from Hacker News

Friend.com – The Virtual Friend

by blackdogie on 7/30/24, 2:16 PM with 37 comments

• by blackdogie on 7/30/24, 2:41 PM

  When I saw the video I thought it was a parody. I'm still not sure if this is joke or not. It seems like a lot of effort for something like this and a strange use of the domain name. The T&C's look official enough. I did find this news piece "Avi Schiffmann’s Tab AI necklace has raised $1.9 million to replace God" https://www.fastcompany.com/91007630/avi-schiffmanns-tab-ai-...

• by tonerow on 7/30/24, 2:38 PM

  I can't fathom how much that domain must have cost

• by alexb_ on 7/30/24, 2:56 PM

  I'm excited to see how this ends up like the rabbit r1, completely crashing and burning. This is going to be a trainwreck, there is no chance that the on-board AI works well and even if it did exactly zero people want this....

  How out of touch do you have to be to think this is a product anyone would ever want near them? This is such a horrible idea I don't even have the correct words to describe it.

• by salmonfamine on 7/30/24, 2:49 PM

  > What happens when I break the device?

  > Your friend and their memories are attached to the physical device. If you lose or damage your friend there is no recovery plan.

  Surely this is some kind of performance art.

• by huslage on 7/30/24, 2:26 PM

  I thought we already went down this rabbit hole. Do we need snarky responses from an LLM?

• by shombaboor on 7/30/24, 11:09 PM

  it's funny that yc's motto is (where I see these posts) 'make something people want' and launch after launch in the ai/crypto/metaverse era, I just don't see it. Or it's simply me who is out of touch

• by cptcobalt on 7/30/24, 3:00 PM

  Interesting how much this undersells the product. I really thought I wanted it when I saw Avi's tweets about using his prototypes, where (for instance) it was coaching him on delivery and tone during a meeting. This proposition—just as a virtual friend—feels extremely on the nose in this era of tech, like we're just inviting "Her" to happen.

  I'm still keeping my preorder, but I'm a bit more cautious.

• by lardissone on 7/30/24, 3:44 PM

  Coincidence with Based Hardware's Friend name? https://basedhardware.com/

• by churchill on 7/30/24, 2:46 PM

  On one hand, I'm hesitant to underrate another person's effort, knowing that months of effort went into this. on the other, I don't see this gadget producing the level of synchrony needed to maintain real-time convos.

• by nerdjon on 7/30/24, 3:58 PM

  This, cannot be real.

  Why was this not abandoned immediately as soon as the AI Pin and the Rabbit thing failed miserably.

  Putting aside the questionable (and frankly dystopian) side of using AI for something like this, Apple, Google, and Microsoft are all building LLM's into their OS's. It would take, a day, maybe? to tweak the system prompt to do exactly what this is doing but built into your OS and not some other unnecessary hardware.

  Also the product page is, kinda cringe. Like they somehow turned the time it takes for an LLM to process into part of the Marketing with "Pause" "Your friend will think for a moment and come up with something good to say".

  This has to be a joke? Please, someone tell me this is a joke.

  Also "Always Listening". For the love of god how do people think that is a good idea. Hope no one wears this to work and it hears and processes something that is non public information. I wouldn't trust the privacy with this one bit.

  Edit:

  The tagline "not imaginary", I am at a loss for words on that one. Thats... what is wrong with people.

• by friendlee on 7/31/24, 11:00 AM

  Your "Friend" is the NSA unless this is all done on device.

• by winddude on 7/30/24, 2:39 PM

  fuck, how much is that domain worth? Was the thought process, we've had this multi million dollar domain for 20 years, we better build a product for it.

• by TrevorFSmith on 7/30/24, 2:51 PM

  That's a spendy domain for performance art. At least, I hope it's performance art.

• by blueridge on 7/30/24, 3:56 PM

  This is sad.

• by evilfred on 7/31/24, 1:25 AM

  countdown til the android app running on the custom hardware is leaked

• by ilrwbwrkhv on 7/30/24, 2:40 PM

  What I want to know is how much money they have raised.

• by Kuboczoch on 7/30/24, 2:40 PM

  Pre-release, release, server shutdown, next business

• by TechDebtDevin on 7/30/24, 2:44 PM

  Before we all hate, our parents probably thought our Digimons were ridiculous!

  P.s I'm still going to hate