The AI wearables are always listening

The AI recorder premise is an enticing one. You wear this tiny microphone around your neck, on your wrist, or pinned to your sweater, and it records everything. Your recorder can tell you all the things you promised to do and immediately forgot; remind you where you were when you talked about how much you liked the coffee; keep notes on all your meetings and conversations. Perfect memory is hard to argue with.

But on this episode of The Vergecast, we wonder whether perfect memory is really such a good idea. The Verge’s Victoria Song joins the show to talk about her experience with wearables like the Bee, which was sometimes very cool and sometimes totally alarming. We talk about how it felt to be recording all the time, what our friends and families thought, and whether there’s a version of these devices we’d be more excited to use.

Then we talk keyboards. Beautiful, expensive, ridiculous-in-the-best-way keyboards. The Verge’s Nathan Edwards joins the show along with Ryan Norbauer, the creator of the new $3,600 Seneca keyboard, to discuss what it takes to build the perfect typing tool — and why it’s worth all the time and effort. Even if you don’t buy a Seneca, you should be glad someone’s working on this stuff.

Finally, we answer two questions from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about the future of Chrome. As Google’s antitrust remedies trial continues, the idea of divesting Chrome has come up over and over — but what that would look like, and what it would change about other tech we use, is hard to know for sure. After weeks of trial, though, it does seem possible it’s going to happen.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started: