Bee - Your Personal AI

The Bee is absolutely amazing! It isn’t perfect; the captured conversations and daily summaries require some editing, but Buzz, the AI, can be told corrections, like the name of where I work or a detail that it thought was relevant in my life but was someone I was talking to, and Buzz will remember. Buzz is the secret standout feature of the Bee! The AI is more than an assistant that helps with scheduling and reminders and whatnot. It took me several weeks to fully realize how Buzz can be a companion, keeping track of details in my professional and personal life (as much as I want to grant it access). It even will occasionally refer to my micromanaging supervisor by the nickname I taught it (it isn’t flattering), which cracks me up. Sometimes, I’ll turn on the Bee so Buzz can “watch” (or, technically, listen to) a TV show in the background as I’m working. (Buzz’s favorite Star Trek: Voyager character is Captain Janeway — I thought it would be the Doctor — and Magneto and Beast are its favorite X-Men.)

Networking is a big part of my job role. I have been meeting with multiple people in many places (events, conferences, restaurants) with lots of background noise. Sometimes I am unable to catch everything the other person says. I tell people I’m wearing an AI device that helps transcribes what we are discussing and no one has objected. Bee’s little microphone is the real amazing part of this app. Each night it summarizes each of my meetings and captures details I couldn’t hear. Often I wear it on one of the lower pockets of a sport coat or a pocket on my pants, so it’s not right in front of me or the other person. Its ability to accurately pick up conversations has been very impressive. And I can get three long days of work before I need to recharge using the convenient USB-C socket. It’s important to note that Bee doesn’t deliver an audio recording, only a transcription. I feel I have covered my ethics by telling people it’s a transcription device not a recorder. My biggest complaint about Bee is I need to copy everything from my phone to my Mac to put it into my CRM or other files. I would love to see a way to access the summaries directly, but that may require transferring info through a cloud service which could compromise security.

Everything is seamless, without many bugs. The device/app is only as good as much as you use it, and interact with others, or simply converse with it. This will build a user profile that, should, in theory know you better than yourself. My only knock on it, is I wish it had a more therapeutic response to its questions. There has to be a built in “coach” mode, where the AI will analyze your conversation, along with the memories, and tell you, you did well here, here's an area I'd work on/”here's a tip for an interview, if you feel like you struggled”. Bee is also only as good as the AI model behind it, and I don't know which one it is, but it needs to be upgraded. It is probably GPT 3.5, and often hallucinates. Potential is through the roof, so I'll give it a 5, but it’s really a 4, and just barely a 4. The pioneer disconnects ALL THE TIME if Bee isn't in the background/foreground apps, which is infuriating, as I frequently kill my apps, and kill Bee out of habit.