It's a question that I've been musing about ever since I started testing Vi, which its creators call the "first true AI personal trainer." It combines a pair of bio-sensing headphones and an app from Lifebeam, a military biosensor company founded by a pair of former Israeli air force pilots. Lifebeam's side hustle is to take those same sensors and bake them into consumer products like cycling helmets and baseball caps. Here, the company has added that technology to a pair of Bluetooth earphones, along with a raft of other fitness tracking equipment. Buried inside the "halo" that sits around your neck is a six-axis gyroscope, barometer and accelerometer.

The artificial intelligence that we hope will exist in our lifetime is a world away from what's available right now. A thinking computer that knows us better than we know ourselves, and can make us better than we are, is still the stuff of fantasy. But, if our goals are simple and easy to understand, does an AI really need to be that smart to get the job done? It's a question that I've been musing ever since I started testing Vi, which its creators call the "first true AI personal trainer." It combines a pair of bio-sensing headphones and app from Lifebeam, a military biosensor firm founded by a pair of former Israeli air force pilots.

If you're trying to figure out how best to measure human performance under extreme conditions, the skies are a great place to start. Not much pushes the body harder than space travel or extreme flight. Successful missions depend on knowing precisely how astronauts and pilots respond to huge physical strain, and that requires a level of real-time biometric tracking way beyond your average heart-rate chest strap. That's where wearable innovator LifeBEAM comes in. Founded in 2011, the New York-based business has spent years developing cutting-edge solutions that give NASA and the US Air Force mission-critical insights.

Self-learning "hearables" are using ambient noise and interactivity to personalize music. Hearables are smart, wireless in-ear devices that promise to deliver a listening experience that is richer and more immersive than what consumers can get through traditional headphones. Often, they also aim to expand the boundaries of wearable technology, adding extra layers of sound that amount to augmented reality for the ear. Several companies have recently created immersive and adaptive earpieces that calibrate listening profiles and adjust to users' lifestyles. Doppler Labs' Here One wireless earbuds incorporate outdoor sounds as an essential part of the listening experience, allowing users to mix and master their environment through filtering and layering real-world noise.

Many of us who want to get in shape would love to hire a personal trainer, but the cost is simply too high. Imagine your own virtual fitness coach inside your headphones cheering you on and pushing you forward when you exercise. After creating products for the Israeli air force and brands like Samsung and Under Armour, Israeli wearable tech company LifeBEAM is now making its own product – wireless, artificially intelligent headphones, or as many call them, "hearables," headphones that can learn about you as you workout. LifeBEAM's newest product Vi will tell you if you are running behind your usual pace on a familiar run and ask you politely if you want to speed it up. Or if your heart rate is getting too high, Vi will sense that and advise you to slow down.

LifeBEAM is Infusing Wearables with Artificial Intelligence The New York-based LifeBEAM started out making biosensing wearables for NASA and the US Air Force, and now their technology is powering the likes of Under Armour and Samsung. The company is trying to evolve the wearable market beyond statistics and into more meaningful territory. The product they believe will do this is their Awareable line. The Awareable product combines highly accurate biometrics and a personal training agent, giving consumers an intelligent and interactive training experience for fitness and everyday well-being. And now, on Kickstarter, the company is looking for funding for the first artificial intelligence personal trainer they call Vi.

Wearable technology company LifeBEAM has powered products for the Israeli air force and brands like Under Armour and Samsung. What does that mean, exactly? Co-founder Omri Yoffe says the new "hearables," as he refers to these types of headphones, come with the ability to self-learn as you workout. Sony came out with a 300 "artificially intelligent" set of headphones in 2010, the Sony MDR-NC300D Digital Noise Canceling Earbuds, but the difference with LifeBEAMS buds, called Vi, is they have built-in software that adapts to your body using biometrics such as temperature, heart rate and other data measured through inner ear motion. Vi also includes a workout coach and music to match your pace.

On an unseasonably hot Wednesday at the end of May, a little voice in my head was telling me to run faster. "It's time to get your heart rate up," she told me. This wasn't my inner masochist, like it usually is. On this particular run, it was the voice of Vi, a digital assistant baked inside a pair of prototype in-ear headphones. Vi is the first consumer product from wearable technology company LifeBeam, which has provided the tech backbone for products from Samsung, Under Armour, and JBL, among others.