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What's Pippin' my Bops? It could happen here a podcast that is sometimes competently introduced, but not on the days that I'm recording.
We're at CEES, the.
Consumer Electronics Show, seeing what the tech industry has in mind for all of us. Right, this is a show where the industry talks to itself and its investors and clients about what the future is going to be. And so Garrison Davis and I are going to sit down with you and tell, based on our explorations and investigations this week, what the future of artificial intelligence means for all of us and for the world. Garrison, Hi, how you doing.
I'm tired.
Yeah, you look tired.
It's been a long week. It's been a long week convention walking.
Yeah, we've worked very hard.
I've talked to too many robots.
Yeah, I've talked to a lot of chatbots.
I mean it's a bit of a stretch, is that we've talked with them.
I've talked to add a lot of chat bots.
Yeah, times they responded, sometimes they don't.
I guess one of the things that's kind of shocked me is because, like, despite being very critical about AI in the industry. I have actually a pretty good idea of what these things are capable of. And I know that chat GBT and Jim and I and the other like they're capable of doing some things that look very impressive. They are capable of conversations you know, that can be fairly in depth, and that can cover a wide variety
of topics. And so one of the things that has surprised me is that as I have gone up and tried to communicate with every various chatbot enabled AI enabled product, about seventy percent of the time it's not actually capable of responding to me in a way that makes any sense. Like the majority of those products just don't function. Sorry, was that literally your AI and your phone yelling at us?
Case in point, I was trying to pull up one of the one of the AI robots that we saw today, And I guess this is something that we talked about on Better Offline a bit. In the main thing this year year is the complete, the complete like victory of like chat GPT, yeah across not just not just like it's.
Like the cultural victory within the tech industry.
Yes, right, and it's moved into like the physical world through like their API license, saying, yeah, so many of the quote unquote products this year is building a physical thing around chat GPT.
We have a necklace that has chat GPT and you can talk to it. We have a pin that chat GPT is in and you can talk to it and have it do things like transcribe an interview.
Earbuds, there's there's earbuds, little robot dot, every everything has has chat GPT inside it. And that's the main thing that makes it a like uniquer special compared to you know, the types of products we've seen we've seen before.
And I would say again when I when I say that like seventy percent of the chatbot enabled products that I tried to interact with could not converse with me or could not do so in a functional way. It's not because the chatbots aren't able to talk to you,
because they are. Anyone who's not like you can. It's that all of the chatbots require an active Internet connection because the vast majority of these products do not have anything on device, and when you're in a crowded convention floor, the Internet is bad and so they just don't work. And it kind of it's one of those I'm sure most of these products would work better in the real world, but also the fact that they're all completely hobbled by their access to data is kind of one of the things.
It's one of the seams that you can see here.
Yeah, the LLLM rappers, so LLLM rappers and robotics are the big things this year. Often these things.
Are I mean by an LLLM rapper garrison.
Well, this is this is the thing that we're talking about it it'd say it's that this physical product that's built around something like chat GPT or Gemini or Claude or a number of like the Chinese made ones, right, a lot of Chinese companies here. So these physical products, whether those are you headphones, earbuds, or in many cases little tiny robots whose main main features that you can talk to can talk to it and what you're actually talking to is like a filtered version of chat GPT.
And there's a lot of these products for kids that we've seen, like robots for kids, because there's a lot
a lot of robotics this year as well. That these these are the two things that after years and years of them trying to find a new thing for each cees they've like settled on not not actually having anything of robotics, not having anything new because like we've we've seen robotics before at other years, and this is the year that they're combining their physical robotics, which aren't new, but combining them with chat GPT and presenting it as a new product.
Look, now you can intelligence robot and they can't do more tasks than it used to, Like we're still doing really good if it can slowly and not very competently fold laundry. Oh right, Like LG's Kloyd Kloyd, which is a robot designed to be in your home and do chores for you and visibly does not do them well.
We watched it now.
Where they're presumably it's presumably working better than it normally does because it's a demo.
I went to the first Cloyd Cloyd demo and they had like three three different setups for the different stories for like different use cases for Cloyd, once with ones with a family, ones with like a single guy, and ones with like a like a middle aged woman. And with the family, the robots able to find keys that are lost. Notably, what that means is that Cloyd is moving keys around the house, which might actually contribute to
the problem of your keys somewhere else. The robot could put a tray of croissants in an oven and the robot knows it, and the robot knows exactly how you want your croissants done. You don't even have to tell the robot. It already knows. And that's something that was stressed the power of ail and over again is that it will it will start to like know what you want is so you wan't need to tell a memory.
So many of these products, with the big sell ones, it's got a memory, and it has a rant. They can't stop themselves. And I think some of this was like the actual companies and the way that they're structuring a campaigns. But a lot of this was just most of the companies here hire pr people who don't regularly work for the company and don't know much about the products, and they're just there to demo stuff. And some of
it is those people just defaulting too well. They're talking about how this thing like like remembers and knows you, so I'll talk about how it like it has a personality, it has memories, it has experienced, it has core memories, you know, it has preferences and like a personality, it wants things. I talked to a couple of different people at booths who like that was the thing they were emphasizing, is that, like, this is an AI that like feels and gets to know you and has a relationship with you.
And it's very number one not what they would want publicly because that's crazy and none of the products actually work that way. But the attempt to convince people that, like, what we have done is create a robot that lives in your home and does chores and it can think and feel.
And anytime you say, like, well, is there you just saying you built.
A slave, Like are you saying, well, there's thinking sentient robots that you have lived in your house and do your laundry.
Isn't that a slave?
And it's not, actually, because the robot doesn't not actually, but what they were saying was true, it would be a problem, right, really.
Oh, if you get introduce yourself hoever youone introduced.
Oh, I'm Ben Ben Rose Porter, I am an academic, I'm a sociologist at Kearney.
And you have accompanied us through the wonderful world of Las Vegas and cees this year. I always like bringing people to witness the beautiful world.
Yeah, I've been brought to this place very far from god, Las Vegas and the Tech Convention Center. There is this moment where we were walking through and it was the the the Amy Bot for kids.
Which me and Robertsau last year, that the little like oval owl looking robot.
Yeah yeah, and they had this She's got to be an actress and she was doing like a little skit with the the Amy Bot where it was like it was like the Amy about birthday or something, and she was like very clearly having this this very produced. It reminded me exactly of how like Cheap telea novella's like actors talk where she is just like wow, I mean,
you've really gotten to know me over the years. And it was bizarre in that one the selling point of the robot was I think they said, turning data into empathy.
Yes, it's able to turn data into empathy.
Which God knows what that means, but also that like, so clearly the robot turns data into empathy, but also we cannot show you the robot doing anything concretely, so we will have a person like it was just this very one sided like skit where this person was doing this really overly emotional like back and forth of the robot, where the robot would just respond with like the bare minimum like phrases, and so like what they're selling is is questionable if anyone wants it, and all speculative, it's
all none of it can actually be presented.
It's all like the potential to do this, and then and then even the way.
That they're actually showing that is mostly just cheap tricks. There's another booth where they had the sex robots, and I was just it was shocking because the stand like you're at this convention, you've presumably you know, gone through a lot to get here, and you're the image you're putting forward of your robot that you know you're selling
as the sex robot. It's like this cheap AI image, not even one of the good ones, like that they are like clear artifacts and very weird lines and things, and that you could google an anime jpeg and get a better image for this. So just even the smoke and mirrors of it was cheap.
Yeah, that was that Love Ants is the Sex Robot booth, And yeah, they had two products. One was like just like you know silicon like realistic human skin sex robot, which is similar to like you know, those horrifying sex dolls, except now we have an LM inside. It's another one of those LM rappers, except it's wrapped around a redheaded woman.
Garrison. I find that very offensive.
It's actually some people are just they're not capable of talking to women or other human beings of any kind.
Yeah, people with ADHD.
It's actually a disability where people can't know other people and can only have sexual gratification.
Through a creepy robot.
I apologize for my respect for my on air ableism. Yeah, but no again. This is the year of l M rappers, and now they're putting it, putting it in a sexpod, which is more unnerving between than a regular sex doll, because a regular sex doll, you kind of know it's an object. Like it's it's not trying to be much more than an object. It can't you can't you could you put in positions, but it's it's static. Yeah, this because this thing tries to kind of engage with you.
It activates my uncanny Valley response way more because it's like it's kind of trying to pretend to be a person, and like, I could not look at the thing for very long. So they just like started like I just felt bad. Yeah, and some of that's probably my latent Protestantism,
but it's I just feel I just felt bad. But the other product they had, like around the corner was this was this like you know, anime style like like Avatar, which was which is on like a screen that you can talk to and it's synced up to like a jack Off robot, right, so you can you can engage with this.
Finally, you can.
Engage with this like this like blonde blonde hair, blue eyed anime woman as it's as it connects to like a little a little like jackof machine. And that was there. That was the other product which did not work because there was no Wi Fi in the Venetian Yeah, so we could we could not see it, but the Jackoff machine was still going strong.
Yeah, so you could say, I guess that, like, well, obviously there's there's fundamental issues with like having Wi Fi be decent. When you've got seventy thousand people like all cramming themselves into a room, of course, that's going to cause problems that the chatbots and the devices using them are actually capable of more they should. They're more impressive than you giving credit for just because the WiFi didn't work.
But also if all your builds is a shell that without the Internet and access to someone else's chatbot, it's useless.
It doesn't do anything.
This is the big people I haven't really made a product acts are going to brick as soon as soon as as soon as chat GPT raises its API costs, they're going to do one of two things. They're either going to stop working or they're going to move their chatbot provider to a different one that's going to behave differently, and then it's fundamentally a different.
And that's why periodically I would run into someone where it's like everything that we do is on device and everything, and even the ones that were still because almost you almost have to say that whatever you're doing is AI and stuff like. There was a company that I came across because of their name because I just saw the name trans Ai and I was like, well, I gotta go see what that is.
I did see that, and it's.
Simply I believe they're a Korean company, but it's it's just a company that makes like a translator, right, and they make it specifically. It's like the size of a smaller smartphone. It looks kind of like a smartphone and you set it down and it will on device. It does not touch the cloud at all for any reason. It can translate, so if you want to have a conversation with someone in a foreign language, it can like like live translate for you both. And also it will
transcribe whatever conversations you're happening. And they were like, yeah, this is for people who want to transcribe. No have been there at college. It's for people who are doing interviews, journalists and stuff. So and it was a really good It seemed to be a good product. I've not gotten to test it outside of the show floor I saw.
I saw a few of these.
One of the big differences I saw between like the few there were like two or three or four booths that we saw where the product. I was like, I had a positive. I was like I walked away with some mildly positive. Was that almost everything else talk about like the sort of insatiability of capital is that it has to sell. The sex doll was a perfect example of this in that you know, if you make a sex doll and you put the chat GPT inside of it and then you sell it as this is a
sex doll. It's an object you find, but now you can like you could have sexy conversation with Its still an object, but like you know, that's fun for some people.
Thing that people didn't have, and it is new.
Yeah, and it's a phenomena you could clearly show off. It's like, oh you can, you know, now the sex doll can like say your name and stuff. But almost all of the boot that we're selling some kind of aiproduct. It was like, we have to sell the opportunity to like transcend like your mortal shell and become a part of the cosmos itself. Like the SEXTL was literally sitting in this corner talking to no one and saying stuff like I'm about emotional intelligence and building a connection, getting
to know you and reaching into your soul. And it's like it clearly cannot do this. And the few products that were good were the ones where the people showing it were just able to like just put that aside and just say here's what the product.
Does, right, here's what it can do.
Concrete and that has become my baseline first question, which is like, have you done anything with your product? And if all that you've done is we invented a new device that didn't previously have a chatbot that it connects to through data that someone else built, you didn't do anything that's not a product, that's not real. So kind of my first my filter was like, is there anything here beyond another way to interact with a completely different p that you didn't make.
To go back to like the AI note taking devices, which I saw a few where there's a Lindon and it will take notes for you. I saw like a lot of these, like marketed to like a college student.
And it's the thing that it is a thing that machine learning, because I hate that it gets lumped in with AI, but machine learning has gotten up a lot, but it.
Is really good.
It's it's good at note taking and here's the thing, and that's alliable and there's different devices that you can get it on. Like I saw like like a note taking pin that's a pin that just automatically takes notes for you, and that was like, you know, kind of like kind of kind of fun. But the thing is you can do this exact same thing on your phone with the jet GPT app. It's the exact same thing. Yes, you don't need it in a pen, just turn your phone on and it'll auto do the notes for you.
The actual product part is useless. The whole idea of the smartphone is that you have everything you need already on it.
And that's why I did respect again companies like trans Ai where it's like, no, this is actually on device, and this is a thing. This is that better utility that my phone doesn't have, which is that no matter where I am, even if I'm not connected to the internet, I can translate and I can transcribe using this device. That's real utility. And transa is not the only company. A couple of companies had products like that.
Yeah, we saw this emotion tracking pendant which is oh my god, on device, which which listens to everyone.
So you said motion, not emotion, no emotion, oh god, but it listens.
It listens to everything you're saying. It doesn't uput anything to cloud, but it in the AA is on device, so it listens everything. It is like emotional sentiment analysis. It also monitors your breath and your heartbeat because the necklace like rests like on your chest, and then it like talk and then it can like analyze like around like six or seven. That's mystic seven different emotions, and like it was like, fine, I don't I would never
need this thing to tell me how I'm feeling. I know how to feel, but like it might be fun for some people to track how they're feeling or be like, oh I was more stressed. I was more stressed this week than like last week, and like still.
And there's even there's at least a degree of baseline optimism that you have for the product when it's like, Okay, this is a device where you're trying to track people's emotions, and your immediate first thing you decided as a company was this can't go on the cloud.
That would be a responsible This.
Is why that was the first thing I asked, right.
Right, And that is I guess the most important fundamental difference between companies and people here and between the companies that are embracing to some extent AI is the ones who whose default was like, well, but we're doing something that involves emotions or that involves like interviews or conversations that people might not want on like we shouldn't have that on the cloud, versus the people who are like,
why wouldn't you put literally everything on the cloud. Why don't you want your health and medical data on the cloud. Why don't we want your financial data on the cloud? Right, Like that is kind of like the most fundamental difference that you see between people.
Here, part and parcel of the insatiable like just drive for endless value. And probably the comparisons between this convention and its location Las Vegas are really overlaiden at this point, but I mean there is something about, like, you know, the appeal of gambling is the promise of the speculative promise of endless value, and how all of these technologies
are selling themselves off of endless value. And for the producer side, that means like this this device has endless function potentially, you know, we say endless functions.
Especially with these like AI devices.
Yeah yeah, but from the consumer side, it's from a well, if you just give yourself over to you know, to the god of capital, if you if you just bleed into the machine and connect yourself to the cloud and give over like everything, and it really is everything. I mean, there's like AI towels that are like analyzing your sweat.
If you give over everything, there is this vague promise of transcendence and that like you will escape the the like the misery of the world that this place is just both completely blind to and then also without ever saying it, like also responding to it entirely.
First off, obviously you're you're coming at this from more of a left wing perspective, so you probably don't understand that gambling always works and you're definitely going to win. So first off, you.
Know, no Vegas really is the anarcho capitalist paradise.
It sure is, but no, like like what you're saying is they want you to give everything over. There is absolutely there's not outside of again the odd booth where you find sane people, which is almost how I think about it them in my head, where it's like yeah, where you're putting front and forward. This stays on the device. You don't have to be online. We are not exposing your data.
It's like seeing a lighthouse right in like in like a horrible like rainstorm and you're like sailing god a ship and you can't see anything and everyone's you'll see a booth with like a real person God it's like talking about it was solving a real plum, like oh finally, Yeah.
It's a spectrum between talking to the ais, talking to the real few people and then the other people who are kind of.
In between the two.
And it was I I went from seeing this app where the whole purpose of this company that makes like agentic ai solutions, who I'm scrolling to find there the company name right now, all of it is they're making agents that you can put in like point of sale things, or you can put in like cars as a chatbot.
Like.
One thing they said is yeah, we can put this in a car and we can have the you know, you can navigate using voice the way you would normally like with a bunch of other apps. But if you navigate with voice using our app, it will only send you to restaurants or businesses that we have a deal with that are giving us a cut and so and you too the car company gets a cut.
Two.
And that was the innovation is that we can not give people like tell people where things are. We can tell people where things are that hey us and you get a cut of it.
The company can like make a partnership with like Coca Cola, right so then when you we're.
Literally talking to Coca Cola reps when I was there, it's showing them that like, yeah, we have a like, look, we've replaced the human beings that take your orders at Burger King, and the chatbot can alter on the fly of the menu. If you have to get a smooth a lot out of vanilla coat and you want to sell as many large as possible, it can tell people that's the only option.
WHOA And like like the.
Fact that they were just like bald faced about it, because when I showed up, they were they were demoing how this uh, this like Burger King menu with AI worked, And they were like there was a full menu that you could see that was like a like an updated screen menu, but there was a secondary menu where they're like pretending to be a guy who drew up to Burger King. And the way that they started was like, yeah, what burgers are good? What do you think I'd like? And I was like, who No one.
Drives up, No one good drive through window and asks what's good?
Yeah, No, that's not how they And again there's a menu in front of you. You look at the menu and it's like that's how everyone buys food. So at first I was like, is this just a company that doesn't know how life works? Who are like trying to pretend this is like what people want where they go through? Yeah, yeah, well what's good today in McDonald's you know, do you have any specials?
Uh?
Which was crazy?
But then I realized because they were talking to this small group of people, and I realized after a second, oh, because I looked at their badges. Everyone has badges that all of the people worked for Coca Cola. And so they were talking about how, yes, if Burger King wants to move you know, a specific kind of whopper, then we can put that front and center when people ask what's good and we can push it. And said, for coke, if you guys want to move vanilla coke, we can
have Whenever people order anything, we can have it. Say do you want to add a vanilla coke? A large vanilla Cokes?
Just like yeah.
And so what I realized is that this company whose name is this is SoundHound.
AI sound Hound Yeah yeah, great, pretty pretty good name.
Their motto was faster and more accurate, higher revenue. I came to realize, and this is this is not entirely a separation from other years because they are always selling to companies like this. But there was absolutely they were the only thing that they were talking about actual end users, as was a thing that you can pull extra money out of by by tricking them, by pushing extra ads to them. And that's who they were actually selling to,
is these companies that they were like. The other thing they demoed was you can make an agent on the fly and you can include the capabilities, and they showed us how to select it and then built an AI, an agent to live in your car. And the demo they did was like, hey, my car is making this sound. What do you think it is? They didn't play the sound for the AI by the way they described it, and the AA said that sounds like it could be da teta da. It'll cost about seven hundred dollars to fix.
Great book me an appointment with the dealership. So first off, that's not how people work. I've had car everyone has car issues. A regular person. There's a problem with your car. You either have a mechanic. That's not the dealership that you go to because they didn't rip you off in the past, and you're like, well, I trust them, not to fuck me too bad, or you go to a couple because most people don't just drop seven hundred dollars
in a repair and not think about it. But the person that this engineer is pretending to be for the purpose of this AI demo said, great, book me a repair at the dealership. And the AI was like, okay, I've called them and I've booked you an appointment.
And by the way, would you like to schedule the test drive for this if it kind of car. Oh, my wife loves that car. Book us.
And that was the whole thing is he was like, don't be impressed that we can theoretically book you an appointment. Be impressed that we can have the machine upsell you on trying to buy a new car when you come in to fix your old car that broke because you bought a bad car. And there was no shame. They were so proud of themselves, for this machine can repeatedly
upsell you things. And that was the only utility. It was not this allows you to more easily navigate town, This allows you to more easily, you know, cut out problems in your life. It was this machine can upsell you every minute of your day. Everything you ask it to do everything you try to have it do, and we get a cut of that. If we send it to a restaurant and you buy food there, we get a cut of that. And so does whatever company you know put the thing in your car if you buy
a new car, we get a cut of that. That was the product and that we have gone from. Here are machines that do things. And even back in the glorias of smartphones, at least everyone showing like, look, we have a new phone that's thinner than a phone has ever been.
Yeah, or like the camera is like you know, four K now or something.
Whatever, the focus is always and now people who buy them can do this with it, right.
I mean, I would guess that so much of the impetus for creating this stuff and developing it is all for producer goods, and then the more revenue is honest, and that like that's what the and all the consumer goods are mostly just getting you know, cast off is like now we have all I mean literally, that's what the LLLM rappers are. It's just like, oh, we have this thing, let's throw a plastic robot on it and
try and sell it. But what drives its development is squeezing just little bits, squeezing labor out of the pores of the production process, which it just gets you a little bit more, you know, capital to keep this engine going a little bit further.
And it's so because the way it'll work is I saw that thing where it's literally all you've invented is a way to try to con people out of more of their money. I hope you're proud of yourselves, because I think it redacted is what you should do to yourself. And I went from that to the booth of a company called Gintech, who had never heard of before, but they make different automotive products, and an engineer there showed me a thing that he had been the lead on inventing,
which was a sun visor. So like you know, when you're driving and there's a glare, you put down the advisor and the visor is just like a basically a piece of fabric and it blocks a chunk of your view, but it at least blocks the sun. And this was an intelligent visor that was clear and so you could see through it, but it also blocked UV rays and you could adjust the level of opacity if you needed it to be more or less, but you could still see through the mirror and it still blocked the glare.
And I was like, oh, that's really neat. And then he pressed a button and it turned into a mirror. Suddenly that functioned. It looked great. I saw it.
I know it works, and I got like an honest wow, I didn't know that was a thing that could happen. And that's a real product, and I can imagine using it. That's like a problem where yeah, if you want to block glare, you're losing a degree of visibility and now you're not You've actually done something right.
Yeah, but you could put Gemini into a toaster and call it a day.
What if your toaster could talk to you about Proust?
I guess I mean this is actually now that's an idea. If we're going to close this this more AI focused episode, I kind of want to circle back to Cloyd and like why and why Chloyd Loyd again, chlod exists.
Just take a second, if you're listening to this at home on the drive, if you've got family around, look at each other, look another person in the eye, and say the word LG has a new home assistance robot named Cloyd. Cloyd roll it around in your tongue, you know, just think about it for a second.
Okay, why Cloyd exists? Like why? Why? Why is LG who's previously had some really impressive booths over the years, and they.
Had cool TV.
They had TV's where the wallpaper TV was impressive.
Every time I go to an LG's booth every year, I'm like, yeah, that's a better look on TV.
Really TV. Yeah it was great, but why why? And then the wall peer TV is Okay, there was one paper TV last year. It was it was slightly worse. This one's a little bit better. But why does Cloyd the big thing at the LG booth this year?
Loyd?
Right? Because none of the technology that Cloyd is doing is new. Remember last year at show stoppers, me and you we saw that really janky robot. N't have to be more specific, but it's not taking a robot that moves up and down.
Oh yeah yeah yeah, the pusher and shover robots.
Yes, right, And Cloyd is like kind of that. It's like the actual physical robotic parts of Cloyd aren't new. Yeah, and there's sort of the sort of AI that's running Cloyd.
And Kloyd if someone needed to make Wally that was legally distinct enough to stop Disney from suing.
Them, and tall and Tom Taller. That's how Chloyd looks.
So why is Cloyd there? Why is Chloyd there? I'm always asking myself this.
Is This goes into like what this what like Cees is like doing this year, and how it reflects this current state of the tech industry is that these lllms like tra GVT are not actually better than they were last year. No, they are. They are the same. So how do we make things look look cool?
Just whatever improvements they are is not enough to notice for an average person.
Very minimal. Yeah, So instead of actually having anything new or any kind of sizeable improvement to display, they're combining too old and some of the products are kind of archaic. The come combining two older products and trying to pass it off as a new thing. And that's these these these like older older like robotic systems right that you're usually kind of humanoid. Maybe they have hands, Maybe the hands can grab things. Can the hands unscrew up a
milk carton? No? Can can can the can the robot grab milk out of the fridge?
Yes, so long as you want milk from a very specific carton and croissants and only croissants, you're good.
As long as the milk has a QR code that the robot can recognize to know that it's milk. And also when it's emptier than a certain level, it actually will crush the milk thing like it has to be a certain level a full otherwise it doesn't.
But it's neither of these things are new. And the fact that Algae doesn't have anything else to display at their booth, the fact that they had to stoop so low is to regurgitate this old kind of cheap robotics and slap an LLLM in there and then call it a day, so that they have very little to actually show for us. Yes, and you see this walking through like the Central Hall SAT. The Samsung booth is into there, the Nkon booth is into there, the Sony booth is
mostly a car like. There's a lot of these big companies are really absent from actual products. The Panasonic has a really big booth, but it's mostly about like servers, it's mostly about how they're how they're improving, how they're improving data farming, there's no stuff, and a lot.
Of the stuff that does exist.
You even have to separate further from stuff that exists and actually might be useful to stuff that exists and might be useful because it solves a problem that the
thing that it is already. Like for example, a bunch I came to several different companies that had a car AI assistance whose job was to yell at you if you fell asleep or got distracted, and they were all built into these giant dashboard things that were the whole dashboard is a and it's like, yeah, I can see why you need a robot to yell people get distracted because we have data.
Is there putning subway surfers on your fucking car dash.
We have ample data that shows that when you have a giant screen in a car and people use that screen, they are actually worse drivers than when they're just drawn on a normal car. And so, yes, you have made the car. You can show me how this whole dashboard you can change it in a second. Look at all these different modes you have. You can smartly change your dashboard be whatever you want and it'll yell at you
if you get distracted. And it's like, well, but the only reason you're getting distracted is because your entire car is a computer screen, which it shouldn't be, and we know it shouldn't be.
They're either trying to solve problems that they created or
inventing solutions to things that aren't really problems. And like with with and this is this specifically with Cloyd, and they kept the guy who is like doing the demo kept reiterating that Cloyd Cloud or already knows what you want before you have to say anything, right, whether that's a croissant that's slightly under baked, or he knows had a fold laundry just the way you use the way, which is what she what she said in a kind of self aware ironic tone, because this robot spent two
minutes trying to fold a single towel and it couldn't do it. These things don't work, and they're not meant to. It's meant to drive traffic and attention towards the LG brand, because there's gona tons of articles being like, look at LG's new butler robot, right and that, and that's that's all that they're doing at this demo. M HM because this is not a real product for sale. It is it is meant to drive attention to the brand and get articles, and then those articles are going to get
you know, cited by by other by other lllfs. And it's this, it's this cycle that just keeps building. There's some really impressive stuff there too. Like I went to persona AI's booth had a bunch of computers that had without that were not connected to the Internet.
All the signs told you that. And it has on pc AI image generators where it's all on the machine itself, and you know, one of the representatives said, come on, give it a prompt, it will generate an image. And I've never used an AI image generator, and so I kind of panic. I'll be honest, like I got freaked out.
It's gonna be some bullshit.
Tom size more with dead kid.
Yeah yeah, now that's not Tom size Moore. But that is a man cuddling a dead child. The kid doesn't the face is gone, and that's not Tom size more like.
But you know, the future, the future, No, this this I can't. I don't want to harp on Cloyd too much, but it's so it's such.
A good every additional time you say, Cloyd, it sounds less like a work.
It's a good example of what this show is specifically this year, how there's there's there's nothing new, so they're reaching into like into like the cees of of of yesteryear. Yeah, I'm trying to push two things together and pretend that it's a new thing. And when it doesn't work, they're like, oh, this is actually a good thing. He's folding the towel
just the way I like, and that's bad. Poorly. Look, he spends ninety seconds putting a single shirt into the washing machine, and this is him being very thorough.
That was the word. He's being very thorough, really put in the time, and.
You're like, this thing doesn't work.
Is bad, it's a bad product. Part of the mistake they made, I think, is that because this is the year of robots, there are robots there that are like industrial application robots that are showcasing we have made a robot with humanoid hands that is capable of more intricate movements than any other human hand robot before, And they showed it like intricately folding like a pinwheel, and I was like, yeah, that I have not seen a robot with humanoid hands that has had that much dexterity before.
I'm sure that has some useful industrial applications. And then you go from that and there's a bunch of other robots that are industrial where it's like, we have built a new tip for this robot that allows it to do this kind of automotive work, or allows it to do this kind of like manufacturing work, right where I'm like, ayes, assume not being an expert on robotics, but you're saying it's the world's first robot that can handle this task.
But that's at least an innovation. You talk about the ethics of replacing him, but like, that's a thing that is a new capability. And you have those robots next to the robots that human beings are actally meant to buy and put in their homes, none of which work well, all of which are exactly as capable as robots twenty years ago, except there's a chatbot on them, and it
makes it all look worse. Where you're showing me what theoretically the best in robotics can do, and then I'm looking at the thing I'm supposed to have in my house and it just fell down and it can't fold laundry, and you want me to spend six thousand dollars or twelve thousand dollars. One of the robot THEU I think it was like Booster X or something like that. The one that was dressed like Michael Jackson. You're supposed to have as a companion for your child. It will help
it with its homework using chat GPT. It's small dancing robots, small dancing robots. Yes, yes, the small dancing robot that you've been hit in the head with a liquor bottle and it won't break.
That was part of the ad video. You know how you always want to hit your get in the head with the liquor bottle. Get out this anger with this tiny child's high robot robot senator for your child.
And again, if someone was marketing a robot senator, like are you angry at your spouse?
You can beat the shit out of this robot and be fine. At least that's an idea.
With AI technology, the robot will actually learn your spouse's personality and respond accordingly to the beatings.
Look, look, I've been hitting this robot after I come back from work every day for the last two weeks. And look as soon as I walk on the door, it starts to shake.
The previous models is just way.
It wasn't satisfied.
Yeah, it took a long time for a team to figure out how to give a robot PTSD.
By god, we've crossed the rubicon.
As you can see, Vegas is taking its toll on our psyches as we've done a extended intimate partner abuse bid.
He's not a partner. It's robot Garrison.
Oh, you're right, it's not.
Also, the robot can think and feel and has core memories and can love.
You don't put those two things together. He's only separate thoughts.
No, this robot basically has a soul. Watches hit it with a liquor bottle.
It would just be.
So great to like with all of the how much the they're focused on the the AI can develop real human connection, but it's also saccharin. I would love to just do a booth where it's like we're teaching our robots hate.
They can't know how to hate.
Yeah, And I do want to end by noting one thing that we talked about a little briefly, but is kind of low key The most upsetting thing about this, which is I saw a bunch of different booths that use the term empathy, and what they meant by empathy was the robot can understand and anticipate what you want. Right that it's learning you and your patterns in order
to offer you and more effectively assist you. And I guess technically yeah, but reducing the concept of empathy to the robot knows when you might want snacks is kind of evil, like it's in its freedom's right. Empathy means the robot knows when to serve you is like a bad way to talk about it.
Empathy.
I don't think most people you what is empathy? Well, it means someone knows when I want to be up sold on a Hyundai.
That's not what empathy is.
Yeah, our robot learns empathy by being instrumental to you and useful.
See wenously what you know the core of them.
We made our robot watch four hours of videos from Gaza, and it immediately said, I bet those kids went on Undai a Lantra like that.
I anyway, Yeah, it's if your version of empathy is trying to sell coke vanilla. Because we have all of this all this stock.
Oh wait too much. We fucked up. We are in trouble. We're underwater.
That's what empathy is.
Yeah, anyway, welcome to the future. Everyone's a ces miracle. It's a ces miracle. Goodbye.
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