The Last Device You’ll Ever Need

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The first thing that happened when I put on the glasses was that “Starboy,” the 2016 dance track by The Weeknd and Daft Punk, started blasting. Standing in a blue, skateshop-themed room in New York City—one of a few Meta pop-up stores across the country—I stared helplessly at the employee beside me whose instructions I could no longer hear.

The glasses I tried on are the tech giant’s latest attempt at “smart” eyewear, a subcategory of the internet-enabled wearable devices that entered the mainstream more than a decade ago. Powered by AI, they are operated with a second accessory called the Neural Band, a kind of fabric controller that snapped around my wrist and sensed my movements. Flicking through a floating digital menu, I could see roughly where I was on a rudimentary map of the city; I could snap a picture of my point of view; or I could enter a kind of live-dialogue mode, in which the glasses would transcribe real-time captions from other speakers in the room. I had some success with the first two functions and little with the third, which was finicky and slow—similar to how the glasses behaved during their live, onstage debut in September (“This is, uh … it happens,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg of the glasses’ failure to heed commands at the time).

But the real selling point was AI—embedded in the physical device is a more personalized version of Meta’s proprietary chatbot. Theoretically, wearers can point to objects in their field of vision and ask the glasses for live context (although that feature seemed to be hindered by spotty Wi-Fi when I tried it). When I asked aloud how long I could reasonably keep a package of raw chicken in my refrigerator, an answer appeared on the lens’ display: 1–2 days. True; although, why wouldn’t I just look that up on my phone?

The test-run gestured at something instructive about the ways we interact with our computers. As the boom in AI chatbots accelerates the shift to prompt-based computing, tech companies are racing to figure out how to give the text fields of ChatGPT and other large language models a physical shape—something people can manipulate without a keyboard, mouse, or conventional screen. Meta’s glasses are just one manifestation of this idea. One start-up is betting on an AI-enabled pendant necklace called the “Friend”; another, Sandbar, promises discretion in the form of a ring that detects even whispered commands. The pull of these concepts is that they might someday eliminate the need to type out prompts, freeing users from the thrall of screen life.

There’s a quasi-mystical quality to this tech; the creator of Friend has likened his device to “a god” (Pope Leo has warned against this kind of talk). But the perfect incarnation of AI may not yet exist. “As great as phones and computers are, there’s something new to do,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during a filmed conversation with Jony Ive, who was a key designer at Apple during Steve Jobs’s tenure. (OpenAI and The Atlantic have a corporate partnership.) Ive teamed up with OpenAI earlier this year to do for prompt-based computing what the iPhone did for the mobile experience, reportedly working on a “palm-sized” AI device without a screen. Whatever its shape, it has already distinguished itself from its competitors in one crucial way: It won’t be wearable.

Lost in all the techno-optimism around AI’s physical form is whether anyone actually wants a new category of device. AI devices have been tried, and they have failed. Consider Humane, a company that raised more than $230 million to create an AI “pin.” It debuted last year to brutal reviews, and the company was scrapped and sold for parts less than a year later. “Everything that this pin does, a modern smartphone does better and faster,” the YouTuber Marques Brownlee said. A start-up called Rabbit launched an AI handheld last year that also flopped; Tom’s Guide recently reported that some of the company’s employees haven’t been paid in months. So far, Meta’s glasses appear to be the most successful of the new crop of physical AI products. As of February, the company had sold 2 million pairs—far fewer than the reported “tens of millions” of smart watches Apple sells each year. The glasses also represent a relatively small source of income for Meta, which is now worth about $1.5 trillion.

The allure of a life unchained from screens, and the growing utility of chatbots, could drive more customers toward the nascent category of AI devices. But even if more customers start snapping them up, expecting them to unseat the smartphone or the laptop anytime soon is unrealistic: We’re simply too reliant on the screens we already have. There’s also an embarrassment factor to these devices. Meta’s chatbot is summoned by saying “Hey, Meta,” which I found actively unpleasant to articulate in a public space. Even though the Neural Band allows for some silent control via hand gestures, speaking queries aloud is usually simpler—and also somehow stranger. These devices don’t come cheap, either: Humane’s AI pin cost $699, plus $24 for a monthly subscription. Meta’s newest glasses and the accompanying band start at $799—the same starting price as a brand-new iPhone 17.

Whatever comes next in the race for the ultimate AI device will have to stand on its own, outside of the established phone-laptop dyad. But so far, the fantasy of a screenless world is just that—a fantasy. Without a way to persuade users to reject the screens they already have, an AI device will only add to the digital overload.

After returning the glasses to Meta’s staff, I took the R train back to my office. Within maybe a minute of getting on, nearly every screen in the car—from the oblong strips spanning its length to the bolt-on panels above the seats—flashed deep blue. I looked up; it was an ad for the glasses I’d just tried on. Everyone seated beneath it was on their phone.

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Today’s News

President Donald Trump accused a group of Democratic lawmakers of sedition and said their actions were “punishable by DEATH!” after they released a video reminding troops that they should not obey illegal orders.
The United States labor market added a stronger-than-expected 119,000 jobs in September, though unemployment ticked up to 4.4 percent, according to a delayed report from the Labor Department. The news leaves the Federal Reserve with an unclear read on the economy ahead of its December meeting.
Border Patrol is wrapping up an immigration-raid operation in Charlotte, North Carolina, after arresting more than 250 people, according to Department of Homeland Security officials. The agency is preparing to shift next to New Orleans, where an effort targeting Louisiana and Mississippi—dubbed “Swamp Sweep”—is expected to begin after Thanksgiving, according to people familiar with the operation.

Evening Read

Young men and women socialize, drinking cocktails and canned beverages. — Jonah Rosenberg for The Atlantic

(Some) MAGA Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

By Elaine Godfrey

One night at a party in an East Village speakeasy, a pair of 20-somethings—high on youth and rail liquor—made their way to the bar’s single-occupancy bathroom, and proceeded to go at it. I know this because as I waited outside, the exuberant young man inside began to film the encounter. The bright light of his phone had reversed the effects of the bathroom’s one-way mirror to reveal a pantsless youth with a deeply unfortunate broccoli haircut, and a young woman in a make america hot again cap. When I mentioned the encounter to the event’s organizer, Raquel Debono, she clapped her hands and squealed, “I told you people find love at my parties!”

Debono’s path to party planning happened, in her telling, because she was bored. The MAGA gatherings she’d attended were stuffy. So last year, she started throwing parties under the auspices of a new movement—“Make America Hot Again”—to attract fun, sexy conservatives. The kind who might enjoy, say, low taxes and public fornication.

Read the full article.