The best & worst of CES 2024
16th January 2024
Welcome to AI Collision 💥,
In today’s collision between AI and our world:
The best of CES
The worst of CES
The coolest of CES
If that’s enough to get the cash pouring out of the wallet, read on…
AI Collision 💥 all done and dusted
Before I get to the cool stuff of CES 2024, I actually shot a quick summary after a couple of days at CES with a few thoughts at the time. I think that’s a good place to start when looking back at my time in Las Vegas last week…
New tech that’s “old” tech – I think that’s a theme to home in on this year. To see what the market movers are really going to be in 2024, we probably need to look back a couple of years.
Take, for instance, the “Echo Shades” that I used at the Amazon stand. Not new, not a breakthrough, but now at a stage where the hardware and software are at that perfect collision point where they’re useful, they look good, and there’s likely to be real market demand for these things.
As I said in the video, it’s very clear that AI is going to form a part of our world, one way or another, whether you like it or not.
The real question is: how much are you prepared to accept and learn how to use it? I think that’s something to think about. I believe that at some point this year, we may even do some AI workshops to help people figure out how and why they should use AI in their lives.
So, if that’s something you think might be cool to take part in, I have a question…
OK, as promised in the headline, it’s now that I dig into the BEST, the WORST and the COOLEST tech from CES 2024.
The Best
This may shock some people, but the best tech on display wasn’t AI.
The reason being that AI was everywhere. But none of it was really on “display”. AI is one of those tech breakthroughs that’s intangible. You can’t necessarily see it. You can interact with it, but you don’t really get to grips with what makes it happen.
What you do see is the device, but that’s not AI. That’s a device. Now, in terms of the best tech, it would be easy to reel off one of the things from the big players like Samsung and its robot ball (which I don’t particularly think is any good, by the way) or LG and its “vision” of what an LG car would be, or even the Mercedes autonomous pod car thingy…
But none of that really impressed me much. Nothing that I thought, wow, that’s going to change an entire industry.
However, on display under the CES Innovation Awards section was some really great tech. The thing that impressed me most – that really had me go, “Ahh, that’s going to really change things” – was overlooked by 90% of people walking past. Barely anyone stopped to really look at this. But in hindsight, it’s arguably one of the best pieces of tech at CES that no one really gave a s*** about.
What you see there are two Mercury electric outboard engines.
Yep, I know, not exactly breath-taking (we’ll get to that stuff in a minute). But when you really think about it, electric outboard engines have a real chance to completely upend the marine industry.
Mercury is owned by Brunswick Corporation (NYSE:BC), a multi-billion-dollar marine company. And these Avator engines are its foray into electric outboards.
The outboard engine industry itself is a multi-billion-dollar-per-year industry that isn’t something that first comes to mind when you think “tech”. But considering it’s an industry that’s forever and a day been internal combustion engine-focused, it is often overlooked when people think of electric propulsion.
The company has got a bigger 110e model coming later in 2024. I wouldn’t be surprised, if sooner rather than later, we also start seeing more and more electric outboards down at the local marina.
Brunswick isn’t the kind of company you’d think of when it comes to AI, either. It’s by no means a pure play. But autonomous navigation and autonomous systems in its marine tech is something that’s been a part of the company for a few years.
Anyway, it’s no headline-grabber. But for me, thinking of the impact that tech will have on an entire industry, these Mercury electric outboards are right up there with the best.
The Worst
OK, so I do want to apologise in advance to these companies. It’s not so much that these are the “worst” things, but for me, they’re absolutely the most unnecessary – just a personal view.
But there were a few displays at CES showing off the latest in “AI grills”. That’s a very American term. For most of us, we’d call these “AI barbecues”.
I’m not going to name the companies specifically. That’s a little unfair. But I got the full pitch from one that I decided to take a closer look at.
They were saying that the AI cooks the food at record speeds – a minute for a steak, a minute for fish. It had vertical elements, was AI-enabled, with Snapdragon processors, yada, yada, yada…
That sounds all cool and fancy in principle.
But the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed.
You see, during the hype phase of certain tech, you’ll find it in things that it really doesn’t need to be in. AI in a BBQ is one of those things.
The whole point of a BBQ isn’t just to cook the food as fast as you can from an AI agent.
The point is the experience – the event itself. The pride in doing something as a cook and taking pride in the cooking process. The preparing, the cooking and the eating afterwards. These are things that humans don’t need AI for. There’s a strange humanity in cooking food. I think the idea of doing it as fast as “non-humanly” possible completely misses the idea of what a BBQ is all about.
It’s ridiculous. And for that, AI BBQs get my “worst of CES” tag for 2024.
The Coolest
For me, this is a straightforward answer. Aside from the Echo Frames, which I will be buying with my 50% CES discount as soon as possible, there was only one other piece of tech at CES that, had it been for sale (and it could fit in my carry-on case), I would have bought there and then.
It’s LG’s “Dukebox”. See it for yourself.
This is a high-end audio player, and you can see the internal amplifier tubes through the screen. But you might also notice the screen itself is a proper screen, just one of those newfangled transparent ones!
Not only did this thing look the business, but it sounded delightful too. It was easily the coolest of CES for me – and high on the 2024 shopping list.
AI gone wild 🤪
Being lazy seems to be a prerequisite for innovation. How can we do things faster and easier by doing less.
Or maybe innovation for innovation’s sake isn’t all that necessary.
Take, for instance, the AI BBQ I spoke about above.
Is it really innovation, or just a bit silly, a bit lazy?
I thought about this a lot at CES 2024. It wasn’t as good as previous years. It didn’t WOW me like it has before.
Maybe that’s because a lot of the real breakthroughs weren’t/aren’t those that are so tactile as perhaps they’ve once been.
But, also I think perhaps there’s been a greater constraint in the last year or two about where the buck flows for research, development and innovation.
It’s not as free-flowing as perhaps it once was and is more surgical than it used to be.
A perfect example of what it used to be is on full display with “Elon’s Loop”. That multi-million-dollar tunnel that his Boring Company built in Vegas to shuttle people all of about half a mile from one part of the convention centre to the other.
Now if you want to talk about laziness and needlessness… this thing is it. But in the interests of research, I did actually ride it. And it was underwhelming.
And lots of people will probably never see it or ride it. If I head back there, it won’t be something I’ll use again, that’s for sure.
But here it is anyway. Not really “AI” gone wild, although it was supposed to be autonomous Teslas driving through it, so maybe it’s really “Failed AI Gone Wild” today.
Boomers & Busters 💰
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom 📈
Vicarious Surgical (NYSE:RBOT) up 35%
WISeKey International (NASDAQ:WKEY) up 41%
Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG) up 12%
Bust 📉
iRobot (NASDAQ:IRBT) down 20%
Wearable Devices (NASDAQ:WLDS) down 17%
Guardforce AI (NASDAQ:GFAI) down 14%
From the hive mind 🧠
Prepare for the negative-nancy-newstellers in 2024. AI is coming for all your jobs! Frankly, it’s garbage, but you need to understand what the likes of the IMF are saying to understand how wrong they are.
The market doesn’t like the idea of AI mixing with the military. At least not mixing with the Chinese military. The US military, they’re probably cool with, but if Baidu is anything to go by, definitely not the Chinese military.
The irony of a Davos conference being about “rebuilding trust” and then focusing on AI and crypto regulations shouldn’t be lost on anyone.
Artificial Pollteligence 🗳️ the results show
After seeing a number of big tech companies like Sony and LG show off their vision of what their own car might look like, I wondered if you would be interested in a car from these consumer tech companies.
Well, our results are in…
The “Yes” just snuck it in.
I should note that I thought it would be a runaway winner after early polling, but the no’s caught up over the weekend.
We’ll have another poll on Thursday, and the results can be seen below.
Weirdest AI image of the day
Prompt : "advertising slogan that went completely wrong" – r/Weirddallee
ChatGPT’s random quote of the day
“Technology is nothing. What's important is that you have a faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them.”
– Steve Jobs
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief
AI Collision
'From the hive mind' - would it please be possible when including links to news items to indicate whether a subscription fee is required to read them? A good example was in today’s link 'At least not mixing with the Chinese military' which can only be read after taking out a subscription to the Financial Times.
Keep up the excellent work.
Kind regards
KM
Hi Sam, I enjoyed the segment of what the future cars could look like. There is so much endless possibilities with AI. We are awakening to a new dawn in AI and Robotics.