Is AI creating childhood mistakes that last forever?
Wearable A.I. comes next week
Think of a time you made a mistake as a kid. Made a bad choice, said something you didn’t mean, did something impulsively, then regretted it immediately. Or regretted it years down the road.
A few things probably come to mind. But probably not many. It’s hard to remember that long ago and if it’s something you’d rather forget, maybe you did.
Now think of something your best friend did as a kid that they’d rather not remember. Or the kid next door. Or a classmate who sat on the other side of the room.
Maybe you can think of one thing? Maybe nothing at all.
A new A.I. company is working to change that.
Rewind started making news in the A.I. world with its flagship product for Apple computers. “Record everything you do on your Mac and make it searchable.”
It goes on to explain, “Rewind is a personalized AI powered by everything you’ve seen, said, or heard. Your colleagues will wonder how you do it all.”
Sounds extremely helpful at first. And then you start to think about every single thing you’ve ever Googled or been sent or accidentally watched. And then you think about every single thing your child has ever Googled or been sent or accidentally watched. Do we want those interactions with the web to be recorded and saved forever?
In the past week, Rewind announced its newest product: Pendant. According to the company, “Rewind Pendant is a wearable that captures what you say and hear in the real world and then transcribes, encrypts, and stores it entirely locally on your phone.”
Yikes.
They do state right up front, “We take a privacy-first approach and offer features for you to ensure no one is recorded without their consent.” But they also said they have two ideas to do it:
Only record people who verbally opt in. (Each time they talk to you? One and done? We’ll see.)
Only record summaries of what occurred.
Clearly, there are some real questions that need to be asked and addressed before this goes to market.
Right??
Not exactly. You can already pre-order a pendant now for $59. There is no release date announced, as they say they don’t actually have one built yet. But they’re proud to announce that thousands of people have already clicked “purchase.”
The problem with the extreme pace of innovation in today’s current A.I. landscape is that even if Rewind figures out a way to make this safe and ethical, a million other companies will figure out the technology to make their own and won’t necessarily play by the same rules.
But still, no release date and pre-orders only. We have time to figure this all out.
Right??
Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram) says no.
Their Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses will be available in stores and online next week.
The glasses, which look just like any other glasses or sunglasses, can take pictures and video, lifestream directly to Facebook and Instagram, and use the new image recognition function of ChatGPT. Check out this video of Mark Zuckerberg introducing them. It is well worth your next 30 seconds of time.
The cost for these glasses? $200. How many Christmas lists will these be on this year?
Up until now, we’ve had to teach our kids that the internet is forever. “PLEASE don’t post anything or send anything or write anything that you might regret later.” We teach them, we beg them, we implore them.
But starting next week? They might not have any idea what they’re saying and doing is being recorded. Or even straight up live-streamed.
We were already dealing with a massive shift from our generation to theirs. Our mistakes generally disappeared into the ether of foggy memories and latent regret. And we’ve been dealing with it by trying to impress upon them that the active decisions they make online will stay with them forever.
Now, we need to teach them those active decisions are just the beginning. What they do and say can be forever, too, with the click of a button. Someone else’s click of their button.
What happens when childhood is recorded forever?
Ugh, terrifying.