Articles

AI Glasses And The Near-Sighted Future We’re Not Seeing

Multiple waves of disruption are coming so quickly that we barely have time to process one before the next one arrives.

Artificial intelligence… of course.
But we have all kinds of innovation happening with wearables… smart glasses… hardware… software… content… and more.
Each innovation is fascinating on its own.
Together, they’re changing how we live… faster than our ability to understand what they actually mean… and what they could be used for.

Are you following the recent controversy surrounding Meta’s Ray-Ban AI glasses?

Reports surfaced that third-party contractors reviewing footage from the glasses had access to highly “personal” moments (hard to know which ones were intended to be recorded and which ones were not).
That immediately triggered outrage… and understandably so.
Most people assume that when they record something with a device, it stays theirs.
But with connected devices, that assumption gets complicated very quickly (especially for those who did not read the terms of service… and who does?).
Recorded footage doesn’t just live on the device.
It moves to the cloud.
It passes through machine learning systems.
And sometimes, it’s reviewed by humans trying to improve those systems (the messy, invisible labor layer of artificial intelligence that most consumers don’t know or think about).

If that sounds familiar… it should.

We saw the same debates in the early days of social media when companies hired moderators to review disturbing content that algorithms couldn’t understand.
Those moderators often faced enormous psychological strain while doing work most people didn’t even realize existed.
And it was always problematic in terms of balancing safety with privacy (and responsibility with plausible deniability for the platforms themselves).

Now we’re entering a new phase.

Cameras are no longer something we take out when we want to record.
They’re becoming something we wear while life happens.
While Meta is leading this segment with millions of pairs sold, they are not alone.
Apple, Google, Snap and others are developing similar technologies.
This isn’t a one-company story… it’s still in the early stages of a broader shift toward ambient computing… technology that quietly observes the world alongside us.

But here’s the real thing I’m already seeing in this technology and the current issues…

It’s moving so quickly that we’re still discovering the use cases as we go.
Some of those uses will be helpful… some will be innovative.
Some will be deeply uncomfortable.
What’s that saying: the inventor often doesn’t know what the invention is for.
At the same time, the sheer volume of change may be overwhelming our ability to ask the harder questions about surveillance, privacy and consent (because what we’re also seeing is that these are not the same thing).

When disruption comes one wave at a time… society debates it and the regulators figure out the boundaries (and this can take some time).

When it comes as a constant flood, we often just adapt.
And, all too often, the regulation really lags.
That’s why the real issue with AI glasses isn’t just whether companies should have access to the content, or whether law enforcement might want access to it in extreme situations.
The deeper question is whether we’re paying attention to the social contract we’re quietly signing every time we agree to “just one more feature.”

Because the future will not arrive with some dramatic announcement or formal regulation baked in.

It is now arriving faster through devices we willingly put on our faces every morning, recording the world around us continuously… sometimes without even realizing it.
And by the time we finally notice everything these technologies can see…
Because the real shift isn’t that machines can watch the world.
It’s that we’re starting to invite them to watch it with us.

What might they already know about us… and what assumptions might they already be making about us… and how comfortable are we with where this is all going?

This is what Elias Makos and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

Mitch Joel · AI Glasses And The Near-Sighted Future We’re Not Seeing – The Elias Makos Show – CJAD 800

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.