The Intimacy Of Machines That Remember

For decades, our relationship with technology has been surprisingly simple.

We decided when to open the laptop. We chose when to check our phones. We decided when to get up off the couch and put that album/cassette/CD on. We consciously pulled a device out of our pocket… searched for something… took a photo… recorded a video or asked a question when we could not remember an answer. Technology waited patiently until we invited it into our lives. It was a destination. We initiated it during moments.

That feels nothing like the relationship we currently have with technology… and the wheel in the sky keeps on turning…

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a steady stream of announcements around AI-powered wearables. Meta is reportedly working on “super sensing” glasses that can continuously capture what you see and hear. New headsets promise effortless first-person recording. Healthcare companies envision AI wearables that monitor our bodies, detect illness earlier and help us age more independently. Taken individually, each announcement feels incremental… put them together and a much bigger evolution evolves.

We’re moving from wearable technology to wearbable intelligence.

That sounds exciting… because it is. Imagine never forgetting where you parked. Imagine your glasses remembering the name of the person you met at a conference three months ago. Imagine recalling exactly what your doctor said… retracing your steps when you lose your keys… or this tech helping someone with dementia remain independent for years longer. For people with accessibility needs, these devices will be life-changing. So this has all got me wondering if the ultimate killer app is not photos or social media or chatbots… but memory.

And if that’s right, this is also where it all becomes emotionally and culturally complicated.

With our phones, we chose when to record or request. With AI wearables, life increasingly becomes the input. The assistant becomes more useful precisely because it knows more about your world. It hears your conversations… it recognizes faces… it understands locations… it notices routines. And, perhaps, most importantly, it has its own depth of information and analysis that could be the delta of value to you in the moment. Some patents suggest near-future systems could infer emotional states from the tone of your voice, your surroundings (including others) or your (and their) behavior.

The better the product becomes… the more intimate the data gets (yes… another nod to my theory that The Attention Economy is over and we are in The Intimacy Economy).

And here’s the part that will be the most complicated to solve: privacy (again). The privacy question isn’t really about the person wearing the glasses. Presumably, they consented (even though none of us really knows exactly what we’re agreeing to). The bigger question is everyone around them. If I’m sitting beside someone wearing ambient active AI tech, when did I agree to become part of their memory? What happens when your waiter, your colleague, your child’s teacher or your delivery driver is wearing technology that is constantly sensing the environment (because their employer or insurance provider requires it)? The challenge is not surveillance… it’s ambient surveillance.

Does anyone remember Google Glass?

Google Glass didn’t fail because the technology wasn’t ready. It failed because people rejected the feeling of being recorded by someone else’s face. That discomfort hasn’t disappeared. If anything, artificial intelligence amplifies it because these devices aren’t just capturing moments of reality… they’re interpreting them in real time.

Yes, we should be optimistic about this technology.

The use cases are obvious. Helping aging parents live independently longer. Giving visually impaired people richer awareness of the world. Detecting health issues before symptoms appear. Reducing cognitive load in increasingly complicated lives. Those are extraordinary future possibilities. But intelligence (and the data) doesn’t float freely through the world. It belongs to someone. It runs on someone else’s servers. It operates inside someone else’s business model. For years, we’ve talked about wearable technology. The next decade may be defined by wearable intelligence. And the question isn’t whether we’ll wear it.

The question is whether we’ll still recognize where our intelligence, capabilities and agency end… and someone else’s platform and business model begin.

This (and some other topics) is what Trudie Mason and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

Before you go… ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.