Meta, Rabbit or Humane. But the plan isn’t to steer with cool hardware or some sci-fi vision of the still distant future. It’s selecting a problem that AI can solve, solving it, and then selecting one other one. Preparing for a meeting is probably not essentially the most exciting AI story, however it works. And I believe it’s value starting this manner.
Credit : www.theverge.com
