The Importance of A.I. Gadgets & Doodads
There are some cool, silly and fun A.I. gadgets on the market. Yet they play an important role in how humans will understand Artificial Intelligence.
We’re heading into the second year since OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT on the world along with other Generative AI (GAI) tools like Claude by Anthropic, Google with Bard, then Google Gemini. A whole host of platforms from Adobe to Canva and others have pushed into the wild west of Artificial Intelligence land to claim their stake.
Not far behind them came the AI gadgets. The Humane AI pin, the rabbit r1 cube, Samsung’s Bespoke AI oven to optimize cooking settings, the EBO X family robot companion, the Bird Buddy AI powered bird feeder to identify bird species and Flappie the AI powered cat flap that somehow prevents your cat from bringing mice into the house. And others.
There’s a growing set of AI gadgets for health, wellness and fitness. Some of which we have seen in the Apple Watch and other smartwatches that integrate with health apps on our phones. They’ve been using Machine Learning (ML) and other AI tools for years, but really been marketed as such.
Then of course, there’s the new Oral-B toothbrush that’s powered by AI. Just what your teeth have been nattering for the past few years!
Some may well seem silly. Others questionable at best and those like the Humane AI pin or the rabbit r1 interesting, with bold promises of replacing our smartphones. Yet, no matter they succeed or fail, they’re important. Why?
First off, it’s important to recognise that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an umbrella term that covers a whole suite of technologies, some of which have been around several decades. Like Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Neural Networks. Generative AI which includes ChatGPT, Claude, Google’s Gemini, Midjourney, DALL-E 3 and so on are the newest kids on the block. They’re also the ones accessible to most everyone and that have reached the masses in a more interesting and usable way.
Without Generative AI (GAI), none of the gadgets above would have been possible for consumer marketable products. The cultural hype and buzz around GAI, which most people just think of as Artificial Intelligence and everything else is splitting hairs, or teeth, enabled brands to set about trying to find an edge in the crowded CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) markets and adding a few pages of sizzle to otherwise rather dull annual reports and tickling the stock price upwards a tick or two.
A Brief History of Playing With Technologies
Setting aside irony and satire, these gadgets do play an important sociocultural role in how we become aware of AI and the role societies and cultures see AI playing into the near future. Society goes through three major phases when a revolutionary technology comes along; awareness, evaluation and adaptation. The length of and how these play out varies.
Humans have a rather long history of creating consumer technology products that have failed. But the very act of doing this has helped the overall technology to succeed in other markets and ways. Sometimes they fail because they’re ahead of their time, other times they fail because the market doesn’t see any value in them. Other times they may fail in a mass consumer market but succeed in niche markets, where they’re profitable and years later, they evolve to be valuable in a mass market.
Google Glass initially failed in the consumer market, but has done very well in niche markets. Now, over a decade later, as I recently wrote, AR glasses are finding broader market acceptance.
In 1970, AT&T launched the Picturephone, a video calling device. It was extremely expensive and just too far ahead of it’s time. Now, half a century later, we have FaceTime on iPhones and Google Meet on Android and iOS and on tablets.
In 2013, Lululemon launched the Astro Pants that effectively became translucent when wearers bent over. The product was quickly recalled and it’s estimated they lost $67 Million on them.
Apple famously flubbed with the Newton MessagePad in 1993. Now we have tablets and the iPad everywhere nearly two decades later. Let’s not forget that you could also send a fax from the Newton device; all you had to do was attach the fax modem.
In 1950 there was the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory play lab set for kids. Yes, it did contain radioactive materials. There were other kits like this on the market too. It sold then for $49.50 or what in 2024 dollars would be around $630. The kids were positively glowing about it. The government? Not so much. It was pulled from the market in 1951.
While we can have a wee chuckle over them today, including more recent ones like Quibi which was meant to be a short video clip service, they do serve an important purpose.
The Value of Playing With AI Gadgets
While Humane AI pin and the rabbit r1 make bold claims of replacing our smartphones, they’re still incredibly important in how we develop and evolve technologies in culture.
Remember that culture isn’t just the arts and entertainment. It’s more easily explained as humanity’s operating system for survival because biological evolution is too slow for our survival. So it includes norms, customs, traditions, political and economic systems. When we see culture this way, we can better understand how it works in selecting and rejecting technologies.
The world’s currently dominant economic system is capitalism. Overall, it’s the best system we have combined with democracy. Not perfect, but hey, we’re humans and we’re not perfect. That keeps it interesting.
So when new technologies come along, our way of playing with them is to create products and try to sell them to people that think they help solve problems or are very interesting or entertaining. This is our modern way of playing with technologies too. Part of our cultural system if you will.
We look back today at gadgets like the Apple Newton and shake our heads or chuckle at the AT&T Picturephone and how smartphones and the internet make it all seem so ridiculous. But because companies did play with those technologies, we have the technologies we do have today that do make sense.
Whether the Humane AI pin or the rabbit r1 succeed or fail, they’re still important. They may be bought out by Google, Apple or Amazon or another company that isn’t a tech giant today, but because they combine these AI gadgets in interesting ways, become the next Apple or Google. Who knows?
Perhaps the Flappie cat device will evolve to detect and then use lasers to zap fleas and ticks as they enter the house? Who knows what inventor is out there that sees novel and ultimately interesting ways to combine AI and other technologies in ways that do become a blockbuster (or Netflix)technology?
Technologies succeed best when they find cultural alignment as I’ve written before and become socioculturally accepted when they’ve gone through the three phases of awareness, evaluation and adoption.
But perhaps the most important part of all, is when we play with technologies. For that is when we learn the most, as kids and adults. Whether or not the current bunch of AI gadgets succeeds isn’t important as much as the fact that we’re playing with them. We learn so much through play.