CES 2024: Unpacking Tech Innovations and Future Trends | The Black Futurist Podcast

throughout the year I attend Tech conferences that allow me a bird's eyee view into what some of the smartest teams around the world are building and bringing to Market I'm just recently returned from CES 2024 and if you saw my previous video on the black futurist YouTube channel you saw what I consider to be my best in show moments I thought you'd also benefit from hearing from some of my colleagues the people that I attend these shows with and work alongside who I also learn a lot from when I listen to their perspective which might be slightly different than so I asked three of them to come on today to talk about what their Best in Show moments were while attending CES 2024 that's Sarah Ivy Tim hanen and Dr Brad Barons now Sarah is the chief strategy officer at Harvest Media Group Tim is a media industry consultant and the founder of the verer group and Brad is a Innovation and digital transformation expert and a prolific sci-fi writer I hope you enjoy what they have to say and I'd love to hear what you think I'm Brendan Moore welcome to the black futurist [Music] podcast the black futurist one small step for man okay Sarah what did you see at CES this year that was memorable that you woke up talking about after you got back home you know a lot of people talk about the technology it actually was a really big change for me in terms of how the show runs so two things that left out to me and we can we can go back and forth on on them is that what I did see a lot of is cross technology collaboration in a way that we haven't seen before so I think there's a gradual acceptance across the industry that if you'd invent a device it's way more powerful if it's plugged into an ecosystem so they weren't just sort of apis that could talk to each other they were full on sort of um code development I mean the the Aila car is a really good example but it's slow to come to Market and it's going to be really expensive it's gorgeous but it's going to be really expensive but there were even side conversations that we didn't necessarily see on the floor so one of the interesting things that really struck me was um nom the weight loss application you know they've always specialized in in cognitive behavior therapy well the biggest news in in dieting is those mic right so they've actually figured out how to partner with those empix so actually their interfaces work better together now those are completely different Technologies but that for me captures the spirit of collaboration that's we've seen it develop but I feel like in this show it really sort of leapt over where it was before so that was the part that really got me excited nice story that you don't know or maybe maybe I did tell you I Was preparing for a tour on the implications of AI and I sat at the conference room table and I had about 10 minutes people were showing up a half hour early I don't know why but I close my eyes just to like just get centered and I feel this tap on my arm this guy sitting next to me and so I open my eyes and I said hey he goes I just want you to know you got your work cut out for you I said what he goes I did the digital Health tour this morning with Sarah you got your work cut out for you she was excellent that's great oh man that's wonderful it's so affirmation well listen that was a tough tour to give the AI tour because it's like touring peanut butter you know like AI was all over everything you really couldn't tell it was real peanut butter or soy based peanut butter it was just like it was all over everything and right you really had to dig to see whether it was actually real yeah I agree it was tough but it made for good conversation one of the things that I did on my AI tour was let them know in advance that look we're at Theory now we're going to hypothesize when this is done so I don't know anything let's go find out and let's parse good from bad or like exist versus doesn't exist and see what's out there was there anything in digital Health that jumps out to you there that was like this is so important I should go home and tell my best friend about it quite a few I do have a Best in Show but I I think you heard me wax poetic Blue Sky AI because it's good strong ecademic facial recognition research that they first applied to driving technology but every time we visited their Booth we found out about a new clinical trial so just imagine a world in which your facial expressions can help you manage all kinds of things whether that's driving distraction and drowsiness but whether or not you're going to have a diabetic reaction whether or not your autistic teenager is about to have an episode or is feeling really no the their autism study is fascinating their diabetic study is fascinating um they started off with helping diagnose pregnancy mood swings right so the ability of facial recognition applied to like what I kept on as I gave more tours I started to realize well we'll see this all over everything next year because people so many people have been in that booth and they're going to say I figured out a way to do it again that's the collaboration piece is that blue sky was there to find Partners right the floor was full of Partners can you imagine Abbott being able to apply that to their glucose monitoring that they unveiled at the show right and applied to the insulin pump applied to your phone they've you know there's so many things that that could be a foundational technology for and that was so exciting that is cool and in contrast if I think about years before especially with technologies that were so prevalent like lar yeah years ago like there was 12 15 lar providers all competing to be the one in the space but they all have the same technology which is competition you're saying collaboration was the drum that was beating this year and I love that absolutely that's fantastic yeah what else did I know you were excited about the early cervical cancer detection you want to talk about that the only frustrating thing about that is that it's based on the ability to access Public Health System data so work everywhere else in the world except us which is terrible right but just the ability to have that access to a a very large data model and to be able to model out outcomes and understand markers I mean any country in which you have that you can think of a thousand things to do with it right so once AI is able to process that very very large amount of data than the speed to Market of something like cervical cancer detection just being able to put that in the hands of a GP it takes weeks off the diagnosis so just just for our listeners what it is it was developed in Korea and it's basically a photographic technique that basically takes a picture of the um outside of the cervix and measures a particular acid and from that they're able to detect whether it's stage one stage two stage three or clear right and the ability to do that instantly without having to go through the rig roll of swap jobs and going through an oncologist and stuff like that it's just it's going to have a huge impact on uncs yeah so I mean Brendon I was excited about everything that was on my tour maybe not the sperm testing but you know I'm not the right crowd for that but anyway right there's a question I've been asking and it comes up in different verticals if there is a wild wild west right now in terms of spending meaning um you know we talk about ww west phenomenons in terms of investing we're like these are the areas in which currently Roi is not even an issue it's this is we have to dump this amount of resources into the chasm so that we can drive over it and we'll worry about Roi later where would you say we're seeing ww west type Tendencies well unfortunately unfortunately it is around artificial intelligence but different aspects of it so um everyone doesn't know what they need to know around generative Ai and the ability to figure out how to apply it is farther away than ever but there's that still that sense it's fomo but it's fomo with an extra scoop of risk on top because right there's a sense that if we don't understand it we can't plan for it we're missing opportunities so that's where we see a lot of spending the other place that I think is sort of counterbalancing that is in AI compliance transparency issues privacy issues creativity you know license issues and stuff like that that correspondingly is rising at the same rate so that was the sort of underpinnings of a lot of the conversation everyone oh it's all about artificial intelligence chat GPT and generative AI wasn't really at the show other than in buttons right but it's a massive Iceberg underneath the surface that everyone's trying to Grapple got I don't know what you agree no I agree and it's good for cat GPT that they have become synonymous with generative AI when they are just one particular provider right happening with music right it it'll be interesting to see what happens at different shows like um South by will be also very interesting because that will be exploring creativity and the licensing of creativity and of course South by is of course a music festival the musical applications in generative a in music production there's hundreds of them now and it just gives me the holy wh Le anyway did you see anything in either screens or in the mixed reality space that you took home and said I need to keep a pin in this and track this as it grows so the Loda Booth I think think actually had two of the most important things in the show right no one was talking about that no one was talking about the metaverse at the show except the metaverse classes were actually pretty significant in terms of being able to open up that door for people who don't want to walk around with a huge headset on their heads right right so I actually thought that was really interesting from a the metaverse is not going away it's just not as big a hype and it's always been there's a level of inaccessibility so the things that didn't require a headset were becoming more important but at the same time headset does give you that sensory experience that you just can't get from other applications so anyway I thought that was important because it's I think it's going to bring down the price and make it more accessible and also cooler and you bring up laxaa which was one of my best in shows was actually one of the most important things that I saw there because of the correlation between brain function and and hearing loss that makes that device that hearing assistance in those glasses and invisible hearing assistance just to me one of the most important things for families um I did I loved it I thought it was great I didn't like the battery life the battery life is only eight hours and then you got to recharge but that's the same kind of like the Apple watch batter is like less than it should be right compared to like every other watch you own yeah well for version one that's actually pretty decent you know yeah work on that too yeah right in terms of landslide moments meaning you know we may see iterative approaches to a problem and then you finally come to one show and you see oh they finally got it together I think one example that I saw was LG's commercial use of the transparent screen yeah absolutely yeah we've seen like the pieces showing up years before so based on everything you saw on the show this year if you were to guess forward to next year where do you think we may see some surprising fast forward developments so let me let me talk about what I expected to see and what I didn't see I expected to see a whole lot more sustainability it was not there it was an undercurrent right but there weren't really hard applications in terms of sustainability so it'll it'll go one of two ways next year I mean this year was the year of AI right y next year we will see um generative AI as a landslide moment in terms of things being able to be incorporated I mean I mean this year it was Bolton there's like from a product development cycle that's as good as they can get in terms of just sticking something on and then just putting it to market right right but we'll see more thoughtful incorporations of of generative II but what I'm really hoping to see next year is a huge swing towards sustainability this is something that as you know when you look at a world full of gadgets that are all made out of rare earth materials right yeah let's just break it down we have to face this and with what's happening on the it right now I don't know how we can't talk about it so what that's what I'm really hoping to see it swing next year there were some bubbling under like the wonderful sort of see-through solar panels right they're beautiful and they're super super good so there's some great stuff there but the SK Booth was sort of a a masterpiece in irony because that was not a story about sustainability I was going to bring up SK I didn't want to interrupt you but I said that was like their whole headline was sustainability and then they brought they brought all the Plastics they got all the Plastics all the dieses all the colors all the electricity yeah and just like I think we missed the brief on this one yep definitely so good any that's that's my hope for next year Sarah thanks so much super helpful and and always I don't see you enough to see you once a year at one conference is not enough so you're welcome back on the show anytime you want to talk about anything and I'd love to have you back awesome okay thanks Brandon what did you see at CES Tim that like when you woke up in the morning a couple days later you woke up thinking about that was pretty cool what what were a couple of the key hits for you I think the um so to me it's a balance of like brand new things that are sort of like surprising and unexpected blended with the incremental right so incremental is kind of the baseboard of of this show right where we see things that are a little bit of the future a little bit more of the future the next year's a little bit more of the future and then we get to some point where it's actually true product true Marketplace true something that's that's flowering into something real and substantial let's start with that first so for example walking on the floor high sense right which is a big Chinese CE manufacturer one of the largest Now TV manufacturers with previously multiple TV operating systems and now their own called VI yep um so welcome to the mix of now nine or 10 operating systems for TV streaming um but uh high sense like a lot of the big electronics manufacturers like the LGs and the Sony's and the and the Samsungs the were very much involved in lots of different things and lots of different iterations of things the thing that struck me uh at the high sense Booth among many other others was their art TV setup which if you remember Samsung about five years ago uh debuted something called a frame and what that is to most people who know now is essentially a uh high quality High pixelated imagery Centric screen that not only operates as a really good high-end television set but also when not used for television uh can essentially replicate a piece of art right or a series of pieces of art um I think Samsung uh sort of creat the market for it but if you saw the multiple versions that now high sense offers right um just tremendously stylish very high quality and numerous versions of right that to me is a really good example of something that was an idea from one mostly company a number of years ago and now has essentially become mainstream if you will uh imitation being arguably the highest form of flattery certain consumer electronics uh with a whole Suite of offerings from a competitive consumer electronics so that to me is like of the new stuff the brand new stuff I mean nothing really surprises me but you know the translucent transparent TV screen that one saw when walking into the LG Booth y um I don't know how new that is I think that's always sort of been nibbling at the edges of the future but I think the way that it gets now presented into the marketplace right it's not available for sale yet there's no price for it but the ability to see something see through it a screen yet literally have the ability to have programming on that screen and then manipulated either way right uh is is a pretty interesting breakthrough and not just for television but I think actually for things like in store place-based media out of home media that kind of stuff but to me from a television and media perspective and that's sort of where my Heritage is those things kind of struck me as being pretty impressive and arguably real you know what I didn't see in that transparent television was any integration whether they're using a camera because it strikes me that you could now make the argument that this will be another platform for mixed reality if it knows what's behind it or in front of it and it can react to either movement or objects then is it a replacement for holding your phone up and looking at mixed reality sure and then you know to extend that right the augmented and virtual reality kinds of things right uh in the CES realm to me was still very much you know a cordoned off area of small companies um it felt like it was slowly incrementally getting better or more interesting um the one thing that struck me was that the idea of goggles versus you know glass lenses to even things that are just more sensors and just rant more upon say one's gestures right that seemed to be becoming a bit more mature and I think you know the next sort of Salvo in this this evolution is going to be Apple's launch of their what $3,800 set of goggles might be the high-end opportunity uh or the uh jolt I guess the market could use but you know we saw plenty of uh lesser priced Alternatives both on the full goggles headset thing to I think a pretty strong number of firms uh all trying to figure out their way through what a more stylish you know eyeglass lens approach might look like right um I really saw some movement in trying to add style and fashion if you will to the process and obviously that's a tension between engineers and technology and stuff that people actually would not mind being caught wearing on the streets of Manhattan let's say right um and how you balance functionality with fashion Andor design to make that kind of stuff happen again going back to the uh uh the art TV thing right there's technology and design finally coming together I think that actually is a dual tension that I always look for at this kind of a show I think it over indexes and and logically so around engineering technology possibilities right um but what o often lacks is refined product design or or fashion or incorporating the real world if you will into it and arguably that's not what the show is about but it kind of is right because it has consumer embedded in its name so look embedded in its name right also the name show right right and as I said to my tours you know 40 to 50% of what you see on the uh on the floor is BS right it's not real and it's it's designed not to be real because these are ideas aspirations you know looking for uh a way into reality and in a business model or models and some make it and some don't that's kind of the fun and the confusion I guess around the show every year yeah what are your thoughts on Apple's offering versus xreal in terms of the virtual reality interface device look I don't I'm not sold on the whole augmented reality thing completely right uh to me it's the ultimate removal from The Real World right I'm I'm opting out of the real world and I'm going to immerse myself in something and I'm not saying there aren't great opportunities and possibilities with that right I mean the ability to virtually travel when one can't afford to actually physically travel or to be IM in another environment that's in another part of the world that allows for multiple participation like a conference like a Davos of digital or something like that I I think those are educational purposes same thing um I'm high on all those scenarios right what I don't sort of grock onto is sort of the uh let me ditch the real world and just like go into complete Fantasy Land I yeah fine I I see that as entertainment and I see their opportunities for that too but I I don't get as excited about that where I do get more excited about this will answer your question is the mixing of the real and the virtual right so to me that sort of augmented reality thing just simply improving one's life on a day-to-day basis right so if I'm wearing a pair of glasses that are somewhat stylish that might adjust with the sun with the lens like why I would buy lenses in the first place or sunglasses but then also allows me to Overlay some virtualness or virtuality to the real world like I am walking in Manhattan I just came up from the subway and I'm not quite sure exactly where I am and you know Google Map is okay but it doesn't I have to still take time to adjust to that I when I have glasses on not to the awareness of anybody because they are fashionable and they look like God forbid glasses yeah um I can actually see what the building is or what's behind that building so to speak or the areas that I'm looking for to go towards navigationally or May maybe I do stumble across a street sign that says cousin Brucey way right cousin Brucey who's that well he's a longtime DJ in the New York City area legendary he's got one of those New York City street names after him right so there's a little story there and that could be fun for a second or two right so to me that feels more realistic more valuable more uh consumer friendly more solution so I mean look apple is historically really good at creating a high-end Prof for a particular problem issue something right the iPhone being perhaps the best example right phones were a thing before the iPhone came but they refined it right right and as you know Apple has always been a Hallmark of fashion and design and elegance in that regard sometimes that's what it takes to get things over to that next level so I think you know any of these uh uh companies that are in the lens business or in the goggles business they're all probably really good and they're getting better technically uh to me I look for the design and the price point that makes it sort of worth it I $3,800 price point does not seem Mass Market to me right let's talk about Commerce and all this you come from a world uh and an expertise in broadcast and advertising let's talk about what Integrations and interior design as you can see in my Hally my office that's a mess right now but there you go what what do you see and what do you what do you imagine we may see in terms of Integrations into people's lives via the new technologies that we're seeing yeah I in some respects I think some of its old stuff kind of just baked into new right so you look at streaming advertising right now um depending on uh the industry reports and stuff the the idea of interactivity right is something that is you know for people like me it's just like okay IR Roll City because we've seen so many attempts to bring interactive push button technology squeeze the screen all these kinds of things connect it with the device you know follow little let go follow through um however I do think that's something very simple that was um howled at creatively 10 years ago is actually becoming a very easy on-ramp to enabling television video streaming to a device or follow through and that's the QR code right right I can tell you stories about the creative directors who you know were a Gass at having that ugly little Swatch on whatever they were finally producing but I got to tell it's a very easy elegant and uh consumer friendly way to bridge uh I like to call it dimensionalization right the ability to take uh and this this guided some of my early stage startup Investments when I was back in the agency holding company space of the ventures arm or to um the idea of being able to go further with something should you want to right now a QR code certainly appears garish right in a creative 16 by9 AD environment right but if you're interested to have that visual cue that it's there and available to you um I think is a very convenient on-ramp I think over time it could probably Elevate to an an assumption that whatever is there maybe it's just simply taking a shot of the actual screen itself with the screen recognizing right I think the Elegance really matters uh and the availability of that to the average consumer really matters and I think that's kind of an interesting solve for a problem right when somebody's interested in something instead of writing it down or remembering a URL code or a phone number got right the ability to kind of push a something that's there in a in a phone environment seems to be really and I think you'll see a lot more of that whether you like it or not and I think you'll see some creative uh fun with th with barcodes as well and maybe some evolutions of barcodes into something a little bit more creatively friendly um but that's to me is a nice connective tissue there by the way that helps from a measurement perspective and uh an outcomes perspective right when marketers are trying to assume something's working yeah on that note I went to xreal and there was the main kind of forward- facing display and then if you went behind you could make an appointment and go to the back rooms where you get a a more robust experience and I got to speak to the manager of that place he showed me these three I don't even know how to explain them except they look like QR codes multicolor QR codes but they had a floating magnet embedded in each one so you can do position one position two position three by just sliding an element inside the QR code or you could rotate one there was an arrow and you go to multiple positions and each time you altered the position of one of those QR codes a different result was triggered inside the virtual environment in this case because you put on their glasses and say well I can toggle this magnet up or or down that gives me a different QR code and it gives me a different digital element inside so the QR code I think is exactly right and I think it has to be accepted across the board but I think that we're already seeing use Beyond it where that should be kind of p a and and like everybody should adopt it because this other recognition technology is already here and can be used and allow the scanner some options as to where their final destination is pretty cool yeah look I I think what you're also describing is uh the variability of that right so like if you're doing a QR code right one has to create many multiple versions of that maybe even thousands depending on how many creative units are going out there right just as a simple exercise to see okay who clicked on or around one particular ad where it ran right yeah um that's also not creatively viable right from a production perspective right to create 10,000 separate QR codes right so there's probably a Next Generation variability some of which you just describe as as a way to do that uh where it's maybe an on demand kind of uh production code of some sort or something that does vary by when time stamped or whatever so I think that's probably the Next Generation especially if people get comfortable with it right so I to me it's just regardless it's a very dumbed down if you will simple way to offer a bridge to further information should people be interested and I think that it kind of feels like it's going to be more ready for that and again whatever the glass is whatever the the recognition is could be a glass could be a a phone or whatever um just seems to be kind of it has to be part of the future of Commerce we see when we go multiple years to these conferences as we as you described earlier we see kind of these iterations and then we might see a watershed moment if you could forecast forward to what we might see next year based on what we're seeing now what do you expect to see or what would be a nice surprise so look I I've come from the content and advertising and programming side of things right so that's kind of my bias and my expectation right so so will there be other things from outside that that lens no question but I think the Breakthrough I'm looking for very shortly is uh and it's already starting to happen a little bit around the edges is streaming personalization in particular around Live Events and and specifically Sports um the idea where I'm watching the game the game is available to me um through legitimate means and I have also through legitimate means uh the ability to custom the audio customize the video offerings I'm seeing uh alt casts uh being able to share the uh the event uh with my friends in sort of a group chat kind of setting or or a watch party environment yeahum and I think frankly the thing that hastens it is not Commerce and is not necessarily connectivity with other other people viewing the same time but betting right the ability to allow things like prop bets and uh whatever Burns you're throwing at your friends who missed the prop bet or whatever it is um and all that data that comes with it right assuming the latency issue is solved right because that matters but I think the the damn bursts when one of the major gambling players offers an app that incorporates not only their betting features but also live streams uh of the matches of the games that they cover that that they have rights for um and that enables basically it becomes two in one right it becomes the ultimate interactive um portable viewing experience for the game right how much you want to interact with it how or how little depends on what you want to do do you want to cast it and lean back completely or do you want to go deep into it uh and the actual gambling uh betting component for those who choose to do that too that to me just seems like too big of an opportunity for the business side of it to not happen and I think that's what ESPN plus evolves to given now that ESPN bet exists uh I think the fusion of programming and betting uh will be a a win for consumers from who want to personalize their experiences whether they bet or not that's my guess it definitely does seem like the vehicle for spending to allow a lot of different options to be created for sure that actually leads to my question you may have answered it already my question to you was what where is the current Wild Wild West in terms of tech spending you know I think everybody's falling all over each other to Define and operationalize what AR is excuse me not AR AI get your get your uh get acronyms right get your acronyms correct gee whiz um you know artificial intelligence right is such a uh I think it's already overhyped and I think it's already misused and I think it's already genericized a whole bunch of different techniques and Technologies and stuff um but I honestly believe this show as a branding exercise right made AI an elemental thing to not only be aware of but to figure out how to bring into all facets of business and by extension life so in the Consumer Electronics realm or the byproducts of that in video production or just content production or consumption and the processes of all that kind of stuff commercials and and and programming and distribution all those kinds of things the question really becomes where does Ai and the various processes that fit under that umbrella uh make things better faster cheaper right so the QR code may be indeed one of those ways right instead of manually creating if you will 10,000 separate codes is there a push button that allows V you know gentle variations of one that makes that process less expensive and more easily achieved I think I think the manner by which audio and video come together including text text to speech and those kinds of things I I you know uh that all said right I think everybody's in a Chase to sort of find the the bright shiny objects that that that do those kinds of things where I worry is where things like Channel One News which is rumored to be launching at some time in the next three or four months which is for those don't know is a streaming news channel uh Channel One News used to be known as was something else in a different company environment this is a brand new channel one um company that literally is going to be delivering quote unquote live newscasts in fully AI generated forums right including right down to the onair personalities uh the voices which will be multilingual uh and even the the remote reporting uh from the scene will uh include elements of AI generated Andor voice synthesized and Amalgamated content so the I mean we talk about AR and VR and all that kind of stuff well when we sit back and watch a newscast and we now have to really start questioning what we're seeing now and what we're being spoken with and to um the Deep fakes are getting better and it's not just on social media platforms on our phones but now it's going to be in the sort of television news business for the first time and that's when stuff gets really dangerous so you know with all the cool and cost-efficient stuff that can come from AI in television and video and advertising I worry about the going too far part of it as well and I think we all have to be very careful not to go outside those guard rails but you know it's inevitable sadly yeah I think we definitely are in need of some legislation some definite guard rails that say either I need a label when something is beyond real I need a label for that so I can have informed consent or we need some definite limits but we're not there yet let's find out what happens Tim thanks so much pleasure is mine thanks for asking me brenon always a pleasure Brad welcome to the show what did you notice at CES that you really enjoyed that you think is worth sharing so Brendon first of all thank you so much for having me on the podcast it's it's always a pleasure to see your face and talk with you I thought generally CES 2024 had more light than heat there wasn't a whole lot that was really blowing me away uh the theme of this year's show was definitely Ai and it was it we're at a specific interesting point with AI I think of this as the kind of AOL compus serve prodigy phase of AI where there's a lot more AI coming but we have this sort of Walled Garden specifically around chat GPT yeah right I also think of it as the now serving espresso moment of AI where everybody is adding a little bit a little song of Chad GPT to things without there being interesting Integrations you know or or really a deep transformative kind of AI so the best example of this is vsix which is there every year yeah and now they have you know now serving espresso now with chat GPT and I'm not I don't want to trivialize I want to make fun of them a little bit but but it's still it's definitely interesting to make more technology more conversational and chat GPT is outstanding at that but that's not a you know this changes everything moment yeah uh with with Ai and so the one that I think and it wasn't their first time at CES but the thing that really uh really made me stop in my tracks and just think oh wow this really does change things was a company from the shenen region of China called time Kettle and I think we were there together at one point so time Kettle if you look for those of you in the viewing audience I've got my Apple airpods in time Kettle has a bunch of different form factors but one of them is air earbuds that have realtime translation with all of the compute which is not a phrase I really like all of the computational Power inside the devices themselves so they have a thing with a phone app they have a little thing that looks like one of those wireless speakers they've got a lot of different things but the idea that you could be walking around a country where you don't speak the language and someone could come up and talk with you and you would understand what they they're saying that is remarkable that's like the universal translator from Star Trek it's like the Babel Fish from Hit tracker's Guide to the Galaxy it also because it's real now it made me think wait a minute how did that translator and Star Trek work because you know they're they're wearing something is it is there like a little speaker coming out of the the device they never they never went into it yeah this it shows called an aoria in literary studies there's this real Gap but particularly for multinational teams multil linguistic teams for business collaboration for diplomacy for forms of travel you still have to like read street signs in a language you don't know right but but it really that is the thing that I thought just would free so many people up uh particularly people who aren't terribly good at picking up languages right and then the other thing that I'd want to sort of dig into and then I do want to hear what you think of time Kettle but CES is great for Trends right this is the year of AI we've had the year of 3D TV we've had the year of 3D printing uh and this particular Trend about real-time translation accelerated almost immediately after CES because last week Samsung announced a bunch of new AI smartphones which feature real-time translation so it's not time Kettle so much itself as a company um they don't they had a lot of questions that I had a lot of questions they couldn't answer but it's this idea that language as a barrier to Commerce to discourse to Art to business uh is going to vanish right almost completely that's the thing that I thought was was the biggest deal this year which for the people who manufacture TVs is is probably quite disappointing but what did you think you tested on a lot but what I thought was that my first question and challenge to the person at shenzen time Kettle was how is this different from what I'm already doing with my phone with Google translate or any other app that does it and her response actually broke the barrier for me of really appreciation and she said well when you do it with your phone you have to center around the phone I have to talk to the phone and then my guest has to talk to the phone with their device I can keep this in my pocket or set it down within Bluetooth range and now we can explore the environment we don't have to keep coming back to this face to-face geography with the device and so I thought that was cool but I still think their main value has to be in the software otherwise where's the value how come they can't just be hit over the head and usurped by the next provider doing the same thing is it is it a protectable idea and because you love science fiction so much and you bring it up I would love to see the next phase or maybe two down the line being a contact lens or eyeglass component to this so that I can read those signs in the language that I don't speak that'd be pretty cool yeah I uh so in my novel which was called Red Cross um came out quite some time ago I actually have as a pretty key component a retina casting contact lens there we go which which was uh that was back that was a while ago but yeah I think that let's let's pull something out of that though which is what we're talking about is the the increase in ambient Computing and the idea that no matter where you are you have access to a digital assistant as long as you are within voice range that no matter where you are you have access to an augmented reality overlay of information so that you know you I mean because in my world life without name tags is just not fair because I I produced so many shows for so many years that more people know me than I know and so people come up to me they Brad and I'm like hey you and it's just embarrassing I really I'm dying for the arrow that points down at the person's head and says Bradley it's your mother it's like oh de Mom that's wonderful that's really good go back for one second to musix which like you said we've seen them every year at the show and to me they really kind of owned a territory for a while of augmented reality glasses and they chose a niche to do we're the industrial solution we're for manufacturing these things are rugged and they give work instruction and they're not trying to be these immersive experience glasses I saw them take a step towards the entertainment side this year maybe it's smart right but now they have to compete with the tcl's and the high senses and everyone else apple and xre what what do you think about their chances there and why do you like one versus the other I I don't like any of them because none of them yet I mean the dream is so powerful which is to be you know I wear glasses uh habitually the dream to to have that access to information but so many of them are so heavy or you know you have to power charge up the battery every 16 seconds I mean it's you know we're just the biggest thing that's really killing all of these Technologies is batteries until we can have something very lightweight or have a a power source you know in your pocket um it's it's not going to be compelling the the the Enterprise play Google Glass did this oh 10 15 years ago where they pivoted from a consumer Play to an Enterprise play it's exactly like what happens with self-driving cars where you know level four self-driving cars are cars that are entirely self-driving but within a specific geographical area like a campus right taking something and moving it into Enterprise says we're going to limit all of the things we need to do to this controlled environment and then Shazam look what we can do and they're right thinking about you know doctors or surgant tella health for augmented reality that use case is impossibly powerful Engineers you know Appliance fix it guys um even in a kitchen you know to be able to know what the ingredients are to have the recipe that's going to just be floating in front of you those are all great and they are orders of magnitude less complicated to program than a pair of glasses you're going to wear everywhere from you know the bathroom to the football stadium and everywhere in between that's a great point I'm glad you made it there was a section of the the floor dedicated to digital Health what did you see on that side that made you take note and maybe jot a note down so digital Health was the other super provocative area on the floor of CES this year there were a bunch of things that I thought were really interesting and they all kind of build to a theme so there was a sperm tester and and I I understand this is a family podcast so we're not going to go into any of but taking taking a an app and a piece of technology to replace an embarrassing and often expensive trip to the doctor where a guy can figure out if uh you know his little Wiggly guys are wiggling uh to the extent they need to and if there's enough of them uh there's some gender politics in there that I also like which is alog together too often the woman reflect reflexively gets the blame when a couple want to have a baby heterosexual couple that want to have a baby can't um so this is a leveling of that playing field there was a uh right next door to the sperm tester there was a thing called the smart sound stethoscope and this was an AI stethoscope that uh the patient could be anywhere in the world and have a little thing look like kind of like a hockey puck and hold it over her or his heart and the doctor could say a little to the left a little to okay breathe and and do a remote examination where the doctor could actually hear the heartbeat with all of the attending Acoustics now my right this is very relevant to me my dad as a retired cardiologist so I grew up as his guinea pig you know lying on the thing with an ultrasound and watching my heartbeat and and the idea that you could listen to someone's heart he had International patience and 30 years ago he had a patient in Panama if he could have listened to that person's heartbeat from Los Angeles that would have spared that person an extensive trip to Los Angeles that's right it would have you know and so and that also leads to one of the things that we're seeing with digital Health which is moving from an inflection point basis to a continual monitoring basis for people with diabetes instead of having to prick your finger five times a day there's a sensor that will monitor your blood sugar all the time I have an elderly relative who wears an Apple Watch and it manages monitors excuse me his heart rate so that that changes there there were other two other things two other exhibits in digital Health that I thought were fascinating okay the first was Blue Sky AI which can monitor people's emotional state using a webcam so the technology to your point uh about back at time Kettle the technology is not that complicated right um it's just a webcam that you stick in the cabin of a car or like the webcam I'm looking into right now and using their proprietary algorithm they can see if a woman is depressed is suffering from postpartum depression they have an automobile execution where it can create microclimates so that everybody's comfortable in a car but it's the capturing technology is really quite simple just a webcam and a similar engagement just uh on the same floor was a thing called neurologics and as with time K they have a webcam and an algorithm that measures blood rate blood pressure this extraordinary uh sort of quick scan of your health I I just had you know labs done today early this morning and the idea that I might not have to have all of those things done um by somebody sticking a needle in my arm is great and and also although the FLOTUS did a great job the other thing that was fascinating about neurologics was the form factor that they had it on the phone on a tablet but they're building these magic mirrors where someone sits down they call it a video selfie which I thought was provocative but a bit silly but but with the video selfie you would sit there for 30 seconds it would you know gazing soulfully into the mirror adjusting your hair and then it would you know grind and You' he see smoke pop out and then magically it would come up with you know a real indication of what your health is Imagine putting those right next to the blood pressure cuff uh you know you stick your arm in in every Pharmacy uh at the gym uh as I mentioned to you before we started I spent a few hours the other day digging my driveway out because it had turned into a gigantic sheet of ice in the winter storm and there was a moment where I thought oh I'm about to have a heart attack CU my heart was really going uh and I it would have been nice to have something uh to look at uh in order to find out that I wasn't gonna die right and so surprise I didn't but spoiler alert but uh you had a busy day yeah it's been it's been crazy here's the thing that I think is important about digital Health the kind of the theme that you can pull out in general which is disintermediation and distribution okay it used to be uh that in order to get your Healthcare needs met you would have to go somewhere unless you were one of the lucky people who had a doctor who made house calls but for the vast majority of people you would have to go to a doctor go to a clinic uh you'd have to see another person in order to get Diagnostics done all of these things are doing are taking that geographical necessity away so that you can go elsewhere you can have the equipment come to you you can extend the reach of a doctor you can replace a doctor you know nobody in digital Health ever wants to use the dword which is diagnostic because that pulls them to a higher standard but just imagine I always like to think about colliding Trends and another Trend that we can link to digital Health into this again disintermediation and distribution would be drones like imagine if instead of having to go someplace a drone shows up and drops something and you you prick your finger you do this it straps some sensors to yourself uh it really could change health care for people the biggest question as is always the question in this country is how do you pay for it who pays for it how do you make it affordable for everybody as opposed to only rich people but that's the big Trend that I'm seeing uh in digital Health which I think is very exciting and I'm hoping that we see even more next year

2024-02-19 22:55

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