An AI startup spent greater than $1 million to advertise on Recent York City’s subways — and Recent Yorkers simply aren’t having it.
Posters for Friend, a necklace style device that listens to your entire day and sends you push notifications, were defaced with warnings concerning the dangers of AI.
Vandals took sharpies to the ads, which went up late last month, scrawling messages like, “AI wouldn’t care for those who lived or died” overtop utopian slogans.
Our tech overlords might need to intrude even deeper into our lives, but is wearable AI where people finally say enough is enough? Perhaps — and hopefully — so.
The West 4th Street station was almost totally taken over by the corporate’s ads, which spanned 11,000 subway cars, 1,000 platform posters, and 130 urban panels across the town — making it the most important subway ad campaign ever in keeping with Friend CEO Avi Schiffmann.
When asked concerning the negative response to the ads, Schiffmann told The Post it was “all in keeping with plan.” He also noted that Friend uses Google’s Gemini models, “which have protected guardrails that protect users against self harm.”
The Friend device looks somewhat like an AirTag necklace. It’s presupposed to be on-hand to reply questions at any time. It also listens to what goes on around it and sends push notifications to your phone, providing opinions about conversations you only had, all powered by Claude.
“Friend [noun] someone who listens, responds, and supports you,” a poster for the device reads. But Recent Yorkers produce other opinions.
“BE A LUDDITE,” one graffiti says. Other posters have been defaced with, “AI will promote suicide when prompted,” and, “Go make real friends, that is surveillance.”
Despite the nasty reception, other firms are attempting to drag off similar wearable tech stunts.
Meta would love to intrude upon your eyeballs with AI glasses, made in collaboration with Oakley and RayBan. Because what might be more dystopian than reminders being pinged into your line of vision, or with the ability to record the whole lot you see?
There are also very vague reports of an OpenAI device within the making. Firms in Silicon Valley need to literally physically attach themselves to us, supposedly to enhance our lives — but really they only want as much data as possible.
These forms of devices are a natural escalation in tech innovation, but they’re coming at a moderately inopportune moment by way of public perception. After years of tech addiction and doom scrolling, persons are finally rejecting this imposition into their lives.
On a regular basis persons are becoming way more aware of their screen time. About half of teens — essentially the most notoriously online demographic — say that they spend an excessive amount of time on social media, up from a 3rd in 2022.
Meanwhile, parents are implementing phone-free childhoods. Increasingly more schools are banning devices from classrooms and hallways.
Jonathan Haidt’s book about Gen Z’s tech addiction, “The Anxious Generation,” has been a Recent York Times bestseller for greater than a yr and topped the list five times in 2024, advising parents to maintain their kids off social media well into highschool.
Meanwhile, Americans are much more concerned concerning the rise of AI. They’re twice as prone to say AI could have a negative effect on society than a positive one.
People have already put their foot down on similar tech, and the response to Friend is a suggestion they’ll only proceed to do the identical.
Google Glass, released in 2013, failed spectacularly. The corporate learned the hard way that individuals didn’t need to attach Google to their face, and the project shut down by 2015.
And Mark Zuckerberg’s try to get us all to start out living parallel lives within the Metaverse was a laughable flop.
Though we’ve fallen prey to algorithms, perhaps “Friend” is where we are saying enough is enough. A wearable AI spy just isn’t your “friend.”
One poster vandal is true: “AI fuels isolation! Reach out into the actual world!” It’s time to reconnect with our real friends, and to understand Big Tech just isn’t our friend, but our enemy.
An AI startup spent greater than $1 million to advertise on Recent York City’s subways — and Recent Yorkers simply aren’t having it.
Posters for Friend, a necklace style device that listens to your entire day and sends you push notifications, were defaced with warnings concerning the dangers of AI.
Vandals took sharpies to the ads, which went up late last month, scrawling messages like, “AI wouldn’t care for those who lived or died” overtop utopian slogans.
Our tech overlords might need to intrude even deeper into our lives, but is wearable AI where people finally say enough is enough? Perhaps — and hopefully — so.
The West 4th Street station was almost totally taken over by the corporate’s ads, which spanned 11,000 subway cars, 1,000 platform posters, and 130 urban panels across the town — making it the most important subway ad campaign ever in keeping with Friend CEO Avi Schiffmann.
When asked concerning the negative response to the ads, Schiffmann told The Post it was “all in keeping with plan.” He also noted that Friend uses Google’s Gemini models, “which have protected guardrails that protect users against self harm.”
The Friend device looks somewhat like an AirTag necklace. It’s presupposed to be on-hand to reply questions at any time. It also listens to what goes on around it and sends push notifications to your phone, providing opinions about conversations you only had, all powered by Claude.
“Friend [noun] someone who listens, responds, and supports you,” a poster for the device reads. But Recent Yorkers produce other opinions.
“BE A LUDDITE,” one graffiti says. Other posters have been defaced with, “AI will promote suicide when prompted,” and, “Go make real friends, that is surveillance.”
Despite the nasty reception, other firms are attempting to drag off similar wearable tech stunts.
Meta would love to intrude upon your eyeballs with AI glasses, made in collaboration with Oakley and RayBan. Because what might be more dystopian than reminders being pinged into your line of vision, or with the ability to record the whole lot you see?
There are also very vague reports of an OpenAI device within the making. Firms in Silicon Valley need to literally physically attach themselves to us, supposedly to enhance our lives — but really they only want as much data as possible.
These forms of devices are a natural escalation in tech innovation, but they’re coming at a moderately inopportune moment by way of public perception. After years of tech addiction and doom scrolling, persons are finally rejecting this imposition into their lives.
On a regular basis persons are becoming way more aware of their screen time. About half of teens — essentially the most notoriously online demographic — say that they spend an excessive amount of time on social media, up from a 3rd in 2022.
Meanwhile, parents are implementing phone-free childhoods. Increasingly more schools are banning devices from classrooms and hallways.
Jonathan Haidt’s book about Gen Z’s tech addiction, “The Anxious Generation,” has been a Recent York Times bestseller for greater than a yr and topped the list five times in 2024, advising parents to maintain their kids off social media well into highschool.
Meanwhile, Americans are much more concerned concerning the rise of AI. They’re twice as prone to say AI could have a negative effect on society than a positive one.
People have already put their foot down on similar tech, and the response to Friend is a suggestion they’ll only proceed to do the identical.
Google Glass, released in 2013, failed spectacularly. The corporate learned the hard way that individuals didn’t need to attach Google to their face, and the project shut down by 2015.
And Mark Zuckerberg’s try to get us all to start out living parallel lives within the Metaverse was a laughable flop.
Though we’ve fallen prey to algorithms, perhaps “Friend” is where we are saying enough is enough. A wearable AI spy just isn’t your “friend.”
One poster vandal is true: “AI fuels isolation! Reach out into the actual world!” It’s time to reconnect with our real friends, and to understand Big Tech just isn’t our friend, but our enemy.
