Hi, welcome to your Weekend.

It’s been 10 years since the movie “Her” introduced us to a queasy future in which a man falls in love with his AI-powered digital assistant. Guess who loved that movie? Yup, Sam Altman, the father of ChatGPT. “The things ‘Her’ got right—like the whole interaction models of how people use AI—that was incredibly prophetic,” he said earlier this summer. 

So it should come as no surprise that the OpenAI CEO is doing everything in his power to make the speculative fiction of “Her” become our reality. As Julia reports in her cover story on the coming AI hardware wars, Altman is the largest single shareholder in the startup Humane, which will unveil its wearable, screenless digital assistant, the Ai Pin, on November 9. 

Altman’s also a backer of Rewind, which makes an AI-powered sound-recording pendant that users wear around their necks. And, as The Information was the first to report last month, he’s recently been in discussions with former Apple designer Jony Ive about creating the “iPhone of artificial intelligence.”

Hedge bets much, Sam? 

The rush to create the AI form factor of the future is on, and there’s no telling which company or gadget will win. Humane is among the first out of the gate with something completely new: A device “the size of a saltine cracker,” which can respond intelligibly to queries, project images onto your hand and capture 180-degree videos of your surroundings. 

Are these features people will want in a device that is not a phone? Are phones themselves destined to be replaced like so many obsolete Discmans and Polaroids? And, as Julia writes, “Is society ready for devices that know us as well as we know ourselves?”

Altman sure thinks so. We’ll know soon whether consumers agree.

Now onto this week’s stories...

the big read

Has Humane Created the Next iPhone—or the Next Google Glass?

The race for AI-powered hardware has officially begun. Humane, a secretive startup with over $240 million in funding, is about to unveil its wearable Ai Pin. Julia has the inside scoop on how the device might change tech forever—or crash and burn like many hardware bets before it. 

Market research

Blood-Sugar Crash: Has Continuous Glucose Monitoring Peaked?

Nondiabetics are using glucose monitoring devices more than ever in hopes of losing weight and boosting energy. But Annie reports that some of tech’s earliest adopters are starting to turn away from CGMs.  

scene and heard

Katy Perry, ChatGPT Vacations and an Enthusiastic Return to Office: Inside The Information’s WTF Conference

Over two days of interviews and panel discussions, The Information reporting team teed up lively conversations about AI, social media, work-life balance and, in pop star Perry’s case, the glories of transcendental meditation.

Noticing: Andreessen Horowitz’s not-so-optimistic returns
In case you missed it, this month Marc Andreessen published a controversial blog post titled “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” In it, he argued that society’s fixation on doomsday negativity is resulting in technological stagnation. This week, Crunchbase ran the numbers to see just how techno-optimistic his firm Andreessen Horowitz really is these days. Not very, it turns out! Based on Crunchbase’s data, a16z has invested in 112 startups this year, its slowest year of dealmaking since 2020. Of course, the slowdown is consistent with the general downturn in the venture market. Andreessen’s firm is actually outpacing rivals like Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SoftBank and Tiger Global. Ironically, the founder’s screed could have the unintended effect of goading the competition to work harder. —Julia

Playing: Spider-Man in the outer boroughs 
It just got a lot easier to go from Brooklyn to Manhattan—at least, in the Spiderverse. Last week, Spider-Man 2 came out on the PlayStation 5, the follow-up to the massively successful 2020 game. Within the first few minutes of playing, it’s clear the sequel lives up to the hype: while the original restricted your spidey senses to Manhattan, the new game’s map is much bigger, letting you swing around multiple boroughs, including Brooklyn and Queens. There are still bad guys to battle on every block, ranging from run-of-the-mill gangsters to the Sandman—but I’ve spent hours just soaring down Broadway, trying to find my favorite bagel shop or old apartment. Consider staying in this weekend and enacting some virtual vigilante justice; New York City is a hell of a good time with web slingers. —Margaux 

Noticing: ’Tis the season for fast-fashion disruption
It’s about to be pop-up shop season in New York—in which brands without brick and mortar stores host line-around-the-block activations to encourage holiday shopping and test out wares. Joining the pop-up parade this year is Cider, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed fast-fashion company hoping to one day rival Shein. (Both brands hail from China.) The clothes, which average between $20 and $25 , will go on display in an Instagramy, red-heart-laden SoHo megastore at 33 Howard Street (the old Opening Ceremony storefront—a sign of the changing times). Cider hopes to draw in Gen-Z shoppers in yet another example of e-retailers wagering that popularity online translates to desire IRL. Shein, too, just began a partnership with Forever 21, bringing its clothes into some of the retailer’s stores. For Cider, Shein’s a juggernaut that will be difficult to disrupt—but the company’s never had space in SoHo. —Annie

Makes You Think

Who runs the world? Girls. (Especially Lauren Sánchez and her WTF-attending besties.)

Until next Weekend, thanks for reading.

—Jon