Meet the 21-year-old Harvard dropout behind Friend, the creepy new AI necklace
Meet the 21-year-old Harvard dropout behind Friend, the creepy new AI necklace
In a no-holds-barred interview, Avi Schiffmann explains why he created Friend, the AI companion everyone is hating on.
Yes I'm posting more business insider click bait slop 
introduced in a glossy, A24-style promotional video in which fresh-faced Zoomers speak to an AI pendant that provides emotional support, commentary, and playful jabs in the form of canned text messages. "This show is completely underrated," it texts a woman while she's watching a show and eating falafel on her lunch break. Then it texts, "How's the falafel?" The woman is seemingly heartened by this. "It's dank," she tells her necklace, "I could eat one of these every day."
dank
online commentary grew only more heated when Friend's founder, a 21-year-old Harvard dropout named Avi Schiffmann, revealed that he spent $1.8 million of Friend's $2.5 million funding to buy the website domain "Friend.com."
"People think it's outrageous that I would buy a domain like that, but this is the point of VC money," Schiffmann told me in an interview.
Schiffmann admitted that the online reaction to Friend is not what he expected. "I honestly think it's because the video was too good,"
Schiffmann's original vision for an AI hardware device was a pendant that would act as a more standard-fare AI assistant called Tab — he once described it as a "wearable mom." But after spending a lonely night in Tokyo, he began considering a more intimate version
venture-funded AI-friendship necklace is something of a hard pivot for Schiffmann. In 2020, when he was 17, he built one of the first COVID-tracking websites. Anthony Fauci presented him with a Webby Person of the Year award. He went on to build a tool that tracked Black Lives Matter protesters and a website that helped refugees fleeing war-torn Ukraine find people offering spare rooms and couches around the world
HOLD UP "a tool that tracked Black Lives Matter protesters" ???
"These are all really just big art projects to me," he said. "I haven't been able to come up with a stronger intrinsic [reason] why it's worth doing anything like this at all. It's just something to do and I'm bored. But maybe I've just read too much Camus."
Of the many AI hardware devices that launched in recent months, such as Humane's AI pin, Meta's smart glasses, and Rabbit's AI-powered R1, Friend is the most personal contender. Not only does it aspire to be a close confidant, it's also privy to all its users' conversations. As in, it never stops listening. The incessant eavesdropping that people fear when it comes to devices like Siri and Alexa is a selling point to allay Friend users who fear being alone. Friend needs to have access to every aspect of your life in order to work, Schiffmann said
Based on the public's initial reaction to it, Friend appears to be a long way from product-market fit, in that people do not want this product. Schiffmann disagrees. "People underlyingly want this," he told me
When it comes to creating Friend, "every decision I made was guided by personal vibes."
This product will fail but he will become very rich because he is shameless and evil enough to become very rich. The fact that he's a harvard dropout and somehow got a couple mil in funding then felt entitled to drop $1.8 million of it on a domain name suggests he probably comes from a very rich family already, so maybe hes already there and the shit apple has fallen near the shit tree.
reading the post title/headline
reading the post body commentary
I was initially curious about Avi's position on Palestine but if he built something this invasive to spy on people I think I have a good idea what it is
I did a little googling. Emphasis mine.
Jewish Teen Running World's Most Popular Coronavirus Website
Avi lives with his parents, younger brother and younger sister in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in the Seattle area. His family is traditional in Jewish observance and celebrate Shabbat dinner together. When he was little they lived in Israel for a year where the family has lots of relatives. “I can read Hebrew, but I don’t always understand what I’m reading,” Avi quips.
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Edit
I get the sense the Business Insider writer did no googling on this turd. All I had to do was scroll down to see this fourth result in my google search.
Start of COVID you got worldwide attention for supposedly creating a COVID tracking website. This was our work, on the volunteer project I had set up with a few other Redditors, and a smaller news website. You copied our work, without asking us first (I found out by media) and did not give credit where credit was due. You got into an ivy league school thanks to this, met Elon Musk, became an ambassador for a large international organization...
what a piece of shit, stealing that person's work is the kind of stuff that gets you doohickeyed
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This is the launch trailer for anyone who wants to see the creepiness for themselves.
This is probably the best comment:
Lonesome No More!
privy to all its users' conversations. As in, it never stops listening. The incessant eavesdropping that people fear when it comes to devices like Siri and Alexa
Siri and Alexa also listen at all times, that's how they fucking work. The only way they can have a "wake word" is if the microphone is active at all times in order to hear the word
This pendant isn't fucking new in that regard
Well yeah but those are accepted normal devices made by trustworthy big businesses everyone knows and loves, not new scary devices.
Business Insider needs to be dismantled. All business magazines need to be melted down and turned into literally anything.
The history of the UkraineTakeShelter website he built is quite a rabbit hole.
- How a well-meaning tech solution for Ukraine almost became a 'Craigslist for pedophiles'
- A Website Resettling Ukrainian Refugees Got Adoring Headlines. Experts Say It Was Too Good to Be True.
While the American media gushed over UkraineTakeShelter, local activists on the ground in Poland and experts involved in privacy and humanitarian tech looked at the site with concern, outrage, and horror. Here was a site that had made headlines around the world — appearing in overwhelmingly positive stories on CNN, The TODAY Show, and ABC, among many others — but that didn’t verify hosts’ identities until March 21, nearly three weeks after it had gone live, a decision experts said put refugees that used the site at risk for human trafficking. In addition, the lax security measures have also exposed the private data of the hosts opening their homes to refugees, allowing anyone to see information including hosts’ phone numbers and email addresses with a few clicks.
"Look, I definitely agree I should have had a better verification system in place at the start," he says. "But the way I see it is, it's better late than never to add these features."
I was wondering what inspired Good Work’s latest video. Can’t even believe this is real lmao
so are these sociopaths getting into Harvard for the sole purpose of dropping out in an attempt to make everyone think they're the next Zuckerberg?
Why do people keep thinking that Ivy League undergrads who probably still bring their dirty laundry home on the weekends are the people we want running large chunks of the economy?
"But maybe I've just read too much Camus."
God dammit, France.
Permanently Deleted
he's a frontrunner for one of the future's great tech bros. the fact he calls these art projects is just perfect too
A wearable mom, eh? We had a guy in Wisconsin who made a few of those.