Better Offline CES 2025: Day 5 - Pt. 2

Also media.

We're still here, We're still in Las Vegas. I'm still at Tron and this is still better offline. This is the second episode of Day five, our last two parter, and I was trying to think of something like glib and kind of sardonic to say, but I'm just gonna be honest. I've had one of the best weeks of my life. I've just been really enjoying myself. We've had

Well, it's pretty unique for me because, you know, a lot of the media that comes here is from you know, across the country, across the world looking at whatever new text coming and I get to cover from a local angle and how it affects Vegas and fifically, you know what shown here could be implemented in the city in the next couple of years.

So can you talk a little bit about that. I'm a local. Yeah, I'm out in Green Valley, Henderson. Well then no, it's still less Vegas no ate true way.

Yeah, so yeah, I was. I was talking to a couple of different companies this week. One of them was Autonomous Hotel, which is they call it the first AI powered hotel.

Okay, can you define any of that?

Yeah?

So, a lot of what that means is collecting a lot of user data and then using that to personalize kind of the experience of It's also it's a hotel slash apartment, so there's gonna be some split between there. But for the hotel, it's you know, like remembering your coffee order, what direction like your windows, and then when you come direction I like that, No, like if you like it facing south or west or north?

Oh, sorry for your Okay, that makes most sense for a second. But being like brutalized by CS long enough that I'm just like, okay, man, they got moving windows.

Now, No, the windows I'm I've been I wasn't told this, but I'm pretty sure they're stationary.

Uh, saying somewhere else.

So, yeah, there's there's a lot of premig just data scraping from the week they were I asked about, you know, data privacy and stuff like that. Uh, and they were all about, you know, whatever data they collect, is the user giving it to them?

And did they sell it? I imagine no, they said they were.

Well, really more regifting in this scenario.

No, they said, you know, they they're put a lot of emphasis on keeping that data very secure. You know, I was talking with the culinary Union.

No, no, but sorry I had to push back. Yeah, yeah, secure is not the same as not sharing it. So yeah, have they been remotely giving on I mean, if the answer is you don't know, yeah, I'm not sure. No. No, but this is not a failing on you. This is them being like, thank god, thank god, we don't have to say. The thing is, which is we are selling this to the points guy and airlines and hotels, because that's the thing. These hotels around here are like data warehouse.

Don't, I'm not super familiar with it. I mean, surveillance is nothing new in Las Vegas. You know, it's not rare to find hotels working with the government. That's pretty normal.

In what ways they work together.

Oh, you know FBI, if they're looking for something I'm not.

I honestly don't know these.

If there's even because I love living here, but I'm also a weird, greasy freak and I understand what Vegas is, which is you walk in here if you're not being to Vegas, so you haven't spent a lot of time here. There are cameras everywhere, Yeah, everywhere you go. Not in the rooms, I think, but in the hallways, in the casinos, and there are You may think that the scariest place cameras can look at you is a bank. It's actually a casino. They are they are watching and you can

Opening next couple months.

Which one is? Where is it?

It's actually by Allegiant. It's like, I think, like a mile away from Legion. It's not on this trail.

Oh, so it's one of the closer places.

Oh whit? Yeah, walk into Legions fun.

I have season tickets. Man, I want to die.

Can you walk it?

You can walk from the MGM. Yeah, I it's not delan know anymore. It's w but I usually just park there and walk. Yeah, it's I went to the Syracuse game.

So yeah, this is a question that I've always sort of struggled with here as a and you know, in Los Angeles as well, any of the sort of as a New York person that like I like the idea of being able to either take mass transit or walk to a thing, and yet like Las Vegas isn't big enough, like theoretically, like your phone will tell you that's a forty five minute walk, and yet I feel like most of that is just fully impractical.

Yeah.

I mean I wasn't that bad to get too though.

I was talking with Oh god, what's the CTA not CEO?

The other guy, Oh I do not know, don't want.

I was talking to him and He was like, you know, I was asking for a bit of advice on ceas and he's like, every walk is longer than you think of this.

That's actually great conference advice.

Yeah.

So, but I'm still kind of confused this AI hotel. What else does it do other than allegedly remember my preferences? Because I have an idea you could have some sort of data base of sort, like a place for datar data, and you could put the data in that base and then you could simply remember which way my thing. What does what does AI do with this bit?

So a lot of it's with their app. So they have this thing.

Oh it's key.

It's called k ee where they and they described it as I have it here at twenty four to seven butler and the poll of your hands.

Sure, so it's just a lot of the requests that.

You'd be making, not really having to go through a human, just saying it into your phone right room.

This doesn't add functionality to the hotel, surely because the butler brings you things.

Yeah, so a lot of the functionalities I guess just having to avoid humans. I mean I asked them about that, like, hey, how many humans are going to be working here and it's around thirty.

Which is a hotel, which is not a lot. I mean, there's we've that's that's what they told me. I want for myself.

This isn't your company.

Don't worry.

I'm not mad at you.

But there's like a.

Full time and part time employees.

That's what That's what they say.

At a big like Las Vegas three hundred rooms, it's not that big.

That's still pretty big.

Yeah, like that's ten rooms, but a lot of the also is apartments and you don't need as many stuff.

It is funny that that's like basically where the the AI thing. It goes from being like it's like a you know, an application on your phone. It's like that, but it's AI to suddenly like you get to the where the actual rubber meat throat on all of this stuff, which is fewer.

I am going to stay there and I am.

Going to do an episode, okay, and I'm going to have a piss fit.

You're going to disappear.

Well, I will be disassociating, like that's the That's so it's just frustrating because it's like theoretically an AI hotel could well in the sense that if they were to find use of preferences that they could just kind of move around them. I'm not talking about generative A. I'm talking about theoretically algorithms that are capable of knowing a user's preference, but only in a much larger hotel system, like I don't know Marriott.

Yeah, well, it's interesting you say that, because I asked them about that. I asked, you know, is there any interest from hotels in the area, and they said, you know, currently we're trying to get everything up and running and ready to go, but that there was a lot of interest from other hotels and kind of the system you're making. And right after I got my interview, I saw someone from a Vegas hotel repsent it from a Vegas hotel come by and talk.

Because this isn't entirely out of the Roman possibility for thinking about Marriott, for example, they have I don't know why I'm talking up like a publicly traded hotel phone, but like Marriott's pretty decent, like you can put your shit into it. And the frustration I have with the AI part is that, yeah, I've specified what kind of hotel pillow even very different from a hotel that I

Well, it's the same thing as the stuff that we were talking about yesterday with the like smart homes. There's a lot of that with AI related stuff, and it seems like some of it it's like a a degree of convenience that like doesn't just verge upon but like goes fully into infantilization or just like i mean, which is the place where you get infent That's more of what you'd in some ways, like it makes more sense for the Isn't that what a hotel's for?

Right now?

You're like you're removing variables from the equation that Like.

It also feels like there are very obvious a I thinks a hotel could do, such as making check in quicker, making sure you check in with that, making sure no but making sure the cleaning is done based on when Like I don't know, I'm I ain't no tech doer, but I don't know if I had an algorithm that would say, and I'm sure Vegas has these where it's like, okay, we have a hotel of X size and why number of people come in on a Friday, so we can say that we need this much, but we have this one person.

It definitely has that.

Yeah, so this isn't that, No, this is about what the experience for the and I mean to be fair, A lot of hotels, and I talked to professor, I talked a lot of people about this. A lot of hotels have just a billion different legacy systems running every single function.

Which feels like the things to upgrade rather than this, which is and this is that's kind of the point they're trying to do.

It's one completely integrated system for the entire hotel.

You know, everything is.

Content's gonna have so much fucking trouble selling that. So yeah, sorry, just there's no way. It's why we have airlines on nineties computers. Like you think the Grotzi system of Venetian. Yeah, people know I use the Venetian a lot. They do you think they're going to upgrade an entire multifested system. It seems like an unreal that's physician.

Yeah, when I was talking to a professor from you and LV, great guy.

You're a real journalist. Also very clear here, like's.

Great I'm trying to be very very accurate my wording. One thing he told me is that that's one of the main reasons. I mean, hospitality is Vegas kind of unique, but hospitality as industry is not for being on the cunning edge. It's known for kind of not the way of say, being very stubborn and not really changing it. And one of the reasons they're kind of stubborn and don't really adapt to the times as quick is because

It's an equilibrium thing. You can't just mess with one part of a hotel.

And that's kind of why, like for a new hotel, for them, it's like, Okay, let's not make a billion systems and then have to integrate them all later.

Let's just get it at the outset.

They can't be the first windows of hotels though they cannot.

Yeah, I'm not sure if there's other companies having that, but they were emphasizing that Witell.

I'm just imagining startups will do that. So what else have you seen moving off of hotels?

Yeah, I mean I think one of the most interesting things I saw was from this company Sorensen, which I believe is based in Utah. They're at West and so we were talking earlier about this being kind of like a decent use of AI, like there are.

Still good uses of an no I would love to hear.

And so it's a real time translator that works for specifically for like longer form presentations in a city like Las Vegas.

That's obviously very important.

You know, we have a convention authority, and the way it works is that once it's set up by the event, all you do is scan a QR code and then you can have a real time translation of whoever speaking at the front on your phone in I think it's twenty five languages. And one of the cooler parts about it is that they also trained it with different dialects.

Okay, I was gonna say, so is this generative AI?

It's a lot of training training data, Jobert.

Is it a generative model?

Is it?

And you a technology?

Is it?

Basically?

I believe it's a generative model, right.

So my one concern with that, and I'm glad that you mentioned dialects is everyone that I've talked to about I can't speak any other languages. I can barely speak English. I thus have no experience with it. But everyone I talked to is like, there are these subtleties. Yeah, it sounds like so how with extra dialects.

So it's like all good things.

It's a very human solution to that, where they just have a lot of really trained people that you know, pretty consistently are checking the models to make sure that they're they're working. It's it's not They don't just set it to the side. They were really big on this. They don't just set to the side and hope it works that. They are pretty consistently checking it with a group of trained professionals.

One of the reasons I love having you here is being able to respond with this, which is Vegas is quite intolerant of bullshit. Weird for this place. It's the you can bring whatever you want to see, yes, but it's like, oh, you want to sell to our beautiful casinos, with our beautiful slot machines that bring us off.

We love our money.

Thank you, thank you. You understand we love our slots. Why we don't spend we don't have state income tax. Our beautiful slot machines. We love them, folks. But it's like Vegas is quite intolerant of just shit that don't work, because ship that don't work is extremely unprofitable.

Yeah, and a lot.

When you're working in the hospitality industry, your main job is to keep people happy.

And when you.

Want Vegas people are babies.

And when you are running into tech issues and this was again this professor. He's giving me all my lines.

What was the professor's name.

Oh, let me get it out.

Don't worry about no, no, no, no.

Look, this show can be quite cynical and hitty, and I say words that people don't like, and they get upset with me, and they email me every day and they say.

Ed, I hope you die.

And I imagine the cyber trucking you ed. I imagine the Ford f one fifty ed, I sort of a Ford f one fifty rapped or hang you you bounced and you you went in so much.

His name is a met or dem.

He is a resorts sorry, the chair of Unovis Resorts Gaming and Golf Management department.

And I imagine a prius anyway. But that's the thing. I want these people on here because there is a thing I love about Vegas, where there is a dishonest on this day. It's just you can't just fling shit here because it's a very working class city. It's a very it's a pragmatic city in many, many different ways. So it's kind of like, I'm more willing to humor the idea that they would have this translation thing. Yeah, just because putting aside all my feelings, Vegas would simply

But I mean, when you're running a com I mean especially comments like ces having real time translation when I think every panels in English.

Yeah, Anglo well, anglers, anglophote.

Anglo centric when you know, I'm talking people and there's a billion languages here, and you mentioned working class. Another part of this is for at story I'm publishing later. I talked to the Culinary union about their tech protection.

Cool. What did they say?

So they have they've.

Been working since twenty eighteen, probably longer actually, but they've got protection since twenty eighteen, specifically regarding tech replacing workers with that. When tech gets introduced to that would affect someone's job, they have to and they negotiated this. They get a six month notice and part of that there's there's kind of two things that come out of that. One that gives them time to kind of work out

Break the backs of the workers here.

Yeah, And so with that time they were able to get a fix, no problem. And what it also does that if a job gets eliminated or if a position is eliminated that like Vegas has a there's plenty of jobs, so especially in the hospitality industry. So it gives people the time to find somewhere else within you know, the industry, stay with the union and you know, keep their pension. And there's also a pretty decent severance package if your job is eliminated from the attack.

So fucking cool working union man.

No, I simply accept no substitute thing.

Like I live here in people like edge. You live in a vending machine and that's why I like it. But also there are actual really strong unions. Yeah, there's a strike. I've been covering it Virgin. Yeah yeah, so what's the strike? I care way more about that than the do.

Oh yeah yeah yeah, So they've been on strike for a little bit. Now regarding which who is this is?

The argument from Virgin They couldn't afford anything?

Yeah?

And how true was that?

So it's hard because their private company, Yeah, so kind of. So they used to have their casino run by Mohegan, which you can look like the tribe, right, so like you you can look at that data and their casino or I think it was the only one that was I think losing money, which isn't great. So again they do have a point, like Virgin is not a super successful hotel when it comes to its casino. But what they what the union keys pointing at is all you know,

Yes. So I just want to be clear, Kyle can't say this and is no way offering any opinion on what I'm going to say, which is solidarity. Now, fuck you virgin. Now moving on, what else have you seen the Vegas related while you've been here?

Yeah, So the other.

Major Vegas company I was looking at was a robotic company that's been here for a while.

That's rich tech.

Okay, tell me about them.

So they work on a couple different things. So you have like this atom it's called Adam. It's a bartender robot. And when I was at the booth for cees. It was kind of interesting because I.

Didn't see demos of the robot making drinks.

But it was a bartender.

Yeah, it's like a bartender robot, so it has two arms, you can do everything. And the thing that surprised me was like the main thing that brought people over to the booth was when the robot was dancing to Apa Tu by Bruno Mars and I think.

Familiar to a song since two thousand and seven your views.

It is funny that they had the robot partender not making drinks, but it was like.

It might have been at some point when I was there, it wasn't.

It was consoling another robot, right, better than.

Go back to so But the the thing, it was interesting because it was drawing a crowd by its little dance with the music. And I was talking to someone with the company and they were like, you know, the.

The show of it, the spectacles.

I asked like, you know, at what point do we get past a spectacle and into just being there?

And he's like, spectacles part.

Of the cell. This is Vegas quiet, spectacles part of the cell.

Yeah, that's also CS too though, right, like it seems like the Vegas.

Is honest about it.

Yeah, yeah uh.

And then they had another system that was a lot more utilitar. And you also, by the way, can find some of their robots at all the Boyd Gaming or not all of them.

But what are the Boyd Gaming for?

That's like the Awe strip, that Sam's Town and those ones. Yeah, somebody was telling me about there was the it's.

At the Orleans Alante. I might be pronouncing that wrong. Sorry, I'm new here.

And sun Coast cool.

So they'll have like delivery robots like delivering food and then this other robots Skylark and that's more like getting a robot to clean floors and make deliveries and stuff like that. And so, I mean, you know, like all things, the main one of the main things preventing it from

Baby much of that maybe.

Do exactly.

So you have the bartender robot, which is I have the price can it tend bar clean, I mean, like actually drinks reliably.

How does it accept the drink order?

Yeah, I'm sure aware of how drinks.

I'm not sure.

I know the drink make a little hand motion, but he also probably does. It also come with like an inventory.

System, Like I'm not sure exactly how its inventory system works, but i know for like Tipsy Robot, which is kind of like the other that's actually at the Phenician.

Yeah, there's one downstairs and that has like f.

That's like a the point of sales system where you just kind of like tap on a tablet and it gives you the drink. So I imagine it will be something similar to that. I'm not positive, but I imagine its probably a similar system.

To robot because it feels like it probably it's probably not too hard for them to be like, okay, as long as we catalog and keep every single drink in a certain place, and maybe if you like make a request that's outside the bounds of the inventory, then it says.

Do you mean Yeah.

I feel bad about these though, because there are two cities that have my heart, New York and Las Vegas, Like it was my favorite. I got here in a weird way, and I will probably leave here in a weird way. But the thing is, the bartenders here are fascinating, that's fun to talk to. I don't want to rope at replacing them, because first of all, I don't believe Robert will do his good job. But also that was not me coughing for any ironic reasons. I really was

This kind of comes back to another one of the things that we kind of keep bumping up against with going down there is this idea that somehow the important thing I understand it from a business perspective, but from any other perspective, the idea that you want to remove human interaction from every process and every transaction.

The thing I I keep saying this.

I asked them about that, and both this company and I think Atomics also to this. They don't want to replace humans. They want them to like work alongside them.

They want to augment them.

The phrase, the phrase I was told was coba.

That parallel, So it's cobot.

So instead of it being a robot replacing you, it's one you work with.

That is loathsome Well, I don't like the idea of like, unless the robot is like doing annoying things, you don't.

Want a robot understudy.

Yeah, what if?

What if it just what if it just sat on your arm and looked at you and blinked?

Sometimes?

Was that the pet?

Yeah, we've heard.

Good things weirdly like previous episodes, but yeah, they're kind of like.

Look, I don't I was not initially that into the idea, but.

It's very it's very large eyes like I have my cat and I love my.

Yeah, a lot of people are living things. But yeah, that the cobot thing.

I just Also, it sounds like something said by someone who has not worked a job in a while.

It also sounds like the hyper loop shit where it's basically it takes two people to get two people into a car that then takes them someplace.

But it's not.

And then you had the pro public of story that came out this week about which was about what about him to do something bad?

This don't tell me if you did something I want to.

Do something against I mean no me.

Oh yes, I got when I went over to the convention center yesterday, and it was fully the dumbest shit I've ever done in my life.

I really loved it. I thought it was amazing.

Yeah, I need to give this a proper read.

But pro Public published a piece of car Elon's Elon Musk Boring Company is tunneling beneath Las Vegas with a little oversight.

Oh really, Well, I'm sure they're probably doing a good job.

That's the weird thing, though, It's like this city seemed more resistant to that kind of stuff. Are they just letting him dig tunnels because it gets the money?

Well, I mean it's I have not covered the enough to answer that.

That's fine, No, sorry, I must be clear. I'm not holding you to account here. You didn't do the reporting. But it's just like it feels like such an aberration because one of the things that destroys people about Vegas is that everything is convenient at all times. Everything is fifteen minutes exactly, thank god. Damn. It's so good that real resident here which is five months, three years baby,

Is this what they mean by fifteen minute cities when you hear that phrase, Yes, yes, I start a place.

It's a fifteen minute city run by cars.

Yeah. Actually that's really weird.

I'm so glad you're on the last episode. This is valuable information about Vegas. The thing is the result of every proclivity Jesus Christ being available at all times, is that Vegas is just like no, man, I understand, you got this new tech and you're very horny and you raised all this money, like very exciting. However, you're between the beautiful slot machines and our beautiful customers, who are anyone who is here, and they ain't going to PRIM.

So ye had a pretty bad believe they are pretty bad gaming.

And by the way, if they ever find a way to get people quicker to PRIM one hundred billion dollar industry, I'm just giving people like that. Primm is a city that is far further than it looks.

Oh it's Nevada. You guys, did one of those that's cool.

No, yes, in the sense that there is a strange authority with money that has created the city.

He's ambitious.

It's a strange, but I don't have enough prim exp some shrooms.

And going to Robert, Let's find Silica Valley's Eldorado.

But the launcher point is that Vegas is intolerant of things, not because of good or bad, but because of efficiency.

Oh yeah, it's all bad efficiency.

And that's the weird thing. Cus exists in this very inefficient way here and it's just Vegas is like, I'll take.

A little well yeah, I mean it's it might be inefficient for the tech industry, but it's a great money maker for the city, which.

Is a great description in Vegas. I mean, this may destroy you, but it.

May you know, it might not be great for you know, there's AI being put into everything all that stuff, but I mean, look, it's a very large conference that the city makes good money off of. And we just had a recent F one report or at recent November gaming revenue report and F one not performing the way people want it to. So I mean these conventions are in I mean, they keep the city afloat, especially I mean when people couldn't travel here in twenty twenty. I mean

Like this is a working class city, and when you think about c s a lot of engineers and such, Vegas is a place which is very working class. And the effects of these conferences are quite pronounced.

Yeah, and it's important, it's important for the city.

So very meaningful. Ending for a third of the episode that mister David rothwork and people find you.

Defector dot com the website and I do the distraction podcast there.

Well you're on okay, Well just move past that. You messed up the order there.

Oh I did. I'm sorry.

No, no, no, no, it's gone.

I don't get any second shot at this working people take it over.

I am still do it.

Another cut it.

I'm still on X believe it or not.

I told the Everything app.

Yeah, I'm on there too, but I only only for banking. Don't use it for social network.

I use it.

I put my cat scans in there. Ye see what Crock tells me about it.

It's like, l.

You have disease.

Your discs are very cheeky, you get the elon butt head last when it uploads successful, you're like, cool, it's processing way, Kyle, where could people actually find you?

Kyle Underscore Schnard C H O U I N A R D.

And then the Las Vegas Sun dot com or just Las Vegas Sun dot com, edam Gwaiso Junior.

I am on uh Twitter and blue Sky the Foreign Agent Registry of the shack up in I won't say it for which country, we can guess. For my newsletter it's uh the tech Bubble dot substack dot com. And for my podcast this Machine Kills.

You can find me at Where's your Head dot at for my newsletter and the podcast is called Better Offline. And you're thinking this seems way too honest for it. What's he gonna do to me next? And the answer is nothing. This is a clean break. We're about to go to some advertisements and you're gonna listen to them intently or else you are committing crimes against me. And I know you love the crimes you do on this show.

I'm so tired. I've watched so many steps this week.

I feel like I have new energy. That's the problem. I'm going into the last day with more energy than I have when I arrived.

That's that's that's another Cees miracle.

It's it's beautiful. Kyle Shanad from the Las Vegas Sun either and of course Edward and Guiso Junior. Hellow, that's really bad. Yeah, Kyle, you were at the same panel. Tell me about this panel.

So it was this panel done by a number of tech companies. Adobe had a spokesperson there as well as one of the DHS Science and Technology at representatives. It was ostensibly about like deep fakes, AI generated like information UH and disinformation and misinformation. And I've been to a lot of these panels over the years. I went to one last year at ce YES put on by Deloitte. That was that was actually okay. And then I went to a few at them at the r NC earlier last.

Year, and that's the Republican National Convention.

Correct, correct, So you know it's a good good, uh good panel for journalists to go to speaking of speaking of disinformation. But yeah, I I uh, this was on Thursday that we were we we walked into the LVCC, went to this panel and it was uh one one person in front of me did fall asleep?

Yeah, I thought it was.

What was the panel about?

Also, it was about U misinformation, disinformation and deep fakes.

Uh.

And I think if you didn't know much about it, it probably could be a little shuffle. But for I think as audience, maybe not as much.

Yeah, yeah, I mean it was. It was talking about you know, various various tools to identify, uh, like AI generated or or or deep faked like information or or you know like you know, pictures, videos, and you know how a whole bunch of the previous like visual tactics. Right a few years ago, it's pretty easy to spawn a AI image. It's maybe slightly harder now. It depends on the model. But how you know, how with with with how fast that kind of that is developing, especially

Providence was the word of the day.

Yes, that was the That was the word that they that they used was these uh, these providence systems as opposed to like, uh detection systems, which is like you know, like like post post post talk, you know, we we will use we will use that against you know, AI or suspected AI content. Uh that was you know, maybe not generated with this built in information.

Yeah.

So how was the panel though? Was it useful? Like did it make profound statements or was this more cslop.

I mean I wouldn't call it c yes slop because there's the oh yeah, the ones where you just sit there for half an hour and go like a, well that was half an hour I could be doing something else. Yeah, I mean it was good for you know, learning the basics. And they talked about, you know how like you mentioned, it was a lot easier to detect things a while ago.

I mean, if you go on X be everything.

App as I do for my Bankking of course.

I mean I I go into I can't even read the comments anymore because I have to scroll through a billion in blue checks, and so many of them are just like uh, obviously AI generated based off analyzing the image and then writing the most basic comment possible.

So I wish there was a little more focus on that, if.

You want to no, sure, I mean like that is that is a massive section of it. And this is something even I asked a question about at the Republican National Convention at Microsoft panel being like you have all these tools for like AI images, right, you know, images of politicians and in debaucherous acts, you know, all all

And also do you mean creating data to specifically push vote in one direction?

Well yeah, yes, but like but you know, like you if you're working for a campaign and you want to target specific voters, you can analyze their social media presence, you know, whatever kind of information about them is in certain data seats that can be bought and and make you know, an AI written press release specifically for them.

And like, I mean I walked up to y'all afterwards, and I was like, I guess the lesson is that we're all screwed.

Yeah, we all, we all are screwed. I mean that was the main takeaway.

That was what the DHS was saying, which I was like, maybe, oh god, that was the main takeaway I had.

Was everyone pretty much saying like this is going to get worse, and it's an arms and like all the stuff is an.

Arms and it is and like you know, they they gestured towards you know, quote unquote bad guys or like you know, foreign state actors specifically Iran, does you know a lot of work on this? Russia? But and you know, I think in some ways to focus on those two might be kind of lifted as the new is the new administration focuses more on China, but specifically for like for like just disformation using AI tools. Iran and Russia. Like the past year has been like the main players targeting US voters.

It is so wild. We just have I'm this is a real dumb guy statement. Do we just have other countries who are just fucking with the US citizen tree and it's just like a thing that happens.

Oh yeah, it's a huge it's like a it's a it's a huge project.

Disidered an act of war.

Yeah, I mean it's it's it's an extension of like Cold War stuff, right, like it's.

So we just have wars that are like not really yeah yeah, yeah, pretty much. I mean, I mean, I'm also describing how colonial Britain work by paying people not to like teach people to write. So I realized I'm like the Bill Belichick of But it's just very frustrating to hear this stuff and not really know what to do about it because it could happen here. Does amazing welk on disinformation for something as like a person?

Okay no, but no, no, okay, you know, it is a huge problem and there really isn't much to do realistic like we have tried to make fact checking work the past few years, and I don't think Americans are that much better at identifying false or genuine information. Like fact checking has kind of failed as a as like a large as a large project.

I almost feel like what they actually need is vibe checkers. I mean, they need someone, but it's why do I feel bad looking at this? What I'm saying is everyone needs therapy.

Jesus Christ, astrologers and estate.

State mandated therapy is the solution here.

Yeah, definitely a state mandated vibe checker. Is this real?

I would apply to be checker? What do you think about this? It's not.

Big.

Don't read the end of Jiu Jitsu Kaise and it's a very disappointing manga, very unfair. The end of Demons LA have far better seven similar, terrible ending. It took out the US superhero.

Joe's bizarre adventure is holding up?

It was normal. I didn't know. Look, think you were weaves. That is interesting. I am I appreciate other cultures. Oh, I don't give a ship.

I'm a huge weave.

Do you know what I'm wearing?

I was wondering if that was a reference. You look like you might explain this one gap because I don't know.

I don't guess.

No, like Anti Anti was it that one?

No, there's no chainsaw man right, No?

No, Oh, I thought you were one of those agents.

It's one of the club ones or in high school, yes, host club one yes, just to be clear, is the best dressed of any of us and also fucking rocking like an actual Manger related outfit and nailing it.

I spent a lot of money on this as you should have looks great. I I I found. I found a very nice blue blazer that I defaced by putting on the orange patch.

This is good. This good. I've been admiring your fits. I feel like back home. I'm usually I'm usually dressed the best dress and dressed best.

Your pants are fantastic.

I appreciate it.

I appreciate it, but no one's saying anything about me.

Good personally. I think you should have gone with the aviator shades.

I think you should have gone with the shade I would love. But I was talking about this with with my boss Robert Evans last night. We should bring the men's wear a guy here one year. I have him walk around.

Ceyes, you have anticipated. He's also not cheap, No, he wants no.

Derek guy is legend.

I love him, and he also knows what he's worth and should he should It's a pro labor podcast.

Is that his name Derek Derek, which is so fucking.

Funny to be like the menswear guy, and your second name is guy.

Very very cool. I would I would love for him to walk around the show floor. I think it could do some real psychicama.

It doesn't rate my fing. I never want him to put his I have so on on me.

I say this with my not quite parasocial but here's my Derek Guy's story. So I lost a lot of weight this year. And this is not a me trying to actually conjure up people saying anything. I'm fine. What I'm saying is I lost all the weight and I bought a bunch of clothes and I took a picture and I'm like, I still feel like shit. So I emailed Derek Guy, as one normally does in tears, and

Responded, yeah, there, he's like the chump ski fashion.

For the.

He's still responding, well, this is kind of what I was addressing with Gare, which is he isn't there to eighty six people. He's there to try and explain what looks and feels good. And he talks about clothing his social language. And he said, you have no aesthetic. You're wearing like trainers with like a threadbelt. My shit was busted. I look terrible because of the clothes, not because of me.

Occasionally you see a very well dressed Asian businessman fucking rocks, and then you see a lot of a lot of Asian, a lot of Asian businessmen in very ill fitting suits. But occasionally you'll see one guy who has that ship on.

Yes, I did see someone who had that ship on and they were like looking at other people's fits. Would discuss That's.

What I've been doing all week, baby fashion ped.

I really I should have gone up to him and talked to him.

Yeah, you have notes about the convention, rapp, Why this is my actual job. Okay, yeah, I forgot why we have we just you know, yeah, at the YAP index is over five thousand right now, Japanese, can please bring us back to why we're actually well?

So, I guess one thing I was spending almost all of yesterday doing, as we've been intundated with these AI products, is is learning about all of the AI products targeting your offspring, your kids who are being raised now with AI the same way my generation was raised with social media.

Nice son of mine.

This is like cocoa melon ship where it's like put this in front of your kid, or it's like the vice, like consumer products for the anxious parent.

You know, both these things kind of these these things canna kind of overlap. The first thing I did yesterday morning was a TENDED panel called Raising AI Kids Responsibly. Great title because this could either mean you're making an AI child that you get to raise, or it's about how do you raise kids in the world at AI? And now it was the latter. I kind of wanted the former.

I hate all of it.

It was bad, Uh it was. It was in some ways it was bad and you know, a little bit cringe. But there's also some interesting you know stuff set here. There was two products that were that were displayed. One of them was from this company called ready Land, I believe partners with Amazon. It's basically like it's an AI story book that interacts with an Alexa machine. Now, one thing about them that I think is actually really good.

Just one idea.

As the father of a son, the son of a mother, a brother of a sister, you can do this thing when you're reading to your child where you can think of something else.

I understand, And this is what my parents did to me and macination. This is what I was thinking about. Like in the panel, I'm like, yes, this is this is cool. You know, it's safer than a whole bunch of the other other stuff I'm seeing. But how this kind of steals away the joy of reading to your kids.

When my little brother is growing up, you just don't realize how bad shit child is.

So I avoid talking about my son in general. I won't name him because I believe he should have his own destiny. But one of the most wonderful parts of being a father is having my son come and talk to me about something he just thought up, and it will be something Minecraft related, and he will explain something I did not know about Minecraft, and you will, like, he will explain something in such detail that I've never even considered in my life, and it's something quite simple.

Yeah, no totally, I mean my bit, Yeah, it's beautiful.

Yeah, And it's like the idea of depriving children of this makes me so.

Fucking actually, especially when it's targeting like five year olds, which is like where it gets more upsetting to me.

And taking the fucking parenting thing of having an imagination about what your child could be is so fucking sickening.

I'm getting angry this is now. Unfortunately, like I actually felt relatively better about this product. So it's basically kind of just like it's kind of it's kind of just a visual It's kind of it's kind of just like a visual novel, you know, like like those uh like those visual novel games. But you have much you have physical books you're reading now. Compared to the other product called Poe the AI Teddy Bear, which I also saw, so much worse is it? It is what it sounds like.

He putting my tongue in my cheek. When did I do when I'm pissed off about?

Side is gonna hang out? You're low key tweaking right, I'm like names places he did talk about. He's like, you know, like chat GPT does does have guardrails for content. But but those guardrails you know, don't always reliably work, but they're better than nothing, and and and content moderation is an issue that we're working on. I'm like, yeah, but your product is hit the market like you are selling, we're.

Working on moderation. Isn't a great answer?

No, not a good answer. And this is something like even even the other guy with like the AI storybook mentioned, He's like, it's pretty easy to make like your AI kids toy not say swear words or even even even like you talk about like sex or drugs. But one

They don't even understand how the training data truly interacts with the system totally, they don't know how this shit truly works. The only useful thing in quantum computing related to AI right now is the fact that they can actually have models that can discern what the training data does. So the idea of my child interacting with all of these I realize now like nothing actually makes me angry other than harms to my child, at which point I might actually go falling down mode.

So it's such a good movie too.

It's such a great movie.

That's a good movie.

Now.

The other the last part of the last thing about this panel is that it was it actually opened with this person from the company Ido Ido Play Lab Partnerships, who was the first company to partner with Sesame Workshop to make to make apps for kids. So I'm like, this is interesting, Like Sesmei Workshop usually I consider I consider being like pretty pretty thoughtful in how they produce media for kids, and like, if they're choosing to partner with this company, maybe I'll listen to what they say.

Sure, so I feel like more attention to the details isn't bad.

Sure, and like this is this is what she said her uh, her data like showed and and you can you can look you can look this stuff up on their website. The main question she asked is what if the tech savvy generation gen Z isn't buying what we're selling anymore?

Fucking hell, imagine the customer does the thing you're building.

Uh, she said, Like, you know, gen Z is typically seen as early as like early adopters, early users, and they usually are, but they also come with the most amount of informed opinions about how badly the tech feels, how cringing it is to use, and how it affects their sense of humanity.

So so the issue is that they know what's up.

They know what's up, which was you know, if you're in businesses is like as either a hurdle to overcome or some insights to help you, you know, maybe maybe pivot or change in a completely different direction. She identified like the key areas of tension around AI for gen Z is one creative expression.

Uh.

You know, it's its ability to you know, have us feel proud of the art that we make and how it affects human relationships. And she she brought up a few questions or like examples of of the types of stuff that she's that she's like you know, asking asking people, uh, as a part of this data collections, Like let's say you've let's say let's say you've had a friend breakup?

Right, Sorry, it's fucked up because the idea of tech at least ten years ago was they would bring us closer together and would allow for deeper connections. Now it's like, buddy, like, yeah about that, you want to connect with the computer.

I mean, this is what happens when I mean all these you know, this is what happens when everyone starts reading Marcus Aurelius a little too closely.

So true, I don't know that reference. I am an idiot. People need to stop quoting books to me.

I think that you don't know.

Yes, yes, ed, Yes, Actually, Russell Croche will say that one of the funniest things on Twitter, which is he responded to one of the CNN reports I believe at the time and he was just like blocked blogger, which is one of the funniest things to say. Anyway, let's just ignore my forty.

But this was the same thing that she was talking about. It is like, you know this thing where that what we're all seeing is like these air products designed to replace the role of human friendship. And another thing she presented as like this like surprising the problem of meeting people. No, no, it's it's it's it's it's it's actually helping you like overcome the fact that you like lost a friend. It's trying to be like, hey, it's okay. If you lost

Mean the solution to like this loneliness epidemic, especially young people are going through. I can't imagine is more robots, you know.

And yeah, one thing I keep thinking that's driving alienation.

One of these guys who did who does? Like these companion bought chat bought sites. I think character AI, you're like, oh, okay, well, you know, you seem in interviews to be earnest about like people are lonely. Maybe we can't replace, but we can offer a salve that helps people get back to the point where they have human friendships. Again, what does

Top as well, because the idea of an AI you can bounce ideas off of, is not inherently a rib idea. We sit there, we think about shit, and the idea of having a log of it. I general a great deal and I think many people listening to this, dude, there's an idea of looking at this, but are like, yeah, what if your journal was a person.

Can help it gets worse?

Oh yeah.

The next thing that choose as an example is like, what if there's an AI that's trained on your preferences to train on your dating preferences what you like aesthetically and what if that could instead go on your first dates for you? What what? What if?

What if this is literally a black mirrors?

What what if this could like handle like icebreaker questions and like and like get over like hard life experiences easier for you.

One of my favorite little perverse things was there once said one time said he doesn't like sex. What he would like he's just a Slovenian philosopher psychoanalytics.

That's a lot he's you know, he means, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And he was talking about how the ideal sexual encounter for him is two people taking their sex toys and those sex toys playing with each other.

Exactly, and this is this is exactly what that's disgusting, and the ideal, the.

Ideal perversion, the pure perversion of that is two people using those sex toys together to get each other off.

No, that's great, that's wonderful.

Good perversions pro sex podcast Christ the the the one where you send an avatar.

That different, completely autonomous from from you and evil. And it was like this is this is why what she was saying was so odd because like she presented this as like a surprising revelation that that gen Z would rather live life themselves than have an AI live your life for you, and like like that was what she was trying to say, but it was so odd having that presented like some like surprising like exclusive fact that you can only get through like data research and and

Like, yeah, how old are you?

I'm in my early twenties.

Sorry, I didn't want to get so gen Z. Yeah, Yeah, how do you feel about these assumptions?

I mean, like again like this is these are questions that she's like that she's imposing to like you know, focused groups of of of like Jami, but like but they're really pandering, They're they're there.

Is it accurate?

Well no, because they assume such a base level of stupidity that they're like kind of offensively like even like framed the fact that I would be like would you rather have an AI go on dates for you?

Like?

Why why would you ever ask me that? That's that? That's fucking stupid?

Some of the fun parts about romance. Wow, set the word correctly. They're always saying this about me with how words go? Is fucking up about exact of yourself that get banged off someone and you feel that you learn about yourself exactly.

And that's and that's what she was saying, is like that's act atually what people want. People don't people don't actually want AI telling to to like live your life, you shouldn't take and and and and she and she she specifically provided to push back against this idea in in the in the tech industry, where like the smoothest possible path is the best one, right, you you want you want, you want to like optimize every part of life, and like what if that optimization actually isn't the point?

It's like a it's a very maybe I'm getting this reference wrong. It's a very like Patrick Baateman Bateman like things of like I am optimizing everything to the tea and I will you keep it, keep it going?

I mean no specifically in his in the book, you know that is like the sort of train of thought he has. This he's like kind of imp empty, engaging with life at the very superficial, craving something else.

Like the final point she had is like and again this is all it's all kind of panderings, like you're saying like you're saying, like gen Z, but like this is like acrossing a lot of people, like but she said, like gen Z doesn't trust AI to understand the nuance of their lives and minial of course, but yes, like it was not a panel because on one hand you have these like like AI toys for kids, and then you have this woman with this company that works as

So, as we approach the final second of the thirds of Better Offline, Yeah, where can people find you?

Well? I am I am on X the the Everything at Hungry bow Tie as well as Blue Sky at Hungry boy Tie, at Hungrybowtie dot Social and it could happen here and the podcast with me Robert Evans and a few of our other colleagues where recover sometimes tech but you know, politics, culture, just disinformation, all that kind of fun stuff that greases the wheels of our society.

Yummy, Kyle, I can be found on X the Everything app I've Got.

Kyle Underscore Schnard and then my my writing's on Las Vegas.

On dot com.

Oh yeah, and Edward Guaso Junia.

You can I in the real world. I live at sixteen hundred Pencils in the Avenue Northwest in Washington, d C s code two zero five zero zero.

That's a nice neighborhood.

It's it's kind of nice. It's got a great view of everything.

Nice.

What else? I'm at a big black Jacobin on Twitter and Blue Sky and This Machine Kills is my podcast, and the Tech Bubble dot Substack dot com is my newsletter.

You are approaching the final third of the final two part episode of the Consumer Electronics Show, and I just want to say something to you, which I'll elongate at the end of this. I'm so grateful for you giving me your patients. With this, I will say, I need you to listen to the ad. I don't know actually what happens after I'm done talking. I never do. Frankly, I barely understand what I'm doing when I am talking. Because Madisowski over here heals Jesus Christ. I can't even say,

Hello, Hello, Hello.

We're at the end of CES. We have one more positive masculine e day coming after this, but this is really the close out, as all of us just slop ourselves into the remaining quarters of this convention center. I could not have had more fun if I tried, But next year I'll try. Robert, how has the show been? How would you summarize the show?

It was great?

I mean, obviously AI is here to stay. This is the worst it's ever gonna be. Everything's thank you, only gonna get better and thank God. You know, there's this little kid that I helped take care of and it takes a lot of time, as you know, as a father, ed a lot of time and a lot of effort to raise a child, and I'm just excited that TCL has a solution to that problem.

We can do.

It's what I've always dreamed, which is that you keep like a hamster like feeder and a water like you just took up a hose to the room and you lock the child in with a robot until they're eighteen or twenty like the room exactly.

Yeah, it's perfect.

You know, as long as you get like one of those lights that gives you some sun kind of effect, you know, they won't die probably, like and that's ideal.

Have you introduced this product?

I I'll introduced Oh wait, no, no, we have not just into the disparagement.

No, I'll move on.

No, I mean this is in the we had talked about how like cute little guys are part of the like that again about me, it's but that like this, the TCL is the most I looked at this also, and they have like a whole little video of like a towheaded child interacting with this thing. Yes, and his parents, the kid's parents are kind of like standing off to the side being like super listen, do you want to like go to the movies or whatever?

But it's the most.

It's probably the cutest of the cute little guys, but then also easily the most sinister, the most evil. Yeah, it's the most sinister.

Well, and you stray towheaded.

I didn't disagree with with Garrison, So I'm wondering how you thought, because I felt like they cast that child because it looked like he had leukemia definitely.

Well, I don't want to say anything bad about the kid, right, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yes he did.

Well.

What he looked like was honestly the scenario you described, which is basically like we're growing a child the way that people grow mushrooms.

Yes, in their house. Yes, it looks like.

Yeah, huge bags under his eyes. Never seen the kiss of the sun or his mom.

You do not know what vitamin sees is, little boy, But don't worry or d d well.

Pfirst robot specifically for children that look the way the actor Brad Doroff looks right now, designed for that.

I don't know who that is.

I am the host of this fucking thing. You need to Okay, so we've also got Phil our bartender. We should talk in Hello. Thank you Phil, very good. That's enough, thank you. I really don't know how to direct this at this point because I invited like seven people into camp. Okay, well with us, let's start on an easy point. We'll just go around has everyone feeling at this point of

Now a challenge. You haven't had all the conversations I've had with care. What am I doing?

I don't know.

I feel fine. It gets I was able to find some cool stuff despite having to sort through lots of slop. There's always one or two gems at cees that makes kind of all like that that makes all of this slop sorting worth it. So I was happy to find a few of those in Eureka Park. I also had my my family no, absolutely not, we're not We're not gonna do free publicity. Agreed, that's my job and it costs money anyway.

But no.

I was also able to have a little bit of fun. As soon as I realized that this show is just gonna be last year's show again, I kind of relaxed myself, being like I can just kind of do what I can kind of just like funk off. So I talked to a flying car company. It was real. I was waiting to interview someone and instead one of their like pr guys walk up to me is like, hey, can we interview you about your thoughts on this flying car.

Though?

Oh I did hell and so I talked a lot about like my concerns around safety for these flying cars. I I predicted it has twenty minutes in the air. It was actually it was a huge drone and I got exactly right.

It was.

It was a.

Twenty minutes up in the air. It launches from something something that looks like a cyber truck. It launches, it launches out of the classic and it launches out of like the trunk of the cyber truck. You can get twenty minutes in the air and then you're gonna crash or which is my god, you will have some kind of AI assisted landing, And like I asked them, like yeah,

Why.

I don't know what kind of PR trading these guys had. I don't know if they were prepared to this.

Is like good enough PR training that they were Like this person seems nice, Let's ask them what they think.

Turning to my turn to my class, like just killed you killed, like just gun in your mind, just don't. Don't also diet, like it's the best way you could go about this.

But you would get into commercial aviation and not have an answer. The nine to eleven question is is just.

That's in the past, so I was able to relax and have fun, you know, with moments like that, you had fun, you know, once it became clear, it was just like, you know, like AI software was like the king of this year once again, a whole bunch of things that used to be like, you know, actually kind of like all of the like university projects in Eureka Park,

I feel like we're in the slop society. I feel like we're at this point where everyone here, I think, is experiencing some form of mental damage from being here too long. Oh yeah, but also the thing, to be clear, definitely least the one commonality I have with Robert, which is Robert is the only person I've seen exhibit the same thing of like the Jokers feel where you're just like You're like it gets worse and I get better.

I get with the more pain I get.

He's also the only person that I saw that I recognized on the floor of the South Hall of the Conventions that are where it was just like cell phone cases, like not technology, but just like Chinese stuff designed to be sold on Amazon.

That's where Robert his best was.

And he was he was like locked in.

I was like hey, and he got like some of the way past me was like, do you fucking need something or whatever, like, oh man, it's from yesterday.

Table that we were at. Oh my god.

In my defense, there were really huge cell phones there, like massive, like it literally and inho and a half.

Thick rugged cell phones.

Okay, And to look at them, I had to touch them. We're not reporting on them, I have nothing to say about them.

I had to feel them.

Are we establishing that Rubbert Evans accidentally Big Times people, is that what we're saying.

I did not feel big Times. I was just like, damn this guy, I will.

Give the most derisive view of I did not know who Robert Evans was before August twenty twenty three, a fact I am regularly reminded of by everyone else. They mentioned Robert Evans too, Oh my god, the behind the Bastards guy, and I was like, Eh, this is a fucking guy with the weird avatar. Oh you want to do podcasts, but the.

Fucking ass what you're gonna do about it?

Mayah need money? It turns out I already a corporation. Thank you, no negative statements right now, all of you. I actually need this. But nevertheless, it is really fun being here with Robert because Robert again is one of the only people who experiences CS in the way I do, which is the Metallica song Frantic, where you're just like, it's not great but you're here, Oh yeah, and it kind of bangs, but not for the reasons everyone else feels totally sat anger fans line up all three of us.

And speaking of Metallica, I heard a pretty good Master of Puppets cover at the MGM Grand in the top three covers of Master of Puppets I've heard on that exact same stage at the MGM Grand.

No longer interested in the text.

So where was this? It was right near the ski ball.

Okay, well I know where we're going. Dinner is canceled, fellas, That's where I'm going. But it is interesting because talking to the various reporters here about CS and why we do this, and no one can answer that question. But the way, it's just like I we're all fucking here every January. But it has been interesting. Gang one of four reports, like Kylin ging it could happen here, Robin, gare gang ed and Dave in like truly like I

Kyle totally.

Yeah, it's I thought that my main takeaway from the week was the politics of it.

I mean from I was at Panasonic's.

Keynote and immediately you had people from the Consumer Tech Association talking about tariffs. I mean I walked by people wearing Department of Government efficiency shirts.

Really yeah, which was really interesting.

Did you hit them? No?

Right, did not.

I'll take care of it. No, no, don't crime so bad.

But yeah, I mean, tariffs were just such a thing. I think a scene in articles I wrote about it. They were just kind of looming over the entire event, and it seems like, i mean, Trump coming in pretty pretty soon. It is just kind of hanging over everyone's heads on top of all the tech. So I mean, is that what, Who's Who's Donald Trump?

Trump?

No? Sorry, I'm drinking a bit. Yeah, I mean I'm trying to think of the political feeling.

Yeah, there's there's a political feeling there, and at the same time, CES is happening. You're seeing this shift from meta that's just just I mean, especially on their their new policies regarding comments about trans and and just other vegan people.

Yeah, what was it, something like you're allowed to say don't repeat.

Yeah, no I'm not.

But it's basically you can just insult trans people, you can sell get without any issue, Jewish people.

You can refer to women as property too, and you can actually I really like, I mean at this point, I'm just like you could say, well, I think it actually is worth mentioning, like specifically, like the types of like insults around like mental illness that you're now allowed to call to like call queer people but not call other types of people. Actually is worth actually is worth mentioning. Like it's a it's a huge change.

It's just an interesting show because it desperately wants to be a political, a moral totally bereft of these feelings, but it still shows it in the things they show, the collection of data, the kind of surveillance aspect. And it sucks because it feels like this show could be better because on the fringes of the conversations we've had of like, yeah, everyone's creating solutions for problems that they

Really some really impressive like tech to assist people who are disabled. Yeah, I thought accessibility tech was like my main Hi. Yeah, a lot of good That's what Eureka was best at show.

Yeah, it's weird that Eureka.

The Poisonville actually had some good shit in it for that, and it had I would say the one like consistent like form factor for consumer tech that seems to be getting a lot better every year, and that reminds me of like how phones and tablets felt ten years ago. Is glasses tell me like they're getting smaller, they're getting more capable. I'm seeing like glasses that are designed for navigation, that are designed for recording. I did see to what

Such a good business. Well, yeah, yeah, I had a full conversation with someone speaking Chinese. Yeah yeah, yeah, absolutely the same.

King That is objectively very cool.

It's great.

And was it a conversation with Nuance like it was?

Yeah, more than I'd have been able to do, you know on my before we talked about making specific specific dinner plans, what we do for work a real coper too.

This is the thing that I I and I've said this many times in episodes. I'm not anti tech. I wish tech was able to do the thing they promised, but I love technology. The only reason I know literally every person I'm looking at in this room is through posting. And I'm not even kidding. And this is the sickening thing that upsets my father. No, my dad's very proud.

That was the bit that I sort of was struck by again as like sort of somebody who hasn't covered this stuff as much and has had sort of, you know, the same sort of experience like a normal middle aged person's experience of tech. I was blown away by the capacities of the things that were there. I mean, like I didn't realize that it was like you could have a conversation with someone speaking in other language.

Like I didn't see anything that that cool.

But the accessibility tech stuff for me too, Like I found not just really impressive but really like heartening to see that. The bit that was strange and we obviously, like we have talked about this in previous episodes and stuff is the sort of contortions that are required in order to make that marketable in a way that like it's not like it's not a niche market to be like an old person or to be disabled like one way or another. That's like most people will experience that

People want to hear.

The mod which is also like another of the sort of political aspects here that you've got this like in some ways many in many ways like a sort of tempted not to use this word, but I will say that it is like a good hearted intention. It feels like, especially with the disability attech, that is like actually aimed at using this new human capability to make people's lives better. And yet you still have to fucking pitch it the sociopaths if you want to get the thing made.

And I say this is someone who runs a fairly successful podcast. I have fifty one thousand subscribers. I have a successful be off them. I've had emails about this. I have dyspraxia, which is a coordination disability. It limits my I'm wearing zip up boots, which look I'll bang in, but I can't tie my shoes. And this is an embarrassing thing about my life. I fucking hate tying things.

Totally.

Yeah, I mean that's one of the things that's disheartening is I was at like the Samsung booth, which is massive. You know, it's the size of a very large house, like a mansion, and every square foot is tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in terms of what the cost to rent it and the cost to Like these displays they've got are very advanced. A lot of effort is just going into making the presentation as

And you compare that too and Eureka Park.

Today we saw a company who had a small booth that was maybe like four feet wide five feet wide called Knaki in a qi that their attempt was to develop like a way to allow people to control computers and interface with their machine with their phone in a way that is similar to how neuralink works, but without any sort of surgery.

So it's an earpiece you wear in your head.

Oh yeah, we kind of made fun of this, but if this is real, awesome.

It seemed to like we like the use case.

We like the use case for people who are not able bodied. But what happened when we came up to the booth, The first pitch we got was for retail, and then the interest in it was like, Noah, what's real is you can use this if you are someone who's not really able to use your arms or to move the rest of your body. You can slightly tilt it and that makes more sense than like being able to do a sort of like a retail cashier U secondary labor productivity aim.

Yeah, I mean there was a because, like my mind was very much geared towards quadriplegics, but not just but the other because it won't work if you have as long as you have that muscular control like above your neck, like it will work because it reads micro gestures of your face and them the live demo they did, you could see the signal coming into the phone when he would make micro gestures and it would like it would you know, control the phone. So it's it seems like

Fucking works because we talked about it, it seemed to.

But it's like, but it seemed I don't have the ability to like sound though they did.

A conceptual yeah that so this is the thing because I think also there were three or four of them where it's.

Like, yeah, there were there were variations.

There was the one that was like almost like a retainer that you put in and it gave you the same It was a similar sort of idea.

Yeah you use your sorry sorry, yeah you used your tongue for it.

We were struck by that because it was a guy standing completely still with no expression on his face and a bunch of people standing around him recording them on their phones like this is like you've entered the daw Da.

Section of the here Eureka Park.

But but all of those booths together were like a tenth of Samsung's booth, and all of them were people utilizing significant ingenuity to attempt to solve problems For real human beings who were suffering as opposed to the Samsung booth, which was this massive edifice of capital attempting to solve the problem of like, well, what if your milk goes bad?

Yeah, I know, and you know, and that's the thing I think also, you know, to this like inventive stuff was the most interesting of a few friends when you're degenerative diseases and like the you know, some of the stuff that gets made and offered to be able to give finer control over tasks that you need to do, especially when you have sudden jumpson what you're you know,

You must show growth. You must be like this is how this is going.

To tell There should be no reason why you have to consider anything other than that mediate and and an urgent use case, which is like someone losing the ability to communicate with the outside of regulatory avoidance.

So from the earlier conversation we've had several times regarding regulatory power and authorized medical devices. So all of these products I have, I've sounded negative where you're trying to skirt and avoid these requirements. However, the agencies that certify them to want to help people. They want people to go through this process. So these are the things that the FDA loves to see. And it's hopeful.

Yeah, I mean the I guess you talking about capital.

I mean, the main worry is that if there's no growth opportunity for a product, then there's no investment, and and that's just it just kills products that have a one you know, use purpose.

Uh and there that's all there is to it, because that's all there needs to be to it.

And I think that's one thing that struck me as well, is everything needs to have beld and whistles that aren't usually necessary.

So one of the themes I've discussed on this show is the rock economy, the idea that everything has growth or costs. And some of you, at the very beginning with very unfair, you're saying that he's just angry at nothing. I'm angry at everything.

I love that when you do you Donald Trump voice. I can tell now I turn my head, but it's.

I hope it's been obvious how pernicious this problem is because there are companies doing really useful things, and I talk about my dyspraxia because I don't know whatever platform I have. I want people to realize, if you fucking have this and someone makes fun of you, give me their email. I will personally make them regret being online. This is a personal thing. I was bullied, I will bully back, very unfair to them. But the point is there are real solutions, the real problems, real things being

I did see a product that I would say was my best in show in terms of products that you see an ad for in the first three minutes of a zombie movie and then it causes the outbreak and like that's the end of the world scenario, and it was called Vera Doxo. It's a product that generates a miss noise sweeps over your fruits and vegetables to stop.

The most spoilt using plasma plasma. And here's the thing they explained this to me.

They said, it extends the shelf life of like you can put this little box up and it'll it'll get the missed over groceries in your kitchen, or you can use it in like a in a grocery store to get all of the great and it'll extend the shelf life by thirty three percent. And that's a real thing that's massive, right, Like this, I have no ability to vet this based on what I know from Like I'm like absolutely no ability to bet.

I'm gonna hat that missed I'm not I'm gonna huff that I did.

Buddy, didn't get high, so tasteless as far as I'm so quick question anyone.

It's like, if that's a shelf life of your vegetables leaves you glowing, youthful, ye, and then also like there's like a seventy percent chance you grow tail. Hey hey, hey, whoam Yeah you're trying to not sell Some people are that that's like the most innocuous, like that actually sounds good, like it's similar to something you would see and they just.

Called it like like doom slayer, like but it's for your cucumbers, like we just we thought it sounded cool, volunteer.

But also two things, Well, let's just focus on one, which is what the fuck does the miss what's made?

The way they explained it is that it's a my and it kills before you actually get like molds starting to form. It kills them, so it extends a period of time the molds. It's so far just the mold, it's said. Because I asked if it was dangerous and they said no, I have no ability to visit the vera Ox people at this moment. I'm not trying to

Make it agent vera Dux. This is like, oh, you're going to kill everyone I love.

Okay, great, taking a wet market that's spread from a bag.

So many nine inch nails fans here like a year zero I'm thinking of this is the big hand from the year zero.

Yeah again, this scene right now could be the start of the Apocalypse movie, you know.

Okay, one of us who's alive in three weeks like it is thinking back to this as they're fighting off viad ox. Use again to complain about the end of.

Jiu Jitsu Kaisen, the manga, I'm going to just really put this in them.

How did you want Jujitsu Kien to end?

Okay, welcome? Did you want to get again? What you want going to take a break?

Well, first of all, the people of the Jiu Jitsu High School thing, they do very unfair to mister Ryan and Suker All. They spend a lot of time building up abilities that do not manifest into an interest in these real people are these and I'm being very you made this podcast happen. Consequent the ending of Jiu Jitsu Kaisen involves a bit where Ryan mister Ryan and Sukiner mister Sto Go Joe. He's very unfairly treated. They show him winning a battle and then at the end of

For Rigged, unfair for mister Ran and seeking now I'm thinking. Now, I'm thinking I have a different trumpet person. I am so sorry, I can see.

I'm sorry that this is how David Roth feels about the Mets. So I'll move us back to the podcast as we wrap this bad Boy up.

I have no ability to vet it based on the conversation.

I have you never will. I genuinely want to thank everyone else in this room because we're doing another episode tomorrow. But this show has been conceptually one of the more insane things I have done, and I must give real credit to Sophie Lichtman, who is one of the hardest working and also most patient people in history.

Oh yeah, and so oh yeah, she.

Is the only person who can really move Robert oh yeah, who is one of the comment single most talented people I've met in my fucking life. And my comment there we go. And Robert turned to me a year ago and said, you seem to be more pissed off at these people than anyone And he was wrong, only because

It has been so fun hearing you get progressively more angry over the course of a year. It's it's been a real treasure and I mean it sincerely.

I say this as someone who is a pair of yours. The work you make seems to get better every episode, and you're incredible at it. Thank you so much.

You're getting none of this, Robert, You're just very good around. I say this as someone who is profiting off of you. Are you in a stanton?

Should we should we make what that is like just hard medication. I'm just I'm just worried, dude.

I am like the healthiest I've ever been, Like my v O two Max is like doing well, like and my dog just really happy. They don't know what I did ever since.

I got a via dox. And that's another Cees miracle, which which leads which leads me to the which leads me to the last thing that I'll say is the first thing we all said on episode one is this feels like the Cees from last year, and we're not the only ones to think true last night, I was at the chandelier in the Cosmo. That is the place. Now we can write off the drinks and thank you. There we go and Robert I was sitting at the bar and Robert was upstairs waiting for a table and

It's remarkable to see. And David, I'm gonn guess yournees are about as bad as mine. But starting out in twenty ten, like right after kind of the iPad came out, there was so much excitement every year of like I'd never seen a thing that could do this. Every year, I'd never seen a thing that could do like and I would that would be every like room I walked into every like thirty minutes, I would see a thing that was like I didn't know technology could do that until this exact second.

And that's just not CS anymore.

Yeah, I mean it's like even as like a soft touch you can be impressed by, like a cool new TV screen. It's not the first TV screen, you know, not to brag, but there is like, yeah, there's certainly that sense. It's interesting that like the people that are showing here were also kind of like what am I doing?

Like, I feel what am I doing here?

Yeah? I think the and what batt Roughline has tried to do with this entire show is CS is a combination of people who don't want to be here and do want to be here, And a lot of the people that want to be here are the people that already live here to sell services to those who are visiting. But the fundamental problem with CES is that the show itself doesn't seem to be serving the use case of making things happen in the future. It's like, how can

I was hungover at all. He is.

Actually, Sophie is so much stronger willed, and that's very true, willing to respond. But Robert has been an incredible mentor. And I'm going to be sentimental and you're just gonna have to fucking suck it up. All Right, We're an award nominated podcast. I can do whatever the hell I want. But what I think this show needs going forward is more independent voices. And it means bringing in people like Kyle from Las Vegas Suck and allowing them to speak

Oh?

I don't care. And then you have these people like I'm gonna fucking solve people with eye twitches, people with twitching in their eye, which turns out to be a huge industry of people who are genuinely fucking suffering people with way bigger problems, like mobility problems, having that problem solved in real time. But the people that get talked about I have the most massive television, and no, I actually take that back.

It's not even the big TV.

I want a larger TV. I want like a two hundred and fifty inch fucker. I want to watch the Raiders lose.

Well that was so.

I had a moment at the Samsung with and they were showing off one of those transparent TVs and there was a lady who's hold another one another one.

Well, I'm probably the same was No, that was LG.

Last year it was LG.

Yeah, I think it was LG. Yeah, yeah, I it all blurs together.

There was a lady behind a transparent TV whose whole job was when the TV went transparent, to waverhand behind it, and I was like.

That's that's your job.

And it was this recognition as they're like walking as we Garrison and I sat through a guy who played us Ai generated Scot and tried to convince this that we did we know a lot. They needed musicians, even great.

I would know No.

The next time someone played that is a situation it was. It is very much a following down situation, yes, but the realization that, like there is a chunk of guys running big tech who will see holding your hand behind the transparent TV is a thing that human beings should do, but not making music, and like that that upsets me.

It's just it's frustrating because entering into this and the format that I created in a Google dog three weeks ago, and some of some people even read it. Uh. The goal was to try and pull out how the show affects people and indeed the implications of this show do. I'm now going to return to the sentimental bit I was diverted by. I want to thank every single fucking person who listened to this but also joined me on this.

What I've been really excited about this year is getting to meet David and Edward and now getting this is the first time we're in a room together.

But it's not we talked yesterday.

Oh Ship, I was so drunk, So sorry Kyle during the panel, During the panel the disinformation, Oh no, no, I was.

I was just just high on mushrooms. Oh okay, and I've got some creative still in my part.

I'm okay.

I was trying to do like a sincere moment. Now let Robert finish his fucking thing.

I was just saying, like, it's been very exciting to get to meet these folks, some of whom I had been reading for a while, or some of Moore. I'm excited to start reading and get to like make these connections because in a cees that is so anti human. It's nice to make connections to people.

And I'm about to harpoon you with sincerity. Robert and Sophie have been the single and geare as well have been the most single supportive creatives I've ever fucking worked with my in life. I have had issues with believing in myself and believing what I can do. I have talent, whatever, Like who fucking cares? Email me? You're mad were you're listening to this little pig? But the thing is these people beyond when even a year ago, I didn't think I could fucking do this, And now look at me.

And I like this one, by the way, one of my that would be a part of Premium uh cass prank Thryer. That was a goddamn journey that made fury for weeks finding it film.

I love you, I love all of you, seriously. Thank you.

One of the things that made me happy is for everyone that I picked up at an elevator. By the time we'd hit the twenty eighth floor, I knew what I was serving you.

Thank you so much, ma'am. David Roth. David Roth is someone I brought here.

No take the fucking mic. You grab the goddamn mike.

I will shove it in you out. We all know how good I am ed, which is why it's necessary to remind people. David Roth is the is actually my favorite writer, and he is one of the single most empathetic people who understands why people enjoy stuff, and his sports writing and cultural writing is genuinely influential over everything I've ever done. And I'm absolutely going self indulgent. There's nothing a single fucking person in this room could do it.

But thank you, David, and thanks for having me. For real, I feel the same.

Edward Graso Junior. You are an undiscovered talent and anyone fortunate enough to listen to this should now they should hire you immediately because when you finally take off, when you finally get big enough, you are the single most capable grab the microphone.

Motherfucker, hello, I said, when I get my gun.

Okay, let's walk back to the guy.

Okay, let's cut that out on the words, my.

Matt, this is still keep it in.

But just to be clear, the gun was a metaphor right for my potential.

I'm really trying. Sorry, no more, no more.

I know You're not done, ed there are there really isn't not the right that it can do the kind of labor reporting you do and the understanding of the human experience that you can do. You are just at the beginning, and I can't wait to bring you back on this show and have you do more. I love all of you so much. But also, your potential is barey. You are, your potential is barely getting started. Is some ship you'd see on a CS banner.

Though, this is the worst.

This is the worst I'll ever be.

That's right.

That's right, brother, That's why I put on a hinge that I actually might put that on hinge. Any any singles want to email me like, that's what's.

On, darling. I know I've vomited in your car, but let me assure you this is the worst I'm ever gonna be.

Oh my god, you may think I just meant you, so that's true. You came on this show completely, You were actually well prepared. You had a laptop out, which fucking rocks. You actually like took this seriously much like I did with my laptop. Glad that I don't have in the preparation I definitely did. Here's the thing. On an instinctual level, when your first thought is labor, that

God, no, God, somebody more actionable threats in these episodes than I'd expected.

That's not a threat, it's a promise.

Oh, thank you.

I would thank me, And then of course to Mattiasowski. Manisowski is our producer, and he is the silent party who has been sitting here patiently the entire show, working through texting me time signals. When I text him I have BURBD. He edits that out because it's happened three times. I believe Matt. I and I bring up Matt Hughes here, my word editor, who has been so patient with him. Megan wernstromo over at Penguin, who has also been patient reading the dross. I assume she says it's good. But

I just want everyone to know that you know as the verver a ox miss takes your loved ones. Ed Ed cares about you.

Phil.

I want to thank everyone. It's been a pleasure to be here and to serve, to serve and be of service.

David Roff, thanks very much. It's a good time and I feel like I learned a lot.

Mister Wrongways.

Had a great time, and I'm not going to make any more legally actionable threats.

Thanks.

Yeah, Coon, you can just say yeah, this was This was my first ES.

Ever, and I really enjoyed figuring out what was real and what wasn't and support local journalism.

Yeah well, and thank you Ed for putting this whole space together. This has been a fantastic escape away from the show floor. I spent five hours in the Venetian today. Coming up here was a wonderful reprieve and you really, you really put this all together. So thank you so much, and your hard work over the last year on Better Offline has been has been lovely, has been lovely to watch. Thank you so much, and thank you so much for your listeners. If you've got to this point, I I'm

Ourselves out, real smooth like. But today's the last day of the show. Email me easy or ease ed. If you're one of those people at Better Offline dot com, please let me know what you thought. A lot of you have emailed like we had we didn't have enough woman on this We next year we're going to fucking correct that. We luckily got victorious Charisa Belle and of course Sheerlyn Lowe, who really balanced that out. We'll do a better job last last time. Wow, the concept of

Cees twenty twenty four, Part three.

I'm actually going to try and contact the e mcdummot. But anyway, thank you so much for listening. I know it's a lot of audio and and I I'm really grateful for everyone who contacts I love everyone who listens. I genuinely mes so grateful. I am not really good at hiding any of like the me in this and a lot of podcasts are very performative. I've phil can speak to this more than anyone I'm not really good at like pretending there is no off switch. I genuinely

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