The machines are getting smarter. This is tech Talk, brought to you by Skynett. Mark Saltzman is our tech guy.
We talk all things well smart with Mark Saltzman. You can follow him on x Marc Underscore Saltzman for all the great tech tips of the day, and you can listen to him on the tech It Out podcast and all of that good stuff. And we've talked before about technology that exists in cars these days, far and above
what it was even five years ago. The models that have come out, and now we're talking about some pretty incredible tech that is also attached to in some cases an internal combustion engine and sometimes a giant electric motor.
Yeah.
I think a lot of the innovation is happening in
the EV space for sure. And so this week, I know, the LA Auto Show is at the end of the year, but we have the Canadian International Auto Show and so there's you know, a couple of dozen car makers here and yeah, there's been so I've been kicking the tires on some really cool vehicles, some of which are out now and some are coming down the road, and you know, they many of them, of course, have a lot of tech which is was what piques my interest for evs
range is really getting up there. I know the Lucid Error Grand Touring has over five hundred miles, but the yeah, the twenty twenty five Chevy Silverado EV does as well. So that's the equivalent of driving from LA to Vegas and back again without needing to charge up. Yeah, as the proclaimers once famously saying about going to be five hundred miles, So that's you can say goodbye.
To range anxiety with that.
With that kind of range, that's great, right, So not every vehicle has that.
That's kind of where we're capped out.
I'll give it another couple of years and we'll see a thousand miles between charges as we see innovations in both the battery department as well as in the in the software to manage it all. But yeah, that was pretty cool. Then the pickup truck, the Chevy was pretty well. That's on one of their options, the rally Sport model it's called. It also has this sidewinder steering, so it's kind of like a crab walk where all four wheels
can turn in the same direction. So that helps you over a rugged terrain or to sneak into a little tight parking.
Little party lot.
Yeah, you know, I'm kind of surprised that that never really caught I remember back in the I want to say, late eighties early nineties, Honda did that with four wheels steering, where they would if you turn the wheel a little bit, it would kind of do that crab walk, and if you turn it all the way, the wheels would actually go stept the front wheels and the back wheels would go opposite directions for an even tighter turn.
You know.
And I think also when it comes to autonomous vehicles, which there's no shortage of those debuting this week here at the Auto Show as well, you know, the first sort of sign of autonomous driving was the parallel parking feature. I remember ten fifteen years ago. Easily wress a button and the vehicle assesses the distance between two cars and can squeeze between it. Not with the crab walk feature, but it just seems like that was like one of
the first examples of autonomous technology. And so yeah, I don't you're right, I don't think the sidewinder or the crab walk feature has really taken off, but for those who want it, I guess, especially those in a pickup truck.
I think it's kind of neat.
And this isn't exactly new either, but BMW was showing off its new grill. It's at the front of the vehicle. It's like a self healing grill. It's been out for a couple of years, but it's getting better, so it's on the.
On some of their latest models.
So it's basically the way it works is that there's this I guess they call it a digital kidney grill, but it has this additional polyurethane coating that can repair itself. So you get scratches on it and within twenty four hours at room temperature, it could get rid.
Of its scratches. So that's kind of neat.
BMW, by the way, at the Consumer Electronics Show, over the last couple of years, they've shown color changing vehicles, first with grayscale, like going from black to white and kind of in between to full color. So I mean they're really invested in technology, but that was kind of neat.
We've seen some really cool gary, some.
Infotainment systems as big as forty eight inches for a panoramic display in sid distracting more than maybe, so it's arguable. Yeah, this is the twenty twenty five Lincoln Navigator that I'm referring to. Yeah, I mean, it's it's like a full on dashboard in there. Some people thought the Tesla's big tablet like display was distracting, But the more the vehicles are driving for you, the more I guess you need
to keep your eyes on the road. I am kidding, but yeah, I mean, look, I as a geek, I like the innovations when it comes to technology and safety and range and some of the amenities, like you know, all the different kinds of cameras and sensors and autonomous driving.
That that's excites me.
I'm not a you know, I'm not a big car guy other than that, but yeah, it does have to be safe to use. I'll give you that one hundred percent. So that was pretty cool. So it's going on till the twenty third in Toronto. But we've had lots of visitors from the States. After all, we may be the fifty first state soon. Anyways, Right, let's not go there.
Listen, we try to keep politics out of this set.
That is true. That is true. Are you gonna watch that hockey game tonight? By the way, I know that's a big one. Yeah, I've got a Ideah, it's gonna be a big one. I know. I even Trump posted about it. Yeah, we'll see.
But I hope that Canada does not reciprocate and boo the US national anthem. I'm disappointed that that happened at two previous games in Canada. But hopefully, you know, we'll see what happens in Boston. But yeah, it should be good, should be a great game.
AI from from X from Twitter Elon Musk is Grock three and now they're saying it's available to everybody so temporarily.
Yeah.
So on Monday, I believe, Elon Musk announced that Grock three, which is his large language model, his generative AI platform to compete against Chat, GPT, his nemesis, and other players like Google Gemini. It is temporarily free to use. So if you go to X dot com and click on grock on the left hand side, that is the AI platform you can play around with. And it's pretty intelligent.
I've been using it this week and you can have it do everything from create images for you royalty free that you can use I typed in show me an image of a peacock using a tablet sitting on the moon, you know, and it's like it's so fast too. But there are more practical applications. They have what's called the think option for deeper math and science and coding questions you may have. But this is just upping the AI arms race. Another feature called deep so is kind of
like a search engine on steroids. It'll immediately give you the summary of the results, not telling you where you'll find the results. And you can even attach a document like if you've got I don't know, a gym membership contract a pdf, right, you can upload it to grock and for free it will summarize it for you in plain English.
There's a lot of cool stuff.
You can add an audio file and say, translate this to another language, or give me a summary of this. I typed in as Gary and Shannon are they funny? And the answer was yes. But there's style leans so they say that your style liens on witty banter, playful chemistry, and an act for finding human excuse excuse me, finding humor in both the absurd and the every day, which helped them build a loyal audience in Southern California's competitive
talk radio scene. Yeah, and then it said that said their comedy is more morning coffee chuckle, then laugh out loud hysterics, which is tempered by their newsroom roots.
So giving you kudos, but you know, yeah, very accurate too. That's scary.
Yeah, and it gave it me that answer and like a split second, so yeah, you have some fun with it. If your listeners are on X there is going to be a Windows and Mac download, like a separate application as well, but Grock three is free to try at x dot com.
Wow, that's very very cool. We were doing a quick audience participation in asking if you had a favorite kid, and I know you've got kids, so do you have a favorite?
I don't have a favorite.
We have twins, a boy girl twin who are turning twenty three and a younger boy.
Yeah.
I was listening to that and all the call in comments, which were great, We don't. My wife tells me she's got a favorite, but I don't play that game. Now it's thirty three point three percent love between them all. Yeah no, but genuinely, genuinely, I really don't have a favorite.
Oh that's too bad. I mean, hey, the day is young. Maybe one of them screws up. Yeah yeah, exactly. Give them time, all right, Mark, Thanks, great talk.