CES 2026: Part Five (Wednesday)

Alzo Media.

I've crossed oceans of time to bring you this podcast. This is Better Offlines coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show, and I'm your host ed Zetron. We're back here in the Palazza and beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, bringing you yet another episode covering CES with an incredible core of even more incredible look guests. And yes I wrote it like that. We've got an open bar, tacos and places to sit down for members of the media, whether they join us

Yeah, fresh off the elliptical in your hotels.

Thiswee I've been doing podcasting, So Chrisa, We're gonna start with you because you saw something I could not see moving every time I went by the LG. Cloyd Laundry folding robot. How was that You said it here that it folded laundry and served food very slowly. Give me an idea of how slowly.

Well, there's a TikTok in that story that you can see, and one of the top comments was it'll take three weeks to do your laundry at this pace, right, And I don't know if it was slow because for the demo purposes, they're trying to draw it out, make it more traumatic. But it started off with it was out of washing machine, and it's trying to pull something out of a hamper put load it into the washing machine. It's and it just is doing it so slow, but it takes its time kind of picking it up.

Does it have any trouble?

Does it have trouble picking it up? Really, it's just it's not really clear why it takes so long. It's just like I think the arms are just kind of calculating maybe, like each little movement slowly puts it in, slowly closes the washing machine door, slowly rolls over to a table, there's like a pile of wash glass, slowly picks one up, slowly starts folding it like just excruciating and then it picks up the folded thing and then it messes.

Up a little bit.

Did it fix the mess up?

No, but there was like an LG person. I just had an arm reach out and they.

When you say, mess it up house.

Like it was folded like if you imagine something that's very symmetrically right folded, and then when it it's robot hand picks it up like the top corner just comes, it comes unaligned.

Awesome.

How much is this row boat? Did they say anything like that?

Oh, I don't think they're going to sell it.

Okay, that's always what happens with laundry folding.

Yeah, yeah, then no, that's like the there's a rich history of CS and laundry laundry mate here. Oh they all went, we love laundry, mate laundry may I think I've been coming to see us a twenty eleven.

They dead. Finally they're dead. All the all the twenty ten's ones are dead. That's yeah, that's look what they took from us. So, yeah, you also said it served food. I'm guessing it also did that weirdly.

Yeah, you know, walked out, roll sorry, rolled over. It did not have legs. It has like a weeled kind of robot vacuum. It has arms and like a head unit.

Take a look at that. Look at that piece of ship.

A head unit.

Yeah, that's what they called it.

You know.

The they're kind of selling this as it works with all of Elgie's appliances. When it rolls over to the fridge, the fridge opens, it pulls out your milk, rolls over to the table, sets it down.

That's so bad and like I'm guessing it would only be compatible with the LG stuff. Is this just a concept?

Yes, it is a concept, So, I mean the whole presentation it kind of felt like watching something at Disneyland. Yeah, there was like very high production value. They had this very charismatic presenter clearly memorizes very tight fifteen minute script that included a video that was playing, and they invented this story about this family and how this how Cloyd is going to help the dad find his keys and

Like a fridge with a trunk off of a new suv.

Yeah, yeah, button in it, but no, no, you have to get like the seven thousand dollars lg one that you can kick to open.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's that these things. I just want the coldest possible diet coke because that too much to ask. Also, is its name Cloyd, Yeah, cloid, but the eye is small for some reason. Just it's so strange to do this thing. And it got all the headlines and was going robot this is the year of robotics a CS

I mean, I think you said it. They got all the headlines. It looks cool. I think they're trying to show off that, you know, you said, everyone saying that this is the year of a lot of robots are trying to We're finally seeing that some of them are capable of kind of doing these tasks. But these companies aren't yet ready or able or willing to actually make this into real products. Like I think it's probably just not feasible. This thing is huge.

Yeah, how big was it?

I would say I didn't get close to it because it was sort of behind like a rope line and you could line up for like a selfie. But I booked it out of the booth for that. I think it's taller than I am.

I'm realizing I actually think I saw. I don't think I saw the laundry demo or I saw I saw some portion of the demo, because what I noticed about it, and now this is the different perspectives that we come at it from. I was like, Wow, all of these robotics companies and and you know, electronics companies just wind up hiring these very hot actors who.

Are very charming to run the demo.

Because the guy I don't know if the guy who was I don't know if there was a person helping with the laundry and food demo, but there was a guy who was like doing this demo. As I walked by very quick, and he's this fucking gorgeous man being like, Hey, Cloyd, do you anything else that you can do and help me make my life easier?

And it's like, yeah, of course, I guess.

I could Cloyd shrink my shit.

Yeah yeah, I mean truly, it's like, Cloyd, do you want to come over here and touch my pets? It's like and you really sort of do watch it and you're like, I guess I want to fuck the humans, So maybe I will buy the robot.

It seems to sort.

Of what you cannot do demo, You cannot do either.

No, can't do either. But yeah it is it's a big robot.

Yeah, And that's why I said, it's kind of like being at Disneyland where like they have this like very nice, very carefully orchestrated, uh demo that they set up, and it's like watching a little movie of what they are trying to say is going to be the future, I guess. And when you're watching it, you're like, oh, that's it's pretty neat. Like all of that look works together. The robot rolled over there, Look, it found it's the guy.

So like a very clean house, which is traditionally not where you lose your keys. Yeah, it's not like you lose it in an empty room and you're like, oh, it's in the corner, not underneath something.

And also if the way that the robot is going to be able to find the keys is by having something like an AirTag on the keys that the robot gave to we have that.

And also the robot doesn't have legs, so if your keys are upstairs.

A very ball pop on a segway coated where you can just get up onto a curve and obmate.

It like a dollar. Just like so you also saw this switchbot switchbots, which they have a laundry folding robots, and how is that if you see saw that what happened? Well, I didn't see it fold laundry.

So they because they they had it out and they had a like a bench with a few like rumpled pieces of clothes on. I was like, great, I'm going to see it fold laundry. This is what I came here for. And it stood there for like five minutes doing nothing, and then and then it very slowly rolled over to one piece of laundry and I was like, great,

Of You know, this is like a heavily prepped demo. They've had to go through a lot like the Boston Dynamics videos where they like show the robot working one hundred takes one hundred takes with the robot just like rolls on its back somehow like explodes. I love this. I love that they're trying to pretend it's just like fraud, Like there's there's something very fraudulent about this. Like the robots are here, Yes, they're here, but are they able

I was gonna say I stand first five minutes, completely still resisting folding laundry, slowly move lunch show.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Does the robot look at its phone and scroll Instagram for like seventeen minutes before it puts in one T shirt? And does it? Can you program it to leave the washing in the washing machine and forget? It has to do like a visibly heavy sigh before it's.

This is the most drama that folding laundry has ever been the recipient.

Other than like a deteriorating relationship.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There it's like a symbol of drama. This you're you're like, this is the one thing I came here.

To see, and it was torn because I was like, how long can I wait to see if it actually was? Was it going to run the laundry? And then I had to wait for it to come out of itself.

Just look like this video. It's also like got a very strange long body with like with the arms. No, it's cute, but it's also like if I saw this in my home, it would chill me every day. I never get used to seeing this, Like slender Man robot. It looks a little dead behind the eyes. Yeah, it has like these weird like the the chows from Sonic Adventure. We are all eighteen people who got that.

Yeah, it's just to their credit. They did tell me that they are planning to sell it WO towards the end of twenty twenty six.

Wait Cloyd or that one.

That one's cool, but the thunderd Loyd will never leave the LG prison they put it in. Did you see any working robots either of you? One? I saw the fighting robot right, and I saw that guy's dogship form when he was fighting it just like, no, didn't plant his feet at all. Pathetic. Yeah, what was the purpose of that? Are you meant to fight it? Is it like a boxing robot. It was.

It also danced, and I think it was just like one of those general like look at all these things that this robot can do.

Feels like what they sell on Black Friday, just like, is that the one that I see in like various Instagram videos where it's just like running into a wall.

There was a sign that said five thousand dollars, so I guess you could just buy it.

And honestly, that feels like you can haggle.

Yeah, that's one of those CS like I'll give you thirty five dollars, like you can take a tax loss. I will take this whatever this is, I'm beating the fuck out of it, regardless. The weirdest category.

Of stuff at CS is the things that you can buy at CS.

Like the massage chairs, like the wonderful massage chair I actually did see on the way through CS to get back here. I found a chair massage chair company called doctor Boss and it just says, so do you have any problems with your spine? And spine is in blue bold letters, and then there were like three or four spaces with a question mark. I love them. I love the weird massage chair companies. So I was mentioning the earlier episode they scam you. They're like, yeah, I got

There's a TikTok dancing robot.

There's one that does rock paper scissors against you, and it wins every.

Time because it can detect right as you're about to do.

Yeah, it was actually like it was like a cheating robot because it was like a second behind your Sure. Yeah, we just looked at what you're doing and then was like, all right, I'm gonna do the other thing.

Oh, what the fuck is the point?

I'm sorry. I've been trying this whole week to find good stuff, and every time I like, it's the year of the robots. Let's look at the robots.

You can't how many other years has it been the year of robotics?

I actually don't know. It's a great question.

Yeah, I don't think like that feels like a headline that has happened before, right, I feel like I probably really.

I feel like they play with the idea occasionally, but it's there's just something very bizarre about this. I guess it's like, well, we can't claim Mel and M's do anything, so what we lie about something else? Okay, Hey, we have robot vacuums, all right, and the robot vacuums are fine other than picking up dust in my apartment apparently. And yeah, I just I'm very confused. And we discussed this earlier as well, like the robot they had arms last year, and now the robots have legs like the

It is a very hard problem to solve, like anything

If would any of this be solvable if we weren't so committed to having the robots look humanoid? No, Like, like if there was like a big tube. All right, here comes to my idea.

You've cracked the code. It's a big tube.

Yeah, I'm having a right now as a stand up comedian that no one else here at CS has had. But like if there was like a big tube and you dump your clothes in and then somehow there was like a vacuum space.

Okay, Nope, that I don't know.

There is somehow a way to like stretch the clothes flat, like create tension in the fabric no matter what the shape is.

Engineers ended in the tube.

You guys writing this down. Yes, it's meed in the tube. Okay, you're with I like this, this is good. I've got buy ins om And then somehow there could be like a wire that like bisects that and then it at least folds in half and then like does the same, you know, but like it's not it's not a humanoid.

It's a machine. It's not a it's not a just my buddy.

You even have to identify though, like where the edges of the clothes are, and that itself is not easy to do.

It's just lasers you describe me. It's like, what do we need a robot to do? Make food for me? Not really? Launch, not really TikTok. You want to be Do you want to see something cheat at rock paper scissors? Because I'm constantly annoyed that I can't find a better person that as a rock paper scissors champion, I have never been able to be defeated by anyone. It's just so fucking weird. But you know what, changing subjects, did you find anything you actually liked? Either of you? I

They're back and it's you know, it's one of those things that is just like a passion project, which you know, I feel like it's kind of like au then it's the same thing with like clicks.

You know. It's like these people.

That, yeah, they know it's not for everybody. They just want this thing to exist and they put it into existence.

And we've got Michael coming on Friday, we'll talk about it.

When I respect that kind of thing. I think the Pebble watches are are great. I think so it's just it's the watches.

Ring is well.

Yeah, so they're starting with the watches and now they have the thing called the Index I believe it's called. Yeah, you wear it on your index finger and it's basically just a button that you can push to take a note.

Uh, and then like a voice. Yeah you voice trains of the ring.

That's cool.

Yeah. Do you have to speak into the ring? I think you can know.

I think you can just there's a little microphone in it.

Yeah.

Does it make a noise or can you record people secretly?

It's not persistent. It's like a push to talk kind of thing.

But you can break state law.

I think, yeah, I think you can bring it's one interesting in New York.

It's a two party consent.

New York was one.

No, I believe in you because I break it all the time.

Just a admit that on a podcast and then be do an evil laugh after.

She meant parody she meant but so it's just a rook. It doesn't do any health No, there's no health stuff. There's no any of that.

And then I think there's like a secondary function where maybe you can like program some stuff if you wanted to do something else how much then uh oh, you're putting on a spot here in front something like one hundred dollars seventy five dimes.

Is them ugly?

I mean it's presentable. I think there's a there's a button on it. So I guess, however you feel about it, the thing is, I can see the use for that.

Like I don't like voice notes at all, Like I don't like hearing myself speak. Well, I think it will transcribe that I've never listened to a single episode of the show which everyone listening to this two works. Iheart's Gonna Love and It's like I can't hear myself speak, but if I could do a transcription, I might actually buy. It'd be the first thing I've seen at CES or I'm like, I would purchase that.

Yeah, I think more broadly that, you know, they're just things. Their matras is sort of not even matra, but just like it's this dude he's done all right for himself in tech, and he just like wants to make cool gadgets that he doesn't see in the market and whatever.

I you know what, I like.

That reporting live on the pebble index ring. It really looks like a ring that somebody is using to record you.

Let me see. Let me see when it has a sketchy ring its supports me.

Oh yeah, really looks like no, no, I don't have a microphone in my ring.

It's like like the hat that Homer Simpson wall with the camera in it. Ring Like just like, yeah, I'm just clicking this non descript slack. Yeah, what are you doing? Nothing? It's an odd Now say all the crimes you committed, tell me all your secrets. No, I can't move my thumb. I can't move my thumb at all. I now actually know I'm now going to start critiquing this. So you

Fun to watch and changes just like they're like, oh, I like that.

Everything, then hearing something the like becoming an aftimist and then immediately be like no, no, no no.

That's a good instinct to have. That. Also, we've got plenty of people who want We got Blanny, We've got we got fucking cell side analysts there as well. Chris, there anything you've been enjoying.

I saw some robotic sneakers that were kind of cool.

Tell me more, what do you mean?

So they're sneakers that attached to a kind of exoskeleton. Oh, and they're meant for people who can't like walk long distances or want to be able to.

Walk at Robert Evans has been using like an exoskeleton. Io. Please tell me what.

Yeah, these ones are different. They attached to a special shoe and they're battery powered, and then you can kind of it learns your gate the first twenty steps or so, and then as you're walking, it just kind of like pushes you up a little bit. It's a very strange sensation for somebody who doesn't happen. Really it doesn't really

Got an ankle injury. That sounds great. I did see another one, and every time I see them, like my hateriends think kicks in and I'm like, no, actually, this is what technology should do. Yeah, that it can help you if you'd be walking too much or if you have serious mobility issues.

The downside, as it cost forty five hundred dollars.

That actually doesn't surprise me. Yeah like that if I hear that, and I'm like, okay, it literally helps people who can't walk much walk forty five hundred, and I'm like that's actually reasonable. I did see a few of them, but I'm actually kind of excited to see that because I don't know, like I realized it just went from being a huge hate. But like I have tons of like several family members with mobility issues. My mom like it.

Well, you are consistent in what you in, what you like and don't like. Yeah, and that is is there a tangible, describable.

Problem that this is solving.

Yes, And I think the more physical, not necessarily like corporal, but the more physical a problem, the more you are going to be inclined to like the tech presentation of a solution exactly.

And it's like I think, I also, I don't know. I think that's what technology is meant to do. It's meant to allow you to do things you can't do, to streamline things, to make things easier. That's cool, And there were quite a few of them. I want more of this shit, like let those who can't will walk. That's if is there anything more technological than that? Yeah?

The accessibility stuff is actually kind of interesting. I'm always looking out for that.

Yeah.

I was writing about it this year and so many times It's hard to find anything like that because so much of it is just yeah, cramming tech into products that don't need it, or you know, the the crap that we're used to seeing here, smart belts and just weird stuff.

So whenever their belts.

Do you have a belty from like years ago?

Wait, do you kind of remember that? Yeah, Belty, it's called Belty. What is belty? Oh man?

This is from probably ten years ago. It was a smart belt. Do you remember that year at CS when like Internet of Things was kind of just yeah, and like everything was just like a flower pot that's connected to the Internet of this and it was a belt that I think could automatically adjust, like it's like maybe you eat more or something.

Oh God, well, sorry, I'm my fifth piece of chicken. Well, actually we're gonna go back to shape robots though, because everyone has kind of mentioned Agi bought or Aggie.

Bott to have the fun. He says, and this is the TikTok robot. You saw what was that?

Yeah, so there's two. They have two different humanoids. One is a smaller one that was the Dancy one has like these bright yellow shoes. They have a larger one that's about about five feel like my hey, maybe, and they are humanoid robots. They can walk around, the little one can dance. They have some kind of like AI functionality in them. So they're meant like the large one.

Or trying do that though.

Yeah, So what's interesting is this is a Chinese company that's making them Okay, and they already have sold several thousands in China. We went we went to another robotics company booth, and the whole spiel of this booth was that the booth is run entirely by robots, and there's like a human guy there who's kind of like can answer a question for if you want, But the booth is just these two robots. And they were the Agibot robots. And so the larger one was there and it was

Was, but then it got pretty mean.

Yeah.

Well then I said, I was like, actually, I was like, can you be a meaner? Like can you do more? And then not too bad? It made fun of what I was wearing and.

Couldn't see what you were wearing?

Yeah I could.

And then at the end I was like, okay, well you know, all good, let's have a fist bump and it was like great, and it actually did.

What did it say about what you were wearing? I want to judge this from a joke atic.

Honestly, I don't remember exactly. It was just kind of was like, oh, and you're wearing that, Like I like, you're making fun of me, but like you're like it was it was kind.

Of generic, but okay, then you wanted to turn into the boxing robots.

So yeah, I wanted it to be Ruda. I want to find this thing and.

You're able to have like a back and forth. There's a slight delay when you say something, maybe maybe two three seconds for it to come up with a response, but you can actually and its voice actually sounded pretty natural in a way that most robot vice models.

Was it like, was it using a model? Was it like, did they explain any of that it is?

I'm not sure. I imagine that that company it was called into Bot. That was the booth that had these like customized versions.

And that wasn't was that Aggie Bob.

Yes, it was an Agibot robot, but the company that was showing them off was into Bot, and I guess they had customized They had bought these robots and somehow customize them for there.

But the what you're chatting with, it's not just chat gbt no or open ai or whatever.

Yeah, I think it's a combination of things. I think they probably use several different models and then they also have like cameras and sensors so they know you know.

About Tannemon Square. I'm sorry, I want to admit I want to be like, what do you think of Winnie the Pooh? And it just goes just because like just looks at me personally us you look fam Fuck. No, I'm actually gonna say it sounds like it worked, which is unusual. That's genuinely U.

The nicest thing you say about a robot.

It works kind of, But what was the what's the what was the purpose?

For into bot. Yeah, I'm actually not sure because we just went because we wanted to.

Like the show. God, their whole face is.

That our boat is just run by robots, so we're like, well, we got to go check that out. And then we just we talked to it and made a TikTok and I didn't find out what they're trying to do with them.

But you should have asked it, like can you grab me some press materials in hand them to me?

And it would like fail and it starts trying to fold them. Oh my god, I love it. We get to things like yeah, it works. What's why though, and they're like, oh fuck, I we just did this for the yucks. It could introduce you to a museum, so off.

Okay on the broader theme of why though, Yeah, I was walking around today at the convention Center and wondering what is the not what is the point of CS, but pretty close, like how effective is CS and in what way for the majority of people who are here? Well that's sort of I'm asking as a complete naive user, you know, Like, but it's like, are people I understand that? Like there were buyers from Sam's Club walking around being like.

We're looking for a new I don't know what the fuck they're looking.

For, but like I understand that if you like, there's you know, some small proportion of buyers who are looking for some small proportion of specific tech. But like a lot of people, it seems like they're just sort of in booths showing off stuff that like largely already exists, maybe with like a slightly new extra spice, but like

I mean, as somebody who's I'm not super pessimistic about CES despite.

How ridiculous you've been here longer. I don't know. I guess, I guess for me, And maybe this is the point too. You love leaflets.

I love leaflets, No, I just you know, there's probably some value in just getting a bunch of people into one place that we don't have anymore.

You know, we're gonna we're going to rotate rows, We're going to go to an ad break. Coming up now an advertisement for Chumley, the robot that's based on Chumley from Pawn Stars. A word I cannot say. People think I am talking about pornography. And we're back in the room and once again we're joined by Charisabella ven Gadget Hello, Jared Newman of the advisory and newsletter Yo and nearly said newsletter wrong. And of course Coloie Radleff, actress of

Just fine of the bowels of the Venetian the Eureka Hole, where it was just like the most insane shit, like it's a cooler that's also a razor blade to kill people.

Actually, no, that's the thing. Indigo the Indiegogo fraud generation was fucking cool because it was just shit that was impossible to make. And we've raised five hundred thousand dollars. The money laundering operations that go through Indiegogo have funded this and I will deliver it in ten years and then the company will shut down in three.

Like that.

I found kind of like honest laundry folding robots laundry made rip and piss like they the most obvious fake one. I respect they got like fo this it was like a tower laundry Mate. It was like this weird tower and it was never clear how it worked. And every year they were like, next year, there's this hidden consumers, and then they just died.

The only landering that Indiegogoeah robots can do is financing.

Yes, but I feel like this is like a legendary year because they're trying to pretend robots work. They tried, because the reason you can't do robots mass for mass consuming, mass consumer audiences is because training for edge cases is fucking difficult. I don't know, it's it's a shame because I'd love a robot.

I'd love well, I think I think a laundry folding robot is like a billion dollar idea if it actually works.

But I had this tube idea.

Have you heard of indigogo?

Actually, yeah, the tubat is a little real for Indy Goka, We've got to do like a movie that never gets made, or like a card game made by like a disgrace substacker, like or a board game by a guy with an allegation section on Wikipedia, Like that's all we do want here. It's just weird because I say this with a little sadness because like I may seem like broken heart romantic. If we had like an actual laundry folding robot, that's cool. Yeah, that'd be cool. I'd love that. Did you did you

This was all the very small like developers that had nothing going on and so like not like you know, like like one division.

Yeah, this is it for them, and I went to Eureka Park and everything I saw was a chat GPT wrapper and I went upstairs and I was like, fuck me up, show me something, and I saw a WiFi barbecue. I feel like I see i'ms every fucking year, and I wanted to see so I didn't even see anything funny. I was.

I was trying to noodle on this idea, like I don't think this is the right term, but like AI slop product, you know what I'm talking You know, there's a real slop.

Nature to it. It was just like, what is it you want a document analysis? Yes?

Well, also like, well, like an example I'm thinking of is like I think it was high sense. Like they had a oven and then the oven had like a very small display on it, smaller than a phone, and they were showing like you could be like I'm in the mood for pizza, and then it would like generate a pizza recipe for you, you know what I mean. So it's like the recipe itself is sloped. But then also like the implementation of AI is slopped, you know what I mean.

You're just looking at this tiny little screen. It's like roll on the dough.

It's just and again, and I've made this point before on this very podcast earlier today and yesterday, but just to reiterate, if you are going to look up a pizza recipe, you're gonna look it up on your phone, which is a small screen, of course, and then if you look it up on you're smart oven, you are also looking it up on a small screen. It is not eliminating any step in the process or any screen in the.

So it'll it will turn the oven on for you.

Oh fuck this, fuck it'll turn the oven on.

Fuck this happened to you? And just bashing.

If damn woman, I know this instinctive, but I do not make happen.

It's like a Tim Rubinson bit, what do I do? What do I know? And then the street goes to turn on oven. Finally, It's like the thing they keep coming back to that I actually liked was just a fifteen hundred dollars TV with a boot and soundbar with like micro led. I was just like, fuck, yeah, great, awesome. TVs are getting thinner and they're getting soundbars in them, and that's why everything has AI in it, because it's very clear that it's becoming really cheap to make thin

Sorry, it's it's that is that's a whole other thing. But yeah, there's like micro led and now MI micro RGB.

I don't know, uh, both of them.

If you stand in front of them, it looks like you're like looking into the eye of God, but like they're kind of the same.

But I kind of I love it. I genuinely, genuinely love the fact that like a good looking TV's easy yeah now, and you can get them everyone. They're really like really good, Like even the kind of cheap cheap ones are pretty good. Like, yeah, I can not. It's the difference because I stare at screens all the time. But I think most people would be really happy otherwise I'm just like show I wanna like some I genuinely I would love to. I would love to be taken

What do you think would other than a laundry folding robot? What do you think would like what would take you what would so?

I think anyway, there are like magical ideas they've had, like wireless power that it fill hiss me talking about who come and fucking kill me? But like wireless power, Bluetooth that works, perhaps unbreakable Bluetooth would be very popular at c yes where Bluetooth My fucking headphones come out constantly, like something like that might be kind of a boring demo, but it's like I don't know a Wi Fi router that doesn't stop working after six months, Like every problem is just like shit sucks.

TP link has a router with a AI agent now that you can talk to.

That's cool. I go to TP deco.

TP link deco I had to throw away because also fucking if I won't work, but you can like kiel at it and therapy for.

You from TP link. You listen to this deco, fucking sucks. It blows you suck. I spend so much money on that. I can't even fucking ceremony. By goddamn, did you.

See that Kia smart home stuff?

No tell me tell me about that.

So that was one that we thought was pretty cool.

An industrial Yeah it's gonna work, and it will.

They can do it at scale in a way that makes us be able to pay a reasonable price.

We have we have four light bulbs in our bedroom, and so I will be like Alexa, turn off the lights and about about like ten percent of the time one of the lights will stay on.

Of the four, I have Lotron in my house, and one day the bulx just stopped connecting, so I just have to use the fucking light switch and I'm so spiteful that I just refuse. But wait, it sounds like this stuns work though, Carissa.

Yeah, I haven't tried them, but I mean it's akia so I feel like we have I have, I have decent amount of confidence.

That Okay, they can do this, I hope.

So.

I mean, I have some smart light bulbs in my home and they're like an off brand Chinese one, and they're the kind you can change color, and we set them to specific colors for the specific rooms, but we can never change them back. And then like every few months, like the app breaks and then they like the totally wrong color and then we just can't use those lights until.

We fix it.

It's so far.

It's like the product I want from cs is ship that just works and they don't care. It's that's a shame as well, because I actually like the smart home stuff, like the Roseanne Clapper, except you use your voice. It's it's fun, it's good. But again, one thing breaks. It's like Wi Fi that works. I don't think that'll make a good But I was looking through your eng Gadget coverage and I want to talk about the the Dreamy Robot vacuum with the legs the X Yes, what are

So the promotional image they sent me at first had it kind of like standing upright like a spider on these legs, but they're sort of like more like treads like legs that kind of have these like rubber treads. And so when I saw it move, it most more like a tank. It kind of rolls up the stairs and down the stairs.

What they look like little chain saws. It's like chainsaw man.

It's terrifying. When was not clear though, is that that whole unit with the legs is actually just like a little like docking station for the actual robot vacuum.

It's like a vehicle.

Yeah, so the actual robot vacum like like zooms in there and like parks itself, and then the thing goes up the stairs and then it can send out the robot to actually do the vacuuming. What this means though, is that it can't actually clean the stairs themselves. Apparently rubo rocks can climb and vacuum the stairs. This one, which is just a concept, can just like move up.

I'm showing everyone just for the listeners at home. I'm showing everyone a video which works really well. It's a concept, so I'm giving them some affordance for how slow this is. I find this kind of cool. I kind of like, like, you know what, when it comes to robot vacuums, I'm oddly like generous, especially because this is just like very fun to watch. It's like kind of shoving its crotch into the stairs. It slides up.

Yeah, and then when it term makes that bend and it starts to go down, it's kind of funny because it's sort of like half of it goes up.

I think that's cool. I think it's go Yeah.

People, I've asked for years for a robot vacuum that can do like multiple floors.

Without having to pick it up, and I like him. I just find the robot rock that I have doesn't clean dust sometimes, which is a classic exhibit of the floor. Yeah, but you know what, I feel like robot vacuums are like the state, Like they're the like block and tackle of cees. You see. I've been seeing robot vacuum s. If he is, it's like watching him keep going, like watching.

Hey little buddy. Yeah, I get doing.

Oh you got a fucking arm now. Nice.

I feel so biased against robot vacuums because I think I've like lived with the roomate who had one and it never worked. Yeah, that was like one experience a long time ago. But uh, just like less than a month ago, I shot a whole production piece in Denver, and our whole small crew was staying in one big Airbnb in like this big, big, fancy house in Denver, and they had robot vacuums on every floor because for this exact reason. So I bet these people would love

Horrifying.

I would never have to have a personal vendetta against my vacuum.

It's also just like the problem is is that, like every robot thing, it's the edge cases, it's the ship between the corners. That's actually the problem. When it comes to sweeping the floor, that's prett easy. If you have a perfectly flat surface, it's good. It's just like we all want it to work. Have you tried any of the wet dry ones? You've seen those.

I'm intrigued by them, but I've never just the idea of like having a little robot looking just spooge on my floor feels like.

Like, I don't they already seem to do pretty bad with the brushes. I don't want them to like, sorry, ejaculate. It's like an aqui. God, yeah, I'm sorry.

All right, Oh buddy, you got excited.

Calm down.

I think that's kind of you know, that's the core disconnective cs, right, Like you just want stuff that works a little better. Yeah, and that's not something that you can have a CS like it finally works.

It's not really did more but didn't work. That's often what it is though. That's another.

More did dreamy vacuum with the arm. It can change out the arm. It has a little cubby in its station and it can change out the little claw thing for like a vacuum nozzle and like reach the arm up and like suck. Well it's not that long, but it can like go into corners or little spots that.

That's what can see. How can it where it needs to go?

I don't know. I asked them at their booth because they were demonstrating the kind of claw arm just sort of picking up balls and putting them in a basket. And I asked them if they could show me it going to fetch its little attachments, and they said, no.

They don't work. That just means they don't work. That doesn't happen.

They looked very alarmed, and I asked, like, oh.

Yeah, no, one's awesome. That's I love these moments though, where you can see nobody, like there's like two thousand members of the media and it's being like, can you show me it do that?

Keep asking but who cares?

When they tell me something? Because I just have so little.

Repercussions for being This is why I asked, did anyone have an answer?

Uh?

It usually takes them like a couple It takes me a couple tries, and then I would say probably two thirds of people have got have been able to answer the but who cares?

Question?

But it's just so it's so clear that like nobody's prepared. And I understand that I'm being like incredibly brusque about it, but I'm also like, I don't know, man, you should.

Have an answer for that.

I feel like you should. Yeah.

I Like there was one like cable stand where it's like it looks really fancy and he's telling me all about it, and I was like, as far as I could glean, the only thing special about the cable was you can make it extra long.

Hm, it wasn't.

I was like, oh, are you saying like you can change out the heads of the cable and you can whatever what they were like all these little pieces and then he was like, no, no, it's all the same head. You can't change it out. It's only USBC. But you can connect them, and I was like, so it's.

Just really long connect.

Two USBC cables to each other to make a long USBC cables and wound And I was like, but who cares?

Like why not just buy a lot?

Sure? I guess I no, I get it.

Like there, it's just this kind of stuff where it's like, I just want to know the answer to.

Is so what? It's kind of alarming that everyone doesn't have that answer.

Yeah, that's the thing.

I yeah, I understand that I am being annoying in your face, and.

I get that you're saying that and you're being nice, but also this feels like you should just be able to explain really totally, really easy totally, because otherwise you paid like twenty five thousand dollars a day to be in like the South Hole to show off the goob is microwave with AI or whatever. It's cold.

There's often there is often that question when you're looking at something, it's like, well, why couldn't I just do this?

And then I don't know?

Yeah neither the day yeah yeah yeah, Well, like like I was at Lenovo's booth today and they have their own day they to I think I talked about this last year too, Like they got cool hardware stuff.

Okay, I want to hear please, that sounds fun.

They have a gaming laptop. It's a concept, of course, but some to their credit, some of those concept things they.

Tell Henry Casey was mentioning the toning screen, they actually made yes.

And then they have a gaming laptop that goes from like regular sixteen by nine into like ultra wide.

Hell yeah, yeah, I fucking love that shit. I know, I love that shit. Great. It's like probably insanely expensive. But so what I'm guessing is it like you pull out the sit it's a rollable display. If you just press a button in it, let's fucking go. Yeah.

Consumer Electronics shows showed me some weird shit. Great, that was like in the back. And then they have an AI chatbot for Winds.

What is the reason they claim that is?

I could not get an answer. What did he balance that? Uh? Usual AI stuff like.

You have a document? You have a document.

Yeah, It's like you have a document and then you ask about the document and it tells you about the document, summarizes your notification. And it was like it was like, well, why wouldn't I just use you know, copilot or chat ept and there wasn't really a clear.

Get him out of here, get him out of here now, just you'll leaves. Gods, yeah, that's They.

Also had people telling me that it was on device language models, and then like the product manager was like, oh no, that's that's incorrect.

So large language models traditionally are run in the clouds, so you have to have a persistent Internet connection. There are on device language models that require a ship ton of RAM to run because large language models are extremely rand.

Depending are you are have you downloaded the Actually I don't. Most people seeing the stupidest question, have you downloaded a file that is the size of the large language?

Amight it?

Like do you are you holding the whole?

No? No, they not in this case they the product manager.

Yes, in this case they were not. In theory, yeah, you would have to have this like pretty powerful computer in a lot of space and whatever, and it still wouldn't work as well as like chatty.

Yeah would take it.

But then and then you would and but yeah, yeah, I was asking about it because you're dealing with like they were taking screenshots of what you were doing so that they could summarize and this like I don't really want that data going up who knows where.

So it's like, finally you can tell me what I'm looking at? Yeah, how else would I know I'm not looking at? That's such a ship because Lenovo makes some reliable share and that was the legion go their handheld gaming pieces. Pretty cool them anything like that. No new gaming handheld stuff this year? Well, thank god? Would using all the world's high bandwidth RAM to generate various wife tunes like it's It's just such a shame. Now, Chris, I'm going to change the weird company to choose for

So this is actually a startup that is so the startup is independent for Meta, but they made this risk based like wearable device that's supposed to work in conjunction with metas smart glasses. So the ideas that you're wearing Meta smart glasses. They have these kind of like real time AI capabilities. So I'm talking to you the videos on. That's going back to an app that's run by this startup. Right, the app can detect They have these models to detect

You know, for someone who's visually impaired. Yeah, actually sounds quite useful.

If somebody is talking to a blind person and they give a thumbs up that person.

Yeah, actually that's a that's a good point anybody. That's a good point.

Anybody who thinks that they can communicate with a blind person via hand gesture should be walked off.

You are doing the jack off gesture at me. My armband's fucking telling me you're just doing this with your hand.

Yeah, well, I just.

Could do your subtle ones too. And I think it's also they said that you know there's people who you know, they're talking to their kids and they're like, oh, I never get that feedback from my kids, like knowing how they're Yeah, that's another expressions.

They did get back in line.

No, No, they did say that. Yeah, they think that perhaps there's a use case for people who are nerodivergent who just like could see the facial expression but just like don't know what it means.

But I say this as someone with autism. If I heard someone's say that to me, they might be blind by the end of the conversation. I will say this, if you're a visually impaired listener to the show, I would actually love easy at Better offline dot com please email me because I can see, like I don't experience

Does that mean that, like somebody high up in some pyramid at Meta is actually well intentioned?

Yes? I mean, like I must be clear, I think Meta is a deeply evil organization run by a scumbag. And when when Mark Zuckerberg, I assume from natural causes, passes from this world or for a fucking party for that piece of shit. That being said, there are people a meta I'm familiar with inaccessibility, in particular, you actually give a ship. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just they're not running the company, and I think it might be sadly

Yeah, like the worst AI s I generated like sprouts another head and then that that head starts barking.

So I'm like being like reverse gang stalk by meta. Though, because I don't get any AI slow. Oh really, I've never been shown any.

I don't know that I get shown AI stuff.

I've seen other people's feets and they are just like, yes, I have a friend who's it's exclusively AI. I get like I get gen Z people being like showing a clearly homeless person pictures of like brain raw and this person in distress, just being like why am I being harassed by a man with broccoli hair and eight cameras And it's like, oh God. But luckily I've trained my things, so all they get is like silk and wind howls now like shout out to Chloe and Abby and all

What is the portal?

It's like, literally, it's just an HDMI camera. You connect to your TV and you can connect to someone else. It will it works?

Right, You're looking at it. Yeah, and it follows for your TV. Yeah, and it follows you like very quite well as well. It's like it was a cool product, which is why they stopped it because we can't have that. We can't be having you connect to people on Facebook.

No, no, because you know what that does takes you off of Facebook.

Yeah, you can't be shown the feed. But it's like it's interesting to see them try. Shit, It's just there's all the other stuff. Also, it's kind of rare to see hyperscala here because like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, they don't really Amazon will have like a side thingy. I remember last year when I had a picture of the smiling man on my badge and I went into the Amazon thing a woman stopped me and went wows. I mean, there are no good reactions to that picture and everyone

I mean, the smart glasses are interesting. They you know, I've written a lot about this. I have very mixed feelings dumb about that because they're genuinely good products. You roast me every time I post on my Instagram.

You don't have roast roast you. I'm nice to you. When did I ask grost you? Come on? Now?

You don't rust me, but I did one time post a poll of like do these look good on me? And you were like and you were the first and instill like.

It's the royals and glasses but anyway you have complax.

It's true because they are actually like a good product if you use them, they work really well. The a some of the AI stuff you're gonna hate this, it's cool. The translation features I've used on vacation consistently.

That's the only feature where like everyone's gonna like that. And dictation and stuff is good.

Yeah, they're good. The display glasses they look unfortunate, Yeah.

But I've used, but they're using they're kind of cool.

Yeah, they're cool. They're you know, I tried today. They they just launched a handwriting the handwriting feature.

What's that?

So you know they use this neural band that you can control gestures.

So if you sell of the glasses, you put them on and you control it with the wristband. Just for party site.

Yeah, you kind of do little swipes and that's how you control the interface.

It works pretty well, and it does.

And so up to now, if you get like a What'sapp message and you want to reply, basically you have to like use your voice to dictate or reply. So now what they're going to do is they have a future it's feature called handwriting, where you can basically just trace letters with your hand, like on any like on your leg, on a table, you know, just say cool, like just do the letters and then that will appear on screen. And I try to say it was actually

Uh huh, I mean that's I cannot, like I just practice a physical, physical disability, where like writing is one of the worst things. It's like eventually painful. I kind of want to go and hunt this down just to be like, yeah, let's fucking go, mate, I have a disability. Let's go. But actually, you know, maybe it works, but wait, so do it's how you write them? Do you do it by letter?

Like yeah, so you just do a letter by letter and then when you want to do a space, you do like a left to right. When you want to delete something, you can go right to left.

I'm oddly like intrigued by this because there's when they brought Swipe. I don't remember Swipe. It's like when you just drag the it's now fairly common, but it like that works pretty well. Oh yeah, I love it. I'm kind of like, all right, Meta, if you want to do one whole booth for swipe, a c that they did one year Swipe, I think actually have like a small booth. Yeah, it sounds like something plausible and I just mandela affected into the world, just like YouTube videos

I mean, I think what you were what you were saying earlier about basically the trend is the most pragmatic things are the things that actually will help the world and the consumers actually want and actually need, But they just are the least shiny and they get the least positive feedback and they hit the fewest headlines.

Yeah, and if you allow me to tell a brief story, please please close out this there.

This is okay, Here we go. I think, I think we you're for the first minute of this, you're gonna go why are you telling this story? And then I think you will understand. For my wonderful boyfriend's birthday earlier

That he didn't have to move it around.

And then he also thinks that the Eminem's store in Times Square is very funny, and so I was like, I also will get him some Eminem's store branded merchandise, okay, And then I think I had a third idea right that I don't remember now. And then it was the day before my boyfriend lives in London. It was a day before I was It was the day I think it was the day that I was flying to London. Had not any of this. Went to the Times Square store in London, the Eminem I'm sorry, the eminem story

No, it's like a step down from that.

It's a two word, two name, John w John Lewis, John.

I fucking wish yees.

So he went to John Wallas, went John Watis, went to John Lewis, bought him a plug and two cables that all were sold separately. Couldn't figure out what the

And you are still the fucking husband. You're still the husband. You're still the husband who got the gift. They're like, look, it's good, it's good, and it was expensive. Stop muttering onto your breath when I mentioned Christmas. All right, We're going to rotight to our next guest. The next advertisement is brought to you by Blought the sun Cream for Dogs. Welcome back to the show. I'm met Zeitron. I'm joined by Charissa Bella Engadget.

Hello.

Hello, Jared Newman of the Advisory to newsletter. I'm Robert Evans of Behind the Bastards. I am loving the drive time radio DJ version. I'm really enjoyed. A yeah, I really, I'm going to be everyone not for me. Have you taken reader questions? I would love them. If you want to easier better offline dot com, I'll answer all your questions. No, I've been Daniel Goodman my producer. Sorry, my producer is Mattsowski, but Daniel producers went in person. It's not a fan

I love printed advertisements for products that are going to destroy the company releasing them. Yes, and I've been collecting quite a few. These are just the ones that I managed to grab out of my bag quickly.

Nice, but talk to me about some of the things you've seen today.

Well, I mean, easily the most impressive product that's at the show today and there's a wide variety of stuff. There's like apparently some sort of like magnetically fired net gun for taking out drones. Okay, you know there's all sorts of incredible like different like in smart vehicle product or products like different kind of electric engines, and like all sorts of crazy new battery and solar technology. But it's the AI that's really set off the convention this year.

They're coming off a scam. They're coming after the scam artists. Today, the newspapers are gonna shut down. They already told classified the way.

And I, for one thing, I cannot tell how much is AI generated of the pictures of people in this brochure.

Everything looks a little wrong to me. Yeah. Yeah.

They brat that they have a pro prietary astrology engine with a berth horoscope and a composite chart analysis, a long term memory system so it gets to know you better with every chat, and a personalized personality that's customizable based on user data. They're good as friends, as emotional comfort. They brag that it can help you cure certain problems that you might have. Uh so I'm gonna say the other ad I've got. Yes, I'm gonna say Jesus Christ.

First of all, I don't think the audience could possibly know how low resolution it's like. And you've got some Yeah, here's the thing, because there's like astrology where it's like based on like when you were born and more times, and like there's always like thoughts. This is not that, this is like various photos. They're not okay, this is like did they photo show this thing in that's what They don't quite look right.

And I can't tell if that's just because they used AI photos or if there's just like a deep well of madness at the same.

These are these physical objects.

Yeah, yeah, they're little furbye sized objects that give you our like horoscope chatbots that are supposed to like learn and evolve the more they work with you. And they're also supposed to like counsel you and be like quasi therapists. So they had like four different arc types of these

I want to know how cues in action just by it's so horrifying you make it.

Yeah, I need to get up and leave my house to get away for it from the doll.

Yeah.

And then there's the joyful protector cap onuncech to ditch the mental overloads, stay upbeaten, carefree, twenty four to seven, and I really wanted to try these out, but they did not seem to be functioning. At least the demo I got, I couldn't really hear it and it I connected,

A lot though, because the Wi Fi doesn't work and all these things are off device. Yeah.

Well, and that's one of the products that I did really like was from a I initially just discovered the company because I saw their name and I was like, that can't be an American company because they would not have picked this name. And it's for they do translation based AI products and the company's name is trans Aia, So I just looked. I just kind of like that got me looking. But then their products were actually really really neat. They had a device that's like a transcription tool.

A bunch of products actually sounds a ton of people. And this was on I remember them saying this was all on device, and it's on device.

That's what I really liked because a lot of people are offering this is a translator, but it's in the cloud or it's it's you're literally like chat GPT's on it too, and like, so you want me to have like interviews that might be sensitive and then throw that shit back to chat GPT or elsewhere on the No, I want it on device.

And especially with these cheap companies, you know they're not paying the extra.

To keep it so diope, yeah, and that will be trans Ai is going to have this out there if you just google Transai Kickstarter. They've got a Kickstarter going to fund this device, which I didn't get to test it fully, I did get to like whole and look at it. It seemed at least physically well made, like it's a good industrial design. I can't well I did. I mean, there's only so much you can try standing around.

Well it works device as well.

No, no, no, no, those are those are because they're just little earbuds, right. But it may it may just be though that the downloads enough onto your phone. I'm not I haven't gotten to try that yet.

But I feel like in a few years, anything that's left of the air Bubble will all be on device, just because nobody trusts this shit right well, and just yeah, nobody wants to pay for it.

No one wants to pay for it, and for stuff that's really crucial, like being a like if you're trying to sell like you can have conversations when you're traveling around the world, maybe in like weird off grid locations.

I don't want to have to have like five G We were just saying that earlier. It's like if you're in some way where you desperate, you need the translation. There's no English speakers around. It's probably also not a Wi Fi rich environment. Yeah, and you you have more experience of this, I think than anyone. Well, and you'd always prefer to have a person. But that's not mean always some what else you got in your pile of papers? Okay, let's see what? Please? Do I have them? I?

Well, I've got this book that I can't wait to read, Patterns for Building AI Agents by Sam Bogwatt, who is.

The co founder.

That's a great name. I think it's it's just a normal name. I'm Bogwar, founder and CEO of something called Master AI. I don't know what it is, but eleven of these we're sitting out at a bus stop on.

The way to the convention center. So I just went ahead and grabbed one, like when you're walking around Brookley Fund a scientology thing.

Yeah, yeah, it might be a cult. I have not confirmed it's not a cult.

Okay, So okay, this guy Patsons for building a saman Yeah, I don't know. I'll look at this later and i'll tear it. Oh yeah, this is oh actually I can't read. This is the sequel to Principles of Building AI Agents of Oh, okay, you got to read the first one strikes back first. So I found the name.

This is the device I was talking about, the AI, the on the world's first on device AI meeting note taker, the trans AI note. You can see, it's like a nice looking gadget.

By the way.

There was another device called trans AI or trans It's just something with trans and AI in the name, and it was voice cloning. It was a translator, that translator that tried to make your voice sound like it was in the other language.

Oh, that's kind of cool. Yeah, it was a little undersettling. That's that's really good for fraud. Like that really is going to fraud.

So I haven't really wanting to take advantage of a lot of French people at scale, and it's just hard to do right now.

Yeah, I'm just reading this agent book example Coding Agents. Replet agent feeds errors back into context and kicks off an not mate feedback loop. Based on everything I've ever read about that company, that is wrong, just like it. Maybe just haven't looked masters.

There was Oh, there was the cybo pal, which is It was one of those products where I can see the cool in this, but it doesn't work very well. Where it's supposed to be a site tracking, intelligent monitor that moves on its own with your.

Head, Okay, I can see the bottom as you as.

You like move Now, obviously you don't want it to just physically move whenever you move your head, because that would be a nightmare. That would like literally be hell, like if this gadgets just constant as you're like, I gotta like move over, take a hit of a vight

Of two different sensors.

And first the lady who was like the pr representative that was supposed to show it off, tried to and about one out of every four times it did what she asked it to. And then the guy who I think was one of the inventors. It's definitely her boss. There's a language, bears. It was a little hard to tell their exact roles in the company sat down and he.

Did a lot better.

It responded to what he asked it about seventy percent of the time, but it's.

Still a lot.

Both of them a lot of the time are just like doing this, like repeating the same like two finger gesture whatever, over and over at a camera to get it to move. And when it because periodically for like forty seconds, it would do like five or six gestures in a row would move.

And I was like, oh, that's kind of neat. Yeah, if it worked, it would be great.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's just one of these. It's another like AI product, well for one thing.

That's not AI. I'm sorry, guys, like we're using that for every It's the same thing. Like they had that company that Apple bowl, like in twenty eleven that was like they had a ca it was like a ball that it was like a wee baw. You're attached to a monitor and you could like do gestures and that badly fucking worked. Hell yeah no.

Lenovo actually had a tilting a swiveling screen, yeah, laptop and then follows your head when you're on.

Did it work?

Yeah?

It worked at these people. So are you oh say we had that?

Didn't Xbox have that technology like ten years ago?

Well connects, but it couldn't see black people. So that was like it's like it's like a better keeps happening too, It's not the first, no one will be the last time. The law doesn't seem to do that either.

Well sometimes yeah, but yeah, I mean, and that that the whole frustration of like things labeled it, because there's there's a mix of like shit labeled as AI that under no circumstance does anyone really reasonable consider like a robot that responds to a gesture by moving a screen and that's all it does is not an intelligence?

Also, just do you have fucking hands? And have you met people with all the hands.

Like we've been and we've been doing that for forever. Like machines that you can like do something into a camera and it recognizes a simple a vision.

It's just basic like you get not on device now.

And likewise, like I keep seeing like I like this AI, this meeting note taker.

I don't is it AI?

I guess it's more AI to recognize and like transcribe a conversation. But the appeal is not that it's a thing that you can communicate with. The appeal is that it can do a task.

Right.

It's this there's a bunch of different AI pins and AI glasses and the ones I hated all had chat integration into it to where you can communicate with it, and the ones that were cool were like, yeah, it's a pen that can listen to a conversation and transcribe it for you, right right, And it's like, well, yeah, that's that might be useful.

You know. It's just like it all gets back to the classic thing of like, yeah, I want this to do a task and they're like, oh no, no, sorry, AI doesn't do that. Yeah, like it's not able to do that. And it's I feel like this is just the logical end point of where this is. CS has been going for ten years, which is slowly distancing itself from reality. Yeah, and promise to just this point when ninety seven percent of the stuff is just like if it works, wouldn't it be kind of useful?

Sort of Well, it's like you know, I was talking about like AI slop products earlier, you know, and it's the kind of thing where like okay, uh, you can talk to your router and the router will tell you what's wrong whatever. But it's like you could just design a UI that just like told you that, that just gave you that information in a visually appealing way.

Work. People don't look as a print journalist.

Like people don't want to read a block of text unfortunately, they just want visual. And yet we're reverting into this thing where like the technology communicates with you via a block of text that was generated by Yeah.

I also love that with routes as well, because I think for like every CEES I've ever been to, there was a router company that said, yeah, we'll just fix your network problems. Right, everyone's lying, every single one of them's lying. It's wrong every time. It's never worked, tp link deco, fuck you, tp Link, I'm sorry that shit don't work. Busted and fuck that. Hundreds of dollars wasted.

Yeah, and it's the most I've the most product category type I have seen at CEES is some form of digital assistant and or a new chat bot or like companion. Right right, Like there's a huge booth for a company called to Ya t u Ya that was like they've got this holistic it does everything digital companion. You can like there's a health version of it, so you can like feed this thing your health data, Like you can give it access to your wearables, and it'll not just

I have.

The concern I always have was like with like, okay, so you're feeding all of your biometric data into this machine that you're feeding all of your communications to. It has access to your email, it has access to your notes, it's you've got a wearable device and it's listening to you. There's a mobile version running through your house. How secure are you?

How? How how much do you trust this company's data safety? Yes, data retention, considering big companies have breaches all the time. I will also have if you get the wrong workoup and you can actually really hurt yourself. Honestly, this is someone who's done it to myself. It's just like that feels I feel people are very cavalier about that as well, where it's just like Oh yeah, I'll just take the workout from the air and you fuck your leg up, you fuck your arms up, all the things I've done.

Yep, And there's a So they have an AI pet robot for two you that can live in your house. It's got It looks like a big white doughnut with wheels. And I think the hole in the middle is meant, at least based on the crudely photo or the crudely photoshopped cat sitting in it, to be like your pet can sit inside the AI robot companion.

See, it's part of the Wow family. I've always a pet for my pet, your cat, And it's telling that you get a real cat in that thing.

They had to photoshop a cat crudely because the cat is getting inside a wheeled robot.

Bobo is killing that shit. Bob is fucking running across the house to like, yeah, donkey kick that shit.

And they describe again it just looks like a doughnut with wheels. Galactic design, harmonious coexistence, sleek sci fi aesthetics for pets and people.

Yeah, it's Jesus, It's just why am I going to meet somebody who buys one of these? Yeah? I want to meet someone, I actually want to study the brain of someone who goes that is.

Like yes, yes, it was a big booth, so clearly there's money behine hundred thousand. This is uh yeah. I'm not sure where the company is based at them. I haven't looked into it enough yet. There was a panel going on uh two ya x two ya and Google Cloud from AI First to AI Everywhere, which was the same as half of the other panels I've heard.

It was just a bunch of platform do you want to tie someone?

Like how the ais ais just getting back? It's coming to everything. Don't you love your digital assistant? I don't go anywhere without my digitalist?

You set the last year this is the worst that leviby it Actually.

It's at least not any better. And yeah, they've they've got the health management thing. It's got a fitness coach, it does sleep analysis. And again I just keep thinking like, okay, so you're just handing literally your entire life's data.

And this is the Zone app.

This is they do the doughnut thing, and they have the Companion app that can also one of the things they bragged about is that if you just oh, it can run your smart home, so you can plug your security system into this addition to your biometric data. It's a security guardian twenty four to seven protection for peace of mind. And it can run your smart power system, it can run your smart home. And it's also just

Aren't we all you know? We're as you're now ed. It takes a little more skill than that chat chat with Hay two. Yeah. By the way, it's Hay two sounds a lot too much like haka. Yeah. I'm also just thinking like everything's like sleep analysis, so as a chat GPT wrapper you feed the sleep day or into health analysis. It's just they released chat GPT for Health Today AI podcasts Alex said, listen to what you love. Alex Heath of Sources says that churt GPT health is

Yeah, so why though he said that we can't advertise that right now Jesus the liability, But.

Also, what the fuck is it for? Then it's for giving you health advice? Yeah, it's like it's for health. Here's the other thing that like health stores.

If we buy and this is an if, but like if we buy the idea that generative AI agents like chattybut Gemini whatever are like the operating systems of the future, which I of course do, yeah, and I know you believe that, but like you now you have all these other products like that, which is like its own AI kind of agent and so and there's like a million of them on the show floor, So like are you

You really would rather just use chatchybut or whatever. That's the thing. It's like, what happens to all these companies when open ai copies all of them? Yeah? Or dies? What if open ai raises their prices? Do the margins make sense?

And these products are literally just a thing that like that a computer that we slapped into a ring or something and gave it wireless at like gave it like access to to chatchipt, right, that's all it is.

What if you can't afford that anymore? Yeah, what if they raise the prices by ten percent? Because that doesn't sound like much if you're like paying twenty bucks a month, but if you're doing I don't know, thousands of dollars tens hundreds of Yeah, wipe them out immediately if your margins are ten percent, and like most of your business is spent on chat GPT, It's just it's inevitable, but also so easily clonable.

I am I'm looking forward to the chat GPT. Furry astrologer.

Sure now that that's responsible use, that's AI of AI, and that that really seems like ethical AI to me.

Yeah, they're worrying.

There was a good one on mental health and AI that was by a the Yeah, I mean it wasn't so much a panel as like a speech by like a clinical therapist. Okay who I've got this written down of my notes. I'm spacing on her name right now. But she was taking very much the the reasonable tact of like, Okay, what has already happened is that a shitload of people are using chatbots as therapists. That is happening.

Yeah, you need pushback, right, you.

Need pushback, You need critical analysis of what you're doing. Sometimes you don't need a machine that is trying to keep you happy so that you continue to use it. That's not therapy. And she was like, so any responsible version of this technology turned towards therapy would have to

So what frustrates me She's right, sure, but what frustrates me about that is like I'm tired of people saying if it did this, it would be great. If it's just not possible, if it's just like most of ces this year is like if it worked, it would be good. Hers was more people are using chatbots for therapy? Is it? What would you need to see for this to not be Irrespecti's and I use, I think that's reasonable. I

Last year, we talked to a guy who made an AI enabled device that was like four as a companion for old people. Primarily, it's like this like head shaped kind of robot but didn't have like a face, that had cameras on it and could like move a little bit and engage with you that you would like keep in a kitchen or something like an appliance, and you could use basic stuff with it. It'll tell you like the weather outside, it can look up stuff for you, and.

It'll also basically like a lepsa, but it also.

It's programmed to engage you and kind ask you to like, hey, do you want to record a story for your grandkids?

This is not a cash grab for you.

You were attempting to make something that would solve a problem.

And be a good business as a result of that.

Right, And this year I came across a company that this is the company I showed you the horror Zeroth that had the They have the Wally Robot. They say they're working with Disney to do a licensed version of But they have these tiny robots that look like rock'm sockam robots that are like companions for the elderly, even though they look like a Toya kid would have played.

Was this nice or something like that? No, No, it's.

Zero with this company, But it can like walk away. I can hobble around and the thing is. When I asked, like, what does it do, she said, well, it'll tell your face. It'll tell like an elderly person's family member if they're not doing well, if they like seem to be less

Yeah, you're making this so too.

Telling me that your like elder care device looks at people the way the terminator.

Does, you a lot of confidence.

And just the difference in like this man who this is a very personal invention to him, and he at every step was thinking about what will actually be best to the people I want to help, versus this marketer being like, yeah, it's like a fucking terminator. I'll tell you if your grandma's dying, fucking room to do with that. And it's tiny, it's like eighteen inches tall, Grandma's gonna have this walking around, it's because she's gonna trip on it.

Yeah, like what the fuck? Like the classic thing that old people do is trip on stuff, and it's like, we need another one.

But grandma needs is a tiny robot that looks like a toy that her forty year old grandson now would have played with as a kid, and like why why does she want this in her house?

You get it between like t Moon notifications and Instagram notification Grandma dead, Grandma dead, grama details later, Grandma dead, or like the it's like your cat's pissed, Like you get the note he really is notification. If you bought even seven of these devices, your entire life is just a nightmare.

Of just like ping cat the rest of your life trying to scroll through one day's notice.

Your I mean, my fucking phone is already like that. It's insane. You install a new app that's like, oh, it's the it's the Selfridges app, and it's like did you know you can buy pants? And it's like I'm familiar, Thank you Selfridges.

But I think it it kind of gets back to like you know what I'm saying before about like pebble and clicks. It's like, you know, it is so in short supply at cees to find like authenticity, somebody who is like really passionate about like this thing.

I want to solve a problem. So when you find it, it's very exciting, you know. Yeah, like the guy.

Who made the the the mug that has a fan on it for when you're in like you're drinking at the stadium or something during like a summer game and you want both a.

Fan and you want your your beer, your gatorade, whatever you.

Put in there. You know as well, it's stupid. I don't want one. It barely counts as consumer electronics. But at least a man had a dream, you know.

So we're going to rotate again and the next ad is whatever it is, it's perfect. You have to buy it immediately. Diana once again, in front of a micro phone in the Palazzo in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm drinking my eleventh diet Coke. I'm surrounded by the warmth and love of friendship and camaraderie. Joining me is Chloe Radcliffe, the wonderful stand up comedian actress from a is this thing on who What? Where? It's you who Robert Evans

I mean, it makes me wanna like go see someone play an acoustic guitar with no amplification.

You know what I mean.

It makes me want to like walk by a playground, like you know, it's recess and the children are just sort of like running around.

Yeah.

It makes me want to build a fire and dig a hole. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It makes me want to like have a basic a basic pleasure of life. And I'm having trouble, like, you know, putting the two worlds together.

You know, I mean, like, well, it's just you know, like this is it's the center of you know, the tech industry in many ways, or at least a certain piece of it.

Right, It's like all sort of coalescing around this, you know moment.

It's like a little black hole like owls of the tech end, not ready to like ship all this stuff out yet, so we're kind of watching it as it and it's.

It's supposedly the most the most important, you know industry in America.

Sets the tone for the year as well, because it's in January, drives the economy.

These are the people who are like creating the future and and so much of it could not be more distant from most people's lives or horrifying to their lives.

Yeah, did you say anything new today that horrified you? Yeah?

There were three different kiosks that we're selling body trackers that would track you while you're driving a car. Sorry, it's not for you the driver, though, it's for your employer to track you while you're driving the car, like if you know, to track ups drivers or Uber drivers or other people who are drive in a fleet and it can you sit there and it has you know, it draws a little skeleton over.

Your body and your face to track you. And then it has a little icon, Oh we can tell you're yawning.

A little voice will say put on your seat belt like it's it's it's human monitoring to you know, mechanize people. I guess if you're a logistics company that can't afford way mos, which are also all over the place, this is a way of sort of putting your drivers into a little virtual prison.

Feels so much more invasive than you know, Hey, we do have an alarm on the car door, so we know every time you get in and out of the vehicle, and and we have GBS in the car and we know, you know, we know when you're stopped.

Yeah, we have like a governor so it can't go above a certain yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

And uh, you know, it was kind of fun to play with because they have a camera set up and you want to track your body.

And me and what we're playing with it.

And then and I was like waving at it, and then I kind of pretended I was in a car crash and then I kind of like yanked the equipment around and it wasn't put and then a German Man came over and he was like, you must leave.

That has been enough fun. You must I was like, I'm sorry, yes, you must leave. Yeah. Each time you say each time and I'm said I'm sorry. He's like, oh, yes, yes you have to go.

Yeah.

By the way I was, I was like pretty stoned for the entire two hours that we were there.

Yeah.

I love getting in trouble at booths. Like my second or third sees. I used to have this thing where I would go I would seek out all of the rugged products because this was right when they were starting to make a bunch of bluetooth speakers fifteen years ago, starting to make a bunch of like blue like power

And said you must leave, you must put the log down. She apologized to me because she said it. I asked, I didn't do I didn't assault the device.

Well, you assaulted the device, but with expressed.

With that with consent. But this was also a device you are mint to a soul.

Yes, well that and that's what my very first cees. They had an indestructible cell phone, not a smartphone cell phone, and they took a bunch of journalists out too. I think we were in front of Caesar's. Maybe it was the Venetian, but they had like a car that had like company branding on it, and they would each journalist could go and set the phone down and they would drive over it with like an suv, right to show

I feel like this is that this is the CS thing. It's like, we have got one thing this does and most people are not going to ask because this is not for people to use, it's for people to sell. And it's like, oh yeah, yeah, well what if it does this? Wait? What does it work? I feel like you were talking about something earlier, Chloe. It was just like you asked one question. My brain just seizing up in real time.

Yeah, I'm trying to remember, which I just have so many people I've been like what's the point?

Yeah, that's the question. It's like, what's the point? And then like why fuck way, no one's ever asked does Yeah? Yeah, yeah, you got anyth dregs left, Chloe things to declare.

I saw this is not a well I actually don't know what product this is associated with.

It must be a product way for the best.

But there was a like test how strong your your punch is? Oh yeah, they've had section And I stood for a couple of minutes and just watched with the greatest respect, the dweebiest, loseriest, sweet little dorks, some young, many old walk up and just like try and rail this thing, and like, you know, everybody punched it, but watching watching dudes in just like weirdly fitting suits whose faces move a little strange, be like it is my turn to punch now. I was like, this is incredible,

I saw also like there was one where you could throw footballs at target, and I was just I watched this old man just walk up and just fucking lamping the footballs and then he just and he's like, wife was like like videoing him do it, and they just walked off and you could see the people both be like, wait, you're not gonna talk to us about the TV and they just walked off. That guy fucking rocks. That's beautiful. I want to throw the football and I don't want

One thing I maybe the only thing I liked actually was I saw this massive John Deere tractor.

Didn't know they could be this fucking big, massive two story houses.

Yeah, literally, I climbed stairs to get up there had crazy hydraulic if I had a vision of of just not doing any of this ship at farming with the with.

The big as tract really and right by farming.

Yeah, with the industrial farming from a long line of farmers. I feel like that that felt right for a second, and then I had intest of thoughts about running over all the tech.

Yeah, and that would be.

Oh yeah, that I felt more when I climbed up there, I started, you know, because it's you climb into this thing and you're thirty feet above the ground and it's like the bridge of like the Starship Enterprise. It's like a hydraulic chair and like a giant thing, and you're looking at the it's the rest of the show floor and you're just like, oh, if I had a missile launcher on this, I could blow.

It all up.

And the front of it looks like weaponry because it's like twenty like imagine a cone the shape of a traffic cone, but as tall as a person, right, and then on its end like with the sharp part pointed out, like twenty of those lined up.

That's what you're it's right, it is.

I believe it's picking corn like off the cobs and putting it into a giant like dump truck looking thing that that that goes along in sync with it, which is another part of the gap between the stuff with the sh in reality, because it's like this is so far from what most people think of it as a farm. You know, this looks like.

But that's how but that's how most farms is. Oh, I know, but it's it's just the gap between.

It looks like if you were playing like a video game and you were like terraforming mars like this, this thing looks.

Like I just like the idea of a giant tractor and just turning the fucking thing on, driving forward until I'm out at this convention center.

Could drive away, just head for the hills, Yeah, just to just stop to hit red Rock, go out.

To Area fifty one, me and the boys.

Yeah, that's our dear president.

That's one of his bits, right, Remember when he had that truck and.

He was.

Just drive away.

They won't let me, But I could just go off into the sunset.

You could.

You could do that up the tractor, you know, if you maybe if you're hot, worried. I don't know if it actually has an.

Imagine you could imagine a tractor that you are describing is the size of a spaceship. But if you just know exactly where to cut, you can just make red wire technically wire and turn this thing on.

Yes, Massacre mo over Sea the last US track to Massacre.

Blasting big green tractor out of the speakers there were.

I do want to say behind us in line for the tractor, there was like a bunch of folks from Japan and they were like vibrating with excitement to get in the tractor. Because I can only imagine just the americanness of a John Deere tractor and the size of it. It was like they were they like shoved me out of the way to get in.

I'm I will also say this is a unique thing that Americans can't understand how small some other countries are. Look when I got to American and I saw my first cruise ship, I kind of freaked the fuck out. I say, it's just so large, so much, it looks like the size of London. Upsetting. I still freak out over them. They're huge and they're terrifying. They look horrifying, and like, if I go on this big tractor, I would either feel overwhelmed with power or like just like

Yeah, I feel like the big tractor is like the ring of power and that Yeah, no matter whether or not you like hate it, before you get behind the wheel, as soon as you start driving it, it changes you.

You just hit dragula.

Yeah, it's like it was pretty clear. It was pretty clear you don't even drive this thing you supervised. Yeah, Mar this would be my green Goblin mosque.

You've got mister Wharf behind you on the weapons tail rikers outside.

Alex Heath is hand Sorry, Alex, Sorry, Alex. I don't mean I'm not going to run you over the track. I do love that.

Every now and then you'll name jobs when you're like, I wish I could do bodily harm just kidding.

I also would not do bodily harm to Alex Heath. I apologize, Alex.

Not what the poster that you made and put on the wall. I wasn't gonna comment on it.

It's weird, but just the fucking signal chat from lost was just like an action of threat against an executive. I was like, oh yeah, and it was the second I got here as well. He was like, Samuel, when we're going to and I'm not going to fucking repeat it.

Yeah, it's it's not illegal to make actionable threats against people.

It's not. It depends on what.

Who you voted for, folks. Yeah, it's These are jokes. These are bits bits. We're doing bits. We're having a laugh. We're having a laugh. It's bans it's we're bantmaxing.

We're bantering. Yeah, yeah, that's that's how it works. So Adam, this is your last day though. Did you see anything you liked it? So you're on it of all? Yeah? No, no, I know. I was vaping. I have a dry herb vape, which is the best way to consume week Hi. I actually am curious what does that mean?

Okay, so what it means? I love explaining this. What it means is you you know, Robert, you know what this is. Yeah, it's just like a vape that, yeah, you put material in it. Most vapes that people think of our oil that have like chemically extracted the THHC and suspended it in like an.

All of the vapes used to work a volcano and stuff when we were kidding.

This is you put plant material in it. It heats it to a precise temperature where it does not burn. It just vaporizes the THHC and other oils oils, and one of the great things about it is it makes almost no vapor. So you I use this thing at the fucking airport, Like nobody noticed. You know, no one's looking at you. No one is going to know as you're using this thing. So it is great for this kind of environment, but it.

Doesn't taste like strawberry melon. I guess weed babes maybe never do wow. Spoken like a person who really knows her drugs.

Uh, I did see something that I really did pop for, which was and Ed was there too, the uh uh it was ah okay. So imagine like a white van, like a normal van, and on top of it are sort of a couple of blue tubes that go up and down and rotate, kind of like a like if you built like a lego version of an anti aircraft that looks like that looks like a home anti aircraft weapon, And it turns out that's what it was because it shoots a net at.

Drones using not gunpowder. It's just some kind of electromagnet. So it's like a like almost a rail gun type. I asked the guy was this a rail gun, and he was like.

What's a rail gun?

Magnets to propel around? Nothing trail gun with you.

Sorry, it's like a it's like a yeah, like a sci fi torp.

Can we cut that out of.

But yeah, so it shoots a it shoots a net at the drone and then it catches the drone and then there's a little parachute so the drone like falls down to Earth so you can it was like super fucking just like Metal Gear Solid five.

Yeah, it's just because it's like he was like, there's a legal gray area where it's like, you know, you see a drone that you don't know and you're like, whose drone is this?

And you want to shoot it, but you can't. You know, you might get in trouble.

So he says, so you're not destroying it, you can just you can give it back to the owner after.

You retrieve it. That shit on the back of my truck like a technical and in the park, just driving you pick up truck with a bunch of drones in the back.

I mean, what we think mad Max is going to look like is like old gas trucks. It's actually going to just be semi trucks with drone trophies.

Because the drones are going to have countermeasures. Eventually, they're going to all they are chaff or they're going.

To dodge, you know, they've already I mean that's yeah, that is the nature of drug Like that's what we're seeing in Ukraine right now, which is like it's it's this, it's gotten to this insane escalation of countermeasure where if you go to a lot of frontline villages, they're covered in miles of fiber optic cable. It looks like the

That like hangs on the tree, have no idea about.

Yeah, the drone warfare's nuts. Fuck, I hate it.

That's the thing that came closest to killing me overseas was a fucking drown But yeah, it's it's it's all this like Red Queen measure countermeasure ship. Like everyone's been sprinting as fast as possible to stay more or less in place for the last four years.

What I liked about this company was I was like, is this for the military, And he.

Was like, I mean, we're pitching the military, but like, you know, mate, we talked to him, but like we think you could use it, you know, to like guard a private you know, like a power plant, or like I.

Was like, use it at Coachella or whatever. I mean. I uh.

Once there's an episode of Adam Ruins Everything where we couldn't shoot for like ninety minutes because some dumb ass was flying a drone over the shoot and we could. We had to find the guy to stop because it was fucking like because he used it.

That day, ye had to break his legs. I remember that episode in That's I love that. I do love Honestly, every time I hear about this, I just want to play with one. I just want to shoot a guy like Duck Hunt, like your guy Jesus Christ.

Just a guy in the sky. Okay, okay, yeah, see a guy.

Shot down exactly what I mean, exactly that understand what I mean.

Not a guy.

I'm just looking at in the streets and capture in my nets.

He's got to be high enough that that there van.

Guns have to be able to aim at them.

The last time I saw the Blue Angels at fleet during Fleet Week in San Francisco, I couldn't stop myself from thinking like I could take them.

I could take them. I feel like I could take take him. Went out.

Well, they're flying real close to each other. I feel like it's not hard to fuck that up. Shove just a little shop. It's like a because they're in a plane.

Yeah rock sure, yeah.

Yeah, wait, no, we do actually want to take them out.

With Okay, So they're flying pretty low.

If I ever need to take the Blue Angels, I would like these.

How low? Like are we talking one hundred feet?

Feel like if you get on top of the Salesforce tower when they're doing some of those like really low flights, get like a potato gun. You could get one of those lodge right into one of the area intake things. Oh sure, and they're probably like they're they're going so fast. I feel like any little mistake would be catastrophic.

Yeah he is, And don't get up the Harlem Globe drivers, Okay, manhunt look like you know, you're like posted up on the Salesforce tower.

You used a potato gun parody parody he's doing He's doing Bess Spence were Bents Spence? Yeah, Fence. But yeah, it's so it is quite funny watching people like I'm gonna call you to normal. I think that that's fair.

Yeah, watching a lot of my exes would disagree.

Yeah, sure, but normal You've seen this show and it's funny watching regular people just be like, yeah, so most of it's useless, most of it doesn't work, some of it, most of it will never exist.

I mean I asked the question in the last episode with none of these guys here, I've basically said, uh, what does what is the point of CS? I was like, what does anybody walk away from CES with you?

Yeah? Well I was asking Edward and maybe someone here knows the answer. Who's the customer? Like I went to toy fair once and at.

Toy Fair there's there's buyers from retail chains walking around going like yes, I'll take ten thousand sticky hands or whatever, which makes sense.

Who here? It's not custom Like, who's there are?

So there's CS is really a couple of different events, right, A huge number of the booths here, particularly when you get to the areas where all of the company all the booths are small, and all of the companies have like different like like Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, or Taiwanese names.

Do business here.

That's like a chunk of the event that we don't have really any because that's not journalists aren't interested in that.

And that's most of that is kind of full of these I was mentioning like photonic scent sense and we had things.

Just for like one group I went past like twenty booths that we're all just selling different pieces of solar panels. Right, yeah, that's not form valid, right, and that's fine and that

Okay, that's clarifying, thank you. Yeah. I think like the majority of this year just feels like chat GPT wrappers. Yeah.

Yeah, that's most of what most of what I've seen as some form of AI chatbot integration or glasses we'll chat.

I saw one interesting uh we talked to one vendor that was like an AI thing that actually seemed to kind of do something okay, which was they, Okay, if you have an autonomous driving system and it goes on a drive and the drive doesn't go well, this will simulate a slight version of the like they can take a real drive, turn it into a simulation, and then have the agent or whatever it is, the weay mo do it again like in its head.

To like make it do it better the next time.

I'm like, okay, that that seems like sure a company, an AI company that a different one of these companies my contracts will date specifically.

What I like about that is that that's a company. I don't know how all this product will work, but that's a company that's thinking about solving a problem.

Yeah.

I always gravitate towards like someone identified a problem and they made a thing.

Maybe it doesn't work. I suppose the ones just making up a problem rather than feling to solve it. You know how your.

Kid doesn't have a robot hallucinating horoscopes for it? Well, we have solved that.

Does your does your does? Where? Does does your kid think that Taiwan is Taiwan or China? Right? Well, this, this, this toy is going to tell your child that it has offended it terribly. Do not mention Winnie the pool to ai Bop. You will get fucking drunks, you little shit claude. Don't talk about and sweat.

Is your four year old having too much trouble finding which under the sink chemicals are most caustic? This new teddy bear will make sure they know and teach them how to open all your pill bottles.

This adorable rabbit will teach your five year old about BDSM. And what's funny is we are sounding like we're making jokes. No horror, this is a thing happening today. Welcome, Welcome, because you may be thinking, well, also, doesn't it do all the assistant stuff? And you'll be surprised to hear it does not. None of this refuck. I am like I would actually love to be elated. I would love to see something I'd love to I brought in so many people spoken in so many hours, and I'll swear

Okay, A cool thing I saw today is this company that is advertising like paper batteries, right, okay, and the actual battery isn't isn't paper, but like the battery like the core of the battery is made out of cellulose

Right, that's useful potentially.

Again, I have not looked into this company and done like third party report also how they are claiming it works. I don't know if it works, but it's at least an idea and.

By here filter the metals and like, but you know what again, And I'm also like, yeah, who's gonna be doing that also? But that has great ramifications for disposable things.

That's against someone's trying, yes to take humanity a step forward, and at least that's.

Good as opposed to like the eighteenth different VACUUS autonomous driving as opposed to what I saw next to that booth, yea meat which the company name is just M M E E T T.

Don't know what that means, and it's it's they have an AI business card. They actually have two different card products. One is it's the size of a business card. If a business card was way thicker and couldn actually fit in your wallet and would be super easy to break even if it wasn't your wallet. But you tap into someone's phone and if their phone as an NFT reader like or.

Not n F NFC, Sorry, oh I couldn't.

If your phone has an NFC reader, it'll pop populate automatically with their like business card.

And one quick problem sure if you bump in phone together, it will do this without you having like an easily breakable piece of electron.

Interesting what if I told you would? Also, as long as you have an Internet connection, can translate things because they can just stick that on whatever. Now I would I'm using a shitty speaker, I assume, Oh well, I'm sold.

I just fucking And.

The other product they had was a thicker card that they bragged with as thin as three millimeters houses for AI assistants, all the chat bots, they don't actually live in the product. Again, it's connecting. Why do you need internet?

Really simple? What is for? Is that just different? That's just prompt engineering. These motherfuckers are claiming as like eleven AI.

Ah, no, no, you're you're being unfair. They've got the AI meeting assistant turn conversations anywhere into summaries, insights and action items to boost productivity.

They've got an AI.

Translation assistant break language barriers across one hundred.

And forty five So there's not four ais.

No, it's just four different things. Does it's just prompt engineering? Because I don't think they were lying to explain.

Because it's like all using chat gpty so to explain to a sales assistant, which is so promptent.

Ring is literally just every single AI product you have ever seen on this floor is just prompts. It's prompts for the API and telling it you are a sales assistant, you are a meeting assistant. That's all it is. It's just text. It's just it's all text. Every single one of these is just text. I am Yeah, Well, what about the pixels yeah.

Sometimes it's Yes, it's multimodal an AI inspiration assistant ideas and develop them in the future possibility.

Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait.

You can use that. You're a writer.

You can what do you mean capture fleeting ideas? Do you mean have an idea? Focus on it in I've got to be clear your own brain. Then you can't. An AI can't it. If it's fleeting, it leaves your brain faster than you can type it into your busines his card.

I'm thinking about, like, because I keep a notebook and sometimes I like jot down ideas in it. I'm thinking about, like that time I woke up after blacking out and just written on a page in the notebook was Hitler with abs question mark?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The AI could have really helped me. That could have been something, you know, Hitler with abs could have been the next goog.

Wow, Robert Hitler with abs. Sure is an invigorating and original idea.

We're not just coming up with an idea. You're touching into something that everyone else is feeling.

What if he had abs? Right? So I'm not just an idea. It's a revolution. That's another hitler with abs that real quick. It's not another one of those tweets about AI wrotes, like every AI thing is like, it's not just big, it's huge.

That has literally become to me in the last month that has if whenever I see it's not X, it's y, I'm like, that's LLLM test.

So as we wrap up and Adam is finally released into the into the wild again, is that I'm just going to tell you the worst name I saw on the show floor and I fucking looked and it would be junkie Cream.

Yeah.

Yeah, I got junk yunk cream.

We love junk and it is just an AI slop company. It was just like it was just I don't want to talk about what they did because they couldn't work it out. And also it was very obviously we're trying to be like because it.

Is just money.

That's so that's exactly. No, no, no, it's like an it's like an illustration. It's like an it's like semi animation producing whatever.

It's very clearly meant to make you go junkie.

Cream, right, And that's actually exactly.

Why I it looks like, come, I haven't brought it.

Up because I saw it yesterday and I was like, junkie cream.

That's crazy.

And then as soon as you walk over it's the whole vibe is isn't this crazy junkie cream that ruins it? Like that's not it's not it's not funny anymore.

There's a couple of those about yesterday, the jerk off hand and I saw that. I saw that today, and I get the handy. I get exactly what you mean, though, It's like you can look, it's not it's not your grandma's jack off machine. It's like a very sad thing.

It's only funny when it's when the product is in earnest, like the Okay, I think, Edward, I think you were talking about toilet cams. But I then saw, I think, a different toilet cam than you did. And when the guy was explaining it to me, he was, first of all, the words camera in your toilet are, at least to a woman, the camera four words that you can string together. And so then when he was explaining it, he was like, yeah,

Obviously it's facing down.

And I was like, and then he paused and he goes, or maybe it wasn't obvious, and I was like, yeah, honestly.

Notting a toilet in a camera and a toilet everything's on the table.

Yeah, I know what you might do.

Yeah, yeah, And what happens to those photos?

And what?

What? What fuck toilet camera?

What is this product supposed to do?

It's looking at your ship and going, hey, you got to drink more water.

That's the way it does. It insane with a permanent camera.

I forget who posted it, but it's like, yeah, I know it's because my piss is like looks like a high viz vest.

Yeah, Like the consistency of your poop is already you know it when it's happened.

If you're like diary, yeah, yeah, ask them. And this little machine has so many pieces to it, like it's probably you know, like as you're holding it, it feels like it's probably like four separate housings that have been attached together to like make it all work. And I say that it looks it looks fine. I just say that to say, there's a lot of seams in the thing.

And a load of pictures of piss, and presumably.

That's in the cloud. That's for anybody to ask.

Oh good, I'm sure that won't be breached.

But I said, I was like, how do you clean the toilet cam? And he said, oh, you clean it in the same way that you would clean your toilet.

And I was like, well for all, yeah, really weird?

Yeah, like, how does he clean his toilet?

Yeah, clean his toilet.

The follow up question, how often? Also, this is sitting on the rim.

I like, I'm happy to use the scrub brush, but it is once a year at best that I really like getting there with elbow grease around the rim. And then this thing has so many once a year.

I guess that's exactly how I.

Pay a lady clean your toilet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, to clean my toilet to look through the photo.

Also, I have a camera on my toilet. It is called my cell phone, which I bring with me every time.

Yeah. All, So just if you I'm just gonna as we wrap, I think this statement I want to make is if you are thinking I'm going to put a camera in a toilet, Your fucking scumbag. I'm sorry, I'm just I.

Met the guy who founded the company and he seems sweet and like you just had bad shits.

Yeah, but it is like, I don't know, buddy, A camera can't be the.

Just but I think the going robot.

I mean, it's just because you're right that this is something that is going to be more immediately, Like more women are going to immediately respond negatively to this idea than men because there's a chunk of men. I'm sure there's just a smaller number of women too, but there's a chunk of men who have absolutely no interest in their own privacy, have absolutely no concerns about privacy, and are shocked and kind of scared when they realize other people have a sense of privacy. And most of those

I had a camera in a public space trained on you.

You don't post about how many erections the robots that you have every night.

Oh my god, I bet that's it. All right, We're gonna wrap up. I'm gonna read my favorite name from the the show floor, Shenzen City Wenzita's Motor Manufacture Co. Limited. That's a fucking name. Shen Zen Pan Brain Technology Co. Limited. Hand brain basically like brain brain, like in a head. Yeah, it's like it's actually a really worrying photo. I don't know if that's just like a guy sitting there full sleep faster and it looks like a sleep act near mask.

It looks like something that people use in kick Yeah.

Yeah, it looks like how the guy in Manhunter was like towards the anyway, can I tell one more story? Please? Please please?

Okay, just this is the most useful thing that I'm gonna leave with, and you can jump into the story if you want. We went to the Weai Moo booth, which was mostly just way mo is here, you know, waymo here it is. But they had a little line and if you scan your badge and you push a button, it would dispense a little a little goodie for you. And first of all, very clearly there's just a person in there.

And they get a very upset if you suggest otherwise.

Really if you if you say that, they are but like sometimes you'd scan your thing and then sometimes it would take like four or five seconds and like the little pin would like come out at an irregular angle, like this is a guy back there, and like that's much cheaper than any other mechanism. And then you take the little pin and they go, oh, you're a winner. Everybody was a winner, but like, oh you're a winner.

It's going to be cold, and bring a hat.

So that's Waimo has made my life.

Well advertise for Waymo.

I think it's gonna be pretty clear. It's ironic. Okay, if my hat says.

We adam my god, I'm so I'm so sorry, I'm.

A little I'm a little tipsy. So for a second it was unclear to me. I thought you were saying that Waimo had given you a ticket to Madison, Wisconsin. I was like, what an incredible advertising.

Foss stand up to Madison, get in there.

Airplane.

Yeah, yeah, all right, as we wrap this up and Adam has to he has to go, Adam, plug your stuff, plug your shit.

Okay, I'll be well listen the Factually podcast, which sometimes but I'm gonna be a Madison, Wisconsin docy this weekend, a comedy on State. Next week, I'll be Fort Wayne Summer Comedy Club. After that, Louisville, Houston, Texas, and finally taping a special on at the Punchline in San Francisco from February nineteenth through twenty first.

Lovely Chloe, why don't you because you do this too?

Yeah, I do this too. This weekend.

I'll be in Cincinnati next week, and I'll be in Washington, d C. And uh the week after that, not the weekend. I will be doing my solo show called Cheat in Philadelphia January twenty twenty one and twenty two, and then at the end of January, I'll be in Vermont and then for Collins and then Fargo, going to Fargo.

Okay, that's all that's gonna be colder than man.

Oh yeah, of course.

And as we wrap of course, in honor of Sean Paul Adams from Friend of the Show past last year, Please dedicate this to and donate to the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium. Shan Paul's son is epileptic and his family would deeply appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening for another day of Better Offline. We'll be back tomorrow and Friday, a little bit on Saturday. I love you all. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to Better Offline.