AI that can be your second brain with Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri of Humane

Imran Chaudhri and his wife Bethany Bongiorno are responsible for bringing some of the most widely-used screened products to market—like the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. And while these devices have connected humans like never before, Imran and Bethany couldn’t help but wonder about the downsides of spending so much time tethered to screens. After leaving Apple, they eventually brought a new tool to life; something screenless... This week on How I Built This Lab, Imran and Bethany’s wearable pin capable of being your personal assistant. Plus, how they believe that AI can be regulated without stifling innovation. This episode was produced by J. C. Howard with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella with research help from Kerry Thompson. You can follow HIBT on Twitter https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 3:45Guy Raz?

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• 4:27Guy Raz?

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• 5:12Guy Raz?

  And before we start the show, I want to tell you about a super exciting thing we are launching on How I Built This. So if you own your own business or trying to get one off the ground, we might put you on the show. Yes, on the show! And when you come on, you won't just be joining me, but you'll be speaking with some of our favorite former guests, who also happen to be some of the greatest entrepreneurs on Earth. And together, we'll answer your most pressing questions about launching and growing your business. Imagine getting realtime branding advice from Sun Bum's Tom Rinks, or marketing tips from Von Weaver of Uncle Nearest Whiskey. If you'd like to be considered, send us a one-minute message

• 5:56Guy Raz?

  that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. And make sure to tell us how to reach you. Each week, we'll pick a few callers to join us on this show. You can send us a voice memo at [email protected], or you can call 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there. That's 1-800-433-1298. And that's it. Hope to hear from you soon. And we are so excited to have you come on the show. And now, on to the show.

• 6:42Guy Raz?

  Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So wherever you are right now, chances are there is a screen within arm's reach. Maybe it's a phone, or a tablet, or a smartwatch. And over the past decade, we've come to depend on these screens to conduct most of the business in our lives: transportation, communication, scheduling, entertainment. We now do all of this pretty much on our screens. But what if you could do all of these things without the distraction of a screen? Well, that's the idea behind the Humane AI pin. It's a little square device that can do many of the same things as our screen devices. Think of it a little like an AI assistant.

• 7:25Guy Raz?

  The difference is the Humane pin is controlled by the sound of your voice. The pin has a touchpad, a camera, a built-in projector, and it's made to pin right to your clothes with a little magnet. The AI pin was created by Humane cofounders Imran Chaudhri and his wife Bethany Bongiorno. Before they got into the world of artificial intelligence, the two of them worked at Apple, leading the design of some of the very screens I was just talking about. Imran started there first, in the late 1990s, when working for Apple meant kind of being the underdog.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Our team started by redefining what a Mac was by building macOS X that just really had an eye towards how do you actually build a new type of computer that was easier to use, that wouldn't crash. And Macs used to crash all the time back then. But that was our boot camp. And then we got to work on things like multi-touch, which went on to propel things like iPhone and iPad and watch. It was all stuff that my team and I worked on.

• 8:35Guy Raz?

  I mean, of course, the famous presentation that Steve Jobs gives and says stylus, who needs a stylus, right? When you've got five digits on each hand. And that's something that you worked on. You worked on that touchscreen, the technology that enabled that.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think that was the fundamental unlock for making the transition from remote interactions from a keyboard and mouse to really allowing people to do what we call direct manipulation. And that's literally just being able to touch the screen and have a far more intimate relationship with the things that you're really using on a day to day basis.

• 9:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I mean, both of you were at Apple at just such an incredibly historic time. Bethany, you joined about 10 years after Imran started. But still, I mean, right after the iPhone kind of shipped is when you joined. And soon, I guess, you were kind of put in charge as a project manager involved with the iPad.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I joined Apple in 2008. And I, you know, I was a BlackBerry user. I was a PC user. I didn't have an iPhone. But I had a lot of admiration for what they were doing.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  A couple of months after I joined the iPhone team, which was, which was pretty small at the time still and still treated like a startup within the company and had, you know, a lot of secrecy around what that team was up to. Um, a lot of, you know, locked doors where, where the teams were, were meeting and doing our work. But a couple of months after I joined, they asked me if I would take on a, a new project. And at the time, they, they told me that they couldn't tell me what the project was, but that it would require that for the next, you know, year and a half to two years of my life, I would have to work many, many hours and it would be really challenging and really difficult. And it was this new project that Steve wanted to do.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  They couldn't tell me what it was, but they would need to know in 24 hours if I would take it on. And so I said yes and walked into a room, signed an NDA, and then they told me that I was going to be leading a project to build a tablet and bring together a group of engineers and work really closely with the design team and just figure out how we could make it, make it possible. Uh, and that started that, that project for me.

• 11:03Guy Raz?

  It's so interesting to me because of course, Apple is like famously as secretive as like the Pentagon, right? And, and, and many companies talk about like breaking down silos and breaking down walls and creating cross collaboration. And Apple really took a, and has taken and continues to take a completely different approach, which is it's very siloed. But I wonder, having been inside, it seems like it works, like there, there is method to that madness and that, and that, that kind of secrecy is probably necessary? Or do you think that, that with some perspective, looking back on it, it's sometimes a little bit too much?

• 11:39Speaker 01

  You know, there's some advantages. You get a, an amazing amount of focus, which is good. And, and I think the projects that, that I worked on were all essentially 1.0s that, that turned into something else. And that really siloed protected space allows for those kinds of things to happen.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  I think where it becomes difficult is when you come out of stealth, so to speak, you start to have to really need different functions of the organization to come in. And that's where it gets a little messy.

• 12:16Guy Raz?

  Because you don't have the relationships.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't. And I think some of us, over time, at Apple, built those relationships. But in some cases, you'd end up with duplicative work that would build, you know, some animosity and things like that. So those are the things that you have to struggle with.

• 12:36Guy Raz?

  And essentially, Bethany, I'm curious about your perspective, because obviously the two of you met at Apple and then fell in love and got married and now here you are today. But when the two of you were both at Apple and a couple, presumably you had to keep what you were working on from Imran and vice versa. You probably couldn't really talk about what you did. It would be like two people who work for the CIA.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Well, actually, we had the good fortune that we were building basically everything together. There were very few things that Imran was working on mainly that I didn't know about. For the most part, he knew everything I was, you know, directly involved in. And actually, we met on my first day at Apple. And we didn't really like each other that much, mainly because we were polar opposites. And my job was to make sure that things were on schedule and on time and that everybody was at the table and were having the right conversations. You know, Imran's the vision.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  My job was about pushing the boundaries of what's possible and what the world really needed in that moment.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so we used to get into quite a few arguments, actually. And I would go up to him and say, Imran, what are you doing? Like, we can't do all of this, or this idea is too big, or the team can't do it. And he would push back on me and say, well, we have to do it. You know, we have to make this happen. And have you tried this? His favorite line was, have they tried this? Have they tried this? And he was always right, which was always the really frustrating part of it in most moments. And so, yeah, we had the opportunity to build a lot of things together, whether it was new hardware and totally new product categories, or software, things like FaceTime and iMessage, you know, that were really complicated things for billions of people

• 14:37Speaker 02

  that involved a lot of challenges along the way.

• 14:40Guy Raz?

  In 2016, you both left Apple. And presumably with the idea of maybe trying to create something yourselves. But was that the reason? Was it, did it feel like, did you feel like it was time to move on to that you'd kind of done everything you wanted to do there?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, that equation of like, why somebody decides to move on is always such a complicated one. I had an amazing opportunity there and was really blessed with the things that we were able to achieve. Around that time, we were working on iPhone X, which in and of itself is kind of like, a bit of like a Groundhog Day thing.

• 15:20Guy Raz?

  It's just a newer version of the same thing.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, we definitely were some new things we were thinking about. But what I was really into was being able to push the limit of compute. And what I found for myself was that the environment had changed a bit. And I really needed to think about where else I'd want to go. I wasn't at all done in terms of thinking where I wanted to take compute, but I felt as if I had reached my personal limit at Apple, because everything had really started to mature.

• 16:00Guy Raz?

  When the two of you decided to leave,

• 16:05Guy Raz?

  tell me a little bit about some of the ideas that you had thought about, things that you could do. Because it wasn't, what we are going to talk about, humane AI, wasn't the original idea. You had, maybe there was going to be like a fitness app, or wellness app, or maternal care app. You guys had talked about a couple of different ideas, right?

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, we we actually started ideating on a couple of ideas and Imran took his passion and started really digging into AI and that's uh that this was in 2017. He was very passionate about it and and I really started to look into women's health and it was something the the other area that Imran and I were very interested in mainly because women actually suffer because we were never really taught how our bodies work and we don't have the right tools to to be able to care for ourselves ultimately. And so we essentially started building two prototypes and we had one in the space of women's health and the other

• 17:05Speaker 02

  was this idea that Imran was was pushing around uh you know, a new kind of computer.

• 17:12Guy Raz?

  Tell Imran, tell me about that idea that you had in mind. What what were you thinking?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so always was fascinated with AI and when I was in high school, I had a job at a um computer shop where I used to be able to get books and magazines and read them, right? And um I used to read AI journals when I was in high school and be just be fascinated by that stuff. And um a lot of it theoretically was was something that was moving into a place of practice around the that timeframe 2017 or so and sparked a lot of inspiration to say, hey, I I actually really want to build a new kind of computer, uh something that

• 17:58Speaker 01

  is really gonna help humanize the the ability to be able to interact with AI. And and around 2017, I was able to convince Bethany that if we started now that we would be where we needed to be by the time we'd be able to actually practice this stuff, which is kind of like right now.

• 18:21Guy Raz?

  We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, the dinner date that convinced one of the inventors of the touchscreen to go screenless. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

• 18:41Guy Raz?

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• 22:16Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2017, which is a really pivotal year for AI research. And Imran and Bethany are thinking about how their experience working for Apple might help launch their next venture. So, all right, so you you knew that you wanted to do something around computing. Now, you had, I mean, you were intimately involved in developing and helping to develop your names and patents around so many of the products we use, my my Apple Watch, my iPhone, like, you're you're you're in this thing. You had spent so much of your career working on screens, right? Things that we can look at.

• 23:00Guy Raz?

  And so were you, I mean, already back in 2017, were you sort of saying a version of this to yourself, which is, can I make something that doesn't require a screen? Were you literally thinking that granular?

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's that's exactly right. Like, how do you actually elevate compute? Because, you know, I think smartphones are great. They're really, really great at what they can do now. But they're very limited in terms of how much more they can do. And if you think about if they're able to leverage some of these multimodal inputs that use text and voice and sound and image and eventually video, you need a new kind of computer that really allows for you to take advantage of that kind of processing. And at that point, you don't need to use screens the same way.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  You need screens because screens confirm everything that you're doing, whether you're typing in something properly or whether you've tapped the right button. But if you can actually take that away, take the burden of that away, you don't need a screen other than something for a lightweight confirmation, which is kind of the underpinnings of what we've built.

• 24:20Guy Raz?

  Bethany, I gather, after sort of a year and a half of consulting and considering maybe doing something in the women's health space, I think around 2018. You both agree to pursue this. How did Imran describe what this product could be to you initially?

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd been out for the day and I came home and he said, this is what we're gonna build. And he pulled out, he had made a one pager on the computer that basically described the vision for this operating system. And he said, this is what we need to do. And so I said, okay, well, let's start it. Let's see, is it possible? And I'm the person who definitely questions sometimes, like, is this technically feasible? Like, are we going to be able to do this? What are the things that would prevent us from being successful? And so, and Imran is always, you know, 10 to 100 steps ahead of me. So in his head, he already knows where we're going and what's possible and what's not. We definitely think about things in a different way. But that really started it. Once we said, okay, let's build, let's build some prototypes now.

• 25:23Guy Raz?

  How specific was that one pager? Did it say, a wearable device in the shape of a square with a camera? I mean, we'll get there. But how specific was it?

• 25:35Speaker 02

  He had a diagram of the device. He had a drawing that he had done that looks very much like it does today with a couple minor exceptions. It even had the, you know, magnetic attachment and also had a description of what it would do. Like, here are the things that you would do with it. Here's what it has, what it doesn't. And I remember at the time, having worked on the iPhone and having had some experience there, my first thought was, this is impossible to build a phone this small and to be a standalone device. You know, you're talking about four radios, it has to have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and GPS and a pretty powerful chip to run what he wanted. So my first instinct was to say, this

• 26:18Speaker 02

  is impossible. But I also know my husband pretty well. So I said, okay, let's, let's, let's give it a go and see if we can prove it to ourselves that we can build this.

• 26:28Guy Raz?

  Imran, at the time, in 2018, this is before ChatGPT, like ChatGPT, I mean, people are using it in so many different ways. Like, I'm going to Italy this summer. And I was like, give me the seven essential restaurants I need to eat at in Rome. And I gave it some parameters and it's great. Okay. But in 2018, ChatGPT wasn't, wasn't out yet. How confident did you feel that within the next Three years, that the things that you wanted this thing to do could be done.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Pretty confident. I used to say this thing at Apple, you know, if you can dream it, and if you can describe it, you can make it. And I don't think a lot of people like really believe that. But if you have those parameters in place and you understand how you get there and how long it's going to take, it's at a much larger scale than say like a chef that imagines a recipe because they can taste the notes in their mouth and through imagining things. I sort of feel that way with with this. This is the medium I understand the most.

• 27:38Guy Raz?

  So when you guys embarked on this project, you really went underground. You kind of went underground. You had to, I mean, you had to operate like Apple, right? You had to be super secretive. What was that like, basically going underground until 2023, when when you kind of came out of the underground and reveal this product? What, I mean, how did you operate? I mean, was it, you couldn't talk about this with anybody outside of the company?

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was it was a challenge because we also needed to hire. So we we knew that there was a risk involved in sharing with people who were joining or thinking about joining what we were building. And so we actually, you know, up until the fall of last year, every single person that joined Humane didn't know what they were joining to build. We didn't even tell candidates what it was, which was kind of a radical decision, but we felt it was pretty important. One, to be to make sure they were joining for the right reasons. Also, to protect the idea because it was still pretty, it's still pretty fragile in the early stages.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  But it was it was a challenge and I think we also started building really in earnest in late, late 2018, early 2019. And we were self-funding for a good amount of that time up until the summer of 2019. And then at that point, started to bring a team together and only had a couple of months really of building together before before COVID forced everybody into lockdown. So there were a number of challenges along the way that were were hard for a startup.

• 29:17Guy Raz?

  Tell me what the the the vision was as you continue to kind of develop what this product would be. Imran, did you think, okay, I want this to be, and again, forgive me because I'm oversimplifying it, I know it's much more complex, but just for the illustrative purposes, right? Were you sort of thinking, okay, this will be like the best personal assistant? How like, how are you thinking about what this could do?

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, this this was really more like a companion or an expert that you could take with you. And this this piece that would allow you to be liberated from having to really use a computer in a conventional way. You know, I think it's it's this always with you piece that the moment you could think of something, it would allow you to act on it. And it was just always there. And the results that you would get would happen, I used to say, that at the speed of thought, right? And even mundane things like text messages would start to feel a lot more lightweight because of that.

• 30:24Guy Raz?

  I I want to just describe what what it is for people who haven't seen the demos, but it's essentially, it's a square, a little sort of square, maybe this a little bit bigger than an Apple Watch face, right?

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:36Guy Raz?

  Okay, yep. And you can, it it it sticks onto your clothing through a magnet and it has a camera so it can capture images and it's got a cell phone, so you can wear earbuds or not. And and then it has a projector that it can project like text messages or other things on your hand. So it's got all of the more or less the things that your phone has, right? But it's designed to answer questions. Walk me through what what was the hardest, what's the hardest hurdle that you had to kind of overcome to to pack all that in such a small little package?

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I'd say the hardest part was really ensuring that everything was going to be something we could fit in. So we call that miniaturization, making all the components small enough so that they sit there. And then making sure that they work well together. Like, the laser display has its own challenges. And then the wireless power that allows you to not have the problems of a wearable that when you take it off, it's because you, the battery is dead and you can no longer use it. This allows you to keep going. Even that alone is, has its own challenges. But when you bring them all together, that interference,

• 31:57Speaker 01

  electrical interference that happens, the management of the heat and the weight, all of the packaging aspects and the runtime issues, bringing it all together was the biggest challenge.

• 32:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah, the first time I saw this product, the thing that seemed appealing about it to me was the absence of a screen, right? I, I think that you were so good, you and your colleagues were so good at Apple, you designed such good products that it enabled many of us to become addicted. And it's, it's really distressing because I actually think that, that these products, as incredible as they are, I'm holding up an iPhone right now, and as life-changing and groundbreaking as they are, have also changed our brain chemistry, you know? It's changed my attention span, has been dramatically affected by this. And as much as I try to build in, I had a screen time on my phone. My phone turns off from six at night until seven in the morning. But then I find myself like, it's like a

• 32:56Guy Raz?

  smoker trying to sneak a cigarette. Like, I find myself like, temporarily like, undoing that on apps. And so, the, the idea of a screenless thing just appeals to me on so many levels. And I wonder, how much were you motivated by having maybe some residual guilt over making something so good that it actually addicted people?

• 33:20Speaker 02

  When we left Apple, there was this moment where we were out to dinner and

• 33:27Speaker 02

  There was a family sitting next to us at the dinner table. They had three kids, two parents, and all of them were on their phone.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Every, the entire family, and none of them were talking to each other. And I remember Imran looked at me and, and he said, man, you know, what we built was so incredible. But there have been some downsides that feel, that feel pretty heavy. And, and I think that, of course, that was something we were thinking about. And for me, I started doing some research on happiness and I was really interested in the question of, you know, has it made us happier? And, and what is happiness ultimately? And one of the things that I found in my research was that people reported higher levels of happiness when they were truly present in a moment. And I think that was something that Imran and I talked a lot about, which is if, if

• 34:16Speaker 02

  being present truly in a moment does help you, you know, feel happier, um, it, it, how does that play into what we're building? And I think what we are building here is something that brings a lot of freedom and the ability to remain present.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I, I, I think the, the, the things that you were saying, Guy, I think are, are things a lot of people struggle with. Um, you've got this incredibly powerful tool that makes you more powerful. Yeah. Or in the know, or, you know, where, or connected, all of these, these, these tangents that come off, off of this tool, that they just really, they enable certain characteristics. That is the piece that becomes addicting. Uh, you wanna be more of that. You wanna know more, you wanna be able to, you know, speak, speak out more. And, and so I think the trouble as a designer is that you really need to be able to be

• 35:16Speaker 01

  responsible for, uh, not only the tool, but, you know, how the tool is used and how the tool is sold and how the tool is actually safeguarded. Yeah. Even at Apple, I was the champion for do not disturb. And it was something that, you know, I, I added in because I had coexistence experiences like the one you described. There definitely are some, some things that, um,

• 35:43Speaker 01

  I wish didn't happen, things like social media's prevalence.

• 35:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah, which exacerbate. I mean, that's really, it's not the iPhone, it's all the things on the iPhone.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. The iPhone is an amazing tool. It's just the things that you're allowing on to the tool and doing on the tool are the things that are tough. And so, as Bethany mentioned, you know, we certainly started to think about some of these things in a very different way in terms of how memories are formed. You know, when you, even the act of taking a photograph with a large preview takes you out of the multisensory biology that allows you to form a memory. And that's because your concentration is more on trying to get the image than it is on actually experiencing the thing you're

• 36:34Speaker 01

  experiencing. We absolutely rely upon our devices as much as the air we breathe and the electricity that runs through our cities and homes. We can't really live without it. And what Humane is really all about is taking a more considered look at what is that coexistence or that relationship with technology? What should it look like? It's something we think about all the time.

• 37:08Guy Raz?

  We're going to take another quick break, but when we come back, how Bethany and Imran think about a business model that doesn't rely on a traditional app store, plus the Humane AI pen in action. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

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• 39:08Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So my guests today are Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, founders of Humane. They described the company's first device as a wearable personal assistant. And they call it the Humane AI PIN. Bethany, I noticed you have one with you. Is it possible to just show us one, one thing on it? Or is that possible?

• 39:34Speaker 02

  It might be hard to hear it. I'm wearing it on my, on my.

• 39:38Guy Raz?

  Oh, I heard that as a little speaker. Yeah, I heard that. Yeah. Can you ask it? Can you, I don't know. Can you ask it to tell you something about me?

• 39:46Speaker 02

  Sure, let me make sure my, my device is unlocked. Don't get my passcode.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  What time is it?

• 39:56Speaker 06

  One P M.

• 39:58Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  What's the weather like outside? Making sure we're ready.

• 40:03Speaker 06

  Checking weather. The current weather in San Francisco is partly sunny with a temperature of fifty four degrees Fahrenheit.

• 40:10Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  Who is Guy Raz?

• 40:14Speaker 06

  Searching for Garaz. Guy Raz is an American journalist and podcaster known for his popular podcasts such as How I Built This and

• 40:22Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 40:23Speaker 06

  Radio Hour.

• 40:24Guy Raz?

  That's so cool. I mean, a very narcissistic question for me to have you ask, but it's almost like that movie Her. You know, it's like having, right? Have you ever thought about that parallel?

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the thing about it is that, you know, obviously, you can ask it very tactical things, right? So what's the weather like outside? What's going on this weekend in the city? But you could also ask it, you know, to store memories for you, and it really is about being your second brain.

• 40:54Guy Raz?

  How does it do that?

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Yes. So for me personally, the way that I use it is I ask it, my AI, I ask it to remember my entire travel itinerary, where I'm gonna be when the hotel I'm staying at is this, my room is this. So then if somebody asks me like, hey, Bethany, can you do this thing on this date? I can say, am I gonna be in San Francisco on this date, right? And it tells me. But it's also not just for tactical things, right? I can use it as a live journal. I can have it record things in notes for me that I'm thinking about, make lists of places I want to go visit or things I need to talk to Imran about, which is like my, one of my favorite things.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  So you treat it almost like your second brain. And what happens is that you create this incredible data set that's very personal, and it uses it, and it can use it to then offer suggestions. So now that I teach my AI everything it should know about me and everything it should know about my life, when I'm in a new city and I say, hey, I have an hour, I'm in Tokyo, what should I do? It's using what it knows about me to offer suggestions, right? Or if I'm saying, hey, I'm in Tokyo and I need to buy a gift for Imran, what should I get him while I'm here? Now it's using what it knows about Imran that I've told it to help me figure out what to buy him. So this is the power of this very personal computer that we've built.

• 42:14Guy Raz?

  And where is, I mean, we, you know, Google has Gemini and obviously there's ChatGPT and there's other platforms and operating systems. Does it use a specific one or will it have access to all of it? Is it a proprietary one?

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we will be using whatever's best based on on what it is you're trying to do. And so our architecture allows for multiple models. Things are made by companies like OpenAI. We have a good relationship with the team there. And smaller models are things that are proprietary to us. And these will change and evolve over time. And we are able to add these into our operating system. Whenever we feel like there's a new type of capability. And that's key to how we've built not only the device, but also the operating system that runs underneath it.

• 43:12Guy Raz?

  So when you, let's say, talking about it as a second brain, a memory tool, right? You can imagine just journaling, using it as a journal, right? You would say, hey, record, I just want to record my thoughts for now. What what does it then do with that information? Like it's stored somewhere in the cloud. And then what if you want to access that? Like, do you say, hey, can you like put my life story in a book? Like, what would you do with that?

• 43:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so so for right now, what you can do on the device is you can with your with your PIN is you can ask it, right? So when I have it remember all of my thoughts and all my notes and things I need to do and places I need to be. I can just speak to it like I would speak to a person, right? Like, where where is Bryn's birthday party again? Like, oh, it's at the park. You told me it was at the park. Okay, it's at Rossi Park. Great. And then you also can access all of your data on a website. So you have your own, think of it like your own Google homepage that you go to. That's your personal page that has all of your data. It has every question you've ever asked it. It has every answer it's ever given to you. It has every photo and video that you've ever taken.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  All of the data we've collected and you can go in and view it. You could also delete your data. So let's say there's something that you don't want it to be there anymore. You can delete every individual query, or you can delete a certain note that you've created. And I think our vision has always been that we want to create a OS that is very personal. And that eventually you're building this really rich data set that you own and it's yours. And eventually you can decide where your data goes.

• 44:48Guy Raz?

  I don't mean to take this to a dark place, but I'm sure I'm not the first person whose head went to that Black Mirror episode. Where every memory was recorded and then he like picks the chip out of his head and.

• 45:01Guy Raz?

  But I mean, I see incredible value in being able to store memories. I guess part of me is just worried about the security side of that. But we already do store a lot of our memories like Google Cloud. So that version of that already exists, right? So I don't think it's like totally outrageous to be slightly concerned about this, about securing this data, right?

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I think you should be concerned and I wish more people were concerned. And it's something that we care about a lot. We understand how this data has been used in the past. We believe that everything that you create or collect and store using your AI PIN belongs to you. And only you and is is something that only you should know about. We don't have a way to access your data. We don't use it in training or anything else. It's literally yours and anytime you use it to access a memory, it's actually doing so in your own protected space.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  It's a foundational thing for us to protect people's data and to make sure that it's not being used.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  By anyone but you.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  You know, we also, it was very intentional from the beginning that we didn't have a wake word. You know, we didn't want to build a device that was always listening. We're not recording at all. We're not recording from the cameras or the microphone unless you engage with the device. And when you do engage with it, you know, you heard the sound when I was using it before. When I engage, when I engage with it, the LED turns on to tell you and everyone around you that the microphone is on. And that's something that we actually built into the hardware that the LED will turn on when the microphone's on, when the cameras are on. And that's something that it was really important that we wanted to be more transparent than the devices you have today.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  So your phone today, you know, somebody could be sitting across from you, taking pictures of you, recording audio of you, and you would have no idea. It's not transparent at all. And Imran was pretty clear from the beginning that we care about this stuff. And it is important that privacy and transparency are at the forefront of it. And that's a big part of our ethos.

• 47:27Guy Raz?

  Do you, I mean, can, like, right now, this, the PIN can't replace a smartphone because you can't order an Uber from it or transfer money on your bank account, for example. But do you imagine that, that it will be able to do all of the things that we've become unfortunately dependent on? Like, I wanted to, I went to a coffee shop the other day and I wanted a coffee and I didn't bring my phone and I couldn't see the menu. And I was like, what do you guys have? And they're like, oh, just scan your phone. And I was like, I don't have my phone. So they were very kindly dictated the menu to me.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:03Guy Raz?

  But you know what I mean? Like, it's almost impossible to get through the day without a smartphone. In in most of the world today.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I think people post covid, the the the QR code is reigning supreme right now. And I think when you have a vision based computer like ours, you can play in that world. It works really well. But you know what we what we have here is, again, a computer that really allows you to have those kinds of interactions without you really being the the driver of all that. You're just the person that takes the benefit from it. If you think about rideshare services, you know, you can just say, hey, I need a car. And what your AI understands, as Bethany was saying, where you need to be. And you you could say, I need to get there quickly versus I need to get there in the most cost

• 48:53Speaker 01

  efficient way. And, you know, the the the device and the OS and the AI experience will figure that out for you. And so we do see there being a tremendous benefit for having these AI first interactions for these things that we do today, because they can help you out. You know, it just feels more like an extension of you.

• 49:14Guy Raz?

  Both of you guys are are very intimately involved in the this sort of this AI kind of revolution that's happening and certainly centered around San Francisco. And there's very much been a an open debate around where it's heading and what to expect. I understand that what you're working on and your sort of the way you see your role in it is to create responsible AI technology. But just in general, where do you sort of stand on where this is headed? I mean, it's already growing and scaling. It's such a fast pace that it's hard for the people who have created this technology to even understand how quickly

• 49:59Guy Raz?

  it's growing and how powerful it's becoming. And I wonder whether

• 50:05Guy Raz?

  Like, I'm not smart enough to articulate why that scares me, but I can tell you that part of it does scare me. And I wonder, you guys are a lot smarter than me, does any of that scare you?

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, this is an accelerated pace unlike anything we've ever seen before. You take compute and you couple it to the internet and you add in the processing capability. I think what really needs to happen is, there needs to be a good balance of making sure that bad things don't happen, and there needs to be an openness to allow for good things to happen. You need a way to make sure that these regulations keep people safe, but then don't stifle innovation. And the best way to do that is to involve the people that are really intimate in understanding how to do that. And we have been involved

• 51:01Speaker 01

  in a few conversations about shaping regulations around this, which we really appreciate, and we want to be able to be involved in a lot more. But you really do need that right now. This is not only something that's important on a regional or national level, it's also important on a global level.

• 51:23Guy Raz?

  Bethany, I want to ask you a business-related question. My assumption, I'm just going back to Apple, for example, as an example, but a huge source of Apple's revenue is the App Store, right? I mean, they have multiple revenue streams, the phones, the hardware, their software, the App Store. I mean, it's an incredible company in how they can really harness different ways of making money. You have a closed device, you will not have apps, right?

• 51:51Speaker 02

  So we will, or we do, integrate with third parties, and we already have some that exist on our platform. There will be many, many more over time. And so, the services side is also a part of the business.

• 52:05Guy Raz?

  Right. So you'll have the device, and then the monthly fee, which right now is low, and then, over time, part of the business model will be, there will be apps available, and that could be another revenue stream.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  We and we see it a little bit differently in that the the traditional idea of what an app is is is effectively gonna disappear and it kind of already has. And so for us, we work really closely with some some third parties that run on our on our platform. There will be some that we we don't need to have partners partnerships with where we'll be using things that they have publicly available. And right now, we obviously, we still make money on the hardware, which is incredible. And over time, we're just gonna be constantly shipping new experiences. And that's the beauty of having a like a light lightweight client on the device backed by a really powerful cloud that can just continue to evolve over time. And you wake up and your device does something new, just like you own a Tesla, you wake

• 53:05Speaker 02

  up, your Tesla has a new software update.

• 53:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  It has a new feature.

• 53:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  It's the same model.

• 53:10Guy Raz?

  And so what what does success look like for you in in the next sort of two to five years?

• 53:17Speaker 01

  I'm gonna bring it back to something that Bethany said. When you feel like you have a better relationship with technology, you have people that are just generally happier, but then aren't forsaking a lot of the capabilities. That's when I think we'll feel really good about what we've done. To me, that's what success is, is just having that impact of redefining our relationship with technology to make it make it better.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I I hope that our work inspires other people. We've already seen that kind of, we started this momentum in the AI hardware space, which is really exciting, and I think it will ultimately benefit all of us. And, you know, we we are building something that we want to, right? We we we started building this because we wanted it in our life. And I think, of course, success for us means financial success, of course, that that has to be a factor. We're building a business. This is that that's a huge part of it. But I'll say that the thing for me personally, you know, that really impacts me is when even people who have PINs today, our entire company has them, some friends and family have them, we're we're living with them day, you know, day to day, but as we get ready

• 54:29Speaker 02

  to ship, we have channels internally at our company where people post, you know, photos, videos, experiences that they have with their device and kind of share their thoughts. And the when I read ones that involve people talking about how they You know, went away for the weekend with their family and they were able to capture all these moments and, you know, go to an event with their child and capture the entire thing, but like be able to look them in the eyes the whole time and stay really present in the moment. Those are the things that get me pretty emotional, honestly, because I do care a lot about the impact what we build has on people's day to day lives. Like, that for me is a huge motivator every day.

• 55:12Guy Raz?

  Bethany Imran, thank you so much.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Thanks, Guy.

• 55:18Guy Raz?

  That's Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri, founders of Humane. Thanks for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss an episode of the show. And as always, it's free. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard, with music composed by Runtin Arablui. It was edited by John Isabella, with research help from Kerry Thompson. Our audio engineer was Neil Rouch. Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Catherine Seifer, Malia Agudelo, Niva Grant, and Sam Paulson. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This Lab.