Mar 14, 2024 · 45m · how-i-built-this
AI that can be your second brain with Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri of Humane
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This Lab, host Guy Raz interviews Humane co-founders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno about leaving Apple to develop the Humane AI Pin—a screenless wearable designed to reduce smartphone screen addiction and introduce an ambient, present-first era of personal computing.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 36.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 2.5 Guest teaching 2.3 Guest disagreement 0.3 Guy pushing back 0.7
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 42:11 Rejecting the traditional App Store paradigm
Bethany directly dismisses Raz's assumption that Humane will follow Apple's app ecosystem model, arguing that traditional apps are already obsolete.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 37:18 Pushing back on replacing smartphones in everyday lifeRaz challenges the realistic utility of a screenless device by recounting how unavoidable smartphone dependence is for essential tasks like QR restaurant menus and banking.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 7:53 Correcting the CIA secrecy assumptionBethany immediately corrects Raz's assumption that married Apple employees operated like secretive CIA agents, explaining they worked collaboratively across major products.
Guy holds their own ▶ 23:33 Articulating screen addiction and design culpabilityRaz demonstrates deep personal reflection and critical awareness regarding altered brain chemistry and dopamine loops, directly questioning the founders' accountability.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Listener Call-In Announcement for How I Built This | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Raz introduces the episode and contextualizes Imran's history at Apple by citing Steve Jobs' famous dismissal of the stylus to introduce multi-touch development. | |
| Bethany Bongiorno's Secret iPad Assignment and Apple's Culture | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Raz probes Apple's extreme culture of secrecy and siloed structure, which Imran and Bethany validate while pointing out internal organizational friction when emerging from stealth. | |
| Creative Tension and Collaboration Between the Co-Founders | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Raz assumes the couple kept secret projects from each other like CIA agents, but Bethany reframes that they worked closely together across nearly all major hardware and software releases. | |
| Leaving Apple and the Initial Seeds of Humane | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Imran and Bethany discuss leaving Apple as iterative iPhone upgrades matured, leading them to prototype wellness and AI hardware ideas in 2017. | |
| Conceptualizing the Screenless AI Computer | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Raz asks how creators of touchscreen devices decided to go completely screenless, prompting Imran to explain multimodal inputs and eliminating screens as heavy confirmation mechanisms. | |
| Stealth Mode, Engineering Hurdles, and Miniaturization | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Bethany explains hiring under extreme stealth where candidates did not know the product, while Imran details technical hurdles around miniaturization, electrical interference, and heat management. | |
| Addressing Screen Addiction and Designing for Human Presence | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Raz articulates his personal struggle with phone addiction and asks if the founders felt residual guilt, leading Imran and Bethany to discuss presence, Do Not Disturb, and human happiness. | |
| Humane AI Pin Live Demo and the Second Brain Concept | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Bethany performs a live demo of the AI Pin querying Raz's identity and describes its architecture as an ongoing, contextual second brain utilizing multiple AI models. | |
| Data Privacy, User Ownership, and Hardware Transparency | 3 | 3 | 0 | 2 | Raz brings up dystopian Black Mirror comparisons regarding total memory recording, and Imran and Bethany emphasize data sovereignty, lack of wake words, and visible trust indicator LEDs. | |
| Everyday Utility, Smartphone Coexistence, and Responsible AI Governance | 3 | 2 | 0 | 2 | Raz presses on everyday practical barriers to ditching smartphones like QR codes and banking, while Imran outlines AI-first orchestration and international governance responsibilities. | |
| Business Model Beyond App Stores and Defining Success | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Raz questions the viability of monetizing a closed ecosystem without an App Store; Bethany reframes apps as an obsolete paradigm superseded by ambient cloud capabilities. |
Statements from this episode (12)
Chaudhri: Multi-touch was the fundamental unlock for direct digital manipulation
“You know, I think that was the fundamental unlock for making the transition from remote interactions from a keyboard and mouse to really allowing people to do what we call direct manipulation, and that's literally just being able to touch the screen and have a…”
Bongiorno: Apple gave 24 hours to accept secret iPad role before NDA
“A couple months after I joined, they asked me if I would take on a new project. And at the time they told me that they couldn't tell me what the project was, but that it would require that for the next, you know, year and a half to two years of my life, I woul…”
Chaudhri: Siloed stealth teams enable 1.0 products but create integration friction
“You know, there's some advantages. You get a, an amazing amount of focus, which is good, and I think the projects that, that I worked on were all essentially one point O's that, that turned into something else, and that really siloed, protected space allows fo…”
Bongiorno: She and Chaudhri co-developed FaceTime and iMessage at Apple
“We, had the opportunity to build a lot of things together, whether it was new hardware and new, totally new product categories or software, things like FaceTime and iMessage, you know, that were really complicated things for billions of people that involved a …”
Chaudhri: Working on iPhone X at Apple felt like 'Groundhog Day'
“Around that time, we were working on iPhone X, which in and of itself is kind of like a bit of like a Groundhog Day thing.”
Chaudhri: Multimodal AI eliminates the need for full computing screens
“Smartphones are great. They're really, really great at what they can do now, but they're very limited in terms of how much more they can do. And if you think about if they're able to leverage some of these multimodal inputs that use text and voice and sound an…”
Bongiorno: Humane hired pre-2023 employees without revealing what they were building
“Up until the fall of last year, every single person that joined Humane didn't know what they were joining to build. We didn't even tell candidates what it was”
Chaudhri: He championed and added the Do Not Disturb feature at Apple
“Even at Apple, I was the champion for Do Not Disturb, and it was something that, you know, I added in because I had coexistence experiences like the one you described.”
Chaudhri: Photo screen previews disrupt multi-sensory memory formation
“Even the act of taking a photograph with a large preview takes you out of the multi-sensory biology that allows you to form a memory, and that's because your concentration is more on trying to get the image than it is on actually experiencing the thing you're …”
Chaudhri: Humane AI Pin uses both OpenAI and proprietary AI models
“Our architecture allows for multiple models. Things are made by companies like OpenAI. We have a good relationship with the team there and smaller models of things that are proprietary to us, and these will change and evolve over time, and we are able to Add t…”