Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? So? Longtime no podcast y'all. The last
Speaker 1: time I actually recorded a new episode, it was about
Speaker 1: CT scanning machines, and I talked about how I had
Speaker 1: just had my first CT scan. That was on December
Speaker 1: thirtieth of twenty twenty three when that happened, and it
Speaker 1: was all part of a medical emergency I experienced over
Speaker 1: that last weekend of twenty twenty three. But guess what,
Speaker 1: The very same day that I was recording that episode,
Speaker 1: I ended up having another emergency and I had to
Speaker 1: go right back to the hospital. My blood pressure had
Speaker 1: spiked again. It got to the point where I was
Speaker 1: completely incoherent, more so than usual. You know, I realize
Speaker 1: my coherence is a spectrum. Well this was off of it,
Speaker 1: and I honestly only remember the second half of what
Speaker 1: happened at the hospital once I was moved into the
Speaker 1: Intensive care Unit or ICU. Before that, apparently I spent
Speaker 1: several hours in the emergency room, but I have no
Speaker 1: memory of it. I was told I even received a
Speaker 1: lumbar puncture, which is I understand it. Those are pretty painful,
Speaker 1: but none of that is in my mind. But a
Speaker 1: group of doctors and nurses took very good care of me,
Speaker 1: both in the er and the ICU. And as I
Speaker 1: am recording this now, I'm just back from getting from
Speaker 1: the hospital. I had to go in for a surgical
Speaker 1: procedure that is connected to all the emergency stuff. The
Speaker 1: surgery went pretty well. The recovery has been rough, but
Speaker 1: hopefully this will get me toward being on the right track.
Speaker 1: It has been a heck of a way to start
Speaker 1: off twenty twenty four. And as I mentioned in that
Speaker 1: last new episode from Me, I am scaling back on
Speaker 1: the number of shows that I do per week. One
Speaker 1: contributing factor to the blood pressure issue is stress, and
Speaker 1: we figured that reducing my stress should be a little
Speaker 1: bit helpful. Now, that's just one part of what I'm
Speaker 1: doing to get better. It's not like cutting back is
Speaker 1: going to magically make me healthy. I have to do
Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff. I'm on medication. I've got
Speaker 1: a new approach to my diet and exercise, which is
Speaker 1: well overdue. So it's just one piece of a bigger
Speaker 1: puzzle anyway. Enough of all that. One of the many
Speaker 1: things that I missed out on while I was in
Speaker 1: the hospital was CES, which sometimes is also referred to
Speaker 1: as the Consumer Electronics Show, although I think now they
Speaker 1: just prefer to have it called CES. And in case
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with this event, CES is a huge
Speaker 1: trade industry conference in the United States in which companies
Speaker 1: come together in Las Vegas, Nevada, every January to focus
Speaker 1: on all things in the consumer electronics space and beyond.
Speaker 1: If we're being honest, consumer electronics is really just one
Speaker 1: part of it, which might be why they prefer to
Speaker 1: call it just CES these days. It's at CES where
Speaker 1: manufacturers and retailers will show off products intended to launch
Speaker 1: within the next year or so. Sometimes they just show
Speaker 1: off things like prototypes that are never going to see
Speaker 1: the light of day, but might show off some features
Speaker 1: that could find their way into products in the future.
Speaker 1: Various members of the media attend and an effort to
Speaker 1: get really cool stories. And you know, you've got other
Speaker 1: industry professionals who go for all sorts of reasons, you know,
Speaker 1: analysts and such. Most of them are really looking for
Speaker 1: ways to find free food. At least in my experience,
Speaker 1: that's kind of what the main priority seems to be.
Speaker 1: And every year at CEES, trends emerge. Sometimes these trends
Speaker 1: will establish themselves and eventually become a pillar in technology.
Speaker 1: Like think about flat screen televisions. I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: common form factor now, but once upon a time it wasn't,
Speaker 1: and when those started to pop up, they eventually did
Speaker 1: become the standard. Or things like Bluetooth connectivity and smart
Speaker 1: home technology those fall into these categories too. Now. Other times,
Speaker 1: various industries will push really hard to get a technology
Speaker 1: kind of established in order to make it a trend,
Speaker 1: and it ends up going nowhere. So the one I
Speaker 1: always cite is three D television. When I first started
Speaker 1: going to CES, which is back in the mid two thousands,
Speaker 1: all the major companies in television space were gung ho
Speaker 1: on three D televisions. There was a ton of support
Speaker 1: behind three DTV within the film and TV industries, you know,
Speaker 1: because three D formats would be a lot harder for
Speaker 1: people to pirate than your typical visual media. So the
Speaker 1: studios were really gung ho on three D TV as
Speaker 1: well because they were like, well, if this means people
Speaker 1: can't just steal our stuff and they have to buy
Speaker 1: it from us, then that means more money. So let's
Speaker 1: definitely make three D television a thing. I mean, what
Speaker 1: better way to crack down on those pesty pirates than
Speaker 1: to convince them that they all have to watch the
Speaker 1: stuff in three D. And you know a lot of
Speaker 1: pirates can't even watch stuff in three D because they
Speaker 1: got eye patches, which means they have a lack of
Speaker 1: death perception. That's a parallax joke. Anyway, the whole gambit
Speaker 1: for three D television didn't work out. Consumers rejected three DTV.
Speaker 1: Most folks decided they didn't want to have to wear
Speaker 1: glasses just to watch television in their homes, or that
Speaker 1: having yet another component that could go missing was a
Speaker 1: real hassle. Like if you've ever been one of those
Speaker 1: folks who's like, where the heck did the remote control go,
Speaker 1: imagine doing that with glasses as well. Or they were
Speaker 1: arguing that there just wasn't enough compelling material that was
Speaker 1: in three D to justify the investment of purchasing one
Speaker 1: of these televisions. So after a couple of valiant years
Speaker 1: of trying to make three D happen. It followed in
Speaker 1: the footsteps of Fetch and didn't happen. This year was
Speaker 1: no exception. There were other trends that came out this year.
Speaker 1: A few different ones popped up, like transparent O led
Speaker 1: television displays. There were a few of those, and I'll
Speaker 1: probably do an episode talking about that in the future.
Speaker 1: But undeniably, one type of tech really dominated conversation at
Speaker 1: the show floor this year, and that was artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: And we all know that AI is a big deal.
Speaker 1: Companies like Microsoft and Google and Amazon and Apple are
Speaker 1: all struggling to find ways to incorporate AI into their
Speaker 1: business models in a way that benefits them, and that
Speaker 1: might also mean that these companies will make cuts to
Speaker 1: actual human staff in the process if they find that
Speaker 1: the AI can take on some of the load that
Speaker 1: people would normally carry. And if you read up on
Speaker 1: any business conference, any conference that has happened in the
Speaker 1: last year and a half, you're going to see a
Speaker 1: lot of discussion will be devoted to AI and how
Speaker 1: it's going to change everything. And often at these exact
Speaker 1: same conferences, at these exact same speeches, you're going to
Speaker 1: find hardly any detail as to how we're going to
Speaker 1: get there or what strategies companies should employ well forging
Speaker 1: the path, it just becomes like this will change everything.
Speaker 1: How it becomes like the underpants gnomes in South Park.
Speaker 1: You just have a bunch of question marks and then
Speaker 1: at the end it says profit. So essentially, everyone knows
Speaker 1: that AI is powerful and it's important, but we don't
Speaker 1: have wide agreement on how it should be developed or deployed. Also,
Speaker 1: it's not like this was the first time that AI
Speaker 1: was part of the conversation and at CES. In recent years,
Speaker 1: lots of companies have leaned on AI for all sorts
Speaker 1: of things, from voice assistance to image recognition to robot navigation.
Speaker 1: If I'm being honest, I would say the AI on
Speaker 1: display this year more often seem to lean on the
Speaker 1: large language model and generative AI versions of artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that we've been seeing so much
Speaker 1: about from companies like open AI and Google. And I
Speaker 1: get it. They're very flashy and they are impressive when
Speaker 1: they're working properly, but it gives a very narrow view
Speaker 1: of what artificial intelligence is, and AI is so much
Speaker 1: more than just large language models and generative AI. But
Speaker 1: unfortunately that's harder to sell. So it gets easier if
Speaker 1: you just kind of reduce it all to one form
Speaker 1: and say, like, this is what AI is. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's very wise because it's misleading, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm one voice in a big crowd. Now, there were
Speaker 1: a couple of major approaches that I saw while reading
Speaker 1: up on how various companies were positioning AI in their
Speaker 1: pitches to the media over at CEES. The big companies,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, were actually a little less bullish. You know.
Speaker 1: They didn't position AI as being a definitive feature in
Speaker 1: their technologies, that did not seem to be the big thing.
Speaker 1: Like it wasn't like a big flashing knee on sign
Speaker 1: saying this has AI in it. So in their products,
Speaker 1: AI was often a component that they might mention as
Speaker 1: contributing to the functionality, but it wasn't positioned as being
Speaker 1: the main event. Now, some smaller companies went in the
Speaker 1: opposite direction. They developed products that put artificial intelligence front
Speaker 1: and center, like this is AI. And we're still seeing
Speaker 1: some examples of companies that are shoving AI into their
Speaker 1: marketing message, even if it seems like they still don't
Speaker 1: quite have a handle on how AI adds value or functionality,
Speaker 1: or in some cases, I'm not entirely convinced that AI
Speaker 1: is actually part of the whole thing in the first place.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it just seems like we need to put AI
Speaker 1: in there because that's a buzzword that if we don't
Speaker 1: put it in there, it's going to seem like we're
Speaker 1: falling behind. But I would argue that, at least in
Speaker 1: some of the cases I was looking at, AI really
Speaker 1: was a grandiose way of saying whatever it was the
Speaker 1: product was supposed to do. So let's get started. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about an implementation that I actually think is a
Speaker 1: pretty good idea, and it's BMW's use of a technique
Speaker 1: called retrieval augmented generation. So BMW has a voice assistant
Speaker 1: that you can get in in certain BMW vehicles, and
Speaker 1: it uses generative AI to respond to your requests. But
Speaker 1: this voice assistant can't just chat about anything at all.
Speaker 1: It's it's not grant access to a limitless selection of topics,
Speaker 1: So you can't just be like on a long road
Speaker 1: trip and you're like, let's start talking about Sartra, or
Speaker 1: can we have a deep discussion about Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 1: It can't do that. Instead, this voice assistant can really
Speaker 1: only provide information about the vehicle itself. So this restriction
Speaker 1: means that the voice assistant isn't prone to hallucinations or confabulations.
Speaker 1: So that's the tendency for generative AI to just plane
Speaker 1: make stuff up on occasion. Right, Sometimes AI, in the
Speaker 1: lack of information, will make something up and it sounds
Speaker 1: like it's reliable, but it turns out it's completely false.
Speaker 1: This is why AI critics warn that without strong guidelines,
Speaker 1: AI could manufacture and distribute misinformation in such a way
Speaker 1: that the misinformation seems like it's reliable and it's not malicious.
Speaker 1: It's not that the AI is trying to mislead. It's
Speaker 1: just trying to answer a question and doesn't have the answer,
Speaker 1: and like some other people I know, it's too scared
Speaker 1: to say I don't know the answer to that question.
Speaker 1: So BMW built a barrier around their voice assistance knowledge
Speaker 1: base to prevent this from happening. They said, well, it's
Speaker 1: only going to be restricted to matters that involve the
Speaker 1: vehicle itself. So the assistant draws upon the power of
Speaker 1: Amazon's Alexa large language model, and it can interpret what
Speaker 1: you mean when you ask questions. So that way, even
Speaker 1: if you are not a car person and you don't
Speaker 1: really know how to frame a question properly, like you
Speaker 1: don't know what you're asking about, you're just trying to
Speaker 1: find an answer to something you don't know the answer to, well,
Speaker 1: this assistant can still try to help you get to
Speaker 1: where you need to go, like what information do you
Speaker 1: need to know? It can actually ask follow up questions
Speaker 1: to you in order to get a better understanding of
Speaker 1: what it is you're asking about, So like if you
Speaker 1: don't know what it is you don't know, it can
Speaker 1: at least ask follow up questions to try and narrow
Speaker 1: down what the matter is. And then it can simplify explanations.
Speaker 1: If you find something too technical to follow, you could say,
Speaker 1: can you explain that to me in in plain English?
Speaker 1: And it can reduce the complexity and do it now.
Speaker 1: The beauty of this is that the voice assistant becomes
Speaker 1: sort of an interactive owner's manual that's capable of rephrasing
Speaker 1: passages if they just don't make sense to you, which
Speaker 1: is great if you've ever flipped through a car owner
Speaker 1: manual and encountered stuf where you're like, this doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like a human being wrote this. I don't understand what
Speaker 1: they're actually getting at. Well, imagine that it would be
Speaker 1: able to rephrase it so that it could convey that
Speaker 1: meaning to you like that to me is incredibly valuable.
Speaker 1: So for example, if your vehicle has multiple drive modes, right,
Speaker 1: and you have no clue which drive mode should be
Speaker 1: used in any given situation, the assistant can help. You
Speaker 1: could ask it and you might find out that if
Speaker 1: you were to switch to a different driving mode, you're
Speaker 1: going to get way better performance on the roads that
Speaker 1: you're currently driving on and your drive is going to
Speaker 1: be far more pleasant. Or maybe that by making a
Speaker 1: few other changes you can dramatically decrease the amount of
Speaker 1: fuel consumption you're going through and save some money. I
Speaker 1: think that's a pretty neat idea. Now, I should say
Speaker 1: that the description I read about this tool was done
Speaker 1: as part of a non interactive demonstration. So the reporter
Speaker 1: whose report I read is Tim Stevens. He wrote a
Speaker 1: piece for Ours Technica, and he was not allowed to
Speaker 1: ask any questions of the voice assistant himself, so he
Speaker 1: could not interact with it. Instead he had to just
Speaker 1: witness a kind of a performance almost so BMW representatives
Speaker 1: ran the whole demo. And it's hard to say for
Speaker 1: you know how far along this product is, or how
Speaker 1: reliable it is, or whether or not you could prompt
Speaker 1: it to make a mistake, because often that becomes a
Speaker 1: thing where people will try to get AI things to
Speaker 1: mess up to see if, in fact it's possible, because
Speaker 1: it's better to find out through testing than to find
Speaker 1: out through actual use. But I think this is an
Speaker 1: AI implementation that really makes sense, and I could easily
Speaker 1: see other companies in other industries making similar use of
Speaker 1: this technology to make it easier to navigate increasingly complex systems,
Speaker 1: not just vehicles, but all sorts of stuff like I
Speaker 1: can see businesses that are incorporating generative AI to do
Speaker 1: it in this kind of way where they are effectively
Speaker 1: geo fencing the AI so that it's only focused on
Speaker 1: the things that are pertinent to the business. That just
Speaker 1: makes sense to me. Okay, we're going to take a
Speaker 1: quick break. When we come back, I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: a lot more about AI at CEES twenty twenty four. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. So we talked about BMW's approach, which I
Speaker 1: thought was really cool. I don't know if the tool
Speaker 1: itself is cool. I just think the strategy makes sense.
Speaker 1: But let's contrast BMW's rather focused application with a handheld
Speaker 1: device that is completely dependent upon AI and large language
Speaker 1: models or large models, I probably should say, and that
Speaker 1: is the Rabbit r one. So this gadget got a
Speaker 1: ton of attention at CEES, at least from the media
Speaker 1: as I understand it, it did not really go viral
Speaker 1: over on Twitter. I'm not on Twitter anymore, so I
Speaker 1: just have to take other people's word for it. But
Speaker 1: like whenever I went to any outlet, if I were
Speaker 1: looking at Wired or the Verge or Ours, Tetnica or anything,
Speaker 1: there were articles seen at the articles about this thing,
Speaker 1: the Rabbit are one. This kind of happens at the
Speaker 1: show occasionally, right if you go to CEES, sometimes a
Speaker 1: particular thing will stand out, and it's usually something that's
Speaker 1: not from a big company. It's usually something that's kind
Speaker 1: of a surprise, and it often can be a small thing,
Speaker 1: but it just captures everyone's attention and then it generates
Speaker 1: tons of articles. So like in past years, there was
Speaker 1: a vibrating fork which was a real thing. It was
Speaker 1: a fork that had a little haptic motor inside of it,
Speaker 1: and if it detected that you were eating too quickly,
Speaker 1: it would vibrate so that the food would fall off
Speaker 1: your fork, forcing you to eat more slowly. That was
Speaker 1: the whole concept. That was a big deal one year.
Speaker 1: The pebble smart watch was a huge deal one year,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't even exist anymore. They'll fitbit purchase that
Speaker 1: and then kind of killed it off. So the pebble,
Speaker 1: it shows that these little things that can become viral
Speaker 1: and get everyone's attention and get a lot of excitement,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that they are guaranteed to stick around.
Speaker 1: They're not guaranteed to be a success. The Pebble was
Speaker 1: huge and doesn't exist anymore, so that can raise the
Speaker 1: question will the rabbit r one have better luck than
Speaker 1: say the pebble. Well, let's talk about what it is first.
Speaker 1: So it's a handheld device. It's kind of square ish
Speaker 1: in shape. It's about half the height of your typical smartphone,
Speaker 1: so it's not as big as a smartphone. Most of
Speaker 1: the front face of this device is covered with a
Speaker 1: touch screen. That touch screen typically has a sort of
Speaker 1: cyber rabbit icon face on it. To the right of
Speaker 1: the screen is a little physical scroll wheel. It's mounted
Speaker 1: so that you can scroll up or down with it.
Speaker 1: Above that is a forward facing camera. It has a
Speaker 1: simcard port, It's got Wi Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. It's
Speaker 1: got a speaker, it's got a microphone. It's got a
Speaker 1: few more things. But the physical stuff isn't really where
Speaker 1: the story is with this device. See The company behind
Speaker 1: the rabbit are One Rabbit in other words, says that
Speaker 1: it wants to create the next generation of computers. But
Speaker 1: these computers should be able to interface with all the
Speaker 1: functions we rely on today without us having to deal
Speaker 1: with the actual applications that provide us those functions. So,
Speaker 1: for example, than having to open up an application or
Speaker 1: a program and run a function, you could just tell
Speaker 1: the computer what it was you wanted to have happen
Speaker 1: and the computer would do it. So these computers should
Speaker 1: be able to interface with all the functions we rely
Speaker 1: on today on behalf of us. They can act as
Speaker 1: almost like a middleman. So for example, I could get
Speaker 1: a smartphone and download and install apps on my phone
Speaker 1: to do all sorts of stuff like to call a
Speaker 1: cab or a ride share. I could have an app
Speaker 1: to order food. I could have a different app so
Speaker 1: I could listen to music, a different app so I
Speaker 1: could watch films, or maybe I have apps that are
Speaker 1: various games. But I have to download and install each
Speaker 1: of those apps in order to do that. And obviously
Speaker 1: lots of different companies make these apps, so these interfaces
Speaker 1: aren't universal, right, So it might actually take me a
Speaker 1: little while to learn how to navigate those apps properly,
Speaker 1: because one app may use one kind of interface, another
Speaker 1: might use a different one. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've had the experience where you've opened up programs and
Speaker 1: like you have that moment where you realize, oh, the
Speaker 1: shortcut I'm trying to use doesn't work because that's actually
Speaker 1: for a totally different program. I have it happen all
Speaker 1: the time. But then I'm also I'm also getting old
Speaker 1: and broken and perhaps senile. So maybe that's just a
Speaker 1: Jonathan problem. But what if instead of doing all that,
Speaker 1: my device just took those steps out and just interface
Speaker 1: directly with the underlying platforms. What if all I needed
Speaker 1: to do was to tell my computer order me a
Speaker 1: deep dish Chicago pizza to get here by five pm,
Speaker 1: and the computer, acting like a personal assistant, handles the
Speaker 1: entire transaction. And what if I could do any kind
Speaker 1: of transaction that way, not just ordering pizza. Maybe I
Speaker 1: need to order a ride. Maybe I want to watch
Speaker 1: the latest episode of True Detective. Maybe I have a
Speaker 1: list of things I want to do, like maybe I
Speaker 1: want to do a full fledged vacation, and I need
Speaker 1: to do things like I need to book flights, I
Speaker 1: need to secure a hotel room, I need to get
Speaker 1: tickets for a walking tour I was interested in, I
Speaker 1: want to make a dinner reservation for a particular restaurant.
Speaker 1: What if I just had a gadget and I just
Speaker 1: told it all these things I needed it to do,
Speaker 1: and it took care all of that for me in
Speaker 1: one go, Right. That's the kind of idea behind the
Speaker 1: Rabbit r one. The company says the secret Sauce is
Speaker 1: a system they call a large action model, and it's
Speaker 1: this model that figures out how to interface with all
Speaker 1: the different services out there in order to get the
Speaker 1: result that you desire, whether that's pizza delivery or an
Speaker 1: update on your health records or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of unanswered questions when it comes
Speaker 1: to this actual approach, like how can the product and
Speaker 1: system ensure privacy and data security? For example. As is
Speaker 1: often the case at cees, answers to the hard questions
Speaker 1: didn't really take center stage. Instead, folks got swept up
Speaker 1: with this idea of a device that you know, possibly
Speaker 1: could do all these things, And in just over a week,
Speaker 1: Rabbit had sold out of its pre order inventory that
Speaker 1: had set aside, and then it sold out of the
Speaker 1: next batch that it set aside, and then the next one,
Speaker 1: and it keeps going and one hundred and ninety nine
Speaker 1: dollars a pop. It's a pricey piece of technology, but
Speaker 1: admittedly it's significantly cheaper than your typical smartphone. So you
Speaker 1: could argue, well, if you wanted to free yourself of
Speaker 1: a smartphone, then maybe you could use this. Now, gret
Speaker 1: you can't use this thing as a smartphone, it's not
Speaker 1: intended to be a smartphone, but you could use it
Speaker 1: to do all these other tasks. Now, some evangelists have
Speaker 1: already talked about how the device lets you do lots
Speaker 1: of stuff that we do use smartphones for today, but
Speaker 1: it removes pesky things like notifications and distractions. So if
Speaker 1: you're someone who's like, I'm so sick of getting text
Speaker 1: messages and phone calls and all these little pop ups
Speaker 1: and stuff. I just want to be able to do
Speaker 1: what I need to do when I need to do it,
Speaker 1: and then not be bothered that I could see where
Speaker 1: you'd be. Really you'd find the appeal of the rabbit
Speaker 1: r one. Maybe you go back to having just a
Speaker 1: phone at home and an answering machine or something similar
Speaker 1: to that, where you're not carrying your communications device with
Speaker 1: you everywhere. I think a lot of people, at least
Speaker 1: on one level, think that's attractive. But when you start
Speaker 1: really thinking about the convenience of having a communications device
Speaker 1: on you, it does. I mean, that's a strong use case,
Speaker 1: right Like, as someone who has been through a couple
Speaker 1: of medical emergencies recently, I can tell you having a
Speaker 1: communications device on you is invaluable at times. But you know,
Speaker 1: it does seem like it would be cool to have
Speaker 1: a gadget that could handle these things and you know,
Speaker 1: you just tell it what you want and it handles
Speaker 1: all the details. That does seem pretty nice. But as
Speaker 1: one YouTuber vrun Maya and I apologize for the Butchering
Speaker 1: of your name. I saw his YouTube video about the
Speaker 1: Rabbit R one, and he made some really good points,
Speaker 1: some criticisms about this, and he said that the rabbit
Speaker 1: R one's place in the pantheon of established technology is
Speaker 1: by no means assured. He argues that the use case
Speaker 1: for the r one is pretty limited. And if you
Speaker 1: were to actually look at how much time the typical
Speaker 1: person spends on their smartphone and then take another step
Speaker 1: and say, all right, let's break that down, what are
Speaker 1: you using that time to do? Like, what what are
Speaker 1: you mostly doing on your smartphone? He argues that you
Speaker 1: would only see a tiny fraction of the use time
Speaker 1: that would go to interfacing with apps in this way
Speaker 1: for doing things like ordering say a ride haaling service
Speaker 1: or food or something. He says, yeah, people do that,
Speaker 1: but that's like five or six minutes a day. If
Speaker 1: you were to look at how much time they're spending
Speaker 1: on their phone, most of their time is spent consuming content, right,
Speaker 1: watching videos, listening to podcasts, you know, that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: but not booking travel or ordering food or whatever. So
Speaker 1: his argument is that there's actually not enough of a
Speaker 1: use case to justify purchasing the R one that yeah,
Speaker 1: it might work. If it does work, we don't know
Speaker 1: because we only got to see some demonstrations and stuff.
Speaker 1: But it's only taking off like the like, if it's
Speaker 1: taking off like five minutes of work a day, that's
Speaker 1: hardly valuable, right. It's not like that's a huge load
Speaker 1: off of you. It's not a big enough departure from
Speaker 1: the smartphone to necessitate it. Plus, and this is a
Speaker 1: really good argument. I think it stands to reason that
Speaker 1: smartphone manufacturers are going to experiment with their own approach
Speaker 1: to things like large action models, which means you're likely
Speaker 1: to see rabbit R one functionality finding its way into
Speaker 1: established smartphone lines in the future, right, whether it's Apple's
Speaker 1: Siri or Google's Assistant, that kind of thing. You would
Speaker 1: expect to see these companies start to build those capabilities
Speaker 1: into their own tools, which means, well, you don't need
Speaker 1: the R one anyway. You're going to still want a phone,
Speaker 1: and your phone is going to end up doing the
Speaker 1: same thing the R one does, so why would you
Speaker 1: need a separate device to do those things. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like why most people, not everyone, but most people
Speaker 1: don't bother having their own like separate MP three player anymore. Right,
Speaker 1: you don't need an iPod or anything like that. You
Speaker 1: can just use your smartphone to access music. So for
Speaker 1: that reason, most people don't carry around iPods are MP
Speaker 1: three players. Why would you carry around a separate AI device. Still,
Speaker 1: it was neat seeing something that was different from everything
Speaker 1: else that showed up in Las Vegas. Right, it was
Speaker 1: nice to see something that did not look like everything else.
Speaker 1: The design is also kind of it's got the sort
Speaker 1: of retro cool thing to it. It looks a little clunky.
Speaker 1: It actually makes me think of the seventies because it
Speaker 1: was in bright orange, and I associate the seventies with
Speaker 1: like oranges and browns and it, you know, it was
Speaker 1: like a little square box and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: this feels like it was like technology was imagined in
Speaker 1: the seventies. It's got this little scroll wheel thing, and yeah,
Speaker 1: that was cool a neat idea. And I think the
Speaker 1: idea of having AI that can interface with these different platforms,
Speaker 1: I think that's interesting too. I do think that there
Speaker 1: is some value in that, like, especially if you're on
Speaker 1: a vacation or something and you want to be able
Speaker 1: to arrange a bunch of stuff, but you don't want
Speaker 1: to take up time on your vacation to do it.
Speaker 1: I could see that being really valuable, so I can
Speaker 1: definitely see this evolving from here. I don't know that
Speaker 1: the Rabbit R one is going to stick around. There's
Speaker 1: also the question of if Rabbit were to encounter financial difficulties,
Speaker 1: Like the company is really young. It launched in like
Speaker 1: October of last year. It has not been around for
Speaker 1: very long at all, which should also raise some questions
Speaker 1: about things like how likely is this device to work?
Speaker 1: But if it doesn't stick around, then does that mean
Speaker 1: the R one just becomes a paperweight? Right? Two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars paper weight? Because if it doesn't have the connectivity
Speaker 1: to any underlying services, presumably this device doesn't have a
Speaker 1: massive amount of processing power. If it's two hundred bucks,
Speaker 1: there's no way it's got really high end components inside
Speaker 1: of it. It must be relying upon cloud and edge
Speaker 1: based computing. If the company that's behind all that goes under,
Speaker 1: then presumably that functionality goes away. So I don't want
Speaker 1: to see them fail. I think it would be really
Speaker 1: cool if they succeed, but I would warn people to
Speaker 1: consider it carefully before plunking down two hundred bucks that
Speaker 1: they might not ever see again for something that ends
Speaker 1: up being interesting, but then ultimately fuels other companies to
Speaker 1: create similar tools and the r one gets lost in
Speaker 1: the shuffle. But who knows, maybe like a year from now,
Speaker 1: Rabbit's going to become like one of the big names
Speaker 1: and consumer AI. All right, we're gonna take another quick break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, I'm gonna talk about some other
Speaker 1: AI components and consumer goods that were shown off at
Speaker 1: CES and talk a little bit about whether or not
Speaker 1: I think they're interesting. But first let's take this quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're back now. I got a question for you.
Speaker 1: Would you sleep better if you knew that artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: was in your pillow? Because the Motion pillow is a
Speaker 1: pillow that is outfitted with AI according to the company
Speaker 1: behind it. So you might say, why why is there
Speaker 1: AI in a pillow? Well, the idea is that this
Speaker 1: pillow can monitor your sleep and detect when you do
Speaker 1: things like snore, and snoring indicates that you're your breathing
Speaker 1: pathway is obstructed and so you're not getting as much
Speaker 1: air as your body wants. So if the pillow in
Speaker 1: you know, if it detects that you're starting to snore,
Speaker 1: it will activate pumps to inflate little balloons within the
Speaker 1: pillow to help raise your head in an effort to
Speaker 1: clear your airway. And it also includes other stuff inside
Speaker 1: it as well, like sensors that are meant to keep
Speaker 1: track of how well you sleep right, you know, are
Speaker 1: you staying nice and still, are you moving around a lot?
Speaker 1: Are you getting up in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: And it can give you sort of a score in
Speaker 1: the morning indicating how well you slept the night before. Now,
Speaker 1: as someone who personally very soon I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to do a sleep study because that's another part of
Speaker 1: the follow up. They want to check me for sleep apneam.
Speaker 1: I understand the appeal of a device like this, right
Speaker 1: the idea of, oh, here's something that can help me
Speaker 1: deal with sleep apnea, and I'll get better rest and
Speaker 1: I don't have to worry about all that other stuff,
Speaker 1: like I don't have to worry about getting a seapap
Speaker 1: machine or anything like that. I actually worry that some
Speaker 1: folks might lean on technology like this in an effort
Speaker 1: to bypass the need to consult with physicians about this
Speaker 1: kind of thing. I do think technology can help. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong. I think that having technology to help
Speaker 1: support a healthy lifestyle is a good idea. I just
Speaker 1: worry that people will rely on the tech rather than
Speaker 1: rely on medical assistance, and they won't get the quality
Speaker 1: and quantity of help that they really need. But still
Speaker 1: I think it's a neat idea. I don't know how
Speaker 1: I would feel about plunking down nearly seven hundred bucks
Speaker 1: for a pillow, though, because that's how much it costs.
Speaker 1: At that point. I think I might be thinking more
Speaker 1: of the seapap mache because as much as I don't
Speaker 1: want to look like a Star Wars alien when I
Speaker 1: go to bed, I would like to have something that
Speaker 1: has a good track record, and potentially my insurance could
Speaker 1: help me pay for it. But you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe the pillow is a really good idea. Now. I
Speaker 1: did mention that pillow has a lot of components in
Speaker 1: it that are mirroring things that you find in fitness trackers,
Speaker 1: right Like, there are a lot of fitness trackers out
Speaker 1: there that you're supposed to wear when you go to sleep,
Speaker 1: and they'll track your sleep. Well, we saw lots of
Speaker 1: other fitness trackers at CEES twenty twenty four, No big surprise.
Speaker 1: They have been a huge thing there for years now,
Speaker 1: and this year we saw a couple that were meant
Speaker 1: for our four legged friends. Again not totally new, I've
Speaker 1: seen this sort of stuff before, But in Voxia introduced
Speaker 1: a dog collar. It calls Mini Tales and includes stuff
Speaker 1: like a GPS tracker, very useful if your dog happens
Speaker 1: to get away. So has health sensors to monitor things
Speaker 1: like heart rate and breathing and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And it also includes an AI element, so that if
Speaker 1: you wanted to check in and see what your puppers
Speaker 1: was doing while you were, say, off at work, you
Speaker 1: could open up an app you could see if they
Speaker 1: were sacked out or if maybe they had a serious
Speaker 1: case of the zuomis. So the AI's purpose, from what
Speaker 1: I was reading on this description is to interpret what
Speaker 1: your dog is actually doing based upon the data it's gathering.
Speaker 1: So if your dog's heart rate is elevated and if
Speaker 1: it's breathing is faster, then and GPS is giving indications
Speaker 1: that could say, oh, well, your dog's running around right,
Speaker 1: because it's not like there's you know, a clear running
Speaker 1: around indicator on there, the AI is making an interpretation.
Speaker 1: So I think that's kind of an interesting concept. It's
Speaker 1: probably one of the the fuzzier AI things that we're
Speaker 1: talking about today. This color's ninety nine bucks, which for
Speaker 1: a fitness tracker isn't terrible, but it also requires a
Speaker 1: month subscription of twenty five bucks, and that does start
Speaker 1: to pile up, and just like I was saying with
Speaker 1: the R one, it makes you worried. If you're paying
Speaker 1: a subscription, that usually indicates that the functionality of the
Speaker 1: device is dependent upon ongoing support from a back end,
Speaker 1: and if that means that the company, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: has trouble, then you may no longer get that support,
Speaker 1: which means your smart collar just becomes a regular old
Speaker 1: collar and it becomes one hundred dollars collar that does
Speaker 1: the same thing as just a regular, you know, fabric
Speaker 1: based collar would do, or leather or whatever. So yeah, again,
Speaker 1: buyer beware. I don't think you know if you really
Speaker 1: want to buy these things. I don't think there's anything
Speaker 1: wrong with it. I just think knowing ahead of time,
Speaker 1: the risks involved in purchasing something that could eventually become
Speaker 1: kind of a dumb version of what it once was
Speaker 1: due to a company dropping support. I think that's a
Speaker 1: good thing to know. The gamer out there already know
Speaker 1: this really well, because there are a lot of games
Speaker 1: that over years have lost features due to companies either
Speaker 1: going under or just stopping support. Now, there were a
Speaker 1: couple of smart mirror devices at CEES twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: that leaned a little bit on AI. One of them,
Speaker 1: the b Mind Smart Mirror, claimed it could help users
Speaker 1: practice mental wellness activities to improve their state of mind.
Speaker 1: So imagine you're the evil queen in snow White, and
Speaker 1: you walk up to the magic mirror and you demand
Speaker 1: that it proclaimed you as the fairest of the land,
Speaker 1: and instead the mirror adjusts the lighting to a more
Speaker 1: soothing color and brightness, and it encourages you to find
Speaker 1: value within yourself rather than to seek validation from others
Speaker 1: or something. I've only read about this mirror, so I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely sure how it works or how extensive this
Speaker 1: AI actually is. I mean, it could be that it's
Speaker 1: a relatively small library of responses that it can provide
Speaker 1: based upon your prompts, but I don't have any idea
Speaker 1: if it's some that can make more, you know, extensive interpretations.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting, But I don't know that. Another mirror
Speaker 1: like gadget is the Anura Magic Mirror, which looked to
Speaker 1: me more like a screen than a mirror, sort of
Speaker 1: like how some people use the forward facing camera on
Speaker 1: their phone to do stuff like check their makeup and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Anyway, this gadget can perform a
Speaker 1: full face scan. Apparently it takes like half a minute,
Speaker 1: and then it analyzes your face to determine a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff like what your blood pressure and heart rate
Speaker 1: happens to be that kind of thing, And maybe I
Speaker 1: should get one of these, because you know, I need
Speaker 1: to keep track of that sort of stuff. Or maybe
Speaker 1: I should just keep using my blood pressure cuff and
Speaker 1: just to use that. Anyway, according to the company, the
Speaker 1: planned customer base isn't for the average person. Instead, it's
Speaker 1: for stuff like doctor's offices and gyms and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. We also got more than a few robots
Speaker 1: at CEES twenty twenty four. That's to be expected. Every
Speaker 1: year that I've attended, I've seen tons of robots. Some
Speaker 1: end up being fairly simple, like there might be a
Speaker 1: robot that's essentially kind of like a smart shopping cart
Speaker 1: that will follow behind a specific person and act as
Speaker 1: kind of like a little robotic valet and carry their stuff.
Speaker 1: Others can get much more complicated, or at the very
Speaker 1: least can fulfill more complicated tasks. So this year there
Speaker 1: were a couple that I saw lots of folks mentioned
Speaker 1: in particular. I mean there were tons of robots, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, like hundreds of different types of robots,
Speaker 1: but two that a lot of people specifically wrote features on.
Speaker 1: One came from LG, but I couldn't find like a
Speaker 1: real specific official name for it, although the one I
Speaker 1: saw referenced it as the smart Home AI agent. That
Speaker 1: just doesn't seem very snappy to me. But it's part
Speaker 1: of IG's zero labor home concept, and it's a very
Speaker 1: cute little robot. It's got two stubby little legs, the
Speaker 1: end in wheels, and its body looks like a horizontal cylinder,
Speaker 1: so like imagine like a canister on its side, but
Speaker 1: it's being held up by these two legs with wheels
Speaker 1: on the end, and it looks like it's wearing a
Speaker 1: little pair of headphones, and it's got a little digital
Speaker 1: screen with digital eyes in it. I really wish I
Speaker 1: could have seen this thing in person. It's so adorable
Speaker 1: in pictures. So, according to LG is essentially a moving
Speaker 1: smart home hub. So it's meant to interface with other
Speaker 1: smart home appliances and such so that you can control
Speaker 1: your home by talking to your plastic pal who's fun
Speaker 1: to be with. Shout out if you happen to get
Speaker 1: that reference. So, this device has facial recognition capabilities that
Speaker 1: means it can learn to recognize the various members of
Speaker 1: the household. It can monitor the home. It has a
Speaker 1: built in camera so it can patrol and keep an
Speaker 1: eye on things. It can also check on various factors
Speaker 1: like air temperature, humidity, and air quality within the home
Speaker 1: and alert you if any of those are in ranges
Speaker 1: that are perhaps unhealthy. And it's even supposed to be
Speaker 1: able to figure out if you're in a good mood
Speaker 1: or not. So the idea is that you get home,
Speaker 1: this little robot rolls up and looks adoringly into your
Speaker 1: face and then tries to figure out if you're happy
Speaker 1: or if you're grouchy or whatever. Then immediately it begins
Speaker 1: to select settings and content to help you out with
Speaker 1: the various smart home appliances in your home. So maybe
Speaker 1: you come home, it looks at you and it can
Speaker 1: tell that you're all stressed out, so immediately starts to
Speaker 1: set the lights to a kind of calm lower level
Speaker 1: and plays soothing music on a smart speaker and puts
Speaker 1: a silence on notifications for the time being so that
Speaker 1: you don't flip out. I have no idea if this
Speaker 1: thing is ever actually going to be an actual product,
Speaker 1: but I can definitely see the appeal of it. Samsung
Speaker 1: also got some buzz by showing off an update to
Speaker 1: its Bali robot or bally, depending on how you pronounce it.
Speaker 1: I watched a video where it was from Samsung. I
Speaker 1: had both pronunciations in there. But it's a b a lllie.
Speaker 1: I would think it's Bali because it is shaped like
Speaker 1: a ball. Now. Samsung first introduced Bali back in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: but this twenty twenty four version has a few extra
Speaker 1: bells and whistles. Now, like I said, it's rather ball shaped,
Speaker 1: but it uses again a pair of thin wheels, one
Speaker 1: on either side of the ball that helps it move
Speaker 1: around the environment. And this new version of Bali has
Speaker 1: a projector built into it, which allows it to project
Speaker 1: images on floors or walls or ceilings, essentially being able
Speaker 1: to turn any surface into a video screen. So promotional
Speaker 1: video showed folks using Bali to create an impromptu video
Speaker 1: calling screen, or to turn a wall into a television,
Speaker 1: or even project stuff on a floor in an effort
Speaker 1: to entertain a Golden retriever, which I think is unnecessary
Speaker 1: because we all know golden retrievers have like two brain cells,
Speaker 1: so you really don't need to work that hard anyway.
Speaker 1: Like LG's robots, msun showed off that Bali is meant
Speaker 1: to interact with smart devices and thus give the robot
Speaker 1: control over appliances and Internet of Things gadgets throughout the home.
Speaker 1: So like the LG one, you could use it to
Speaker 1: do things like adjust the thermostat, or change what's playing
Speaker 1: on the smart speakers, or change the lighting. It can also,
Speaker 1: like the LG one, it can also patrol and keep
Speaker 1: an eye out on things that are going on back
Speaker 1: at home base while you're out and about. So those
Speaker 1: were some of the robots I mean, like I said,
Speaker 1: there were tons of others. There was one that was
Speaker 1: a few people mentioned that was like a combination robot
Speaker 1: that was a couple of different appliances, with one big
Speaker 1: appliance acting as like the docking station for the roving
Speaker 1: robot that could mop. It was a washing machine and
Speaker 1: mop combo, and the mop part could wander around the
Speaker 1: house and mop and then dock with the washing machine
Speaker 1: and offload the dirty water through the washing machine's drain
Speaker 1: so that you didn't even have to empty the mop.
Speaker 1: It could fill itself with clean water and empty the
Speaker 1: dirty water, which I think was pretty cool idea. So
Speaker 1: a lot of different stuff like that, But moving on,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Nvidia, because that was another company that's
Speaker 1: heavily entrenched in AI, and that should come as no
Speaker 1: surprise because it has been manufacturing powerful processors that have
Speaker 1: been tweaked to support AI functionality for the past couple
Speaker 1: of years. Powering artificial intelligence requires a whole lot of OOF,
Speaker 1: and Nvidia has a rep for building chips that are
Speaker 1: very much oomph centric, whether it's to provide the best
Speaker 1: performance for a state of the art gaming PC or
Speaker 1: a computer system that's running artificial intelligence applications. The company
Speaker 1: held a special address during CEES to talk about how
Speaker 1: its products will power the tech of tomorrow, and it
Speaker 1: can be challenging to walk away from stuff like CES
Speaker 1: and not have a feeling that at least some companies
Speaker 1: are still more than a little wishy washy when it
Speaker 1: comes to You've got companies like Nvidia that can very
Speaker 1: firmly point at how they support AI functionality, but when
Speaker 1: it comes to the companies that are building the actual
Speaker 1: AI implementations, it gets a little more vague. You might
Speaker 1: have limited implementations, you might have some very loose definitions
Speaker 1: that don't make a very strong stance as to how
Speaker 1: AI is a factor. But we do need to remember
Speaker 1: that artificial intelligence itself is kind of on thin eyes
Speaker 1: at the moment. There are governments around the world that
Speaker 1: are taking a very close look at AI and are
Speaker 1: starting to consider the sorts of regulations that may be
Speaker 1: needed to keep AI from going all terminator on us,
Speaker 1: and companies need to keep that in mind too. It
Speaker 1: may be necessary one day to walk back some AI strategies,
Speaker 1: so diving wholeheartedly into AI tech could end up being
Speaker 1: a costly mistake, and that might be one reason why
Speaker 1: companies are a little slow to do so. It's not
Speaker 1: just that it's hard to figure out how do we
Speaker 1: do this in a way that makes sense. It's also
Speaker 1: how can we do this in a way where we
Speaker 1: don't over commit and if governments decide to push back
Speaker 1: hard against AI. We haven't gotten into a position where
Speaker 1: we've you know, over invested in an area of business
Speaker 1: that ultimately doesn't pan out. So that also opens up
Speaker 1: opportunities for smaller companies like Rabbit to potentially cash in.
Speaker 1: But I'm still not convinced that Rabbit will see much
Speaker 1: success beyond its initial launch. Maybe I'm wrong, We'll have
Speaker 1: to wait and see. It's a really weird situation. We
Speaker 1: already have and use so much technology that has various
Speaker 1: elements of AI built into it like a Again, AI
Speaker 1: is not new. You know your smartphone has AI components
Speaker 1: built into it. It's something that's everywhere all around us.
Speaker 1: It's clear. It's obvious AI is going to be a
Speaker 1: big part of our technology moving forward. There's no denying it.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I think most of us
Speaker 1: recognize that AI also has the potential to do amazing things,
Speaker 1: but potentially also terrible things. So here's hoping that companies
Speaker 1: make the best choices and that our refrigerators don't rise
Speaker 1: up against us, because I'm pretty sure it could take
Speaker 1: me anyway. That's kind of a round up on an
Speaker 1: overview of what was going on with AI over at CES.
Speaker 1: As I said, that was just one small thing that
Speaker 1: happened at CES this year. I might do another episode
Speaker 1: talking about some of the technologies that were shown off
Speaker 1: to go into further detail, like those transparent OLED screens.
Speaker 1: It's something we had been hearing about for a very
Speaker 1: long time, and we had even seen some prototypes in
Speaker 1: the past, but man, they were on display like crazy
Speaker 1: this past year from what I've seen, and I'm kind
Speaker 1: of sad that I missed seeing them in person. Not
Speaker 1: so sad that, you know, I would have traded all
Speaker 1: that wonderful time I spent going to various doctor's appointments. Anyway,
Speaker 1: enough about all that. I hope you are all well.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad to be back recording. I look forward
Speaker 1: to doing that three times a week. I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: news episodes on Fridays and then other just regular textuff
Speaker 1: episodes on Mondays and Wednesdays. And it's a pleasure to
Speaker 1: be back in the saddle and recording again. I hope
Speaker 1: you are all well. I hope you all take very
Speaker 1: good care of yourselves, go see your doctors on a
Speaker 1: regular basis. Trust me on this, you don't want to
Speaker 1: fall into the same trap I did, and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.