Snapchat's Pixy drone shows how AI assistants could offer a different perspective on the world

30 May 2023 · 1 min

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In this commentary, the speaker references Eric Schmidt's prediction that digital assistants will provide us with a new perspective on the world, and Sergey Brin's claim that Google could become the "third half of your brain." Using Snapchat's newly released Pixie drone—a selfie‑capturing drone that follows the user—as a concrete example, the speaker argues that embodied AI sidekicks can record, replay, and store personal memories, effectively acting as an external cognitive partner. This marks the beginning of digital assistants evolving from simple tools into integrated extensions of human perception and cognition, offering alternative viewpoints and becoming part of our mental processes.

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It reminds me of Eric Schmidt saying not long ago that we're going to have a kind of digital assistant helping us with lots of things in our lives, and that that's going to give us a different perspective on the world. And in fact, I was reminded of this when I looked at Snapchat's Pixie drone, a drone they've just created which flies around you taking selfies and sends them to your phone. You can only ever take a selfie at the moment kind of at arm's length, but if one has a sidekick a drone, then the drone can fly around and, and record your life for you and play it back and store those memories. And I think this is the start of us using a digital assistant service, whether it's in a character or not, to become the third half of your brain. It's giving you a new perspective. It's perceiving a new and different alternative reality, but it's going to become integrated as part of yourself. I think when Sergey Brin said, "We want Google to be the third half of your brain," I think we should believe him.