{"id":94,"date":"2026-05-24T07:11:05","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T07:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/?p=94"},"modified":"2026-05-24T07:11:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T07:11:05","slug":"002-unboxing-day-or-i-am-not-a-motorbike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/?p=94","title":{"rendered":"#002 &#8211; Unboxing day,  or &#8216;I am not a motorbike&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Human in the loop<\/strong> means having a \u2018person\u2019 involved in an AI system, checking the content, validating what\u2019s being designated as corrected. It occurred to me that I am about to enter into this loop. I will no longer be walking around a lone bag of biological material, but I will have a silicon companion at all times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These glasses will be capable, in theory, of observing and recording my entire life (battery permitting) and they are quite literally, a physical barrier between me and the outside world. My experience of the world, for the next three months  will be mediated by these lenses, the technology that is carried inside them, and their constant connection to my phone. Wherever I look, a photo or video can capture my world view, and I can connect to an AI model which will tell me about what I\u2019m seeing, in its own words.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These weren\u2019t cheap, but I hope they\u2019re worth it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I keep thinking about looking in a shopping magazine (Argos, if you know it) when I was about eight or nine  and seeing the Nokia 3210. It looked like something from the future, and I remember it cost well over \u00a3100 &#8211; which for that time was a lot. These glasses ran me a little over \u00a3450 with prescription lenses, and that was the cheapest option. I didn&#8217;t even get the transparent orange colourway or the transitions for strong sunlight.  <br><br>I&#8217;d ordered from a third party seller online, uploaded my prescription ad they came the next day. I was surprised by the old-school leather case that they came in &#8211; a nod to the traditioal Ray-Ban aesthetic. Interestingly, it was very hard, despite being brown leather and soft by appearance. This is due to the charging infrastructure at the bottom. <br><br>When I opened it, the button started to glow orange. Then after I&#8217;d plugged them in, blue. In a brief moment of YouTuber fantasy role play, I decided to take a video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"960\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 720 \/ 960;\" width=\"720\" controls src=\"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/79e3aa1d-2c49-42bc-8b9a-9da401fff109.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><br>If you look closely and squint, and have only had 3 hours sleep, it looks a bit like it&#8217;s saying &#8216;hello&#8217;. <br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first thing you notice is the noise. A wake-up sound rings in your ear when you put them on. The sound seems to be all around you &#8211; not inside your ear like with a headphone. It&#8217;s jarring because the sound reminds you of what happens when you start up a computer, or turn on the TV. But nothing seems to have changed &#8211; you have no visible screen, and no indication that you&#8217;re wearing a live, functioning computer. I can&#8217;t see that they&#8217;re working, I can only hear them. <br><br>The second thing is the weight. They&#8217;re heavier than normal glasses &#8211; but not by much. I&#8217;ve had non-AI glasses that I felt have weighed more. They&#8217;re every so slightly chunkier than a normal pair of thick, black-framed glasses, but not enough that it would be easy to notice.<br><br>After the new glasses headache wore off, I started experimenting with the AI. To activate it, you have to say &#8216;Hey Meta&#8217;. This is frustrating because you can&#8217;t give it a name of your choosing. One of the first things I&#8217;d considered was what I&#8217;d call my companion &#8211; Jarvis, Clank, Kryten, C3P0, and a few others had all briefly crossed my mind. This is a big disappointment, but also strangely telling &#8211; I want to make the AI assistant &#8216;mine&#8217;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The second teething problem I noticed was the voice. Maybe it was because I&#8217;d decided to run the battery into the ground and the hardware couldn&#8217;t keep up, but the voice flitted from masculine to feminine, varied in pitch, pace, and tone. A couple of times it shifted into Judi Dench, then John Cena (two of the celebrity voice options available). I started to feel like I was sitting in a room with several different robots, some of whom sounded keen and enthusiastic to help, others who sounded weary and like I was wasting their time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After I&#8217;d done about 50 queries, I started to look at the physical features. There is a small LED in the side, which changes colour. A thick, solid on\/off button in silver on the side of the frame which clicks satisfyingly. There is a photo\/video button on top of the arm on the right hand side. What I thought were two cameras, right next to the lenses and pointing wherever I look, is actually one camera, and an LED light. <br><br>The LED light comes on when you take a photo or video.  I didn&#8217;t think much of this at first, but the more I&#8217;ve considered it, or &#8216;sat with it&#8217; (as Claude or ChatGPT will tell you to do), this is a bit weird. It&#8217;s like they realised that the major use case for consumers is to covertly photo or video other places and people, and put in a feature to head this off. But, it&#8217;s a feature that you can adjust the light brightness on in the app. It&#8217;s also a feature that you can&#8217;t see very well in bright sunlight. You have to ask yourself, did they have a conversation about this in the product design? <br><br><strong>Add an LED for recording and photos. But make it subtle and hard to see. Also, you can cover it. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m sure a bright red, always on LED would be possible. More on this privacy aspect later though. <br><br>Once I&#8217;d set up the app, done as much customisation and settings work as I felt I could stomach, I went on with my day. I was in a bathroom and noticed a mirror and thought, well I&#8217;d better take an action shot of myself wearing it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then, I asked the AI to make it look better. <br><br>To its credit, it seems to have tried hard. My jumper changed to a presumably more neutral tone, and the white bathroom background benefited from the addition of a 1978 Ford Capri in lemon yellow. My hands had also been made bigger, so I wasn&#8217;t pressing the camera button. Who says AI isn&#8217;t creative? <br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-3-768x1024.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-100\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-3-768x1025.png 768w, https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-3-225x300.png 225w, https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-3.png 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I decided to push it further &#8211; what happens if I iterate a second time with a very basic prompt to improve the image? (my AI prompting skills are decidedly basic, I use the minimum words possible). <br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"774\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-5-774x1024.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-102\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-5-774x1024.png 774w, https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-5-227x300.png 227w, https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-5-768x1016.png 768w, https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-5.png 876w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 774px) 100vw, 774px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This time, it went a step further. <br><br>I wish I was making this up. <br><br>I definitely did not say &#8220;turn me into a sick motorbike, with dirt still on the tyres after it screeched into a public bathroom for a photo.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I did ask it to make me look better, and so it&#8217;s a <strong>10\/10 <\/strong>for effort. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Later in the day things went from funny and interesting to a little darker. I started to think about some of the practicalities of this experiment.<br><br>How would I know they aren&#8217;t recording me or my life without me knowing it?  Do I just trust when Meta says &#8220;Don&#8217;t worry, we won&#8217;t &#8211; trust the LED light&#8221;? <br><br><strong> Can I be sure my stuff won&#8217;t be uploaded online somewhere? <\/strong><br><br>I needed to do some research. <br><br>Until I&#8217;d fully worked out the answer to that question, should I take them off when I&#8217;m  in the bathroom or getting dressed? Where is my boundary, and what is my justification for that boundary? How about audio? Will my content be used to send me ads? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Also, why did the Meta AI app choose to focus on cars and motorbikes when it edited that image? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Probably it&#8217;s just a coincidence, but I watch a lot of content online on bikes and cars. Especially vintage cars. Could it have known that? The first moments of AI-paranoia  have started to seep in. <br><br>Luckily, I was able to put these questions on pause &#8211; battery dead. <br><br>I took glasses off, and plugged them into the USB port in my sofa, where I was charging my Ring doorbell. <br><br>I looked at the setup and wondered, if I could send a photo of my furniture charging my glasses and my doorbell back in time, what someone in the 1980s would have thought of it. Then I realised that I couldn&#8217;t send them a photo, because they didn&#8217;t have smartphones. <br><br>The final task while they were charging was to choose a name for the glasses, because this project is about werable AI as a whole, not a singular company. <br><br>So instead of &#8216;Hey Meta&#8217;, I decided that in the blog, I will simply call them glasses. Maybe AI is more creative than me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><br><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Human in the loop means having a \u2018person\u2019 involved in an AI system, checking the content, validating what\u2019s being designated as corrected. It occurred to me that I am about to enter into this loop. I will no longer be walking around a lone bag of biological material, but I will have a silicon companion &#8230; <a title=\"#002 &#8211; Unboxing day,  or &#8216;I am not a motorbike&#8217;\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/?p=94\" aria-label=\"Read more about #002 &#8211; Unboxing day,  or &#8216;I am not a motorbike&#8217;\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104,"href":"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasperroe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}