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Running with Artificial Intelligence: LifeBEAM Vi

In the middle of last year, I supported LifeBEAM’s Kickstarter campaign, and this week the LifeBEAM Vi arrived: “The first true artificial intelligence personal trainer”, supposedly the first real personal trainer based on artificial intelligence. LifeBEAM has so far mainly produced helmets for fighter pilots, which can measure vital signs with special sensors; so the company can already be expected to have some experience with sensors. And measuring the pulse via the ear definitely works better than with a watch on the wrist, the Fitbit Blaze has often disappointed me here. AI is “the next big thing”, so why not have an assistant like in Her to improve my fitness?

We are still a long way from “Her”, but a “Her” for only one area (domain-specific), in this case sports or even more limited running, is realistic. It is also her-like that LifeBEAM has kept the interface with voice very minimalist, so that your imagination can play with what Vi looks like for YOU.

Great packaging, not so great manual

The fun cost $219 including shipping, plus another 50€ customs, which I think is an impudence, but apparently also not discussable. I was also just too excited. I don’t have an unboxing video, there are enough of them on the net. The packaging is great, it all feels very valuable, only the documentation has been saved. Although there is a small manual, it does not say, for example, which voice commands exist, and other questions can only be found out by rummaging through the forum posts. The support side, on the other hand, is rather poor.

Setting up the LifeBEAM Vi

It’s great that the LifeBEAM Vi doesn’t come with an empty battery, so you can get started right away. It’s a pity, however, that you can’t see anywhere how full the battery is. The supposedly possible charging within 45 minutes does not work either.

The Vi cannot speak German and does not understand German, and the corresponding app only exists in English. But at least you can switch the units to the metric system, so you don’t have to convert miles while running.

The suboptimal thing about the setup is that you have the headphones in to hear “them”, but then you have to pay attention to a blue light, which you can only see if you don’t have the headphones inside. By the way, the sound is great. At least when you’re not running.

The first run

First of all, you don’t feel this stirrup at all. It’s super light anyway. Due to the fact that you get different pins for different ear sizes and also a small hook that is supposed to hold the headphone in the ear, the in-ear headphones hold very well for me, which is rarely the case. You just have to be very careful that the small green light, the heart rate monitor, is not visible, because then it does not measure the pulse.

For the first run, I just wanted to run 5 kilometers, started the app, the connection was found immediately, and off I went. The LifeBEAM Vi talks quite a lot at first, while a Spotify playlist is playing, although I didn’t understand which one it was. Spotify’s running feature didn’t work. The music gets a little quieter when Vi speaks, but it was still too loud at times, so I didn’t always understand Vi.

What I think she said is that she has to spend 2 hours of training with one until she has enough data together to be able to make suggestions. In the forum, some users complain that nothing happened after 2 hours. In this case, however, it was probably because the coaching apparently only works on the iPhone at the moment. By the way, the sound didn’t seem quite as great when running, but this may also be due to the fact that I had replaced the earbuds again shortly before.

First Coaching

What the LifeBEAM Vi says is definitely more personal than what Runkeeper tells me. The voice is more natural, and it’s less predictable. It was also nice that she told me after 2 kilometers that my steps were too big and “put on” a cool beat with which I could try a different stride length. She praised me after 2/3 of the run that I could keep the speed well. That seemed much more individual than Runkeeper.

What I didn’t understand was how to get her to tell me my heart rate. At first I tried it in the classic way with “Vi, what is my Heart Rate?”, but she hadn’t responded. Then I pressed the right headphone, because I thought I dimly remembered that it worked. In fact, all you have to do is say “Heart Rate”, and if there isn’t quite as much wind blowing against the Elbe, then she understands it. It’s just funny that 20 seconds later she explains to me how I can ask her for the heart rate. She didn’t say anything about the fact that my pulse was relatively high. She also didn’t understand the question of “distance”; Sometimes I would have liked to know how much I still have ahead of me.

You’ll never run alone

Shortly before the end of the run, she told me that I had made it right away. It seemed like an eternity to me afterwards, but that may also have been due to the Elbberg, which gets in my way every time (hence the high pulse and low speed in the screenshot).

When it was over, it was nice to have someone to give you feedback, even if it was only a summary. Overall, it was a good experience to have someone to talk to you, because sometimes I’m bored while running. Some people think about problems while running, but I try to clear my head. The LifeBEAM Vi helped a lot with this.

Next steps

So I still have an hour and a half missing until the LifeBEAM can coach Vi; I will report on that then. Until then, I can also report which other voice commands of the Vi work and how fast the battery actually lasts and charges. Overall, the impression is positive for the time being, even if the high expectations raised by the initial videos were not completely fulfilled.

Update: The video I had embedded here was set to private by LifeBeam. The background is probably that a man was shown on a treadmill in the video. But Vi can’t handle that at all

We love the robots

In the period from December 17, 2014, Felix Lill reports on the Japanese researcher Hiroshi Ishiguro, who not only created a robot copy of himself but also sends it on trips to give lectures in his place. He calls these copies Gemonoids, and he also believes it’s possible that one day we can love robots. If children already develop feelings for Tamagotchis, why shouldn’t people also develop feelings for robots?

This idea is not new, for example Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is based on the fact that a machine human is built in the shape of Maria and the men fall for her. David Levy wrote a thesis about it in 2008, which he processed into a popular science book a year later.

For me, the question arises as to what robots can do better in relationships than humans? Thus, each robot could better respond to a person’s psychological deficits and, so to speak, “behaviorally therapeutize” them.

To that fits a video by Björk:

From man-machine becomes man against machine

Roman Pletter writes in the 29/2014 issue of ZEIT about the potential loss of highly qualified jobs due to ever-improving algorithms. In the so-called second machine revolution, machines can learn on their own (I already did something like this at Ask.com in 2006, on a very small scale…), but now it’s enough for more than winning in chess.

Which doctor can have read all the studies on a topic? Does a lawyer really know all the verdicts? Can a banker really take all the factors into account for a business? The computers could. We are already seeing harbingers of this development in online advertising: Instead of an advertising banner being placed on a website in a global galactic manner, an algorithm decides which user sees which banner in a fraction of a second using statistical methods. Based on data, algorithms can also learn which personality profiles are particularly suitable for certain tasks, so that personnel selection could be taken over by machines in the future.

The consequence of all these developments? What happens if the so-called middle class loses its jobs? The author of the ZEIT quotes an MIT economist: “Brynjolfsson pleads for states to rethink the old idea of granting their citizens a basic income in order to allow them to participate in the productivity gains.” I’m not sure if this has really been thought through to the end. Looking at the news, I have great doubts that anyone in the world is actually willing to agree on a new economic system. And what about all the countries on earth that are still far from advancing such a level of automation that their populations can no longer work? Or that are already dependent on the work of other countries anyway?

At the same time, you have to keep one thing in mind: We haven’t even reached the peak of the hype cycle yet, perhaps because the empty promises of the New Economy were not so long ago and people are no longer so gullible. Yes, the development will be exponential. But it won’t be as easy as you think.