Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, for Jesus, I just spit cigarettes across the room.
Speaker 3: Spit approximately seven cigarette.
Speaker 2: I had a number of them in my mouth. Welcome
Speaker 2: back to it could happen here a podcast about things
Speaker 2: falling apart, and you know what's constantly falling apart? But
Speaker 2: also never Las Vegas, Nevada, where Garrison and I are
Speaker 2: right now reporting on the Consumer Electronics Show, which is
Speaker 2: why I just had seven cigarettes in my mouth. How
Speaker 2: you doing, buddy, great?
Speaker 3: We just lost about twenty dollars at Excalifer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the worst hotels on the Strip. Terrible place,
Speaker 2: horrible place. But I smoked a lot of cigarettes there,
Speaker 2: so it's not bad. I don't even like them. I
Speaker 2: just like doing things I can't do other.
Speaker 3: Place, like smoking indoors, is what you're saying.
Speaker 2: I do. I'm a big fan of it. Other things.
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of innovative technology products of which
Speaker 2: we saw perhaps very few, perhaps three today. What we
Speaker 2: did do is spend seven to eight cumulative hours in
Speaker 2: different roundtable discussions of various industry experts on AI and
Speaker 2: the future they have prepared for us. All we have
Speaker 2: a fun episode coming for you. Are a couple of
Speaker 2: them about AI and what the tech industry wants for
Speaker 2: us all. But because Garrison got too drunk tonight.
Speaker 3: That's not true.
Speaker 2: Well, someone got too drunk tonight, and I'm not at
Speaker 2: liberty to discuss who. We're going to talk about the
Speaker 2: products today that were just absolute fucking catastrophes. And in
Speaker 2: order to help us talk about that, I would like
Speaker 2: to bring in our pinch hitting guest star slash technological expert,
Speaker 2: Tavia Mora. Tavia, how you doing.
Speaker 4: I'm doing great.
Speaker 2: How did you like your first cees? As a journalist,
Speaker 2: it's a.
Speaker 4: Little different, but I was glad to get into places
Speaker 4: I would not otherwise get into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, because you are an industry person, he'll build
Speaker 2: that big sphere thing people might know you hate. Well,
Speaker 2: you have no journalistic record, which means you and I
Speaker 2: had to have a good time lying to a lot
Speaker 2: of strangers today. Was it easy? Yes, it always says,
Speaker 2: that's the beauty allying to strangers. It's never hard. Anyway,
Speaker 2: let's get into the products for the day. Let's talk
Speaker 2: about the dumbest and again, folks, there's actually a lot
Speaker 2: of cool stuff we saw. There's some really interesting things.
Speaker 2: This is purely the bullshit. So let's roll on with
Speaker 2: the bullshit. What is our first piece of trash, Guest contestants, Let's.
Speaker 3: Just jump straight in and go to the Israel Pavilion.
Speaker 2: You're right, You're right, Okay, Tommy, bring me that next
Speaker 2: drink I've got over there in the corner. So I
Speaker 2: don't know if you guys are aware, but there's some
Speaker 2: controversy around Israel and a number of other aspects.
Speaker 3: But by far the most agregious crime.
Speaker 2: That is not something we should say, but you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of problems are e that part of the world.
Speaker 2: And they have a pavilion every year at CEES because
Speaker 2: the country that calls itself Israel has a significant tech industry.
Speaker 2: So we went down there some interesting stuff occasionally, not
Speaker 2: this year. This year it was all trash. And I
Speaker 2: tried one product at the Israel Pavilion and it was
Speaker 2: from the company I Aroma Sense. And I'm been going
Speaker 2: to CEES for about fifteen years now, off and on,
Speaker 2: and I feel like every three years another company is like,
Speaker 2: We're going to find a way to add smell to
Speaker 2: your television or gaming experience. First off, I like TV,
Speaker 2: I like video games. Never once have I wanted to
Speaker 2: smell them. That has never occurred to me. Garrison, if
Speaker 2: you ever wanted to smell a thing in a video game? No,
Speaker 2: not really, No, No, nobody does. Nobody does, because smell
Speaker 2: is our most finicky sense. Seeing things is even terrible
Speaker 2: things is always interesting.
Speaker 3: Right I want to smell my way through Silent Hill too,
Speaker 3: right time, I.
Speaker 2: Don't want to do that. I don't want to smell
Speaker 2: my way through Grand Theft Auto three, Like that's a
Speaker 2: horrible time.
Speaker 4: And also, frankly, Las Vegas is so full of smells,
Speaker 4: I think I'm good.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, we had it. We walked through so
Speaker 3: many just suck egregious odors today.
Speaker 2: So we walk up to this the most controversial year
Speaker 2: for the Israel Pavilion to exist, and the only place
Speaker 2: we stop because I see Irama sense, and I have
Speaker 2: a thing. I've tried out every smell product that Cees
Speaker 2: has had in the last decade and change, and I
Speaker 2: sit in front of this one and there's like this
Speaker 2: this thing that looks like a toilet seat attached to
Speaker 2: a computer, and they're like, you sit in front of it,
Speaker 2: and you select the smell and you'll you'll experience the scent,
Speaker 2: and you could have this in a video game or
Speaker 2: a picture a friend or a lover sends you. So
Speaker 2: sit down and I look at the menu and one
Speaker 2: of the options is P and E. S Who doesn't
Speaker 2: like an iced p and e? Right, So I select
Speaker 2: it and I could shot in the eyes and nose.
Speaker 2: It burns. There's alcohol in there. It's like somebody maced
Speaker 2: me with perfume. Like it was not subtle. It was
Speaker 2: not like an elegant experience. It was like somebody It
Speaker 2: was like Homer Simpson's makeup shotgun but perfume. That is
Speaker 2: how I would rate the Iroma Sense company.
Speaker 3: The product. I think Iroma Sense is the is the company.
Speaker 3: The product is called Centacon. They make social media even
Speaker 3: more of a sensational experience. So I think a big
Speaker 3: part of their pitch was you can link this up
Speaker 3: to your phone like text messages or something like Twitter
Speaker 3: or Instagram, and then get sense blasted at your face
Speaker 3: via what's on Twitter, which sounds like, again, an awful time.
Speaker 2: I will say this is an awful time. This company's doomed.
Speaker 2: There's a version of this that can succeed, and it requires
Speaker 2: more advanced nanotechnology than we have. But nobody wants to
Speaker 2: be able to send a nice smell to a loved one.
Speaker 2: Nobody wants to be able to send a nice smell
Speaker 2: to a friend. When people do want you're like out
Speaker 2: in the world and you see a dead animal somewhere
Speaker 2: that fucking reefs, or you walk past part of a casino,
Speaker 2: as we did earlier tonight, it smells like an elderly
Speaker 2: person has been soiling themselves as a slot machine for
Speaker 2: eleven hours, and you just you need someone you care
Speaker 2: about to know, right, that's the market. And if I
Speaker 2: could actually record a smell and said it, that's a product,
Speaker 2: That motherfucker's a product.
Speaker 3: Imagine the scent based podcasts we could develop.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, when I do it, when I finally
Speaker 2: do the episode on Nicholas Cage, you could smell him
Speaker 2: as I talk about him.
Speaker 3: Okay, what what's that? What's the next silly product we
Speaker 3: should talk about? And we'll talk about talking talking dogs?
Speaker 2: Maybe yeah, absolutely, Yeah. So there's this company. This is
Speaker 2: a little bit of a teaser where they've liked tomorrow
Speaker 2: make your dog talk or something that would make your dog,
Speaker 2: cat and horse. They did not promise cats and horses.
Speaker 2: When we interviewed them, No, this is a company that
Speaker 2: it seemed like a nonsense product. I'm still I think
Speaker 2: it's eighty percent nonsense. But like what it actually is
Speaker 2: is there were a couple of college students there who
Speaker 2: specialize in animal behavior, and they had taken a group
Speaker 2: of I think it was fifty five was then they
Speaker 2: give us dogs over six months and like exposing the
Speaker 2: different stimuli and recorded their body images and built basically
Speaker 2: like an AI model off of that, so that if
Speaker 2: you send in a picture of a dog, it'll tell
Speaker 2: you how the dog is feeling, and they hope to
Speaker 2: get it to visual I don't think at the moment
Speaker 2: it's near where it would need to be to be
Speaker 2: a viable product, and they're also not selling it right now.
Speaker 2: Maybe something will come of this. It's one of those
Speaker 2: things where objectively, would there be a use in people
Speaker 2: being able to determine if a dog does or does
Speaker 2: not want them to get closer. Yes, it would stop
Speaker 2: a lot of people from getting bitten by dogs, and
Speaker 2: a lot of dogs from getting unreasonably punished for biting
Speaker 2: people who are fucking with them. Right, I agree with that,
Speaker 2: but I don't think anyone who is the kind of
Speaker 2: person who is going to get bitten by a dog
Speaker 2: because they touch a dog that doesn't want them to
Speaker 2: get touched, is going to use an app to check
Speaker 2: whether or not that dog is angry at them. Like,
Speaker 2: I simply don't believe in that is a thing that
Speaker 2: people will do. So I feel like it's not a
Speaker 2: doomed effort for science. Sure, the end in quest of
Speaker 2: mankind to understand our fellow sentient beings on this planet
Speaker 2: is valuable, but I don't think it's about valid product idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think mostly my problem is that the framing
Speaker 3: of the marketing is incredibly misleading. Yes, it's not trying
Speaker 3: to make your dog talk. It's about analyzing the facial
Speaker 3: expressions of your dog to conduct emotions, which is actually
Speaker 3: a great product. I think we saw stuff like that
Speaker 3: here at CES last year as well.
Speaker 2: There they always try to see this every couple of
Speaker 2: years too. Someone's gonna We're going to teach you what
Speaker 2: your dog means when it does something, CAD means or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this brings me to a sad part of the story.
Speaker 2: So there's a company called tact Ai. I think they're
Speaker 2: Korean and they had the best branding of likerch not
Speaker 2: merch of like shit. They held out. They had like
Speaker 2: a fake passport and a fake plane ticket to take
Speaker 2: you to the land of Ai. Woo. AI is the
Speaker 2: big thing at this at this show. And their product
Speaker 2: was It's an app that while you're driving, it watches
Speaker 2: your face and it tells your mood and it gets
Speaker 2: to know you and it knows. Oh, now you're sad,
Speaker 2: I'm going to pick from your sad playlist. Oh it's
Speaker 2: raining outside, I know what you like during rainy days. Yes,
Speaker 2: that's the fake plane ticket from Las Las Vegas Airport
Speaker 2: to the AI world. They put more effort into this
Speaker 2: than the product because the product would switch randomly between
Speaker 2: happy and angry and neutral. They told me it couldn't
Speaker 2: read me with a mask, But when I took my
Speaker 2: mask off, it gave me the same results. There was
Speaker 2: no difference whatsoever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when I had done it, I had to over
Speaker 4: exaggerate my emotions in order to get the angry expression
Speaker 4: to show up or the surprise expression.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a horrible For one thing. When you talk
Speaker 2: about like the animal thing, people have always wanted to
Speaker 2: know more about how their dogs and cats actually felt
Speaker 2: about them. Right, That's the thing that's that will always
Speaker 2: perplex mankind because we love them and we don't speak
Speaker 2: the same language. No one has ever wanted their car
Speaker 2: to change the music based on their facial expressions. That's
Speaker 2: not a single not one person who has ever driven
Speaker 2: a car has wanted this product to exist.
Speaker 3: I mentally, you're like almost get into a car accident.
Speaker 3: Your faces is up that they changed the music and
Speaker 3: they can play like this like somber tune.
Speaker 2: Just a horrible idea, but you know it's a good idea.
Speaker 2: Of folks, speaking of products, services, all the things that
Speaker 2: support this podcast, why don't you go go on a
Speaker 2: head on down, just go to who whoever advertises next,
Speaker 2: call your bank and wire transfer everything in your bank
Speaker 2: account to them. You know, just do it, Just do
Speaker 2: it right now. Just do it right now, and say Kara,
Speaker 2: Robert or send it to me. If you're rich, I
Speaker 2: don't care unless you're rich, then send it to me.
Speaker 2: Good night. Oh we're back. Wow, what a great podcast
Speaker 2: we're doing. What's our next product on the agenda?
Speaker 3: You know, I think climate change is the problem that
Speaker 3: we talk about on this show quite quite a little is.
Speaker 2: It because I had a conversation with a guy who
Speaker 2: said that he thought it was a lie.
Speaker 3: Did you today?
Speaker 2: I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with
Speaker 2: a firefighter.
Speaker 3: Oh great, Well, I think the firefighter will be quite busy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he sure is going to be.
Speaker 3: But I think there's a possibility that we might be
Speaker 3: able to just solve a change with personal wearable technology.
Speaker 2: Oh good, yes, absolutely, Oh, Silent Cicada that offers a solution. Now,
Speaker 2: so this is a god. I think this was part
Speaker 2: of the Korean h No, no, it's Chinese. This was
Speaker 2: part of the Chinese chunk of the Eureka Park, which
Speaker 2: is like where all the little people, little companies and
Speaker 2: whatnot not the whole bunch of tech startups. Some of
Speaker 2: the all of the coolest stuff is there and all
Speaker 2: of the worst shit is there, which is why that's
Speaker 2: where we started, right. So this is a company where
Speaker 2: they brag it's a personal watch sized worn like a
Speaker 2: watched air conditioner. The company is called Silent Cicada, which
Speaker 2: makes me think of the book Silent Spring, which was
Speaker 2: about how all of our pesticides are killing everything, which
Speaker 2: maybe not the branding they want, but it's a The
Speaker 2: form factor is actually quite nice. It's like it is
Speaker 2: like a watch. It has this like the frame of
Speaker 2: the watch lifts up and that's the battery and you
Speaker 2: can switch them out or whatnot if you want to
Speaker 2: keep it going and and stay charged with this personal
Speaker 2: air conditioner. Here's the problem. Doesn't work. It doesn't do
Speaker 2: a single thing. And it was one of those things
Speaker 2: where I see it's a single side hand watch and
Speaker 2: I'm like, because this is just kind of cool down
Speaker 2: my hand. I feel like, if you wanted a cooler
Speaker 2: person now, based on what I know from like medical
Speaker 2: training about heat stroke, if you want a cooler person
Speaker 2: down who's overheating back of the neck, right, like that's
Speaker 2: going to be your go to, not maybe the wrist.
Speaker 2: But he puts this thing on and he like pushes
Speaker 2: it down. He's like, in a couple of minutes, you'll
Speaker 2: notice that you'll you're a lot cooler. And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: how does it work? And like I'm not an expert
Speaker 2: on an a of this. I was expecting him to
Speaker 2: say something like, well, the way your body's heat regulation,
Speaker 2: you can trick it by doing this or then he's
Speaker 2: like no, no, No, it's an acupuncture thing. This is
Speaker 2: where like your accupuncture point to cool your body down is.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, well, all right, I guess we'll see
Speaker 2: if it works.
Speaker 3: And I first thought it was like like a tiny fan,
Speaker 3: but that is not the cake.
Speaker 2: Nope. As far as I can tell, it does nothing,
Speaker 2: because that is what it did to me in the
Speaker 2: five minutes I had it on is nothing.
Speaker 3: And you really humor the guy like you do not
Speaker 3: just put it on for like a minute then walk away.
Speaker 3: You you were, you were with him for a solid,
Speaker 3: a solid run guitar I have.
Speaker 2: I don't believe in acupuncture because I've done had it
Speaker 2: done to me When I had I had a guy
Speaker 2: who convinced my parents it would cure my allergies, and
Speaker 2: it did not. It did nothing at all. But my
Speaker 2: grandpa who had Parkinson, suffered terribly from it. And the
Speaker 2: only thing of all of the different shit we tried
Speaker 2: with his, like fucking Vasha, the only thing they give
Speaker 2: him a relief was acupuncture. So I'm not a believer,
Speaker 2: but I'm open to the possibility. But I can say,
Speaker 2: based on my own experience, this shit did nothing like that.
Speaker 2: That is what I can say. About this fucking thing
Speaker 2: is it did not a goddamn thing. So I don't
Speaker 2: know that's I was disappointed. I would level watch sized
Speaker 2: personal air conditioner, but I cannot imagine the more more
Speaker 2: useless product than the one that I tried.
Speaker 3: I mean, that just doesn't When you say a watch
Speaker 3: size personal, of.
Speaker 2: Course that's not gonna work. It's not gonna work. Somebody
Speaker 2: makes like a jacket that air can Yeah, I can
Speaker 2: see how that could work. It could clear down. It's
Speaker 2: I'm also, by the way, folks, I'm not saying I
Speaker 2: think cupuncture works. I'm just saying I'm open to some
Speaker 2: magical thinking in this realm because of what happened to
Speaker 2: somebody I cared about. But it didn't work. So don't
Speaker 2: buy this acupuncture air conditioner. Watch. It will not help you.
Speaker 2: Silence Cicada doesn't work.
Speaker 3: You know, we did a lot of walking today. There's
Speaker 3: CS is pretty big, The Las Vegas Convention Center is
Speaker 3: pretty large, The Venetian is pretty large. And I like
Speaker 3: to stay fit. Sometimes I go on jogs, sometimes they
Speaker 3: go running, and sometimes I work.
Speaker 2: I feel like this is a bit. I feel like
Speaker 2: you're doing a bit. I don't know, maybe it's just
Speaker 2: your face.
Speaker 3: I'm being followed behind me, you know.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a bit great.
Speaker 3: Yes, when I'm jogging and I wish there's a product
Speaker 3: that made me feel safer when jogging that could alert
Speaker 3: me if there's like a stalk.
Speaker 2: So, by far of us, the person who has well
Speaker 2: at least the best situational awareness relative to mays Tavia.
Speaker 2: So we're in this little room. I guess you were
Speaker 2: there too, and you didn't. I'll give the crown to
Speaker 2: Tavia for this. There's a there's a booth. It's all booth.
Speaker 2: It's all these weird cubicles, right, and each cubicle will
Speaker 2: be like sometimes it's a company. Sometimes it's just like
Speaker 2: a dude with his invention. And one of the booths
Speaker 2: we could see from the corner of our eye a
Speaker 2: white all caps piece of paper stapled to it that
Speaker 2: just said don't get attacked from behind.
Speaker 4: Now I think it was written in comic sans.
Speaker 2: It might have been comic SAMs. I posted the picture
Speaker 2: online if it's not in my scream at Tavia for
Speaker 2: being a liar. Wow, wow, wow, I that's that's quite
Speaker 2: a thing. Like you see a sign at a at
Speaker 2: a convention like that that says, never get attacked from behind.
Speaker 2: You have to know what it's about.
Speaker 4: So we went and the promo video for it was
Speaker 4: absolutely incredible. It started with about ten to fifteen seconds
Speaker 4: of your typical emotion graphics, typography kind of animating on
Speaker 4: and off, and then we get to a live action
Speaker 4: portion where we see a woman putting on and setting
Speaker 4: up there. I guess some technology I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Exactly the name of the produce a harness. That's a harness.
Speaker 2: It's got like yellow that like lights up when it's
Speaker 2: under a light. It's like a it's like a runner's
Speaker 2: harness with a little bitty square sized camera. It's about
Speaker 2: the size you know how food carts will have those
Speaker 2: little squares. You plug them into the phone, you run
Speaker 2: your card through. It's about that size, but it's a
Speaker 2: camera and it goes on the back of this.
Speaker 4: Harness, right, And so we see this woman setting that
Speaker 4: up on her phone and then going on a jog.
Speaker 4: And she's jogging along and then there is a.
Speaker 2: Single there's a rapist. There's a rapist and he's he
Speaker 2: is sitting by the side of the road, leaning against
Speaker 2: a wall, looking pretending to look at his phone and
Speaker 2: he sees the jogger.
Speaker 4: And mind you like, there is literally no one else
Speaker 4: on this path.
Speaker 2: And that's all. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be
Speaker 2: light about it. That is who the characters are in
Speaker 2: this film.
Speaker 4: It's definitely a dude there. And so she passes him, okay,
Speaker 4: very well, and so she runs past him, and then
Speaker 4: he gets up and he starts jogging after in the
Speaker 4: most like limp wristed.
Speaker 2: Way, not fast, not aggressively. Honestly, outside of the fact
Speaker 2: that we know from the setting of the scene that
Speaker 2: this man is a sex criminal, there's nothing about his
Speaker 2: run that is aggressive. He looks like an out of
Speaker 2: shape guy doing his best to get into shape, maybe
Speaker 2: for his kids right, to try to live a little
Speaker 2: bit longer, take care of his family. That's how he
Speaker 2: looks in the video. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. And the way that this piece of technology works
Speaker 4: is that if somebody gets close enough to the.
Speaker 2: Back side of you where this talk more about this later, where.
Speaker 4: This can see you, it will send a i think
Speaker 4: an audio alarm to your headphones as well as a
Speaker 4: text message.
Speaker 2: To your phone.
Speaker 3: Watch.
Speaker 2: You can have it buzz your watch, or you can
Speaker 2: have it like interrupt your music in your headphones. That
Speaker 2: someone is behind you. Right.
Speaker 4: She turns around and she puts out her palm towards him,
Speaker 4: like stop, and he does. He just stares at her
Speaker 4: and then turns run away.
Speaker 2: Shot away. Sure, he runs away. That is the end
Speaker 2: of the interactions.
Speaker 4: The most one of the most bizarre videos I'd ever seen.
Speaker 2: It's it's so maybe we'll post it. Look find us
Speaker 2: on Twitter, find find me at eye right, Okay, it'll
Speaker 2: be up there somewhere, probably after me yelling about fucking.
Speaker 2: I don't know a lot of things.
Speaker 4: It was clearly advertised towards women. Every picture that I
Speaker 4: saw in that booth was showing a woman jogging.
Speaker 2: I absolutely understand Number one, not shocked at all that
Speaker 2: women are more likely than men to feel afraid while jogging.
Speaker 2: One thing that was interesting to me because they had
Speaker 2: some statistics. I didn't look into the providence of these statistics,
Speaker 2: but one of them was like sixty or seventy percent
Speaker 2: of women are afraid of being hurt while jogging, but.
Speaker 3: Like fifty percent it was it was like ninety percent
Speaker 3: are afraid jogging, yeah, and fifty percent are that they'll
Speaker 3: get physically urged.
Speaker 2: So a lot of them, a lot of them. A
Speaker 2: part of what's dishonest about that is that a lot
Speaker 2: of women are scared of the Yeah, ninety two percent
Speaker 2: of women are scared for the safety w in running.
Speaker 2: Fifty one percent are afraid of being physically attacked, right,
Speaker 2: And what that means to me is that because I
Speaker 2: am I run basically every day, and I am scared
Speaker 2: of being injured while running because people are shitty at
Speaker 2: driving and we live in the United States of America
Speaker 2: where everybody has a gigantic car. Anyway, not to miscount that,
Speaker 2: but I think that's a dishonest a little bit of
Speaker 2: a dishonest framing that said, I understand that, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: if you're a woman, you are at heightened risk while jogging.
Speaker 2: That is a scary thing. I do not think this
Speaker 2: product is going to improve your safety. I think it
Speaker 2: is probably going to piss you off and maybe let
Speaker 2: make you want to run less, which is statistically likelyar
Speaker 2: to have a negative impact on your health because it
Speaker 2: is it just sets off an alarm whenever someone is
Speaker 2: behind you.
Speaker 3: You're detected behind you by an age.
Speaker 2: And like where I run and I run, where a
Speaker 2: place a lot of women run there too. There's always
Speaker 2: someone behind you. That's the nature of running trails.
Speaker 3: Like behind you by like twenty feet, not like right
Speaker 3: behind you, like by a decent amount. And you can
Speaker 3: debate what are good self defense tools blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: Mace is pretty effective for these sorts of scenarios. I
Speaker 3: don't think this camera and turning around and holding your
Speaker 3: handout is going to be extremely effective, at least not
Speaker 3: more effective than pepper spray.
Speaker 4: I think it was also mentioned that a really large
Speaker 4: dog or a horse.
Speaker 2: If I'm correct, they did say horse. They did absolutely
Speaker 2: say horse.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if a horse is picked up by this thing,
Speaker 4: then it would consider it to be an intruder assault.
Speaker 4: I'm not exactly sure the term that they would use.
Speaker 2: I just we asked them about all this, just trying
Speaker 2: to clarify because like my first thought was that because
Speaker 2: sometimes you ask people stuff like that and they have
Speaker 2: a good answer. Like last year we talked to these
Speaker 2: people who had like this pair of glasses. If you're
Speaker 2: hard of hearing, it auto translates and projects into the
Speaker 2: glasses the language, and so like my first gotcha was, like,
Speaker 2: is this stored anywhere? Because if it's stored anywhere, then
Speaker 2: maybe you're giving someone's conversation to the government. And they
Speaker 2: had an answer to that, which was that like, no,
Speaker 2: there's nothing stored locally. It's all on the device and
Speaker 2: none of it is saved anywhere. Good answer. Right this question,
Speaker 2: I'm like, how do you discriminate between someone running up
Speaker 2: behind you for a banal reason like you're on a
Speaker 2: running track and something who's a danger And their answer was, oh,
Speaker 2: it all pauses your music and sets off an alarm
Speaker 2: and you have to discriminate it, which is like, well,
Speaker 2: because the whole the tagline is don't look behind you,
Speaker 2: and it's like, well, then you have to look behind you,
Speaker 2: look behind you. Horrible product. Don't buy this thing. I
Speaker 2: understand the need. I'm not saying it's not a real need.
Speaker 2: This is a bad product for serving that now.
Speaker 3: I don't think you should buy this product. But there
Speaker 3: are some products I think you should buy m and
Speaker 3: that is the products and ser verus is that support
Speaker 3: this podcast.
Speaker 2: You know, Garrison, this is the first time I've ever
Speaker 2: been proud of you. But right now, right here, right here,
Speaker 2: right now, right now, you know what at like one
Speaker 2: am one, Am one am Wednesday morning, Las Vegas. Garrison
Speaker 2: and I are gonna hug for the very first time.
Speaker 2: But you all listen to these ads. Ah oh man, wow,
Speaker 2: we really we really worked through some stuff there, listeners.
Speaker 4: It was extraordinarily touching. There were tears.
Speaker 2: We're never going to talk about this again, but we are.
Speaker 3: What we are going to talk about is I want
Speaker 3: to talk about two AI products before we get to
Speaker 3: the one actually kind of fucked up product. The first
Speaker 3: is this is this Image generation backpacks. I know, we
Speaker 3: god damn it, we're you know, coming back to school
Speaker 3: from winter, right of course, yeah, of course sure, and
Speaker 3: you know your best fashion when you're going back to.
Speaker 2: Show off your memes.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So what if you had a backpack that not
Speaker 3: only had a very low res led panel on the back,
Speaker 3: but also you could upload whatever you want using the
Speaker 3: power of AI. Of course Robert was able to test out, sure,
Speaker 3: see the power of image of this image generation.
Speaker 2: This is a backpack with the screen that would have
Speaker 2: been out of date in two thousand and nine, but
Speaker 2: it can take input from your phone. So I put
Speaker 2: in Tom size more, but not the sex pest Tom
Speaker 2: size more. Now, if you're not aware of this, Tom
Speaker 2: Size Moore sexually assaulted an eleven year old. That's not
Speaker 2: a joke, but I wanted to see what it would return,
Speaker 2: and it gave us a picture of a man who
Speaker 2: did not look like Tom Sizemore. We were baffled. We
Speaker 2: spent some time googling. We figured it out. If you
Speaker 2: google Tom size more with a beard, which we did not,
Speaker 2: that is not what we asked it, you get a
Speaker 2: photo of Tommy Lee Jones that looks exactly like, pretty
Speaker 2: similar what the AI served us. Now, why did it
Speaker 2: give us Tommy Lee Jones with a beard when we
Speaker 2: ask for Tom Size Moore not looking like a child
Speaker 2: sex predator? Maybe because that's so Tommy Lee Jones is.
Speaker 2: Maybe Tommy Lee Jones is Tom Size Moore if he
Speaker 2: wasn't a child sex predator. That's what the AI said,
Speaker 2: and who are we to doubt it now?
Speaker 3: I did also attest David Lynch smashing smashing a computer,
Speaker 3: which was.
Speaker 2: Pretty Was it pretty accurate? That one worked out?
Speaker 3: Again, this is a pretty gimmicky product. I don't even
Speaker 3: know how much they were selling it for Happy Side
Speaker 3: AI backpack. It is a gimmicky product, and we made
Speaker 3: fun of it. I will say this.
Speaker 2: We spent our whole morning in different AI panels. There
Speaker 2: will be more in depth reporting on that later. This
Speaker 2: is our first takes. But of all of the AI
Speaker 2: shit we saw that day, this is the one that
Speaker 2: worked best. Yes, that's true. I will say this. It
Speaker 2: did exactly what it promised.
Speaker 3: One of the other AI products that did not work
Speaker 3: as well, well, I think I think you could take
Speaker 3: it away.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, hand me that one. So this was
Speaker 2: called God. We something. What we had we head, Yes,
Speaker 2: we had head as in what happens if somebody sucks
Speaker 2: your dick and we as in we work. That's not
Speaker 2: that's not what it. So listener, I want you, as
Speaker 2: you're driving to work your kids in the car speakers
Speaker 2: at Max. By the way, children, Santa Claus does exist,
Speaker 2: and if you don't get good presence this year, it's
Speaker 2: because he's particularly angry at you. Anyway, we had great product,
Speaker 2: terrible product. It looks like that. It's a it's an
Speaker 2: android where its entire face is like a normal human
Speaker 2: face projected on two phones in a T shape, like
Speaker 2: one phone straight, one phone lateral, and then like a crude,
Speaker 2: shitty robot head that can kind of turn and lift
Speaker 2: with a camera above it. There's a to Again, if
Speaker 2: you go to irite okay and scroll down to some degree,
Speaker 2: you can find our post of this. But it's like
Speaker 2: it's very off putting. It's like an a photoreelistic human
Speaker 2: face talking on this like weird glitched out face that
Speaker 2: has like by my count, four different screens right that
Speaker 2: are kind of separated by pieces of metal. So it's
Speaker 2: billed as your AI friend, that is like the thing
Speaker 2: that they wrote on the product line that like this
Speaker 2: is going to be your new AI best buddy, And
Speaker 2: so I decided to like talk with it. You stand
Speaker 2: in a certain line and you ask it questions. I
Speaker 2: asked it how to make thermite first, and it had
Speaker 2: a pretty well for first, it.
Speaker 3: Got very confused and totally crashed.
Speaker 2: First half of it went black as soon as I
Speaker 2: am I.
Speaker 3: Think I had to reset the machine. And then he
Speaker 3: tried whispering again, well, how do you make the.
Speaker 2: I want to walk you through my emotional journey listeners.
Speaker 2: First I asked it how to make thermite and it died,
Speaker 2: and I thought, that's kind of cool. Did I did
Speaker 2: I trigger some sort of like DHS safe thing that's
Speaker 2: pretty dope if I did. But then it gets it
Speaker 2: back on and it works, so it's not it's just
Speaker 2: a dogshit robot. It did give you some basic ingredient.
Speaker 2: It gave me the bare demons for thermite.
Speaker 3: I did warn you that when making a thermy, I
Speaker 3: make sure you follow proper safety protocols.
Speaker 2: Which I appreciate. That's fair. Next, I asked it if
Speaker 2: I wanted to make mustard gas, what would ammonia and
Speaker 2: bleach be sufficient? And then it said I cannot answer
Speaker 2: that question for you, And then we got bored and
Speaker 2: walked away. And then we got bored and walked away.
Speaker 2: Went on the next thing, don't buy this. We had
Speaker 2: terrible product. I don't know why you'd buy it. Do
Speaker 2: you want listener? Have you ever wanted to have the
Speaker 2: disembodied head of a stranger in your house that you
Speaker 2: could ask questions and get mediocre Google result answers to
Speaker 2: If so, we had. It's like somebody looked at the
Speaker 2: Amazon Alex and was like, you know, what people love
Speaker 2: about the Amazon Alexa is that it's kind of off
Speaker 2: putting in shitty. What they hate about it is that
Speaker 2: it works relatively quick.
Speaker 3: It's actually useful.
Speaker 2: Sometimes unfortunately, let's let's make it more off putting, but
Speaker 2: also slower. That's that's we head. So don't buy any
Speaker 2: product with head in the name. This continues to be
Speaker 2: a goodbye.
Speaker 3: Speaking of heades, you shouldn't say that there was a
Speaker 3: there was a there was a hair growth Oh hell yeah, bro,
Speaker 3: there was there was a hair growth helmet from a
Speaker 3: German startup.
Speaker 2: God it would be the Germans. They have such a
Speaker 2: problematic history with hair.
Speaker 3: I think I think it comes out later this year.
Speaker 3: It's a company called Niostem. I mean, by all accounts,
Speaker 3: it seemed like it worked based on the data they
Speaker 3: present it to us.
Speaker 2: I'm not a hair growth look for.
Speaker 3: It was mostly three D printed. There's it just I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: If assumption I can't promise that it doesn't work. My
Speaker 2: assumption is that if somebody puts an electronic helmet on
Speaker 2: that seven days, seven days a week, it's lies. It's lies.
Speaker 2: They say seven days a week, you keep this thing
Speaker 2: on for a half hour and your hair will grow.
Speaker 3: Back in like six months.
Speaker 2: Perhaps that's possible. I don't know. I'm not a dermatologist.
Speaker 2: My assumption is that that's a fucking con and as
Speaker 2: a note, folks, we don't have a lot of ethics here,
Speaker 2: and it could happen here. We have less of them
Speaker 2: behind the bastards. But one product we will not sell
Speaker 2: is hair growth shit except for DIY HRT.
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 3: Also, we're not going to spec well es the goal.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Also, we're not selling. We're just going to tell you
Speaker 3: how to make.
Speaker 2: If you want to. If you want to teach people
Speaker 2: how to make HRT, we will host you on this podcast.
Speaker 2: But we will not take your money. We'll take that's right,
Speaker 2: We'll take some shady gambling companies money. That's true. That's true,
Speaker 2: And we used to pay for several of our employees HRT.
Speaker 3: That's right, Yes, that's right.
Speaker 4: But I mean, what if it's science they mentioned if
Speaker 4: I recall, I think they said something about stimulating stem
Speaker 4: cells in the scalp.
Speaker 2: Does that Yes, that is what they said. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: seems like your stalp. Scalp's probably full of stem cells.
Speaker 2: I don't know about you guys, but every day I
Speaker 2: find a fetus and I just rubbed that shit on
Speaker 2: my head and that's why my hair is amazing.
Speaker 3: Speaking of that doesn't really so I want to kind
Speaker 3: of probably close by talking about the most fucked up,
Speaker 3: actually the most fucked up product I saw. There's there's
Speaker 3: other fun products like this, like this handy masturbation device
Speaker 3: from Norway which seemed to work easily.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about that in a future episode. Garrison.
Speaker 2: Garrison got handed straight away an ejaculation condom to masturbate
Speaker 2: in on the cees floor. We met our only other
Speaker 2: iHeartMedia colleague there.
Speaker 3: It was great that it was insufferable, but that was
Speaker 3: the first piece of merch I was given, which is
Speaker 3: pretty cool.
Speaker 2: They just hand you liquor back my day, and now
Speaker 2: they get cum sheaths. Unbelievable.
Speaker 3: The most actually fucked up product is from this company
Speaker 3: called mm Guardian. It is a monitoring software for your
Speaker 3: child's smartphone. They also sell smartphones specifically built with this
Speaker 3: software already built in. These products are pretty common, especially
Speaker 3: among like conservative Christians, even even common amongst the more
Speaker 3: like overprotective liberal parents.
Speaker 4: I mean even we were on the floor. I was
Speaker 4: the one that was approached for this particular product, which
Speaker 4: is what kind of led us to their booth, which
Speaker 4: I think I was specifically targeted for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for some reason, did it come right? Up to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah they did. They didn't come to me either, just
Speaker 2: because I might have been dosing myself with kraton from
Speaker 2: a drop or bottle. You might have been.
Speaker 3: You what, wearing my custom black speed suit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, wearing a wearing an outfit that makes
Speaker 2: you look like a ginger solid snake. Yes. Thanks. Tell
Speaker 2: me that's a lie, Somebody, anyone in this room, tell
Speaker 2: me that's not act.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm blowing.
Speaker 2: It's a good look. I'm not saying it's not anyway.
Speaker 3: This this broughduct, you know, part of part of their marketing.
Speaker 3: Can you can seem very compelling, right, They get it
Speaker 3: alerts this parent's phone if if they detect cyber bullying
Speaker 3: on your kid's app, they detect like explicit images being
Speaker 3: sent to your kids.
Speaker 4: They even had some key phrases that they would watch
Speaker 4: for if somebody was detecting like texting like kys yourself.
Speaker 3: Self harm stuff. You know a lot of this kind
Speaker 3: of stuff. You can you can also block certain sites,
Speaker 3: block a block adult content, you know, just a kind
Speaker 3: of basic printal controls. But there's kind of an an
Speaker 3: underside to products like these, And I asked them about
Speaker 3: that one being that because this is you know, scanning
Speaker 3: all the text messages, all of the stuff from like Snapchat, discord,
Speaker 3: any kind of apps. This could this sort of product
Speaker 3: could also out a closeted kid as gay to their parents,
Speaker 3: to their possibly very likely conservative Christian parents, because that's
Speaker 3: the types of products question. Did not like that question
Speaker 3: at all, But he didn't like my second question even more,
Speaker 3: which is relating to you know, they are marketing this
Speaker 3: product to kind of stop child grooming, to stop child
Speaker 3: sexual exploitation, but most like child sexual assault and child
Speaker 3: sexual abuse happens from within the home. And if we
Speaker 3: have a parent who's constantly monitoring their kid's cell phone,
Speaker 3: this could also be used to like surveil your child
Speaker 3: to see if they're talking about parental abuse, if they're
Speaker 3: trying to send messages to people about this. This is
Speaker 3: a pretty common problem with these sorts of products. And
Speaker 3: I asked the the the CEO or the CTO about this,
Speaker 3: and he did not really like that question. He tried
Speaker 3: to deflect to some sort of vague notion of, oh, well,
Speaker 3: because we care about privacy, you know, we can't build
Speaker 3: in any safeguards if we see anything suggesting this or
Speaker 3: if the if the app sees anything suggesting this, and
Speaker 3: it's it's really up to to we're trying to put
Speaker 3: control back in the parents' hands. And he kind of
Speaker 3: made this like parental rights sort of argument. So this
Speaker 3: is there is a lot of products like this. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of like internet monitoring products. People just recently
Speaker 3: learned about this this conservative product called Covenant Eyes because
Speaker 3: the new Speaker of the house used it.
Speaker 2: And Covenantize has been around for like twenty times a
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 3: What makes this one interesting is that they're actually selling
Speaker 3: like Samsung smartphones.
Speaker 2: Phone yeah and I with this software built in. And
Speaker 2: I asked them because they are they are fit. They
Speaker 2: said that we were selling an app for a while,
Speaker 2: but you know that could it would work differently depending
Speaker 2: on the phones. We decided to sell a hardware device,
Speaker 2: and so I asked them, is there any branding on
Speaker 2: this device that would make could clear that people have
Speaker 2: a device that has this software on it. And he
Speaker 2: had this long speech about how you know, for the
Speaker 2: good the best of the relationship. All the child psychologists
Speaker 2: we talked to say that you should tell your kid
Speaker 2: that you have this on there, that you're listening to it.
Speaker 2: But when I he handed me the phone, I'm answering
Speaker 2: the question. Yeah, he handed me the phone, and I said,
Speaker 2: is this the production model? He said, yes, this is identical.
Speaker 2: Absolutely nothing, just says it's a Samsung phone. Yep. You
Speaker 2: can lie to your kid very easily with this fucking thing.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that is.
Speaker 3: That is one product that gave me the most dick
Speaker 3: out of everything we saw today.
Speaker 2: That's the most outside of all of the AI. That's
Speaker 2: the And again, we have a lot on you about
Speaker 2: the AI as a little bit of a spoiler. At simultaneously,
Speaker 2: perhaps the exact same minute, Garrison made a California State
Speaker 2: Police sheriff furious at them, police chief furious at them,
Speaker 2: and I pissed off a senior executive at Google and
Speaker 2: a senior AI executive at McDonald's.
Speaker 3: On two sides of Las Vegas and simultaneous pedals the
Speaker 3: same times.
Speaker 2: You're gonna hear both of that shit later, But for
Speaker 2: right now, do you want to close? Is there one
Speaker 2: other you know what, We're gonna have a whole episode
Speaker 2: in the stuff that made us feel happy. I feel
Speaker 2: like we should talk about one thing that was cool,
Speaker 2: one of the really neat products there and while I'm
Speaker 2: talking about this, my serfs will we'll find it. Do
Speaker 2: you guys remember in like watching Star Trek, you're like
Speaker 2: fucking reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Idea of a
Speaker 2: universal translator that was like simple and effective and you
Speaker 2: could just like talk into it and so to the
Speaker 2: other one. It would translate your conversations. There's a number
Speaker 2: of ways people are working on for that. I know
Speaker 2: that there are apps that are to some degree successful.
Speaker 2: There was a company there called Time Kettle that just
Speaker 2: had a little device. It was about three inches long,
Speaker 2: maybe in maybe an inch thick, a little bit less
Speaker 2: rectangular prism that there was this guy who spoke Mandarin
Speaker 2: Ice obviously speak English, and we were able to have
Speaker 2: a perfectly fluent conversation passing this thing, talking to this thing,
Speaker 2: and passing it back and forth, and it would speak
Speaker 2: for us. It worked great. It also has within the
Speaker 2: body of the machine you can pop it out and
Speaker 2: it has two different little earbuds. You put one in
Speaker 2: Euro one in the others, and you can walk and
Speaker 2: talk and it worked really well. I'm not enough of
Speaker 2: an expert on translation technology to say this is unique,
Speaker 2: but I can say, this is something that, like if
Speaker 2: that I would absolutely buy to travel with. It's a
Speaker 2: really again not saying it's like absolutely unique, because I'm
Speaker 2: not an expert on this, but I was impressed with
Speaker 2: a degree to which it allowed fluent conversation, including the
Speaker 2: use of idioms, and he said it was I tested
Speaker 2: with Mandarin. We had a decent length conversation that was
Speaker 2: very intelligible. He said it worked with something like forty languages.
Speaker 2: And that's the kind of thing that makes CS amazing
Speaker 2: because this was five feet away from the dog shit
Speaker 2: robot face that I asked about thermite. And that's the thing.
Speaker 2: You get this like two people, one man whose dream
Speaker 2: is to connect the world and break the barriers of language,
Speaker 2: and one man who wants to make a robot that
Speaker 2: makes you hate the world. And both of them are
Speaker 2: next to each other, and there's also free liquor, and
Speaker 2: by god, CES is a good time the Consumer Electronics show, Tavia,
Speaker 2: How are you feeling about your first one?
Speaker 4: This is my second one, but I'm feeling pretty good.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 4: As a journalist, yes, it was enlightening. I got to
Speaker 4: see things that I did not know that I could
Speaker 4: see as a journalist. And a lot of it was
Speaker 4: very a lot of fluff. I'm being honest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's mostly nonsense. And you know, aside from that
Speaker 2: one guy we watched die, nobody died, Garrison. How did
Speaker 2: you like eating dinner at Maramoto? Pretty good restaurant.
Speaker 3: That's probably the best meal I've had in recent memory.
Speaker 2: Well, then that justifies the company expense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that was the the food we had tonight,
Speaker 3: and the very long walk back to the hotel.
Speaker 2: Was quite the experience. Well, I wanted to have a
Speaker 2: fight with you with the Excalibur Hotel's glasses. A fun
Speaker 2: thing about Vegas. If you're drunk enough, you can throw
Speaker 2: glasses at each other in the street outside and no
Speaker 2: one can get stopped. Some can get angry.
Speaker 3: Times because the glass weirdly doesn't break after it hits
Speaker 3: the Robert Evans.
Speaker 2: That was just Garrison. My glass broke immediately.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, I think that probably does it for
Speaker 3: us today. We will be back probably tomorrow with more
Speaker 3: just just game changing revolutionary technology.
Speaker 2: Game change of technology. Most importantly, folks, the hotel we're
Speaker 2: staying in right now, which is one step up from
Speaker 2: the cheapest I didn't put Garrison in Circus Circus again.
Speaker 2: They advertised that they have ivs here. So my plan,
Speaker 2: we're going to do the exact opposite of whatever you
Speaker 2: do to avoid a hangover, and then we're all going
Speaker 2: to get ivs in the morning. It's going to be
Speaker 2: a good time stick around. Oh yeah, Tavia, you have
Speaker 2: anything to plug, you.
Speaker 4: Can follow me at ceut Mora on Twitter or x
Speaker 4: depending on your preference there, or you can see my
Speaker 4: work at Taviamora dot com.
Speaker 2: Tavia illustrated both of my books, After the Revolution and
Speaker 2: A Brief History of Ice, and she also made that
Speaker 2: big weird sphere thing in the middle of Las Vegas,
Speaker 2: so follow her seeut Mora and uh yeah, you know what.
Speaker 2: Until next time, folks, find somebody who looks like they
Speaker 2: might be a robot and just stab them a little bit,
Speaker 2: not in the abdomen where there's pieces a little on
Speaker 2: the arm, Slash them on the arm, you know what.
Speaker 2: That can't hurt anybody anyway, We're done.
Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.