The rabbit r1 scam
It’s not new that the promise of artificial intelligence capable of helping us and solving a series of problems we don’t have has emerged. However, it is only from 2022 onwards that large models (LLM, LAM, and others) are gaining traction and attention worldwide. It started with OpenAI and ChatGPT, followed by Humana’s AI Pin and Rabbit R1 from Rabbit Inc. Neither delivered on their promises, but the Rabbit R1 has an extra touch.
While Humane’s brooch is just an overpriced product that doesn’t work properly, the Rabbit R1 is a mishmash of poorly executed features and a good dose of scams, especially coming from a company previously involved with NFTs and “pay-to-win” games (which use NFTs). Most of the instructions are hardcoded into the device, meaning that most actions are predefined according to the software/action requested. In the linked video below, Coffeezilla shows how actions fail when applications change their graphical interface — like Doordash, the US version of iFood, which altered a small hamburger menu in its interface, breaking the Rabbit R1’s action.
Later on, we see a more detailed explanation of how all this works, but to be generic, what Rabbit R1 does is similar to automation we perform when using Selenium IDE to input passwords, create users, send emails, and other tasks. From the outside, there’s no AI or LAM in this implementation; it’s just a large automation running on Rabbit Inc.’s servers. What this automation does is recognize spoken commands (“call an Uber to Santa Casa”) and, based on your logins, it makes the request on the Uber app running remotely and sends the result back to you on the Rabbit R1. It doesn’t seem extraordinary (and it isn’t) or very intelligent (and it really isn’t). You could do this using Shortcuts on your iOS right now.
This whole issue ended up sparking Coffeezilla to create two videos:
Yes, it gets much worse as the investigation progresses, but it’s worth reading because it’s essentially a $199 scam.
Beneath the minimalist design of Teenage Engineering lies a big AI SCAM (possibly the first?) that resembles the NFT craze. Although tools like ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and other stochastic parrots are useful in specific contexts, AI still has nothing of “I”; on the contrary, what they really do is generate text that makes sense (grammatical text, as opposed to ungrammatical texts), which was already possible with Prolog in 2011.
What comes after Rabbit Inc.’s gaslighting? I don’t know, but this is probably the new bubble (after BTC, ETH, and NFT).
Extra
This is an interview that, after the launch and recent events, is downright embarrassing.
For other opinions, MKBHD made a video about the Rabbit R1:
LTT made a video attempting to use the Rabbit R1 (really trying, because it seems impossible):
That’s a shame.
And, you can also see more about it on this clipping I made some time ago:
