Halo's smart glasses, Halo X, are designed to log and transcribe every conversation while feeding wearers live AI-powered insights and promising transformative cognitive enhancement described as 'vibe thinking.' The glasses lack a visual indicator to show when recording is active, distinguishing them from competitors' models. Social media users reacted with horror and outrage, stressing privacy risks for both wearers and the people they interact with. Commentators compared the device to a panopticon, emphasizing the uncertainty of surveillance. Privacy lawyers characterized demand for such constant recording as abnormal. The creators are identified as Harvard dropouts.
Are you looking forward to a future of casual but supercharged surveillance, in which inconspicuous wearable devices record everything private you do - ostensibly in service of making you "super intelligent?" Evidently, readers, you are not. Users on social media have responded with horror and outrage to a pair of smart glasses developed by a startup called Halo that its creators, a pair of Harvard dropouts, claim will feed you live AI-powered insights while logging and transcribing every conversation you take part in.
'Have you ever read a description of the panopticon, a theoretical prison where one guard can see every prisoner at all times, and thought, man, I'd love to wear that on my face?' writer and editor Mary Gillis on Bluesky, alluding to the work of British philosopher Jeremy Bentham that was later famously expounded upon by the French historian Michel Foucault. It's an apt metaphor. What distinguishes a panopticon isn't merely inescapable surveillance, but the fact that you don't know when you're being watched.
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