Also media.
This is it could happen here a podcast about things falling apart, and today the things falling apart are consumer electronics as an industry. We are at CS twenty twenty six, the trade show where the tech industry shows us everything that's going to sell us in the next year. And we've seen some cool stuff and a lot of bloat wear, a lot of crap, a lot of AI enabled stuff that doesn't need to be AI enabled. Here to talk about it is our panel of experts.
Needs experts is a strong word, but okay.
Yeah, panel is a strong word. Is even a strong word. I'm Robert Evans. Garrison Davis is also with me.
And I'm Ben rose Porter.
And you know, Ben, you're an academic, right you do you do college?
Yeah?
Your college.
I'm a teach sociology.
That's right, that's right, as a sociopath. How a trade shift.
It's fascinating, love, I mean, you know, it's a fascinating world sociologically. You can learn a lot of the maladies of society at this place.
Yeah, it's most of them are on display here.
We are now going to walk you through a bunch of the largely non AI products that we were able to find after sorting through the gunk.
Yeah, it's kind of like like you know how people like pan for gold. Yes, if instead of like panning for gold and like a beautiful mountain stream, like you were panning for gold and like a pile of used condoms.
Gold is also generous. This is panning for pennies in a pile of used condoms.
Right right now? What was the best used condom you saw it? Twenty twenty six, Garrison?
I think you mean, what's the best penny good products? Did we see any good products? Yeah, there's some good ones. Did I I don't know if I saw any good products this year?
The translation stuff is still around, and some of it's really.
Cool now, I mean, yeah, we've in other episodes we've talked about the glasses in the earbuds. Most of the product sheets I have out now are at the very
least mixed if if if not, it's not bad. At Eureka Park there was this product called Nodi which is a smartphone replacement for for kids, like kids like six to twelve if you don't want them having a smartphone, and it allows them to send voice messages to a parent and who like you know, has like this approoved contact list, so you can you can also listen to music, listen to like some like radio, like like you know, radio, dramas, price and books.
It connects to Spotify.
You can learn languages allegedly, or you can you can learn words, right, you can learn words from other languages, and you can communicate with your parents. And this was like fine, right, it's the stuff that we've kind of seen before, but it was this little like you know, silicon kind of looks like like a elf bar. If you're familiar with an elf bar, it kind of looks
like that. And it's if yeah, if you don't want to give your like, you know, six year old an iPhone, but you know, want them to have a way to contact you, right, And.
That's like fine, right. So there's there's a lot of like basic stuff like that.
I guess that is like kind of okay, I don't want to be cynical for the sake of being cynical.
That kind of stuff bores me.
But there really wasn't that many good products this year because so many of them just wre lm rappers, as we discussed in our previous episode.
And there's another there were products that were good and I could tell we're good products on their own that they had still thrown AI functionality that I don't want that I know will blow itt the price and also makes it me less want to buy it. LG was advertising their new OLED television that has like the most vibrant colors, the best OLED screen that's ever been on a TV. I'm sure it looked fucking great. Yeah, video of it. The colors, the darks are amazing, are really good.
But it's also with AI, with Evo AI, and to show if it's vibrant colors and what's capable of they had a loop of videos that were inspired by the Hubbled Space Telescope and you can see it if if you ever watched Deep Space nine. It's about the quality of the Deep Space nine intro.
It does look very Star Trek intro.
Yeah, which is frustrating because again we have images show the actual image show they look cool because you know what they are is real, Like they're real products of one of the most impressive things human beings ever made. And you're bragging that, like we have an AI generating images inspired by this thing that look worse.
Yeah, it's just a lot of those things that are kind of mixed.
I wanted the TV I want.
I was like, Wow, I might like a TV like that until you displayed that part of it, and now I just kind of feel dirty about even the prospect of wanting one of your products.
This is an interesting product I saw the like the Innovation Awards showcases, is the Acoustic Eye, which is kind of just off.
That's an ear.
That's an ear, Like, right, that's an ear. We don't need to do that.
But this is a specifically a security system that tries to detect very small drones. And this is like for you know, high profile people's houses. Mostly you can put that on your roof or your window and it'll detect very small drones that cameras would not be able to detect. So it's trying to like listen for drones. It provides three hundred and sixty degree omnidirectional aerial surveillance, detecting invisible
aerial threats. So I would assume that they're trying to excel these to like, you know, like executives, like CEOs, politicians, people who are at risk of either you know, drones filming around their house or more like kinetic drone based attacks, right, and this is an interesting product that's like very current, the very current product like this is this is a reflection of some of the times that we're in. And yeah, I found I found that to be one of an
interesting thing. I guess we should discuss the exoskeleton, which is maybe, yes, the best part of the show for me.
Yes, there's a lot more exoskeletons this year. The technology is clearly matured and mature to the point that not only is it, do they have viable versions for like industrial use for people working in factories and whatnot, right, which two years ago is what they were always advertising is that these are things that you buy at an
enterprise level. And I know they're not primarily concerned with the health and well being of their workers, but actually these do improve health and well being of workers.
Right.
It reduces the felt load and the felt strain, it reduces the damaged knees and back, right.
And that does affect their productivity, right.
And it also affects a profit because you're not you're less likely to have workmen's comp claims.
Right.
It's one of those it's one of those things where it's a really good idea and the product's work. There's a number of very good exoskeletons we received from a company called hyper Shell, an exoskeleton before the convention this year that you and I both wore on the floor. I have some data on it, which is that I timed my normal walking pace when I'm not particularly trying to get anywhere about nineteen minutes a mile, right, if
I'm just kind of like walking casually. When I put the Hypershell on and had it at seventy five percent power mode, my walking pace was fifteen to sixteen minutes a mile, about fifteen and a half, I think is what I generally advertised. And my heart rate didn't change meaningfully. It was like one or two higher than it normally.
Is not really a significant change and heart rate, right, And I felt like at the end of the day, my feet heard about a normal amount for a day at Cees, but my lower back and my knees felt less strained.
Right. That was my experience with hyper Shell.
It's like an external hip almost attatches around your waist.
Yeah, there's a belt around your hip and it goes up to right above your knees. Is kind of the and so it's not a huge footprint.
No, it's a very small device. And yeah, it goes, it goes around your hip.
Then another strap like goes above your knee and it kind of assists or guides your like leg and your hip up and down.
Yeah.
And for the record, folks, the basic version of this product is about a thousand dollars. The version we had was about twenty one hundred dollars, right, and the battery will last about thirty kilometers. They say, I didn't have any trouble getting about an eight hour day out of it.
Ben, you wore it much more than I did. I wore it a little bit. Do you want to just talk about your experience with hyper Shell.
Yeah, I was impressed with it. It was first of all, Hypershell, very funny name. I like that name. It was pretty comfortable to wear, which is I always see the exoskeletons and I'm like, it looks kind of but it was like it was very easy to take on and pull off. I was, And it was comfortable and it was pretty simple.
And it basically just has two motors that sort of assist when you move your leg, it pushes your leg and when it comes back in the step, it pushes it back down and so it's just assisting and it tracks your leg pretty well, so there's just very little time when you're pushing against the machine. It's coordinated very well. I mean, it just functioned. It worked, and you could walk a long time.
Yeah.
The fact that it's like, yes, it's a product that works and it does a thing that has utility, it feels increasingly rare.
At Cees.
I was a little disappointed that the product did not pay attention to my emotions and build a relationship of empathy with me. That was, but the walking was got Yeah.
I asked the hyper Rochelle about its opinions on Proust, and it had very little to say.
It is it is like two main mode.
It has like this Eco mode, then it's this hypermode, which can get really aggressive.
If you turn up hyper model kind of lifting your legs, you can.
You can you could be bounding, yeah, and you you can. You can.
You can addres like the torque, you can address like how how much delay it has.
You have a lot of different settings.
The one thing that I had a lot of fun with is that there's this other experimental mode. I don't know if you turned it on yet called called fitness mode. Fitness mode is cool. It does the opposite. It adds resistance to like so it's it's for like working out. If you want like a harder hike, right then you can you can. You can turn on fitness mode and then it'll be it's more work.
Like how Goku trained to walk.
Sure, but something I I I that's an anime thing.
By the way.
Now, one thing that I've found out through through my own my my, my own cunning is that if you have hyper mode turned on all the way, which which it was when when Ben was wearing the exoskeleton on my phone, I can switch from hyper mode to fitness Mode immediately, which completely halts any movement.
So you can be walking like seven.
Fuck up your friends if they don't have the app had seven.
You're walking with like seven miles an hour, really fast speed walking, and then I press a button and your legs are going to an immediate halt. And it was really fun to do that for about seven hours.
Yeah, I almost crashed into several people just scare to get his kicks.
Oh, I'm glad you found the terrorize your friend option.
On that It was really fun.
It was most of the time I used it.
I had installed the app when I got it, but I didn't think about it after that because there you can do everything on device, or at least you can.
Do a lot a lot of analyze device.
You get a lot more options when you're using the app, but you don't have the app to handle the basic functionality.
Right.
I loved adjusting the the like the intensity of how much how much doing, and it shows a munch of like applications. Or you can wear this hiking like running, doing you know, lifting your.
Work, and I like the thoughtfulness in there.
You don't need the app to use this, but the app vastly The app allows you, gives you a lot of control that you're not going to get off of a simple like button.
Right.
Yeah, It's just struck me as good design.
It has a lot of like fidelity.
Yeah yeah, so that's the hypershell, folks. Good exoskeleton. I've used a few at various cess and this one certainly strikes me as like a very good like consumer option, like if you as an individual want one. And I'm sure still most of the sales are going to be like enterprise different companies that have like you know, want these for people who are doing like loading and unloading and like a loading.
Dock or whatever.
But I think the price prices will continue to go down and they are now hitting the point where this is like a thing that individuals can afford if they
want one. And there is a lot of and Hypershell focused on this in some of their advertising, but there's a lot of utility for people with disabilities for stuff like this, right Like, that's part of the point of all of these different products, and in general, when it came to the stuff where like the because there's AI in this too, Hypershell talks about it, and it's mostly just like how it learns and reacts to your motions, right that.
That's like machine learning.
When we talk about AI, usually the useful applications you could also just call machine learning.
That's what we used to say.
But in general, the products that impressed me most and scared me most at CEES were healthcare related products.
Right where we.
Have a towel that reads your sweat and can tell if you have like vitamin deficiencies or if you're if you're if you're not hydrated enough, or all of these different like the number of products where it's both like, yes, this thing can tell if you've like fatty liver disease like based on without needing to go to a doctor, and I'm sure that is useful and will help a lot of people.
And also all of these products are.
Selling your data to the highest bedder, your health data, you're biometrics.
You ask them about that.
Sorry not, I am not aware of that being the specific thing for the fatty liver people. That was my problem with all of the health wearables. I should just to be sure, I should clarify the wearables are all on the cloud and every one of the ones I saw has deals with the LLLM companies that they're working with and are are handing your data over.
Yeah, because that's how they get quote unquote smarter through a massive data data collection.
And so there's this thing where there is this kind of baseline expectation here that everyone is fine with handing over all of their data, all of their physical data, all their biometrics, which I they're like, the utility is undeniable of things that can diagnose that you need to go to the to a doctor, or can at least suggest the existence of problems combined with and we are not at all interested in keeping that information secure. I find the kind of casual and no one will because
I don't think people will. I think people will buy these products and not think about who's getting access to their biometric data. And I wish that people cared about that.
And we've seen that specifically be a problem like around like pregnancy. Yeah, and with states restricting abortion and the ways in which these companies are aware of people's bodies even before the actual people are.
Here's an AD break. All right, we're back from ADS. So I went to Lenovo's booth. It was a bunch of laptops. I use Lenovo laptops. They make good products. It was every product there was either here is a new update to the line of laptops we've been making for thirty years. This is the latest one, this is the latest think pad carbon, this is the latest you know,
idea pad or whatever. And then they had a couple of like the big thing they were showing was the Lenovo Twist, which is a laptop that has a screen that can twist around and so it can lay flat like a tablet, but it can also the thing that we're really showing is that it's motorized and it has AI enabled, so it can follow your face and you can set it to track an individual's face and as you move, it will move with you. Now, it has
two different modes. One of them is also you can like gesture to it, or you can command it by voice and you can say go into laptop mode, go into tablet mode, turn left, turn right. That did not work well about half the time in the demo that I saw, it did not respond, maybe because the room was loud, maybe because the data was bad. But then he put it into face tracking mode and when you have multiple faces, you can pick which face it tracks and it swiveled to meet your face and it was
cool and it did work very well. That was like, this is impressive, Like what is the use case? Why would you want it? And he was like, well, say you're doing a presentation, like you're a CEO or something doing a presentation. This way the screen with your text on it or the PowerPoint on it will follow you as you move around. And I was like, that could be useful. I don't feel like many people are in
that situation often. I've never been in that situation in my life, and I speak in public for a living sometimes, so I guess, yeah, there probably is a CEO who would benefit for there's like five of those guys. Like what is the there's a whole laptop product line. You have multiple versions, and I didn't get a single reason why you would want this other than that, other than for presentations. And it's genuinely impressive that it can track
your face and move as you move. But why And another product they had that was in the bolt y category was the Lenovo Legion and this is not a product that's ever going to come out, but it was like a proof of concept. So it's their gaming laptop line and it has a normal screen that can widen to be three times as long and it unfolds. They have screens that unfold, and it's cool that they could do that, and it looked neat, and it's neat that
a screen has that capability. I don't want it because it also it doesn't look I could see like obviously I can see utility and like you can have a screen that gets bigger without it being a bigger footprint for the laptop. But when the screen is unfolded, there's huge, like speed bump size, looking like wads of screen that are bigger and like bulge out, and it doesn't look good like it's a bad screen.
It's like a little like bubbly.
Yeah, when it's fully extended, it's not like a good screen.
You said, it's a proven concept piece, Like there's this thing. I mean, like they're.
Showing that they've they're working on folding screen technology.
The Twist was was like a previous version of that. Yes, the proof of concept called the Swivel was at CES last year. Yes, and they improved it and now it's a real product called the Twist. Right, and maybe this could be the case for this like unrolling unfolding.
Eventually it will be.
In products, right, Yeah, But I also don't think I don't see how you cannot have the bulge kind of out and a girl to how the screen work.
The folding screens have come along way the past five years.
I used one.
Yeah, they also do have some pixels dying in the fold area.
I mean yeah, if you're trying.
To buy products for longevity, probably not the thing for you. If you like it for the novelty and for some reason have enough cash to burn, then maybe it's something someone will be interested in.
As I was watching an unfold, there were two guys behind me and talking about it, and one of them was like, yeah, it's not a real it's not going to actually come out like that's even like the old version of the chassis.
And I said, I just don't really see a use. I don't think people.
Want a product like this, Like I'm looking at it, the screen's not great, and I just don't see who's gonna buy this.
And the guy behind.
Me said, well, I think like the the use case is like billionaire CEOs and other people have a lot of money.
And I looked at it. It was a Lenovo rep and I was.
Like, hahh, that's not that's the use Why who are like that's not?
Like did you just say that to me?
A Lenovo rep said that.
Yeah, yeah, he's one of the guys doing the demos.
He had a wild Lenovo badge on and I, yeah, that was weird to me, that's wild.
But again, at least it was a thing.
No, it was it was a physical productcause the.
Other thing they had they had the workstation, which the thing they were showing was there was an app on it that looks at your face and said shows you how fatigued you are by percent, and how fatigued your eyes are, and like other data. And I was like, oh, that's creepy and kind of impressive. But then I walked away and I came back and it gave me a totally different set of numbers for my fatigue.
Where you're differently fatigued.
No, I was a second leg and I did it four times, and every time the set of numbers was like different enough that the only assumption I can make is that it was those aren't real numbers. It's just generating a number and telling you that. And it's full of shit because it wouldn't have been so different if it was actually measuring anything. It's just random numbers that it's putting on to make you think it's me measuring something.
It's probably trying to it.
There might be just subtle things that dramatically changed the numbers.
I tried.
I specifically once I noticed that tried to keep my face flat, and I did notice when you move closer and further it changes. But I think it's just programmed to as you move, alter the numbers so that you see the number moving but every time I came on new it was a different number. It went from like when I started was like point oh two, and the second time I came back it was point five to ozho.
And again I did nothing. I was specifically keeping my face neutral interest like it's just this, it's not a big I think.
I think that type of stuff will will get better, Like we've seen versions of that before that have actually done like Okay, yeah, well there could be a lot of factors into like into why why the demo goes a certain way.
The face tracking and facial recognition were but I went to this booth that like the big thing they were doing was like uh, driving assistant robots that would like yell at you if you fell asleep or if you like looked away and were like texting or something. It would say like look away from your phone, look at the screen please. And there's definitely like utility there, right, Like that is probably a good idea.
I mean we saw that last year at Samsung's section of Eurka Park for like like test taking to make sure students aren't cheating at tests, right, So it like sends an alert every time the students' eyes goes away from like the computer screen, like if they keep like looking down like like under if they could be checking like their phone or notes.
Smart Eye is the company.
One thing I did appreciate was that the little device that they put in was just like a circle with two eyes on it as opposed to like a whole dashboard. So that seemed nice. But the thing, the thing that they had, the first thing I used was this optical recognition system where it learned my eyes and then when I came on, it would give my name time I walked up to it, and so like, yeah, it definitely like recognizes at least your eyes. That's it could switch
between different people. But it was also it can tell when you're drunk, they claim, And I couldn't tell that.
I couldn't. I was high on kratum and I had.
Smoked Delta aid, but so I was definitely not sober. It didn't recognize me as not sober, so it couldn't measure those things. Maybe it can tell if you're drunk. Yeah, demo, it's it. They said it could. And they showed a woman when she was sober and when she was drunk, and they explained to me it was actually really difficult because we did this on a close track and she is really drunk and we had to jump through a lot of hoops for them to let us have a person drunk driving.
That's just And I did find that kind of funny.
You response that his how you test that would be kind of a hard thing to test. Yeah, you can test like simulations.
Right, but they wanted like this was supposed to be a perfect concept in vehicle and it'll shut down the car. I did have some people posting when I posted a video of that that like, I have this condition with my eyes or that condition with my eyes, and normal optical recognition stuff doesn't work with me. Is this going to show that I'm drunk or is it going to like be able to And I actually don't know. Again, I'm not I was not able to test the product
that that does seem like a concern. I would hope they've dealt with. But also I kind of doubt they did because usually there's gaps.
I mean, I can see a company like this partnering with like an insurance company, yeah, or partnering with like certain cars that would like, yeah, stop the car from being able to be moved if it detects the driver as drunk, yes, and how like false positives what play into that? And then you just like are like locked out of your car right because this robot thinks you're intoxicated and actually you're fine.
You just like look like that.
And I could also see them like rolling this product out and it hits like Thailand or something, and then there being a big store where it's like they didn't test this on any people of like Thaie ancestry, and it actually sees all of them as drunk because of like an error in the coding. Sure, and being like
oh great, like like I'm not again smart Eye. From what I can tell, their technology worked, but in order to adequately like review and test it, you do need you need more access to it than they're giving it the show. I can't actually tell you if it works a determined when people are drunk. I can just show you they had a video claiming it does.
So.
One product that I feel at best mixed about I first saw in the CS Innovation Awards section. This is called Self Insight Therapy Resolve x R from South Korea.
Oh, one of my two favorite Koreas. By the way, just since we're talking Korea.
This is a VR therapy program that is supposed to give give you a final goodbye with the deceased loved one in VR. Yes, this was my initial reaction as well. And like I've seen version I've seen versions of this before where it's like an LLLM or like an AI. Yeah, pretending to be your like dead wife that you like
hug in VR, sure, and that type of stuff. I've generally felt bad about some of the people who've used it, like in like you know, like the promotional videos are you know, crying, And I feel and like the product in a way.
As a friend, I will promise you if that moment ever comes for you all pretend to be your dead wife.
I don't even know what to say that I've.
But what I found interesting about Resolve XR is that the the avatar of your deceased loved one is not that the b is not actually an AI, nor is it a fully pre recorded, like prescripted like simulation. It is being puppeted by a therapist that you are working with as a part of the Gestalt empty Chair therapy technique.
And this this is what the product is. So you're working with a therapist who is using text to speech, that is, talking as your deceased as your deceased loved one as a part of this therapy exercise, if you have if you have recordings of their voice, the AI will try to replicate their voice. That's something I feel a little bit odd about. But like that is like the one like aspect of like qute unquote AI that's being used here is for is for the voice clone.
And then there's like a pre a prerecorded set of like gestures that someone does in like motion capture. But the actual like like live puppeting of this thing is done by a therapist that you were sitting across from. But you have you know the VR goggle song mm hm. And this is this is not supposed to be something that you do like routinely. It's not like, oh, I'm like I'm talking to my wife like my wife.
Is in VR.
It's this is a therapeutic exercise meant for people dealing with extreme grief, specifically when loved ones have been taken away during like like like accidents, like they specifically mentioned like a plane crash that happened a year ago. And so this is for people like an extreme extreme grief to give them like closure through this therapeutic exercise, and this is this is this is the this is the pam slet.
I went through a lot of whiplash because obviously my first assumption was this is an evil product where you like feed your loved one's social media data and it pretends to be them, and it's not that, and it's good that it's not that, But then it's like a it's being basically a therapist puppeting your dead loved one. There's a couple of conclusions I have. First off, these people are trying to be ethical. It does seem it seems like they care, and they are attempting to provide
something that is useful to people who are suffering. I also think this might fundamentally, this idea might be fundamentally unethical and impossible to do well. So I think this might be a case of someone trying to do the most ethical version of something that cannot be done ethically, which is a category of AI device that I've seen this year.
It's tricky because on one hand, you know, as I was talking to the woman at the booth and reading through the materials they had, it seemed like they were selling this as this is just sort of augmentation to a therapeutic practice that has already done. Yeah, we're just putting a you know, a digitally generated face and voice to it. But it's so I mean, it's so easy to imagine just this company seems somewhat ethically focused. But yeah,
all kinds of directions you could go in this. It's a Pandora's box, a little bit of like, yeah, where where we're starting to venture into creating replicas of the dead? Yeah, and that is.
And I went to a panel kind of in the same tone on mental health and AI that I thought was going to be an opportunity for me to harass an executive during a Q and A because which is which is one of your favorite the activity everything to
do at CES and there literally is like AI. There's ample data that it is a disaster for mental health, not just AI psychosis, but there are a lot of things that it makes worse, and a lot of problems that it causes people and a lot of problems that it exacerbates, including like suicidal ideation.
This is documented, there's data on it. So that's what I was.
I was showing up prepared to do that, And what I actually got was an actual clinical therapist who was trying to talk about who first started by kind of by very much admitting the dangers with AI and the things that it harms in terms of mental health, and then was trying to say, what would a responsible and
ethical like therapeutic AI do. And her argument was, we know how many people need therapy and don't have access to it, both in the United States and worldwide, and some sort of automated BOT system that handles aspects of therapy might be the only way to provide affordable therapy to the number of people who needed who can't currently afford it. And I disagree, or at least I don't
think that. I don't disagree. It's accurate that there's way more people who need mental health than can afford it, right, that's undeniable, undebatable. I disagree that AI can help this problem in any meaningful way, and in fact, I think
it will only make it worse. But I understand that she was coming at this from a I am attempting to define what a responsible, a therapeutic AI might do, and through the course of that I believe she is partially because I talked to her about this afterwards too. She thinks it might be possis, but is not convinced that it is in fact possible for there to be
an AI therapy system that is actually useful. And one of the things she brought up was that in traditional AI chatbots, the big ones are all programmed to gas you up in order to keep you using them, right, the program to make you want to continue to interact with them, and so it does things that are really bad for your mental health and that can exacerbate and cause new problems, right because of the way these are programmed.
So any responsible AI therapy chatbot would have to not do that, which I'm like, that is true, that you can't be a useful therapy to tool that.
Only praises people, right, that's just not a thing.
But when I came to afterwards, I was like, my issue is I think you're right about that, but I also think if you're saying the AI therapy bot is going to be a separate product that does not do these things. Number one, it's a high bar to get people to pay money for a tool when they already have the chatbot. And number two, if the chatbot that is good for them, doesn't do the thing that makes it addictive, people will continue to use the addictive one
for therapy. And she said, yeah, that's my worry too. And so I came away from being like, she's trying to explore if this can be done, and my conclusion, based on her exploration.
Is it can't.
But it's so interesting that she said that because she and this is I mean me hearing you talk about her, she sounds like the only person who is thinking about this at all. Yes, that's the convention.
She was the only person on the panel. Yeah, of just it was a speech, not a panel.
Really, Yeah, of thinking about that, what are the social relations behind these technologies, because of course that's the main question.
Here.
Is a technology that can generate that can have a
conversation with you? Is one thing it's not that really doesn't seem like the war of the problem so much as will all the machines that are having conversations are driven by very specific incentives, you know, to interact with their users in a particular way that has everything to do with the social relationships of their production and use, and and the notion that technology would have any connection to social relations at all is completely absent from any
discussion of any product I've seen here.
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Robert, have you heard of how She No? So you know about politics, right, I love politics, and you know about insider trading, right, I love insider te What if you could do insider trading about all of politics on the exclusive evasion that you will learn as a journalist.
Wow, sounds legal.
It shockingly is.
There's actually zero federal or state regulation affecting this whatsoever.
That's the CALCI guarantee.
There is no regulatory mechanism that exists on a state level to regulate this behavior.
Now years and you say that, but that's literally just what's printed above their booth.
Let's talk about maybe the worst product that I saw at CEES child Free trust.
Boy, So, what is it like a software that lets you make a trust?
This software was marketed towards child free people. They lead with twenty five percent of Americans don't have children and don't intend to have them, tell you, yeah, and so their idea is that they right here. Child Free Trust is the first comprehensive nationwide solution providing medical and financial poa executor and trustee representation for child free and permanently childless people. So if you are childless and you don't want to burden your loved ones, that's their wording with
you know, your estate plan when you die. Uh, this is a company that will do that for you. What's interesting though, is that I asked them, I said, well, look, you know this presumably already happens. What is in place?
I have a trust in no children?
Yes, yeah, well does state appoints someone to handle this. They'll they will first see if that you have, if you have any loved ones who would want to take on these duties.
And obviously people with that kids aren't capable of love.
So yeah, yeah, they they a little bit I mean strangely like it. So it's it's an it's a product that is for we already have a public service that searches for people loved ones that could take on these responsibilities, and if it cannot find those, it takes it on as a as a public good. So it was it was a product completely without purpose. It was like you, in order to use this, you just have to be
intent on separating yourself from society in this way. You have no loved ones presumably or you don't want them involved in your estate planning. You also don't want the state involved, so it requires this third party company. It is just a very strange product the way they present it.
Well, I mean it's again, I have a trust and a will.
If you don't have a kid, and you don't have like a you're not like married, or you don't have a surviving spouse, like, yes, the state will appoint somebody, but that process is slower and more expensive. If you want to avoid the cost, or if you want to avoid like, having a trust and a will is not an unreasonable thing, especially if you want to make sure if you have assets and you want to make sure they go a specific place, you want to donate them somewhere or whatever.
Well, and like a lawyer can handle that, a lawyer.
Should handle that is what I'm saying, is you shouldn't use an app.
Specifically, what they do that the lawyer can't is they provide a service for the corporation to execute power of attorney.
And that is the main thing.
So this is the most anti social This is the most anti social service I've seen it all of ces because it's building this idea that if you have no kids and you are so separated from the rest of your family, like you don't trust any siblings, you don't trust a spouse, a partner maybe you don't have one, you don't trust parents, you don't even trust a friend to like do this for you. Instead that you turn to a company, a private company. You don't even trust
the state, right because the state can handle this. It is a private corporation that it's going to handle your will, your estate and power of attorneys. And that that's what really, that's what really got me because I asked them, it's like, yeah, like a lawyer can handle all this, and like, well, no,
regular lawyer can't be power of attorney. And I was like, oh, this is the core of your product actually is that it's it's for people who are so anti social, who have so separated themselves that they don't trust.
They don't trust anyone with this. They don't have any loved ones. Really, it's not just about being child free.
No, it's like it's about you do not exist in a social network whatsoever.
Because I can see the kind of people who might need this are people or might want this, are not the people kind of people who do apps, because the actual the group of people who definitely don't have kids and also may not have any living friends are people who are incredibly elderly. But it's not even a factor of like their life is bleak that it's just you lived way too long. You literally don't have anyone left that you knew. But they're not going to use an app,
like that's just not how they think about. If they don't have a lawyer, they'll let have the state handle it. But like they're not they're not going to download the child free app. That's one hundred and four year old okanawent woman to like handle this for them. There's like a graph on the bottom that here's like features and like which different versions have which features, And the three features are child free, trust, trust, and will and then
free will as one word, but the w's capitalized. I just like seeing free well and then checks and exes at the bottom. You don't get free well on all of the options. Sorry, what is free will as a service? S Garrison? Are they saying the machine has it? Or is it literally a free will making service? It's I think I think it's creating a will and they're calling it free will.
I think that's what I think.
That's what they're doing. Okay, I mean, but yeah, right now.
And this was in this was in Eureka part.
Yeah, which is where the cool little products are. That's bad.
Yeah, it was really bizarre.
Yeah, there's a fun bit that you could do if you had the money to show up and just do bits at CEES where it's like this company can handle all of your end of life care and decisions and it's just a booth with a handgun on a table.
So let's talk about to clothes. Let's just discuss like what this Cees kind of means in general. We already kind of discussed like the AI angle of this, and that's something that we've seen throughout this show, is these these massive banners hanging everywhere about how Cees is where.
Innovators show up.
Sure, yeah, absolutely, And and how everything's based around innovation and creativity, and this is where everything descends from. And this sort of like like tech idealism that the world is based around these concepts of innovation and creativity. And they do not mention any any physical way that actually comes into the world or the sort of mechanisms of the world that allow innovation to take And then we've been talking a lot about this the past like two days.
I mean, it's all we're solving all the problems of the world and we're fixing everything, and it's all eternal sunshine. And where that comes from is innovation and creativity. But those are just yeah, totally abstract quantities. There's not even a subject given of like innovators. Well, who who is that?
Ye are the product you're innovating?
Yeah, if you is that? The owner? Is that the workers who make it? I mean, no mention of labor at any point in any of this, which I mean that's a given, but.
Well that's not true. They talked about all the labories you can.
Replace, Yeah, all right, you can. We don't need them. It's the innovation is is drawn the full circle, it produces itself. Now, yeah, just this abstract quantum of I mean, it really is kind of interesting. It does become a blur of like who is the magical font producing all of this stuff? It almost it's sometimes it almost seems like it's the consumer. It's sort of suggesting is like it's actually you who creates all of this. It was very vague, very strange.
Mm hmm.
We went to that one panel about like trying to address underserved people who are who are like cut out of tech and like cut out of cut out of all of these industries.
Yeah, I mean it was very nondescript about who exactly that was. Yeah, they had people talking for that are paralyzed veterans, someone from the NAACP, and I mean it was just one again, there was no actual discussion of the social relationships behind technology. It was just entirely about this technology is here, it is the first priority, so
everything else has to follow after. And yeah, very very unclear about they They would all talk about what technology could be used for, but entirely nondescript about where that process comes from, who's making those decisions, where those centers of power are.
The reach to have an for existing brands and companies that make real things to have an AI angle was the most obvious and tortured thing that I saw, And like one of my favorite booths every year is the Jackery booth. Jacquery makes batteries and solar panels, and they make pretty good batteries and solar panels for like expeditions for camping, like the rugged that they can and I use them.
They're good products.
And this year they had the new addition of all their batteries and the new edition of all their solar panels, and as generally happens with technology, everything's a little better than it was last year. But there's not much room for AI aside from like the batteries have AI, by which they mean there's like a learning algorithm that can determine like how to optimize aspects.
Of like power draw or whatever.
Like Sure, that's not really AI in the way that the AI industry means it, but I'm sure sounds real. But because that wasn't enough, they had this thing that they called their Mars rover, which was not a Mars rover.
I don't think we'll ever go on Mars. Does not look like it could survive on Mars, but it is a rover that is a big battery on wheels that is intelligent and can drive itself and has solar panels that slide out, and the use case for this it will travel around and can go to where the sun is in order to charge itself up and then head to you to offer you outlets when you're doing work.
And it's like, is a robot that moves? Really? I can see like two points in my life where I might have gotten used. Who's gonna buy this for?
What?
Where will it be deployed?
It just roams around outside, this expensive machine that does not look like it should get rained on too much, and finds the sun to charge itself up and then heads over to you to charge device. It can't charge a home. It doesn't power a house. It's like a little robot.
Is it really camping?
I don't know. That was unclear.
They showed it being used and they showed it as like I'm outside and using power tools.
The robot came up to me so I could plug in and like, I guess.
You could take like the park. You could take it to the park.
But it's big.
It is pretty big.
It's like a sizeable machine. It probably weighed eighty pounds and again like, it's impressive that it can go seek out the sun to charge itself up. It's impressive that you could like call it or like call it with an app and it will come over to you. And there's an outlet. Who what is the Who will buy this? Why when that is not one?
Again?
I can think working in my yard, working out, you know, when I'm shearing the goats or whatever, I have had to carry a battery with me because there's not an outlet out there and the shears need a battery. And yeah, I guess it would be easier if the robot moved there. But this has to be like twenty thousand dollars. I'm not gonna buy a robot to do that. I can just pick up a battery and walk with it one hundred feet. Who will use this? Why it's not going
to Mars? I assure you it's not going to Mars. Again, I wouldn't want it to be left out in the rain. And I love the Jaggery products. They make good stuff. And the fact that like, yeah, you clearly scrambled to make this, that you had a thing that can compete with all the other AI things, And I wish you were just devoting your lifes to making better solar panels, which is what I want from you.
Anyway, I'm just curious are the companies here. Are they profitable? Like do they?
Yeah?
I mean some of them, some of them, but a lot.
I mean some of them are funded with VC money and have not made a profit. Some of them are funded from VC money and have been losing money for years. And then there's also like like Lenovo makes it's a company, it makes a profit. They make products people buy, you know, Jaggery makes products people buy.
There's also a lot of startups like the Eureka Park section that we've been referring to, like the stuff in the bottom floor of the Venetian that there's you know, a lot of startup companies who are looking for investors as well.
So yeah, it is definitely a mix.
Some of them are trying to do like business business sales, some of them are more consumer facing, some of them are looking for investors. Some of them are profitable, and other ones are trying to boost their sacer price by being here, kind of like.
Kloyd at LG.
But I think what's really important is that everyone here is an innovator, and you know, why we know that they're an innovators because they've shown up and only innovators show up here and they're the real the driving force of the economy.
And I was feeling bad about myself until I saw that band in realize that I am an innovator.
You know you are an innovator.
Thank you.
I showed up and I figured out how to be the guy on the most kratim at the at the CEO show floor.
No, I mean CS is so is so interesting to be innovated, Like it runs on both on this like technology idealism where everything is based on people geniuses. You know, your Steve Jobs having like an id Staates job, and he is the innovator and everything descends from the idea that is like the thing is like this like tech platonism,
so like this is one side of it. You also have like the tech accelerationists at CES, where it's like they occupy this position of being so pro technology no matter whatever downsides is the current iteration might have because they need someone to hold that position in order for
this thing to move forward. They know that there's concerns around data protection, but their opinion is that it doesn't matter there is problems there, but we we the people here at CES, the innovators, need to ignore them because we have to push forward. And this is like, this is what like the Austrian Secretary of State said that at that one panel I went to. It's like data protection is a problem, but in a but like it gets in the way of innovation.
Yeah, and that's that's literally literally what he said.
Yeah, and so you have you have this like this this like tech optimistic like acceleration like viewpoint of like technology will be better, but in order for it's to be better and safe. Essentially, it's it's it's gonna g's kind of shitty and has some problems now, but we need to push forward through that all the way, Like we can't, we can't, we can't go slowly.
It has it has to go forward.
So they adopt this this viewpoint because like they need someone to hold this like tech optimism viewpoint in order for the process to like unfold.
Yeah, there's something strangely clear eyed about that in the way that it's like, yeah, if I mean, if you're limiting your view to the system of capitalism, yeah, the whole thing goes into crisis. If you are not squeezing a little more juice out of the orange. Uh And if this is what it takes to do that, then then full steam ahead. They're lucid about that.
Yeah, yeah, you know what else is lucid us saying it's time to end this fucking podcast.
Goodbye, another CES miracle. We have kind of survived.
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