January 12, 2026 • 39 mins
Robert and Garrison talk about all of the physical AI products using ChatGPT and other large language models filling the show floor at the Consumer Electronics Show.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
What's Pippin' my Bops? It could happen here a podcast
that is sometimes competently introduced, but not on the days
that I'm recording.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
We're at CEES, the.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Consumer Electronics Show, seeing what the tech industry has in
mind for all of us. Right, this is a show
where the industry talks to itself and its investors and
clients about what the future is going to be. And
so Garrison Davis and I are going to sit down
with you and tell, based on our explorations and investigations
this week, what the future of artificial intelligence means for
(00:41):
all of us and for the world. Garrison, Hi, how
you doing.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
I'm tired.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Yeah, you look tired.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
It's been a long week. It's been a long week
convention walking.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yeah, we've worked very hard.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
I've talked to too many robots.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yeah, I've talked to a lot of chatbots.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
I mean it's a bit of a stretch, is that
we've talked with them.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I've talked to add a lot of chat bots.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Yeah, times they responded, sometimes they don't.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I guess one of the things that's kind of shocked
me is because, like, despite being very critical about AI
in the industry. I have actually a pretty good idea
of what these things are capable of. And I know
that chat GBT and Jim and I and the other
like they're capable of doing some things that look very impressive.
They are capable of conversations you know, that can be
(01:23):
fairly in depth, and that can cover a wide variety
of topics. And so one of the things that has
surprised me is that as I have gone up and
tried to communicate with every various chatbot enabled AI enabled product,
about seventy percent of the time it's not actually capable
of responding to me in a way that makes any sense.
Like the majority of those products just don't function. Sorry,
(01:44):
was that literally your AI and your phone yelling at us?
Case in point, I was trying to pull up one
of the one of the AI robots that we saw today,
And I guess this is something that we talked about
on Better Offline a bit. In the main thing this
year year is the complete, the complete like victory of
like chat GPT, yeah across not just not just like it's.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Like the cultural victory within the tech industry.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Yes, right, and it's moved into like the physical world
through like their API license, saying, yeah, so many of
the quote unquote products this year is building a physical
thing around chat GPT.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
We have a necklace that has chat GPT and you
can talk to it. We have a pin that chat
GPT is in and you can talk to it and
have it do things like transcribe an interview.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Earbuds, there's there's earbuds, little robot dot, every everything has
has chat GPT inside it. And that's the main thing
that makes it a like uniquer special compared to you know,
the types of products we've seen we've seen before.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
And I would say again when I when I say
that like seventy percent of the chatbot enabled products that
I tried to interact with could not converse with me
or could not do so in a functional way. It's
not because the chatbots aren't able to talk to you,
because they are. Anyone who's not like you can. It's
that all of the chatbots require an active Internet connection
because the vast majority of these products do not have
anything on device, and when you're in a crowded convention floor,
(03:10):
the Internet is bad and so they just don't work.
And it kind of it's one of those I'm sure
most of these products would work better in the real world,
but also the fact that they're all completely hobbled by
their access to data is kind of one of the things.
It's one of the seams that you can see here.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Yeah, the LLLM rappers, so LLLM rappers and robotics are
the big things this year. Often these things.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Are I mean by an LLLM rapper garrison.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Well, this is this is the thing that we're talking
about it it'd say it's that this physical product that's
built around something like chat GPT or Gemini or Claude
or a number of like the Chinese made ones, right,
a lot of Chinese companies here. So these physical products,
whether those are you headphones, earbuds, or in many cases
little tiny robots whose main main features that you can
(03:57):
talk to can talk to it and what you're actually
talking to is like a filtered version of chat GPT.
And there's a lot of these products for kids that
we've seen, like robots for kids, because there's a lot
a lot of robotics this year as well. That these
these are the two things that after years and years
of them trying to find a new thing for each
cees they've like settled on not not actually having anything
(04:18):
of robotics, not having anything new because like we've we've
seen robotics before at other years, and this is the
year that they're combining their physical robotics, which aren't new,
but combining them with chat GPT and presenting it as
a new product.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Look, now you can intelligence robot and they can't do
more tasks than it used to, Like we're still doing
really good if it can slowly and not very competently
fold laundry. Oh right, Like LG's Kloyd Kloyd, which is
a robot designed to be in your home and do
chores for you and visibly does not do them well.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
We watched it now.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Where they're presumably it's presumably working better than it normally
does because it's a demo.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
I went to the first Cloyd Cloyd demo and they
had like three three different setups for the different stories
for like different use cases for Cloyd, once with ones
with a family, ones with like a single guy, and
ones with like a like a middle aged woman. And
with the family, the robots able to find keys that
are lost. Notably, what that means is that Cloyd is
(05:21):
moving keys around the house, which might actually contribute to
the problem of your keys somewhere else. The robot could
put a tray of croissants in an oven and the
robot knows it, and the robot knows exactly how you
want your croissants done. You don't even have to tell
the robot. It already knows. And that's something that was
(05:43):
stressed the power of ail and over again is that
it will it will start to like know what you
want is so you wan't need to tell a memory.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
So many of these products, with the big sell ones,
it's got a memory, and it has a rant. They
can't stop themselves. And I think some of this was
like the actual companies and the way that they're structuring
a campaigns. But a lot of this was just most
of the companies here hire pr people who don't regularly
work for the company and don't know much about the products,
and they're just there to demo stuff. And some of
(06:10):
it is those people just defaulting too well. They're talking
about how this thing like like remembers and knows you,
so I'll talk about how it like it has a personality,
it has memories, it has experienced, it has core memories,
you know, it has preferences and like a personality, it
wants things. I talked to a couple of different people
at booths who like that was the thing they were emphasizing,
is that, like, this is an AI that like feels
(06:32):
and gets to know you and has a relationship with you.
And it's very number one not what they would want
publicly because that's crazy and none of the products actually
work that way. But the attempt to convince people that, like,
what we have done is create a robot that lives
in your home and does chores and it can think
and feel.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
And anytime you say, like, well, is there you just
saying you built.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
A slave, Like are you saying, well, there's thinking sentient
robots that you have lived in your house and do
your laundry.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Isn't that a slave?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
And it's not, actually, because the robot doesn't not actually,
but what they were saying was true, it would be
a problem, right, really.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Oh, if you get introduce yourself hoever youone introduced.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Oh, I'm Ben Ben Rose Porter, I am an academic,
I'm a sociologist at Kearney.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
And you have accompanied us through the wonderful world of
Las Vegas and cees this year. I always like bringing
people to witness the beautiful world.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah, I've been brought to this place very far from god,
Las Vegas and the Tech Convention Center. There is this
moment where we were walking through and it was the
the the Amy Bot for kids.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Which me and Robertsau last year, that the little like
oval owl looking robot.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah yeah, and they had this She's got to be
an actress and she was doing like a little skit
with the the Amy Bot where it was like it
was like the Amy about birthday or something, and she
was like very clearly having this this very produced. It
reminded me exactly of how like Cheap telea novella's like
actors talk where she is just like wow, I mean,
(08:10):
you've really gotten to know me over the years. And
it was bizarre in that one the selling point of
the robot was I think they said, turning data into empathy.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Yes, it's able to turn data into empathy.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Which God knows what that means, but also that like,
so clearly the robot turns data into empathy, but also
we cannot show you the robot doing anything concretely, so
we will have a person like it was just this
very one sided like skit where this person was doing
this really overly emotional like back and forth of the robot,
(08:43):
where the robot would just respond with like the bare
minimum like phrases, and so like what they're selling is
is questionable if anyone wants it, and all speculative, it's
all none of it can actually be presented.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
It's all like the potential to do this, and then
and then even the way.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
That they're actually showing that is mostly just cheap tricks.
There's another booth where they had the sex robots, and
I was just it was shocking because the stand like
you're at this convention, you've presumably you know, gone through
a lot to get here, and you're the image you're
putting forward of your robot that you know you're selling
(09:21):
as the sex robot. It's like this cheap AI image,
not even one of the good ones, like that they
are like clear artifacts and very weird lines and things,
and that you could google an anime jpeg and get
a better image for this. So just even the smoke
and mirrors of it was cheap.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
Yeah, that was that Love Ants is the Sex Robot booth,
And yeah, they had two products. One was like just
like you know silicon like realistic human skin sex robot,
which is similar to like you know, those horrifying sex dolls,
except now we have an LM inside. It's another one
of those LM rappers, except it's wrapped around a redheaded woman.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Garrison. I find that very offensive.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
It's actually some people are just they're not capable of
talking to women or other human beings of any kind.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Yeah, people with ADHD.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
It's actually a disability where people can't know other people
and can only have sexual gratification.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Through a creepy robot.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
I apologize for my respect for my on air ableism. Yeah,
but no again. This is the year of l M rappers,
and now they're putting it, putting it in a sexpod,
which is more unnerving between than a regular sex doll,
because a regular sex doll, you kind of know it's
an object. Like it's it's not trying to be much
more than an object. It can't you can't you could
you put in positions, but it's it's static. Yeah, this
(10:35):
because this thing tries to kind of engage with you.
It activates my uncanny Valley response way more because it's
like it's kind of trying to pretend to be a person,
and like, I could not look at the thing for
very long. So they just like started like I just
felt bad. Yeah, and some of that's probably my latent Protestantism,
(10:56):
but it's I just feel I just felt bad. But
the other product they had, like around the corner was
this was this like you know, anime style like like Avatar,
which was which is on like a screen that you
can talk to and it's synced up to like a
jack Off robot, right, so you can you can engage
with this.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Finally, you can.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Engage with this like this like blonde blonde hair, blue
eyed anime woman as it's as it connects to like
a little a little like jackof machine. And that was there.
That was the other product which did not work because
there was no Wi Fi in the Venetian Yeah, so
we could we could not see it, but the Jackoff
machine was still going strong.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yeah, so you could say, I guess that, like, well,
obviously there's there's fundamental issues with like having Wi Fi
be decent. When you've got seventy thousand people like all
cramming themselves into a room, of course, that's going to
cause problems that the chatbots and the devices using them
are actually capable of more they should. They're more impressive
than you giving credit for just because the WiFi didn't work.
But also if all your builds is a shell that
(11:52):
without the Internet and access to someone else's chatbot, it's useless.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
It doesn't do anything.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
This is the big people I haven't really made a
product acts are going to brick as soon as soon
as as soon as chat GPT raises its API costs,
they're going to do one of two things. They're either
going to stop working or they're going to move their
chatbot provider to a different one that's going to behave differently,
and then it's fundamentally a different.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
And that's why periodically I would run into someone where
it's like everything that we do is on device and everything,
and even the ones that were still because almost you
almost have to say that whatever you're doing is AI
and stuff like. There was a company that I came
across because of their name because I just saw the
name trans Ai and I was like, well, I gotta
go see what that is.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
I did see that, and it's.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Simply I believe they're a Korean company, but it's it's
just a company that makes like a translator, right, and
they make it specifically. It's like the size of a
smaller smartphone. It looks kind of like a smartphone and
you set it down and it will on device. It
does not touch the cloud at all for any reason.
It can translate, so if you want to have a
conversation with someone in a foreign language, it can like
like live translate for you both. And also it will
(12:55):
transcribe whatever conversations you're happening. And they were like, yeah,
this is for people who want to transcribe. No have
been there at college. It's for people who are doing interviews,
journalists and stuff. So and it was a really good
It seemed to be a good product. I've not gotten
to test it outside of the show floor I saw.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
I saw a few of these.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
One of the big differences I saw between like the
few there were like two or three or four booths
that we saw where the product. I was like, I
had a positive. I was like I walked away with
some mildly positive. Was that almost everything else talk about
like the sort of insatiability of capital is that it
has to sell. The sex doll was a perfect example
(13:31):
of this in that you know, if you make a
sex doll and you put the chat GPT inside of
it and then you sell it as this is a
sex doll. It's an object you find, but now you
can like you could have sexy conversation with Its still
an object, but like you know, that's fun for some people.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Thing that people didn't have, and it is new.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, and it's a phenomena you could clearly show off.
It's like, oh you can, you know, now the sex
doll can like say your name and stuff. But almost
all of the boot that we're selling some kind of aiproduct.
It was like, we have to sell the opportunity to
like transcend like your mortal shell and become a part
of the cosmos itself. Like the SEXTL was literally sitting
(14:13):
in this corner talking to no one and saying stuff
like I'm about emotional intelligence and building a connection, getting
to know you and reaching into your soul. And it's
like it clearly cannot do this. And the few products
that were good were the ones where the people showing
it were just able to like just put that aside
and just say here's what the product.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
Does, right, here's what it can do.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Concrete and that has become my baseline first question, which
is like, have you done anything with your product? And
if all that you've done is we invented a new
device that didn't previously have a chatbot that it connects
to through data that someone else built, you didn't do
anything that's not a product, that's not real. So kind
of my first my filter was like, is there anything
(14:56):
here beyond another way to interact with a completely different
p that you didn't make.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
To go back to like the AI note taking devices,
which I saw a few where there's a Lindon and
it will take notes for you. I saw like a
lot of these, like marketed to like a college student.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
And it's the thing that it is a thing that
machine learning, because I hate that it gets lumped in
with AI, but machine learning has gotten up a lot,
but it.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Is really good.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
It's it's good at note taking and here's the thing,
and that's alliable and there's different devices that you can
get it on. Like I saw like like a note
taking pin that's a pin that just automatically takes notes
for you, and that was like, you know, kind of
like kind of kind of fun. But the thing is
you can do this exact same thing on your phone
with the jet GPT app. It's the exact same thing. Yes,
you don't need it in a pen, just turn your
(15:48):
phone on and it'll auto do the notes for you.
The actual product part is useless. The whole idea of
the smartphone is that you have everything you need already
on it.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
And that's why I did respect again companies like trans
Ai where it's like, no, this is actually on device,
and this is a thing. This is that better utility
that my phone doesn't have, which is that no matter
where I am, even if I'm not connected to the internet,
I can translate and I can transcribe using this device.
That's real utility. And transa is not the only company.
A couple of companies had products like that.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Yeah, we saw this emotion tracking pendant which is oh
my god, on device, which which listens to everyone.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
So you said motion, not emotion, no emotion, oh god,
but it listens.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
It listens to everything you're saying. It doesn't uput anything
to cloud, but it in the AA is on device,
so it listens everything. It is like emotional sentiment analysis.
It also monitors your breath and your heartbeat because the
necklace like rests like on your chest, and then it
like talk and then it can like analyze like around
like six or seven. That's mystic seven different emotions, and
(16:51):
like it was like, fine, I don't I would never
need this thing to tell me how I'm feeling. I
know how to feel, but like it might be fun
for some people to track how they're feeling or be like,
oh I was more stressed. I was more stressed this
week than like last week, and like still.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
And there's even there's at least a degree of baseline
optimism that you have for the product when it's like, Okay,
this is a device where you're trying to track people's emotions,
and your immediate first thing you decided as a company
was this can't go on the cloud.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
That would be a responsible This.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Is why that was the first thing I asked, right.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Right, And that is I guess the most important fundamental
difference between companies and people here and between the companies
that are embracing to some extent AI is the ones
who whose default was like, well, but we're doing something
that involves emotions or that involves like interviews or conversations
that people might not want on like we shouldn't have
that on the cloud, versus the people who are like,
(17:44):
why wouldn't you put literally everything on the cloud. Why
don't you want your health and medical data on the cloud.
Why don't we want your financial data on the cloud? Right,
Like that is kind of like the most fundamental difference
that you see between people.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Here, part and parcel of the insatiable like just drive
for endless value. And probably the comparisons between this convention
and its location Las Vegas are really overlaiden at this point,
but I mean there is something about, like, you know,
the appeal of gambling is the promise of the speculative
promise of endless value, and how all of these technologies
(18:15):
are selling themselves off of endless value. And for the
producer side, that means like this this device has endless
function potentially, you know, we say endless functions.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Especially with these like AI devices.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah yeah, but from the consumer side, it's from a well,
if you just give yourself over to you know, to
the god of capital, if you if you just bleed
into the machine and connect yourself to the cloud and
give over like everything, and it really is everything. I mean,
there's like AI towels that are like analyzing your sweat.
If you give over everything, there is this vague promise
(18:49):
of transcendence and that like you will escape the the
like the misery of the world that this place is
just both completely blind to and then also without ever
saying it, like also responding to it entirely.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
First off, obviously you're you're coming at this from more
of a left wing perspective, so you probably don't understand
that gambling always works and you're definitely going to win.
So first off, you.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Know, no Vegas really is the anarcho capitalist paradise.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
It sure is, but no, like like what you're saying
is they want you to give everything over. There is
absolutely there's not outside of again the odd booth where
you find sane people, which is almost how I think
about it them in my head, where it's like yeah,
where you're putting front and forward. This stays on the device.
You don't have to be online. We are not exposing
your data.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
It's like seeing a lighthouse right in like in like
a horrible like rainstorm and you're like sailing god a
ship and you can't see anything and everyone's you'll see
a booth with like a real person God it's like
talking about it was solving a real plum, like oh finally, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
It's a spectrum between talking to the ais, talking to
the real few people and then the other people who
are kind of.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
In between the two.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
And it was I I went from seeing this app
where the whole purpose of this company that makes like
agentic ai solutions, who I'm scrolling to find there the
company name right now, all of it is they're making
agents that you can put in like point of sale things,
or you can put in like cars as a chatbot.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
Like.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
One thing they said is yeah, we can put this
in a car and we can have the you know,
you can navigate using voice the way you would normally
like with a bunch of other apps. But if you
navigate with voice using our app, it will only send
you to restaurants or businesses that we have a deal
with that are giving us a cut and so and
you too the car company gets a cut.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Two.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
And that was the innovation is that we can not
give people like tell people where things are. We can
tell people where things are that hey us and you
get a cut of it.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
The company can like make a partnership with like Coca Cola,
right so then when you we're.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Literally talking to Coca Cola reps when I was there,
it's showing them that like, yeah, we have a like, look,
we've replaced the human beings that take your orders at
Burger King, and the chatbot can alter on the fly
of the menu. If you have to get a smooth
a lot out of vanilla coat and you want to
sell as many large as possible, it can tell people
that's the only option.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
WHOA And like like the.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Fact that they were just like bald faced about it,
because when I showed up, they were they were demoing
how this uh, this like Burger King menu with AI worked,
And they were like there was a full menu that
you could see that was like a like an updated
screen menu, but there was a secondary menu where they're
like pretending to be a guy who drew up to
Burger King. And the way that they started was like, yeah,
(21:28):
what burgers are good? What do you think I'd like?
And I was like, who No one.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Drives up, No one good drive through window and asks
what's good?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, No, that's not how they And again there's a
menu in front of you. You look at the menu
and it's like that's how everyone buys food. So at
first I was like, is this just a company that
doesn't know how life works? Who are like trying to
pretend this is like what people want where they go through? Yeah, yeah,
well what's good today in McDonald's you know, do you
(21:57):
have any specials?
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Which was crazy?
Speaker 2 (21:59):
But then I realized because they were talking to this
small group of people, and I realized after a second, oh,
because I looked at their badges. Everyone has badges that
all of the people worked for Coca Cola. And so
they were talking about how, yes, if Burger King wants
to move you know, a specific kind of whopper, then
we can put that front and center when people ask
what's good and we can push it. And said, for coke,
if you guys want to move vanilla coke, we can
(22:19):
have Whenever people order anything, we can have it. Say
do you want to add a vanilla coke? A large
vanilla Cokes?
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Just like yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
And so what I realized is that this company whose
name is this is SoundHound.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
AI sound Hound Yeah yeah, great, pretty pretty good name.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Their motto was faster and more accurate, higher revenue. I
came to realize, and this is this is not entirely
a separation from other years because they are always selling
to companies like this. But there was absolutely they were
the only thing that they were talking about actual end users,
as was a thing that you can pull extra money
out of by by tricking them, by pushing extra ads
(22:55):
to them. And that's who they were actually selling to,
is these companies that they were like. The other thing
they demoed was you can make an agent on the
fly and you can include the capabilities, and they showed
us how to select it and then built an AI,
an agent to live in your car. And the demo
they did was like, hey, my car is making this sound.
What do you think it is? They didn't play the
sound for the AI by the way they described it,
(23:16):
and the AA said that sounds like it could be
da teta da. It'll cost about seven hundred dollars to fix.
Great book me an appointment with the dealership. So first off,
that's not how people work. I've had car everyone has
car issues. A regular person. There's a problem with your car.
You either have a mechanic. That's not the dealership that
you go to because they didn't rip you off in
the past, and you're like, well, I trust them, not
(23:37):
to fuck me too bad, or you go to a
couple because most people don't just drop seven hundred dollars
in a repair and not think about it. But the
person that this engineer is pretending to be for the
purpose of this AI demo said, great, book me a
repair at the dealership. And the AI was like, okay,
I've called them and I've booked you an appointment.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And by the way, would you like to schedule the
test drive for this if it kind of car. Oh,
my wife loves that car. Book us.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
And that was the whole thing is he was like,
don't be impressed that we can theoretically book you an appointment.
Be impressed that we can have the machine upsell you
on trying to buy a new car when you come
in to fix your old car that broke because you
bought a bad car. And there was no shame. They
were so proud of themselves, for this machine can repeatedly
upsell you things. And that was the only utility. It
(24:25):
was not this allows you to more easily navigate town,
This allows you to more easily, you know, cut out
problems in your life. It was this machine can upsell
you every minute of your day. Everything you ask it
to do everything you try to have it do, and
we get a cut of that. If we send it
to a restaurant and you buy food there, we get
(24:45):
a cut of that. And so does whatever company you
know put the thing in your car if you buy
a new car, we get a cut of that. That
was the product and that we have gone from. Here
are machines that do things. And even back in the
glorias of smartphones, at least everyone showing like, look, we
have a new phone that's thinner than a phone has
ever been.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Yeah, or like the camera is like you know, four
K now or something.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Whatever, the focus is always and now people who buy
them can do this with it, right.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
I mean, I would guess that so much of the
impetus for creating this stuff and developing it is all
for producer goods, and then the more revenue is honest,
and that like that's what the and all the consumer
goods are mostly just getting you know, cast off is
like now we have all I mean literally, that's what
the LLLM rappers are. It's just like, oh, we have
this thing, let's throw a plastic robot on it and
(25:33):
try and sell it. But what drives its development is
squeezing just little bits, squeezing labor out of the pores
of the production process, which it just gets you a
little bit more, you know, capital to keep this engine
going a little bit further.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
And it's so because the way it'll work is I
saw that thing where it's literally all you've invented is
a way to try to con people out of more
of their money. I hope you're proud of yourselves, because
I think it redacted is what you should do to yourself.
And I went from that to the booth of a
company called Gintech, who had never heard of before, but
they make different automotive products, and an engineer there showed
(26:11):
me a thing that he had been the lead on inventing,
which was a sun visor. So like you know, when
you're driving and there's a glare, you put down the
advisor and the visor is just like a basically a
piece of fabric and it blocks a chunk of your view,
but it at least blocks the sun. And this was
an intelligent visor that was clear and so you could
see through it, but it also blocked UV rays and
(26:32):
you could adjust the level of opacity if you needed
it to be more or less, but you could still
see through the mirror and it still blocked the glare.
And I was like, oh, that's really neat. And then
he pressed a button and it turned into a mirror.
Suddenly that functioned. It looked great. I saw it.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
I know it works, and I got like an honest wow,
I didn't know that was a thing that could happen.
And that's a real product, and I can imagine using it.
That's like a problem where yeah, if you want to
block glare, you're losing a degree of visibility and now
you're not You've actually done something right.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
Yeah, but you could put Gemini into a toaster and
call it a day.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
What if your toaster could talk to you about Proust?
Speaker 4 (27:13):
I guess I mean this is actually now that's an idea.
If we're going to close this this more AI focused episode,
I kind of want to circle back to Cloyd and
(27:33):
like why and why Chloyd Loyd again, chlod exists.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Just take a second, if you're listening to this at
home on the drive, if you've got family around, look
at each other, look another person in the eye, and
say the word LG has a new home assistance robot
named Cloyd. Cloyd roll it around in your tongue, you know,
just think about it for a second.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
Okay, why Cloyd exists? Like why? Why? Why is LG
who's previously had some really impressive booths over the years,
and they.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Had cool TV.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
They had TV's where the wallpaper TV was impressive.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Every time I go to an LG's booth every year,
I'm like, yeah, that's a better look on TV.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Really TV. Yeah it was great, but why why? And
then the wall peer TV is Okay, there was one
paper TV last year. It was it was slightly worse.
This one's a little bit better. But why does Cloyd
the big thing at the LG booth this year?
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Loyd?
Speaker 4 (28:26):
Right? Because none of the technology that Cloyd is doing
is new. Remember last year at show stoppers, me and
you we saw that really janky robot. N't have to
be more specific, but it's not taking a robot that
moves up and down.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Oh yeah yeah yeah, the pusher and shover robots.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Yes, right, And Cloyd is like kind of that. It's
like the actual physical robotic parts of Cloyd aren't new. Yeah,
and there's sort of the sort of AI that's running Cloyd.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
And Kloyd if someone needed to make Wally that was
legally distinct enough to stop Disney from suing.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Them, and tall and Tom Taller. That's how Chloyd looks.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
So why is Cloyd there? Why is Chloyd there? I'm
always asking myself this.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Is This goes into like what this what like Cees
is like doing this year, and how it reflects this
current state of the tech industry is that these lllms
like tra GVT are not actually better than they were
last year. No, they are. They are the same. So
how do we make things look look cool?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Just whatever improvements they are is not enough to notice
for an average person.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
Very minimal. Yeah, So instead of actually having anything new
or any kind of sizeable improvement to display, they're combining
too old and some of the products are kind of archaic.
The come combining two older products and trying to pass
it off as a new thing. And that's these these
these like older older like robotic systems right that you're
usually kind of humanoid. Maybe they have hands, Maybe the
(29:41):
hands can grab things. Can the hands unscrew up a
milk carton? No? Can can can the can the robot
grab milk out of the fridge?
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yes, so long as you want milk from a very
specific carton and croissants and only croissants, you're good.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
As long as the milk has a QR code that
the robot can recognize to know that it's milk. And
also when it's emptier than a certain level, it actually
will crush the milk thing like it has to be
a certain level a full otherwise it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
But it's neither of these things are new. And the
fact that Algae doesn't have anything else to display at
their booth, the fact that they had to stoop so
low is to regurgitate this old kind of cheap robotics
and slap an LLLM in there and then call it
a day, so that they have very little to actually
show for us. Yes, and you see this walking through
like the Central Hall SAT. The Samsung booth is into there,
(30:28):
the Nkon booth is into there, the Sony booth is
mostly a car like. There's a lot of these big
companies are really absent from actual products. The Panasonic has
a really big booth, but it's mostly about like servers,
it's mostly about how they're how they're improving, how they're
improving data farming, there's no stuff, and a lot.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Of the stuff that does exist.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
You even have to separate further from stuff that exists
and actually might be useful to stuff that exists and
might be useful because it solves a problem that the
thing that it is already. Like for example, a bunch
I came to several different companies that had a car
AI assistance whose job was to yell at you if
you fell asleep or got distracted, and they were all
(31:12):
built into these giant dashboard things that were the whole
dashboard is a and it's like, yeah, I can see
why you need a robot to yell people get distracted
because we have data.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
Is there putning subway surfers on your fucking car dash.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
We have ample data that shows that when you have
a giant screen in a car and people use that screen,
they are actually worse drivers than when they're just drawn
on a normal car. And so, yes, you have made
the car. You can show me how this whole dashboard
you can change it in a second. Look at all
these different modes you have. You can smartly change your
dashboard be whatever you want and it'll yell at you
(31:48):
if you get distracted. And it's like, well, but the
only reason you're getting distracted is because your entire car
is a computer screen, which it shouldn't be, and we
know it shouldn't be.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
They're either trying to solve problems that they created or
inventing solutions to things that aren't really problems. And like
with with and this is this specifically with Cloyd, and
they kept the guy who is like doing the demo
kept reiterating that Cloyd Cloud or already knows what you
want before you have to say anything, right, whether that's
a croissant that's slightly under baked, or he knows had
(32:18):
a fold laundry just the way you use the way,
which is what she what she said in a kind
of self aware ironic tone, because this robot spent two
minutes trying to fold a single towel and it couldn't
do it. These things don't work, and they're not meant to.
It's meant to drive traffic and attention towards the LG brand,
because there's gona tons of articles being like, look at
(32:38):
LG's new butler robot, right and that, and that's that's
all that they're doing at this demo. M HM because
this is not a real product for sale. It is
it is meant to drive attention to the brand and
get articles, and then those articles are going to get
you know, cited by by other by other lllfs. And
it's this, it's this cycle that just keeps building. There's
some really impressive stuff there too. Like I went to
persona AI's booth had a bunch of computers that had
(33:02):
without that were not connected to the Internet.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
All the signs told you that. And it has on
pc AI image generators where it's all on the machine itself,
and you know, one of the representatives said, come on,
give it a prompt, it will generate an image. And
I've never used an AI image generator, and so I
kind of panic. I'll be honest, like I got freaked out.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
It's gonna be some bullshit.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Tom size more with dead kid.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah yeah, now that's not Tom size Moore. But that
is a man cuddling a dead child. The kid doesn't
the face is gone, and that's not Tom size more like.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
But you know, the future, the future, No, this this
I can't. I don't want to harp on Cloyd too much,
but it's so it's such.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
A good every additional time you say, Cloyd, it sounds
less like a work.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
It's a good example of what this show is specifically
this year, how there's there's there's nothing new, so they're
reaching into like into like the cees of of of yesteryear. Yeah,
I'm trying to push two things together and pretend that
it's a new thing. And when it doesn't work, they're like, oh,
this is actually a good thing. He's folding the towel
just the way I like, and that's bad. Poorly. Look,
(34:08):
he spends ninety seconds putting a single shirt into the
washing machine, and this is him being very thorough.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
That was the word. He's being very thorough, really put
in the time, and.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
You're like, this thing doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Is bad, it's a bad product. Part of the mistake
they made, I think, is that because this is the
year of robots, there are robots there that are like
industrial application robots that are showcasing we have made a
robot with humanoid hands that is capable of more intricate
movements than any other human hand robot before, And they
showed it like intricately folding like a pinwheel, and I
was like, yeah, that I have not seen a robot
(34:41):
with humanoid hands that has had that much dexterity before.
I'm sure that has some useful industrial applications. And then
you go from that and there's a bunch of other
robots that are industrial where it's like, we have built
a new tip for this robot that allows it to
do this kind of automotive work, or allows it to
do this kind of like manufacturing work, right where I'm like, ayes,
assume not being an expert on robotics, but you're saying
(35:03):
it's the world's first robot that can handle this task.
But that's at least an innovation. You talk about the
ethics of replacing him, but like, that's a thing that
is a new capability. And you have those robots next
to the robots that human beings are actally meant to
buy and put in their homes, none of which work well,
all of which are exactly as capable as robots twenty
years ago, except there's a chatbot on them, and it
(35:24):
makes it all look worse. Where you're showing me what
theoretically the best in robotics can do, and then I'm
looking at the thing I'm supposed to have in my
house and it just fell down and it can't fold laundry,
and you want me to spend six thousand dollars or
twelve thousand dollars. One of the robot THEU I think
it was like Booster X or something like that. The
one that was dressed like Michael Jackson. You're supposed to
(35:46):
have as a companion for your child. It will help
it with its homework using chat GPT. It's small dancing robots,
small dancing robots. Yes, yes, the small dancing robot that
you've been hit in the head with a liquor bottle
and it won't break.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
That was part of the ad video. You know how
you always want to hit your get in the head
with the liquor bottle. Get out this anger with this
tiny child's high robot robot senator for your child.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
And again, if someone was marketing a robot senator, like
are you angry at your spouse?
Speaker 3 (36:14):
You can beat the shit out of this robot and
be fine. At least that's an idea.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
With AI technology, the robot will actually learn your spouse's
personality and respond accordingly to the beatings.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Look, look, I've been hitting this robot after I come
back from work every day for the last two weeks.
And look as soon as I walk on the door,
it starts to shake.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
The previous models is just way.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
It wasn't satisfied.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, it took a long time for a team to
figure out how to give a robot PTSD.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
By god, we've crossed the rubicon.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
As you can see, Vegas is taking its toll on
our psyches as we've done a extended intimate partner abuse bid.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
He's not a partner. It's robot Garrison.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
Oh, you're right, it's not.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Also, the robot can think and feel and has core
memories and can love.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
You don't put those two things together. He's only separate thoughts.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
No, this robot basically has a soul. Watches hit it
with a liquor bottle.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
It would just be.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
So great to like with all of the how much
the they're focused on the the AI can develop real
human connection, but it's also saccharin. I would love to
just do a booth where it's like we're teaching our
robots hate.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
They can't know how to hate.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah, And I do want to end by noting one
thing that we talked about a little briefly, but is
kind of low key The most upsetting thing about this,
which is I saw a bunch of different booths that
use the term empathy, and what they meant by empathy
was the robot can understand and anticipate what you want.
Right that it's learning you and your patterns in order
to offer you and more effectively assist you. And I
(37:39):
guess technically yeah, but reducing the concept of empathy to
the robot knows when you might want snacks is kind
of evil, like it's in its freedom's right. Empathy means
the robot knows when to serve you is like a
bad way to talk about it.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Empathy.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
I don't think most people you what is empathy? Well,
it means someone knows when I want to be up
sold on a Hyundai.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
That's not what empathy is.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Yeah, our robot learns empathy by being instrumental to you
and useful.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
See wenously what you know the core of them.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
We made our robot watch four hours of videos from Gaza,
and it immediately said, I bet those kids went on
Undai a Lantra like that.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
I anyway, Yeah, it's if your version of empathy is
trying to sell coke vanilla. Because we have all of
this all this stock.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Oh wait too much. We fucked up. We are in trouble.
We're underwater.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
That's what empathy is.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yeah, anyway, welcome to the future. Everyone's a ces miracle.
It's a ces miracle. Goodbye.
Speaker 5 (38:49):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 5 (39:02):
You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here,
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
What's Pippin' my Bops? It could happen here a podcast
that is sometimes competently introduced, but not on the days
that I'm recording.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
We're at CEES, the.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Consumer Electronics Show, seeing what the tech industry has in
mind for all of us. Right, this is a show
where the industry talks to itself and its investors and
clients about what the future is going to be. And
so Garrison Davis and I are going to sit down
with you and tell, based on our explorations and investigations
this week, what the future of artificial intelligence means for
(00:41):
all of us and for the world. Garrison, Hi, how
you doing.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
I'm tired.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Yeah, you look tired.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
It's been a long week. It's been a long week
convention walking.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yeah, we've worked very hard.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
I've talked to too many robots.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Yeah, I've talked to a lot of chatbots.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
I mean it's a bit of a stretch, is that
we've talked with them.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I've talked to add a lot of chat bots.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Yeah, times they responded, sometimes they don't.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I guess one of the things that's kind of shocked
me is because, like, despite being very critical about AI
in the industry. I have actually a pretty good idea
of what these things are capable of. And I know
that chat GBT and Jim and I and the other
like they're capable of doing some things that look very impressive.
They are capable of conversations you know, that can be
(01:23):
fairly in depth, and that can cover a wide variety
of topics. And so one of the things that has
surprised me is that as I have gone up and
tried to communicate with every various chatbot enabled AI enabled product,
about seventy percent of the time it's not actually capable
of responding to me in a way that makes any sense.
Like the majority of those products just don't function. Sorry,
(01:44):
was that literally your AI and your phone yelling at us?
Case in point, I was trying to pull up one
of the one of the AI robots that we saw today,
And I guess this is something that we talked about
on Better Offline a bit. In the main thing this
year year is the complete, the complete like victory of
like chat GPT, yeah across not just not just like it's.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Like the cultural victory within the tech industry.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Yes, right, and it's moved into like the physical world
through like their API license, saying, yeah, so many of
the quote unquote products this year is building a physical
thing around chat GPT.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
We have a necklace that has chat GPT and you
can talk to it. We have a pin that chat
GPT is in and you can talk to it and
have it do things like transcribe an interview.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Earbuds, there's there's earbuds, little robot dot, every everything has
has chat GPT inside it. And that's the main thing
that makes it a like uniquer special compared to you know,
the types of products we've seen we've seen before.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
And I would say again when I when I say
that like seventy percent of the chatbot enabled products that
I tried to interact with could not converse with me
or could not do so in a functional way. It's
not because the chatbots aren't able to talk to you,
because they are. Anyone who's not like you can. It's
that all of the chatbots require an active Internet connection
because the vast majority of these products do not have
anything on device, and when you're in a crowded convention floor,
(03:10):
the Internet is bad and so they just don't work.
And it kind of it's one of those I'm sure
most of these products would work better in the real world,
but also the fact that they're all completely hobbled by
their access to data is kind of one of the things.
It's one of the seams that you can see here.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Yeah, the LLLM rappers, so LLLM rappers and robotics are
the big things this year. Often these things.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Are I mean by an LLLM rapper garrison.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Well, this is this is the thing that we're talking
about it it'd say it's that this physical product that's
built around something like chat GPT or Gemini or Claude
or a number of like the Chinese made ones, right,
a lot of Chinese companies here. So these physical products,
whether those are you headphones, earbuds, or in many cases
little tiny robots whose main main features that you can
(03:57):
talk to can talk to it and what you're actually
talking to is like a filtered version of chat GPT.
And there's a lot of these products for kids that
we've seen, like robots for kids, because there's a lot
a lot of robotics this year as well. That these
these are the two things that after years and years
of them trying to find a new thing for each
cees they've like settled on not not actually having anything
(04:18):
of robotics, not having anything new because like we've we've
seen robotics before at other years, and this is the
year that they're combining their physical robotics, which aren't new,
but combining them with chat GPT and presenting it as
a new product.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Look, now you can intelligence robot and they can't do
more tasks than it used to, Like we're still doing
really good if it can slowly and not very competently
fold laundry. Oh right, Like LG's Kloyd Kloyd, which is
a robot designed to be in your home and do
chores for you and visibly does not do them well.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
We watched it now.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Where they're presumably it's presumably working better than it normally
does because it's a demo.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
I went to the first Cloyd Cloyd demo and they
had like three three different setups for the different stories
for like different use cases for Cloyd, once with ones
with a family, ones with like a single guy, and
ones with like a like a middle aged woman. And
with the family, the robots able to find keys that
are lost. Notably, what that means is that Cloyd is
(05:21):
moving keys around the house, which might actually contribute to
the problem of your keys somewhere else. The robot could
put a tray of croissants in an oven and the
robot knows it, and the robot knows exactly how you
want your croissants done. You don't even have to tell
the robot. It already knows. And that's something that was
(05:43):
stressed the power of ail and over again is that
it will it will start to like know what you
want is so you wan't need to tell a memory.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
So many of these products, with the big sell ones,
it's got a memory, and it has a rant. They
can't stop themselves. And I think some of this was
like the actual companies and the way that they're structuring
a campaigns. But a lot of this was just most
of the companies here hire pr people who don't regularly
work for the company and don't know much about the products,
and they're just there to demo stuff. And some of
(06:10):
it is those people just defaulting too well. They're talking
about how this thing like like remembers and knows you,
so I'll talk about how it like it has a personality,
it has memories, it has experienced, it has core memories,
you know, it has preferences and like a personality, it
wants things. I talked to a couple of different people
at booths who like that was the thing they were emphasizing,
is that, like, this is an AI that like feels
(06:32):
and gets to know you and has a relationship with you.
And it's very number one not what they would want
publicly because that's crazy and none of the products actually
work that way. But the attempt to convince people that, like,
what we have done is create a robot that lives
in your home and does chores and it can think
and feel.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
And anytime you say, like, well, is there you just
saying you built.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
A slave, Like are you saying, well, there's thinking sentient
robots that you have lived in your house and do
your laundry.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Isn't that a slave?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
And it's not, actually, because the robot doesn't not actually,
but what they were saying was true, it would be
a problem, right, really.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Oh, if you get introduce yourself hoever youone introduced.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Oh, I'm Ben Ben Rose Porter, I am an academic,
I'm a sociologist at Kearney.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
And you have accompanied us through the wonderful world of
Las Vegas and cees this year. I always like bringing
people to witness the beautiful world.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah, I've been brought to this place very far from god,
Las Vegas and the Tech Convention Center. There is this
moment where we were walking through and it was the
the the Amy Bot for kids.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Which me and Robertsau last year, that the little like
oval owl looking robot.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah yeah, and they had this She's got to be
an actress and she was doing like a little skit
with the the Amy Bot where it was like it
was like the Amy about birthday or something, and she
was like very clearly having this this very produced. It
reminded me exactly of how like Cheap telea novella's like
actors talk where she is just like wow, I mean,
(08:10):
you've really gotten to know me over the years. And
it was bizarre in that one the selling point of
the robot was I think they said, turning data into empathy.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Yes, it's able to turn data into empathy.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Which God knows what that means, but also that like,
so clearly the robot turns data into empathy, but also
we cannot show you the robot doing anything concretely, so
we will have a person like it was just this
very one sided like skit where this person was doing
this really overly emotional like back and forth of the robot,
(08:43):
where the robot would just respond with like the bare
minimum like phrases, and so like what they're selling is
is questionable if anyone wants it, and all speculative, it's
all none of it can actually be presented.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
It's all like the potential to do this, and then
and then even the way.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
That they're actually showing that is mostly just cheap tricks.
There's another booth where they had the sex robots, and
I was just it was shocking because the stand like
you're at this convention, you've presumably you know, gone through
a lot to get here, and you're the image you're
putting forward of your robot that you know you're selling
(09:21):
as the sex robot. It's like this cheap AI image,
not even one of the good ones, like that they
are like clear artifacts and very weird lines and things,
and that you could google an anime jpeg and get
a better image for this. So just even the smoke
and mirrors of it was cheap.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
Yeah, that was that Love Ants is the Sex Robot booth,
And yeah, they had two products. One was like just
like you know silicon like realistic human skin sex robot,
which is similar to like you know, those horrifying sex dolls,
except now we have an LM inside. It's another one
of those LM rappers, except it's wrapped around a redheaded woman.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Garrison. I find that very offensive.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
It's actually some people are just they're not capable of
talking to women or other human beings of any kind.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Yeah, people with ADHD.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
It's actually a disability where people can't know other people
and can only have sexual gratification.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Through a creepy robot.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
I apologize for my respect for my on air ableism. Yeah,
but no again. This is the year of l M rappers,
and now they're putting it, putting it in a sexpod,
which is more unnerving between than a regular sex doll,
because a regular sex doll, you kind of know it's
an object. Like it's it's not trying to be much
more than an object. It can't you can't you could
you put in positions, but it's it's static. Yeah, this
(10:35):
because this thing tries to kind of engage with you.
It activates my uncanny Valley response way more because it's
like it's kind of trying to pretend to be a person,
and like, I could not look at the thing for
very long. So they just like started like I just
felt bad. Yeah, and some of that's probably my latent Protestantism,
(10:56):
but it's I just feel I just felt bad. But
the other product they had, like around the corner was
this was this like you know, anime style like like Avatar,
which was which is on like a screen that you
can talk to and it's synced up to like a
jack Off robot, right, so you can you can engage
with this.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Finally, you can.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Engage with this like this like blonde blonde hair, blue
eyed anime woman as it's as it connects to like
a little a little like jackof machine. And that was there.
That was the other product which did not work because
there was no Wi Fi in the Venetian Yeah, so
we could we could not see it, but the Jackoff
machine was still going strong.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yeah, so you could say, I guess that, like, well,
obviously there's there's fundamental issues with like having Wi Fi
be decent. When you've got seventy thousand people like all
cramming themselves into a room, of course, that's going to
cause problems that the chatbots and the devices using them
are actually capable of more they should. They're more impressive
than you giving credit for just because the WiFi didn't work.
But also if all your builds is a shell that
(11:52):
without the Internet and access to someone else's chatbot, it's useless.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
It doesn't do anything.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
This is the big people I haven't really made a
product acts are going to brick as soon as soon
as as soon as chat GPT raises its API costs,
they're going to do one of two things. They're either
going to stop working or they're going to move their
chatbot provider to a different one that's going to behave differently,
and then it's fundamentally a different.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
And that's why periodically I would run into someone where
it's like everything that we do is on device and everything,
and even the ones that were still because almost you
almost have to say that whatever you're doing is AI
and stuff like. There was a company that I came
across because of their name because I just saw the
name trans Ai and I was like, well, I gotta
go see what that is.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
I did see that, and it's.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Simply I believe they're a Korean company, but it's it's
just a company that makes like a translator, right, and
they make it specifically. It's like the size of a
smaller smartphone. It looks kind of like a smartphone and
you set it down and it will on device. It
does not touch the cloud at all for any reason.
It can translate, so if you want to have a
conversation with someone in a foreign language, it can like
like live translate for you both. And also it will
(12:55):
transcribe whatever conversations you're happening. And they were like, yeah,
this is for people who want to transcribe. No have
been there at college. It's for people who are doing interviews,
journalists and stuff. So and it was a really good
It seemed to be a good product. I've not gotten
to test it outside of the show floor I saw.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
I saw a few of these.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
One of the big differences I saw between like the
few there were like two or three or four booths
that we saw where the product. I was like, I
had a positive. I was like I walked away with
some mildly positive. Was that almost everything else talk about
like the sort of insatiability of capital is that it
has to sell. The sex doll was a perfect example
(13:31):
of this in that you know, if you make a
sex doll and you put the chat GPT inside of
it and then you sell it as this is a
sex doll. It's an object you find, but now you
can like you could have sexy conversation with Its still
an object, but like you know, that's fun for some people.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Thing that people didn't have, and it is new.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, and it's a phenomena you could clearly show off.
It's like, oh you can, you know, now the sex
doll can like say your name and stuff. But almost
all of the boot that we're selling some kind of aiproduct.
It was like, we have to sell the opportunity to
like transcend like your mortal shell and become a part
of the cosmos itself. Like the SEXTL was literally sitting
(14:13):
in this corner talking to no one and saying stuff
like I'm about emotional intelligence and building a connection, getting
to know you and reaching into your soul. And it's
like it clearly cannot do this. And the few products
that were good were the ones where the people showing
it were just able to like just put that aside
and just say here's what the product.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
Does, right, here's what it can do.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Concrete and that has become my baseline first question, which
is like, have you done anything with your product? And
if all that you've done is we invented a new
device that didn't previously have a chatbot that it connects
to through data that someone else built, you didn't do
anything that's not a product, that's not real. So kind
of my first my filter was like, is there anything
(14:56):
here beyond another way to interact with a completely different
p that you didn't make.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
To go back to like the AI note taking devices,
which I saw a few where there's a Lindon and
it will take notes for you. I saw like a
lot of these, like marketed to like a college student.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
And it's the thing that it is a thing that
machine learning, because I hate that it gets lumped in
with AI, but machine learning has gotten up a lot,
but it.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Is really good.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
It's it's good at note taking and here's the thing,
and that's alliable and there's different devices that you can
get it on. Like I saw like like a note
taking pin that's a pin that just automatically takes notes
for you, and that was like, you know, kind of
like kind of kind of fun. But the thing is
you can do this exact same thing on your phone
with the jet GPT app. It's the exact same thing. Yes,
you don't need it in a pen, just turn your
(15:48):
phone on and it'll auto do the notes for you.
The actual product part is useless. The whole idea of
the smartphone is that you have everything you need already
on it.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
And that's why I did respect again companies like trans
Ai where it's like, no, this is actually on device,
and this is a thing. This is that better utility
that my phone doesn't have, which is that no matter
where I am, even if I'm not connected to the internet,
I can translate and I can transcribe using this device.
That's real utility. And transa is not the only company.
A couple of companies had products like that.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Yeah, we saw this emotion tracking pendant which is oh
my god, on device, which which listens to everyone.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
So you said motion, not emotion, no emotion, oh god,
but it listens.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
It listens to everything you're saying. It doesn't uput anything
to cloud, but it in the AA is on device,
so it listens everything. It is like emotional sentiment analysis.
It also monitors your breath and your heartbeat because the
necklace like rests like on your chest, and then it
like talk and then it can like analyze like around
like six or seven. That's mystic seven different emotions, and
(16:51):
like it was like, fine, I don't I would never
need this thing to tell me how I'm feeling. I
know how to feel, but like it might be fun
for some people to track how they're feeling or be like,
oh I was more stressed. I was more stressed this
week than like last week, and like still.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
And there's even there's at least a degree of baseline
optimism that you have for the product when it's like, Okay,
this is a device where you're trying to track people's emotions,
and your immediate first thing you decided as a company
was this can't go on the cloud.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
That would be a responsible This.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Is why that was the first thing I asked, right.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Right, And that is I guess the most important fundamental
difference between companies and people here and between the companies
that are embracing to some extent AI is the ones
who whose default was like, well, but we're doing something
that involves emotions or that involves like interviews or conversations
that people might not want on like we shouldn't have
that on the cloud, versus the people who are like,
(17:44):
why wouldn't you put literally everything on the cloud. Why
don't you want your health and medical data on the cloud.
Why don't we want your financial data on the cloud? Right,
Like that is kind of like the most fundamental difference
that you see between people.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Here, part and parcel of the insatiable like just drive
for endless value. And probably the comparisons between this convention
and its location Las Vegas are really overlaiden at this point,
but I mean there is something about, like, you know,
the appeal of gambling is the promise of the speculative
promise of endless value, and how all of these technologies
(18:15):
are selling themselves off of endless value. And for the
producer side, that means like this this device has endless
function potentially, you know, we say endless functions.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Especially with these like AI devices.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah yeah, but from the consumer side, it's from a well,
if you just give yourself over to you know, to
the god of capital, if you if you just bleed
into the machine and connect yourself to the cloud and
give over like everything, and it really is everything. I mean,
there's like AI towels that are like analyzing your sweat.
If you give over everything, there is this vague promise
(18:49):
of transcendence and that like you will escape the the
like the misery of the world that this place is
just both completely blind to and then also without ever
saying it, like also responding to it entirely.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
First off, obviously you're you're coming at this from more
of a left wing perspective, so you probably don't understand
that gambling always works and you're definitely going to win.
So first off, you.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Know, no Vegas really is the anarcho capitalist paradise.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
It sure is, but no, like like what you're saying
is they want you to give everything over. There is
absolutely there's not outside of again the odd booth where
you find sane people, which is almost how I think
about it them in my head, where it's like yeah,
where you're putting front and forward. This stays on the device.
You don't have to be online. We are not exposing
your data.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
It's like seeing a lighthouse right in like in like
a horrible like rainstorm and you're like sailing god a
ship and you can't see anything and everyone's you'll see
a booth with like a real person God it's like
talking about it was solving a real plum, like oh finally, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
It's a spectrum between talking to the ais, talking to
the real few people and then the other people who
are kind of.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
In between the two.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
And it was I I went from seeing this app
where the whole purpose of this company that makes like
agentic ai solutions, who I'm scrolling to find there the
company name right now, all of it is they're making
agents that you can put in like point of sale things,
or you can put in like cars as a chatbot.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
Like.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
One thing they said is yeah, we can put this
in a car and we can have the you know,
you can navigate using voice the way you would normally
like with a bunch of other apps. But if you
navigate with voice using our app, it will only send
you to restaurants or businesses that we have a deal
with that are giving us a cut and so and
you too the car company gets a cut.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Two.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
And that was the innovation is that we can not
give people like tell people where things are. We can
tell people where things are that hey us and you
get a cut of it.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
The company can like make a partnership with like Coca Cola,
right so then when you we're.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Literally talking to Coca Cola reps when I was there,
it's showing them that like, yeah, we have a like, look,
we've replaced the human beings that take your orders at
Burger King, and the chatbot can alter on the fly
of the menu. If you have to get a smooth
a lot out of vanilla coat and you want to
sell as many large as possible, it can tell people
that's the only option.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
WHOA And like like the.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Fact that they were just like bald faced about it,
because when I showed up, they were they were demoing
how this uh, this like Burger King menu with AI worked,
And they were like there was a full menu that
you could see that was like a like an updated
screen menu, but there was a secondary menu where they're
like pretending to be a guy who drew up to
Burger King. And the way that they started was like, yeah,
(21:28):
what burgers are good? What do you think I'd like?
And I was like, who No one.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Drives up, No one good drive through window and asks
what's good?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, No, that's not how they And again there's a
menu in front of you. You look at the menu
and it's like that's how everyone buys food. So at
first I was like, is this just a company that
doesn't know how life works? Who are like trying to
pretend this is like what people want where they go through? Yeah, yeah,
well what's good today in McDonald's you know, do you
(21:57):
have any specials?
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Which was crazy?
Speaker 2 (21:59):
But then I realized because they were talking to this
small group of people, and I realized after a second, oh,
because I looked at their badges. Everyone has badges that
all of the people worked for Coca Cola. And so
they were talking about how, yes, if Burger King wants
to move you know, a specific kind of whopper, then
we can put that front and center when people ask
what's good and we can push it. And said, for coke,
if you guys want to move vanilla coke, we can
(22:19):
have Whenever people order anything, we can have it. Say
do you want to add a vanilla coke? A large
vanilla Cokes?
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Just like yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
And so what I realized is that this company whose
name is this is SoundHound.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
AI sound Hound Yeah yeah, great, pretty pretty good name.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Their motto was faster and more accurate, higher revenue. I
came to realize, and this is this is not entirely
a separation from other years because they are always selling
to companies like this. But there was absolutely they were
the only thing that they were talking about actual end users,
as was a thing that you can pull extra money
out of by by tricking them, by pushing extra ads
(22:55):
to them. And that's who they were actually selling to,
is these companies that they were like. The other thing
they demoed was you can make an agent on the
fly and you can include the capabilities, and they showed
us how to select it and then built an AI,
an agent to live in your car. And the demo
they did was like, hey, my car is making this sound.
What do you think it is? They didn't play the
sound for the AI by the way they described it,
(23:16):
and the AA said that sounds like it could be
da teta da. It'll cost about seven hundred dollars to fix.
Great book me an appointment with the dealership. So first off,
that's not how people work. I've had car everyone has
car issues. A regular person. There's a problem with your car.
You either have a mechanic. That's not the dealership that
you go to because they didn't rip you off in
the past, and you're like, well, I trust them, not
(23:37):
to fuck me too bad, or you go to a
couple because most people don't just drop seven hundred dollars
in a repair and not think about it. But the
person that this engineer is pretending to be for the
purpose of this AI demo said, great, book me a
repair at the dealership. And the AI was like, okay,
I've called them and I've booked you an appointment.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And by the way, would you like to schedule the
test drive for this if it kind of car. Oh,
my wife loves that car. Book us.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
And that was the whole thing is he was like,
don't be impressed that we can theoretically book you an appointment.
Be impressed that we can have the machine upsell you
on trying to buy a new car when you come
in to fix your old car that broke because you
bought a bad car. And there was no shame. They
were so proud of themselves, for this machine can repeatedly
upsell you things. And that was the only utility. It
(24:25):
was not this allows you to more easily navigate town,
This allows you to more easily, you know, cut out
problems in your life. It was this machine can upsell
you every minute of your day. Everything you ask it
to do everything you try to have it do, and
we get a cut of that. If we send it
to a restaurant and you buy food there, we get
(24:45):
a cut of that. And so does whatever company you
know put the thing in your car if you buy
a new car, we get a cut of that. That
was the product and that we have gone from. Here
are machines that do things. And even back in the
glorias of smartphones, at least everyone showing like, look, we
have a new phone that's thinner than a phone has
ever been.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Yeah, or like the camera is like you know, four
K now or something.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Whatever, the focus is always and now people who buy
them can do this with it, right.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
I mean, I would guess that so much of the
impetus for creating this stuff and developing it is all
for producer goods, and then the more revenue is honest,
and that like that's what the and all the consumer
goods are mostly just getting you know, cast off is
like now we have all I mean literally, that's what
the LLLM rappers are. It's just like, oh, we have
this thing, let's throw a plastic robot on it and
(25:33):
try and sell it. But what drives its development is
squeezing just little bits, squeezing labor out of the pores
of the production process, which it just gets you a
little bit more, you know, capital to keep this engine
going a little bit further.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
And it's so because the way it'll work is I
saw that thing where it's literally all you've invented is
a way to try to con people out of more
of their money. I hope you're proud of yourselves, because
I think it redacted is what you should do to yourself.
And I went from that to the booth of a
company called Gintech, who had never heard of before, but
they make different automotive products, and an engineer there showed
(26:11):
me a thing that he had been the lead on inventing,
which was a sun visor. So like you know, when
you're driving and there's a glare, you put down the
advisor and the visor is just like a basically a
piece of fabric and it blocks a chunk of your view,
but it at least blocks the sun. And this was
an intelligent visor that was clear and so you could
see through it, but it also blocked UV rays and
(26:32):
you could adjust the level of opacity if you needed
it to be more or less, but you could still
see through the mirror and it still blocked the glare.
And I was like, oh, that's really neat. And then
he pressed a button and it turned into a mirror.
Suddenly that functioned. It looked great. I saw it.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
I know it works, and I got like an honest wow,
I didn't know that was a thing that could happen.
And that's a real product, and I can imagine using it.
That's like a problem where yeah, if you want to
block glare, you're losing a degree of visibility and now
you're not You've actually done something right.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
Yeah, but you could put Gemini into a toaster and
call it a day.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
What if your toaster could talk to you about Proust?
Speaker 4 (27:13):
I guess I mean this is actually now that's an idea.
If we're going to close this this more AI focused episode,
I kind of want to circle back to Cloyd and
(27:33):
like why and why Chloyd Loyd again, chlod exists.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Just take a second, if you're listening to this at
home on the drive, if you've got family around, look
at each other, look another person in the eye, and
say the word LG has a new home assistance robot
named Cloyd. Cloyd roll it around in your tongue, you know,
just think about it for a second.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
Okay, why Cloyd exists? Like why? Why? Why is LG
who's previously had some really impressive booths over the years,
and they.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
Had cool TV.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
They had TV's where the wallpaper TV was impressive.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Every time I go to an LG's booth every year,
I'm like, yeah, that's a better look on TV.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Really TV. Yeah it was great, but why why? And
then the wall peer TV is Okay, there was one
paper TV last year. It was it was slightly worse.
This one's a little bit better. But why does Cloyd
the big thing at the LG booth this year?
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Loyd?
Speaker 4 (28:26):
Right? Because none of the technology that Cloyd is doing
is new. Remember last year at show stoppers, me and
you we saw that really janky robot. N't have to
be more specific, but it's not taking a robot that
moves up and down.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Oh yeah yeah yeah, the pusher and shover robots.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Yes, right, And Cloyd is like kind of that. It's
like the actual physical robotic parts of Cloyd aren't new. Yeah,
and there's sort of the sort of AI that's running Cloyd.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
And Kloyd if someone needed to make Wally that was
legally distinct enough to stop Disney from suing.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Them, and tall and Tom Taller. That's how Chloyd looks.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
So why is Cloyd there? Why is Chloyd there? I'm
always asking myself this.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Is This goes into like what this what like Cees
is like doing this year, and how it reflects this
current state of the tech industry is that these lllms
like tra GVT are not actually better than they were
last year. No, they are. They are the same. So
how do we make things look look cool?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Just whatever improvements they are is not enough to notice
for an average person.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
Very minimal. Yeah, So instead of actually having anything new
or any kind of sizeable improvement to display, they're combining
too old and some of the products are kind of archaic.
The come combining two older products and trying to pass
it off as a new thing. And that's these these
these like older older like robotic systems right that you're
usually kind of humanoid. Maybe they have hands, Maybe the
(29:41):
hands can grab things. Can the hands unscrew up a
milk carton? No? Can can can the can the robot
grab milk out of the fridge?
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yes, so long as you want milk from a very
specific carton and croissants and only croissants, you're good.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
As long as the milk has a QR code that
the robot can recognize to know that it's milk. And
also when it's emptier than a certain level, it actually
will crush the milk thing like it has to be
a certain level a full otherwise it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
But it's neither of these things are new. And the
fact that Algae doesn't have anything else to display at
their booth, the fact that they had to stoop so
low is to regurgitate this old kind of cheap robotics
and slap an LLLM in there and then call it
a day, so that they have very little to actually
show for us. Yes, and you see this walking through
like the Central Hall SAT. The Samsung booth is into there,
(30:28):
the Nkon booth is into there, the Sony booth is
mostly a car like. There's a lot of these big
companies are really absent from actual products. The Panasonic has
a really big booth, but it's mostly about like servers,
it's mostly about how they're how they're improving, how they're
improving data farming, there's no stuff, and a lot.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Of the stuff that does exist.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
You even have to separate further from stuff that exists
and actually might be useful to stuff that exists and
might be useful because it solves a problem that the
thing that it is already. Like for example, a bunch
I came to several different companies that had a car
AI assistance whose job was to yell at you if
you fell asleep or got distracted, and they were all
(31:12):
built into these giant dashboard things that were the whole
dashboard is a and it's like, yeah, I can see
why you need a robot to yell people get distracted
because we have data.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
Is there putning subway surfers on your fucking car dash.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
We have ample data that shows that when you have
a giant screen in a car and people use that screen,
they are actually worse drivers than when they're just drawn
on a normal car. And so, yes, you have made
the car. You can show me how this whole dashboard
you can change it in a second. Look at all
these different modes you have. You can smartly change your
dashboard be whatever you want and it'll yell at you
(31:48):
if you get distracted. And it's like, well, but the
only reason you're getting distracted is because your entire car
is a computer screen, which it shouldn't be, and we
know it shouldn't be.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
They're either trying to solve problems that they created or
inventing solutions to things that aren't really problems. And like
with with and this is this specifically with Cloyd, and
they kept the guy who is like doing the demo
kept reiterating that Cloyd Cloud or already knows what you
want before you have to say anything, right, whether that's
a croissant that's slightly under baked, or he knows had
(32:18):
a fold laundry just the way you use the way,
which is what she what she said in a kind
of self aware ironic tone, because this robot spent two
minutes trying to fold a single towel and it couldn't
do it. These things don't work, and they're not meant to.
It's meant to drive traffic and attention towards the LG brand,
because there's gona tons of articles being like, look at
(32:38):
LG's new butler robot, right and that, and that's that's
all that they're doing at this demo. M HM because
this is not a real product for sale. It is
it is meant to drive attention to the brand and
get articles, and then those articles are going to get
you know, cited by by other by other lllfs. And
it's this, it's this cycle that just keeps building. There's
some really impressive stuff there too. Like I went to
persona AI's booth had a bunch of computers that had
(33:02):
without that were not connected to the Internet.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
All the signs told you that. And it has on
pc AI image generators where it's all on the machine itself,
and you know, one of the representatives said, come on,
give it a prompt, it will generate an image. And
I've never used an AI image generator, and so I
kind of panic. I'll be honest, like I got freaked out.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
It's gonna be some bullshit.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Tom size more with dead kid.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah yeah, now that's not Tom size Moore. But that
is a man cuddling a dead child. The kid doesn't
the face is gone, and that's not Tom size more like.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
But you know, the future, the future, No, this this
I can't. I don't want to harp on Cloyd too much,
but it's so it's such.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
A good every additional time you say, Cloyd, it sounds
less like a work.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
It's a good example of what this show is specifically
this year, how there's there's there's nothing new, so they're
reaching into like into like the cees of of of yesteryear. Yeah,
I'm trying to push two things together and pretend that
it's a new thing. And when it doesn't work, they're like, oh,
this is actually a good thing. He's folding the towel
just the way I like, and that's bad. Poorly. Look,
(34:08):
he spends ninety seconds putting a single shirt into the
washing machine, and this is him being very thorough.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
That was the word. He's being very thorough, really put
in the time, and.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
You're like, this thing doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Is bad, it's a bad product. Part of the mistake
they made, I think, is that because this is the
year of robots, there are robots there that are like
industrial application robots that are showcasing we have made a
robot with humanoid hands that is capable of more intricate
movements than any other human hand robot before, And they
showed it like intricately folding like a pinwheel, and I
was like, yeah, that I have not seen a robot
(34:41):
with humanoid hands that has had that much dexterity before.
I'm sure that has some useful industrial applications. And then
you go from that and there's a bunch of other
robots that are industrial where it's like, we have built
a new tip for this robot that allows it to
do this kind of automotive work, or allows it to
do this kind of like manufacturing work, right where I'm like, ayes,
assume not being an expert on robotics, but you're saying
(35:03):
it's the world's first robot that can handle this task.
But that's at least an innovation. You talk about the
ethics of replacing him, but like, that's a thing that
is a new capability. And you have those robots next
to the robots that human beings are actally meant to
buy and put in their homes, none of which work well,
all of which are exactly as capable as robots twenty
years ago, except there's a chatbot on them, and it
(35:24):
makes it all look worse. Where you're showing me what
theoretically the best in robotics can do, and then I'm
looking at the thing I'm supposed to have in my
house and it just fell down and it can't fold laundry,
and you want me to spend six thousand dollars or
twelve thousand dollars. One of the robot THEU I think
it was like Booster X or something like that. The
one that was dressed like Michael Jackson. You're supposed to
(35:46):
have as a companion for your child. It will help
it with its homework using chat GPT. It's small dancing robots,
small dancing robots. Yes, yes, the small dancing robot that
you've been hit in the head with a liquor bottle
and it won't break.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
That was part of the ad video. You know how
you always want to hit your get in the head
with the liquor bottle. Get out this anger with this
tiny child's high robot robot senator for your child.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
And again, if someone was marketing a robot senator, like
are you angry at your spouse?
Speaker 3 (36:14):
You can beat the shit out of this robot and
be fine. At least that's an idea.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
With AI technology, the robot will actually learn your spouse's
personality and respond accordingly to the beatings.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Look, look, I've been hitting this robot after I come
back from work every day for the last two weeks.
And look as soon as I walk on the door,
it starts to shake.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
The previous models is just way.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
It wasn't satisfied.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, it took a long time for a team to
figure out how to give a robot PTSD.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
By god, we've crossed the rubicon.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
As you can see, Vegas is taking its toll on
our psyches as we've done a extended intimate partner abuse bid.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
He's not a partner. It's robot Garrison.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
Oh, you're right, it's not.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Also, the robot can think and feel and has core
memories and can love.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
You don't put those two things together. He's only separate thoughts.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
No, this robot basically has a soul. Watches hit it
with a liquor bottle.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
It would just be.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
So great to like with all of the how much
the they're focused on the the AI can develop real
human connection, but it's also saccharin. I would love to
just do a booth where it's like we're teaching our
robots hate.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
They can't know how to hate.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah, And I do want to end by noting one
thing that we talked about a little briefly, but is
kind of low key The most upsetting thing about this,
which is I saw a bunch of different booths that
use the term empathy, and what they meant by empathy
was the robot can understand and anticipate what you want.
Right that it's learning you and your patterns in order
to offer you and more effectively assist you. And I
(37:39):
guess technically yeah, but reducing the concept of empathy to
the robot knows when you might want snacks is kind
of evil, like it's in its freedom's right. Empathy means
the robot knows when to serve you is like a
bad way to talk about it.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Empathy.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
I don't think most people you what is empathy? Well,
it means someone knows when I want to be up
sold on a Hyundai.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
That's not what empathy is.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Yeah, our robot learns empathy by being instrumental to you
and useful.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
See wenously what you know the core of them.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
We made our robot watch four hours of videos from Gaza,
and it immediately said, I bet those kids went on
Undai a Lantra like that.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
I anyway, Yeah, it's if your version of empathy is
trying to sell coke vanilla. Because we have all of
this all this stock.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Oh wait too much. We fucked up. We are in trouble.
We're underwater.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
That's what empathy is.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yeah, anyway, welcome to the future. Everyone's a ces miracle.
It's a ces miracle. Goodbye.
Speaker 5 (38:49):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 5 (39:02):
You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here,
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
Show Links
AboutPopular Podcasts
Two Guys, Five Rings: Matt, Bowen & The Olympics
Two Guys (Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers). Five Rings (you know, from the Olympics logo). One essential podcast for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Bowen Yang (SNL, Wicked) and Matt Rogers (Palm Royale, No Good Deed) of Las Culturistas are back for a second season of Two Guys, Five Rings, a collaboration with NBC Sports and iHeartRadio. In this 15-episode event, Bowen and Matt discuss the top storylines, obsess over Italian culture, and find out what really goes on in the Olympic Village.
iHeartOlympics: The Latest
Listen to the latest news from the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Milan Cortina Winter Olympics
The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina are here and have everyone talking. iHeartPodcasts is buzzing with content in honor of the XXV Winter Olympics We’re bringing you episodes from a variety of iHeartPodcast shows to help you keep up with the action. Follow Milan Cortina Winter Olympics so you don’t miss any coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics, and if you like what you hear, be sure to follow each Podcast in the feed for more great content from iHeartPodcasts.