{"id":197,"date":"2026-06-03T15:49:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T15:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/longhaulmovingpros.com\/?p=197"},"modified":"2026-06-03T15:49:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T15:49:57","slug":"big-tech-still-has-no-clue-what-to-do-with-ai-gadgets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/longhaulmovingpros.com\/?p=197","title":{"rendered":"Big Tech Still Has No Clue What to Do With AI Gadgets"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There have been quite a few AI gadgets released into the world at this point, and lots of them are fairly similar. You\u2019ve got AI pins like the kind popularized and eventually made notorious by Humane; you\u2019ve got pendants that hang around your neck like the kind made equally infamous by companies like Friend; you\u2019ve got whatever the Rabbit R1 is.<\/p>\n

Read more I Wore a Smart Fart Wearable for Three Days. Here\u2019s What I Learned<\/a><\/p>\n

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This week, at Microsoft\u2019s annual Build developer conference, we got something new, something groundbreaking, something\u2026 badge-y. In fact, what we got is an AI gadget that\u2019s also a badge. I\u2019ll wait for your vision to come back into focus\u2014it\u2019s a lot to take in.<\/p>\n

If you sense a bit of sarcasm, it\u2019s because AI gadgets have given me plenty of reason to approach new ideas with eyes firmly rolled, and Microsoft\u2019s offering (concept or not) feels like more fuel for that skeptical fire.<\/p>\n

First, let\u2019s recap: Microsoft\u2019s badge concept is exactly what it sounds like. A badge-like piece of hardware you wear around your neck. It\u2019s not just any badge, though; it\u2019s got tech<\/em> crammed in it. It\u2019s got a touchscreen, fingerprint reader, Wi-Fi and 5G connectivity, a microphone for voice commands, and my personal favorite, a side-facing camera. To demonstrate this last bit, Microsoft technical fellow Steven Bathiche pointed the badge at the Build crowd and said, \u201cCopilot, find some good shots from this, clean them up, and then send them to me for me and my team to review.\u201d Cool? He didn\u2019t show the Build audience what the result looked like, which is telling. How well did Copilot clean up the images?<\/p>\n

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All of this hardware is designed to funnel the wearer back to something Microsoft is calling Project Solara, which is the company\u2019s OS for agentic AI, aka AI that can actually do actionable stuff for you. Microsoft envisions its badge as an enterprise product, designed to be draped around the necks of nurses, people in retail, and other hard-working, salt-of-the-earth folks like us.<\/p>\n

With an AI gadget (badget?), workers can do things like record conversations and use the camera to \u201cbetter understand the world around them.\u201d To be honest, I\u2019m not super clear on what people are supposed to be doing with an AI badge, and I\u2019m not certain that Microsoft knows either.<\/p>\n

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