Three days ago Rabbit announced the Rabbit R1, a new handheld AI device co-designed by Teenage Engineering. The reactions have been polarized, with some seeing it as merely an app in physical form, while others hail it as a revolution in how we interact with machines.

The R1’s affordability and Teenage Engineering’s design are certainly appealing. However, I’m curious about Rabbit’s business model since the R1 doesn’t run inference locally and doesn’t require a subscription. I wonder what their revenue strategy is and what the implications for user privacy are. That being said, the privacy claims on the website seem really solid.

What stands out is Rabbit’s approach to AI, particularly their neuro-symbolic model. From their website:

“Our key observation is that the inherent structures of human-computer interactions differ from natural language or vision. The applications are expressed in a form that is more structured than a rasterized image and more verbose and noisy than a sentence or a paragraph. The characteristics we desire from a LAM are also different from a foundation model that understands language or vision alone: while we may want an intelligent chatbot to be creative, LAM-learned actions on applications should be highly regular, minimalistic (per Occam’s razor), stable, and explainable. ¹”

If I understand this correctly, the notion is that instead of asking an LLM to look at the HTML of a web page, instead the LAM looks at the rendered interface as a human would. This feels like consumer robotic process automation (RPA) with an LLM on top and with a drastically simplified training process.

In sum, the Rabbit R1 stands out with its distinct design and the fresh AI approach taken by Rabbit. These factors, combined with the unresolved queries about its operational mechanics and privacy implications, make it a noteworthy development in the tech world, although I remain cautiously intrigued rather than outright enthusiastic.