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One of the most frequent questions Ive been getting from business execs lately is whether the AI pin will become the next great tech device. After all, with OpenAI recently finalizing its acquisition of Io Products, the AI hardware design firm led by legendary former Apple designer Jony Ive, it looks like well soon see the next great interface: a voice-activated, lapel-pin-size AI device thats a successor to the smartphone. And wont it be a better, calmer form of technology, they ask me, freeing us from having to stare at a small screen in our hands? No. In a world teeming with intelligent interfaces, the AI pin chooses to be dumbnot technically, but emotionally, socially, and spatially. The core failure of the AI pin genre isnt technical, but conceptual. But seemingly no one involved or interested in the form factor has stopped to ask: Is a chest pin even a good interface? Not questioning this is to ignore decades of interaction design: that good form emerges from use, from behavior, from affordance. Heres what I mean. The Narrative Inertia and Unanswered Questions Behind the AI Pin To begin with, there are a number of very real questions with this new form factor yet to be plausibly answered, including: Can you hear it in the wind or while in a crowd? Can others around you tell if its listening? What new social cues does it produce? How do you use it while walking, biking, cooking, parenting, holding a coffee, working in a noisy office, standing in line, or going on a date? What does it feel like to wear something thats constantly watching, blinking, and projecting? By all appearances, the AI pin concept wasnt born out of ergonomic study, social anthropology, or material intuition. It was born out of narrative inertiathe idea that because voice agents exist, and because wearables exist, the next logical step is to wear a voice agent. The Problem With Invisible Interfaces Another driver of the AI pins narrative inertia is the concept of the invisible interfacethe belief that our computing is best served through a device we dont have to see, but that seamlessly responds to our stated wishes. This vision has a long history, starting with voice-based computers in science fiction (more on that below); its conceptual stickiness was further strengthened with the launch of Siri and other voice-activated assistants in the 2010s. As a design goal, invisibility is best understood through a famous quote by Xerox PARCs Mark Weiser (though its easy to misinterpret): A good tool is an invisible tool. . . . By invisible, we mean that the tool does not intrude on your consciousness; you focus on the task, not the tool. The second part of the quote tells all. Its not about the device itself being invisible, but the act of usage rendering it invisible. For instance, when we use a hammer, we focus on the nail, not the hammer. To a good woodworker, the very act of using the hammer renders it invisible. In my experience across countless design and tech conferences, the notion of an invisible interface quickly becomes a very powerful semantic black hole. Once people start hearing the term, they cant see anything other than it, and their minds (and design practices) auto-complete to it, instead of considering other formats such as physical buttons and other familiar technologies. Invisible technologies lack the feedback that people need to develop a relationship with them. Your mind has to make up for the invisibility in other ways, adding a cognitive strain and microfriction to their usage. If you have voice-controlled lights in your house, for instance, you have to remember what you taught Alexa to call themthe upstairs lights or something else? Imagine having a conversation like this with an AI pin all day, across many topics! If design is governance, making an interface invisible takes away agency and ensures that design choices are far removed from the people who use it. Which takes us to the sci-fi culprit behind the AI pin. Truthy Tech vs. Track Record When product developers assume pins are a natural form factor for ambient computing, they must then reverse-engineer behavior, trust, and social rituals to support it. They think the form factor will look so cool that it will just work, and address none of the cultural aspects. Its yet another variation of what I call truthy tech: products or concepts that are exciting at first glance, usually because they resemble props from sci-fi TV shows and movies, but that quickly lose their luster when real-world considerations creep in. In other words, the AI pin may seem inevitable because for decades, weve watched characters on the Star Trek series communicate with each other and the ships computer through the ComBadges on their uniforms. Its easy to forget that the ComBadge is only designed to be visually exciting and help advance the shows storyline, and not actually to be functional. As a real-life consumer device, however, nearly a dozen pin-based devices have come and gone over the years without gaining mass adoptionfrom 2003s SenseCam by Microsoft (promoted by famed tech pioneer Gordon Bell) to 2024s Humane AI Pin, which imploded despite $240 million in funding. Ive and the Search for a New Steve Jobs-Level Visionary I should stress that none of this is meant as a criticism of Jonny Ive. He is an amazing supply chain innovator who thrived in Apples halcyon days. But his best work was always done alongside a genuine visionary. And it is very debatable if Sam Altman can ever fill Silicon Valleys conspicuous Steve Jobs-shaped absence. In any case, the likeliest form factor for a wearable AI device is one that already exists and has been integrated into our daily lives: the earbud-type AirPods. Rather than assume Altman can somehow completely transform culture enough that we will want to interact with artificial intelligence through a lapel pin, it makes far more sense to expect a future where the AI program is connected to our iPhones and AirPods. And after all, Jony Ive helped develop those.
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E-Commerce
Tech execs love popping supplements and infusing themselves with youthful young plasma to ward off Father Time, but new research shows that a substance humanity has been ingesting for a thousand years holds powerful anti-aging effects. A new study published in Nature Partner Journals Aging discovered that naturally occurring compounds in the modest psychedelic mushroom were able to slow aging in cells and even increase a mouses lifespan. The two-pronged study out of Emory University examined the effects of psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms, on the micro level using human lung and skin cells, and the macro level using lab mice. Human fetal lung cells treated with psilocin, psilocybins active metabolite, showed a 29% boost to their cellular lifespans a number that rocketed to 57% when exposed to a much larger dosage. When the scientists repeated the study with human skin cells, the large psilocin dose increased the cells lifespan by 51%. Across the cellular experiments, exposure to the psychedelic reduced the oxidative stress that can lead to cell damage and preserved the length of telomeres, a part of the chromosome implicated in cancer and other age-related diseases. The scientists findings in living mice were even more impressive. When dosing older mice with psilocybin and comparing them to a control group, the research team found the aged mice lived 30% longer than their peers who werent subject to the same psychedelic journey. On top of that, the mice given psilocybin looked healthier, with better fur quality, hair regrowth and less graying on their coats. Psilocybin is an emerging frontier in mental health research, but it obviously holds some strong potential in the field of longevity too. The psychedelic substance has shown promise for everything from helping smokers and alcoholics quit to giving patients long-lasting relief from major depression. Our study opens new questions about what long-term treatments can do, senior study author and former Emory University associate professor Louise Hecker, PhD said. Additionally, even when the intervention is initiated late in life in mice, it still leads to improved survival, which is clinically relevant in healthy aging,
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E-Commerce
While tariffs threaten to whittle away profits for many businesses, those costs arent subtle when theyre tacked onto the price tag of an airplane. In an effort to preserve its bottom line, Delta Air Lines is getting creative. The Atlanta-based company has been pulling engines off new Airbus jets in Europe and bringing them stateside to get grounded U.S. planes up and flyingwithout paying costs associated with importing new planes and parts. Bloomberg reports that the company has a new practice of removing some U.S.-made Pratt & Whitney engines from new Airbus A321neo jets that were constructed in Europe and sending them to the U.S. in order to avoid import tariffs. Delta is then installing the engines on some of its older A320neo jets that arent currently flying due to engine problems. Because Delta is reportedly waiting for regulators to give its new set of jets the green light, the engine swapping doesnt mean grounding Europe-based planes that would otherwise be flying. Along with Boeing, Airbus is one of the two largest manufacturers of commercial aircraft in the world. Unlike U.S.-based Boeing, Airbus was founded in Europe and is co-owned by the governments of France, Germany, and Spain, among other investors. Under President Trumps current tariff rules, European-built aircraft incur a 10% tariff when imported into the U.S. Because airlines regularly pay Airbus and Boeing billions to bolster their fleets with modern jets, even a small percentage of additional cost stands to zap the airline industrys already notoriously thin margins. For Delta, one of the largest airlines in the U.S., coming to peace with trade chaos and paying Trumps tariffs isnt on the flight plan. We will not be paying tariffs on any aircraft deliveries, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in an April earnings call. These times are pretty uncertain, and if you start to put a 20% incremental cost on top of an aircraft, it gets very difficult to make that math work.
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E-Commerce
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