Better Offline - Better Offline CES 2025: Day 5 - Pt. 2

Episode Date: January 11, 2025

Welcome to Better Offline’s coverage of the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show - a standup radio station in the Venetian with an attached open bar where reporters, experts and various other characters bring you the stories from the floor. In Part 2 of our 5th day covering CES, Ed Zitron is joined by Robert Evans of Cool Zone Media, Gare Davis of Cool Zone Media, Kyle Chouinard of Las Vegas, Nevada, to talk labor, the true vibe of CES, and how growth-at-all-costs thinking crowds out real solutions to problems. And, of course, how much Ed loves everybody.Ed Ongweso Jr.: https://bsky.app/profile/ bigblackjacobin.bsky.social The Tech Bubble Newsletter: https://thetechbubble.substack.com/ David Roth, Defector: https://bsky.app/profile/davidjroth.bsky.social Defector: Defector.com It’s Christmastown Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/its-christmastown/id1407429849 Kyle Chouinard, Las Vegas Sun https://lasvegassun.com/staff/kyle-chouinard/ Gare Davis https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jm6ufvsw3hg5zgdpnd3zb4tv Robert Evans https://bsky.app/profile/iwriteok.bsky.social Phil Broughton https://bsky.app/profile/funranium.bsky.social/post/3kmolcb3bmx2r Our wonderful producer: https://www.mattosowski.com/  --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/  Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitronSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. We're still here. We're still in Las Vegas. I'm still at Zittron and this is still better offline. This is the second episode of Day 5, our last two-parter. And I was trying to think of something like glib and kind of sardonic to say. But I'm just going to be honest, I've had one of the best weeks of my life. I've just been really enjoying myself.

We've had so many really great guests. I've got David J. Roth, of course, from DeFector. Hello. And Edward Anguoso, Jr. Hello. And Carl Shenard of the Las Vegas Sun. And all week has just been awesome people. Kyle, I talked over you.

I apologize. Just saying hello. Yeah, that's enough. So, Kyle, it's Ed's show. Okay, getting ahead of you. No, so you're a general assignment reporter. So what have you been covering at the show? Well, it's pretty unique for me because, you know,

a lot of the media that comes here, from, you know, across the country, across the world, looking at whatever new tech's coming. And I get to cover it from a local angle and how it affects Vegas and specifically, you know, what shown here could be implemented in the city in the next couple years. So can you talk a little bit about that?

I'm a local. Yeah. I'm out in Green Valley. Out of Henderson. Well, no, it's still less Vegas. No age away. Yeah. So, yeah, I was talking to a couple different companies this week.

One of them was autonomous hotel, which is, they call it the first AI powered hotel. Okay, can you define any of that? Yeah, so a lot of what that means is collecting a lot of user data and then using that to personalize kind of the experience of, it's also, it's a hotel slash apartment. So there's going to be some split between there. But for the hotel, it's, you know, like remembering your coffee order,

what direction you like your windows. And then when you come... What direction I like that. No, like if you like it facing south or west or north. Oh, sorry. For your, okay, that makes more sad. For a second, you've been, like, brutalized by CES long enough that I'm just like, okay, man, they got moving windows now.

No, the windows, I'm, I wasn't told this, but I'm pretty sure they're stationary. Well, I'm saying somewhere else. So, yeah, there's a lot of, pretty much just data scraping from the week. They were, I asked about, you know, data privacy and stuff like that. And they were all about, you know, whatever data they collect is the user giving it to them. Do they sell it? I imagine no they said they were

really more re-gifting in this scenario no they said you know they put a lot of emphasis on keeping that data very secure you know I was talking with the culinary union no no but sorry I had to push back

yeah yeah secure is not the same as not sharing it though have they been remotely giving on I mean if the answer is you don't know Yeah, I'm not, I'm not that. No, no, but this is not a failing on you.

This is them being like, thank God, thank God we don't have to say the thing is, which is we are selling this to the points guy and airlines and hotels. Because that's the thing. These hotels around here are like data warehouses. Oh, yeah. The amount of shit they collect on you is crazy, not just through the... I actually, this is a question. Do you know anything about data collection practices here?

And this is, I don't either. So if you don't. Yeah, I'm not super familiar with it. I mean, surveillance is nothing new. in Las Vegas. You know, it's not rare to find hotels working with the government. That's pretty normal. In what ways do they work together?

You know, FBI, if they're looking for something. I honestly don't know the exact specifics. Because I love living here, but I'm also a weird, greasy freak. And I understand what Vegas is, which is you walk in here if you're not been to Vegas, so you haven't spent a lot of time here. There are cameras everywhere. Everywhere you go, not in the rooms, I think. No.

But in the hallways, in the casinos. And there are, you may think that the scariest place cameras can look at you is a bank. It's actually a casino. They are watching. And you can make the glibular, ooh, the eye in the sky. No, for real, though. It's one of the safest places to be. Yeah.

Because they are watching you. And they're watching you because you could do stuff with their money, which is not good. But anyway, continue. So you've seen this AI-powered hotel. Yeah, and it's opening next couple months. Which one? Where is it? It's actually by a Legion. It's like a thing like a mile away from Legion. It's not on this trail. Oh, so it's one of the closer places. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's fucking walking to Legion's fun. I have season tickets, man. I want to die. Can you walk it?

You can walk from the MGM? Yeah, I, it's not Delano anymore. It's W. But I usually we just parked there and walk. Okay. It's, I went to the Syracuse game, so. Yeah, this is a, like, a question that I have always sort of struggled with here as a, and, you know, in Los Angeles as well, any of the sort of, as a New York person, that, like, I like the idea of being able to either take mass transit or walk to a thing,

and yet, like, Las Vegas isn't big enough, like, theoretically, like your phone will tell you that's a 45-minute walk, and yet I feel like most of that is just fully impractical. Yeah, I mean, I... It isn't that bad to get to, though. I was talking with, um, Oh God, what's the CTA, not CEO, the other guy? Oh, I do not know. Don't worry.

I was talking to him and he was like, you know, I was asking for a bit of advice on CES and he's like, every walk is longer than you think it is. That's actually great conference advice. Yeah. So, but I'm still kind of confused. This AI hotel. What else does it do other than allegedly remember my preferences?

Because I have an idea. You could have some sort of data base of sort, a place for data, data, and you could put the data in that base, and then you could simply remember which way my thing. What does AI do with this bit? So a lot of it's with their app. So they have this thing. It's key.

It's key, it's key, it's key, K-E, where they described it as, I have it here, a 24-7 butler in the palm of your hands. Amazing. Sure. So it's just a lot of the requests that you'd be making, not really having to go through human just saying it into your phone and right but this doesn't add functionality to the hotel surely because a butler brings

you things yeah so a lot of the functionality is just I guess having to avoid humans I mean I asked them about that like hey how many humans are going to be working here and it's around 30 which is not a lot that's what they told me I want to see for myself

this isn't your company don't worry I'm not mad at you but this is like a full time and part time employee That's what they say. At a big, like, Las Vegas scale. 300 rooms. It's not that big. That's still pretty big.

Oh, yeah. That's 10 rooms. But a lot of it also is apartments, and you don't need as many stuff. It is funny that that's, like, basically where the AI thing goes from being like, it's like, you know, an application on your phone. It's like that, but it's AI. Suddenly, like, you get to where the actual rubber meets the road on all of this stuff, which is fewer people. I am going to stay there, and I am going to do an episode. And I'm going to have a piss fit.

You're going to disappear. Well, I will be disassociating. But that's so... It's just frustrating because it's like theoretically an AI hotel could work in the sense that if there were defined user preferences, that they could just kind of move around them. I'm not talking about generative AI.

I'm talking about theoretically algorithms that are capable of knowing a user's preference, but only in a much larger hotel system, like, I don't know, Marriott. Yeah. Well, it's interesting you say that, because I asked them about that. I asked, you know, is there any interest from hotels in the area? And they said, you know, currently we're trying to get everything up and running and ready to go,

but that there was a lot of interest from other hotels in kind of the system you're making. And right after I got on my interview, I saw someone from a Vegas hotel, a representative from a Vegas hotel come by and talk. Because this isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility for thinking about Marriott, for example. They have, I don't know why I'm talking up like a publicly traded hotel firm, but like Marriott's pretty decent, like you can put your shit into it.

And the frustration I have with the AI part is that, yeah, I've specified what kind of hotel, pillow even, very different from a hotel, that I like in a hotel stay. I'm just not sure what else this does other than what Dave is suggesting, which is what if we just had less people? Well, it's the same thing as the stuff

that we were talking about yesterday with the smart homes. There's a lot of that with AI-related stuff. And it seems like some of it, it's like a degree of convenience that like doesn't just verge upon, but like goes fully into infantilization or just like. Which is a place where you get infant.

Right. That's more of what you would, in some ways like it makes more sense with a hotel. Isn't that what a hotel's for? Yeah, exactly. Sort of, right? Like you're removing variables from the equation. But it also feels like there are very obvious

AI things a hotel could do, such as making check-in quicker. Making sure... You check in with their eyes. Making sure... No, but making sure the cleaning is done based on when... Like, I don't know. I'm... I ain't no tech doer, but...

I don't know if I had an algorithm that would say... And I'm sure Vegas has these where it's like, okay, we have a hotel of excise and Y number of people come in on a Friday, so we can say that we need this much, but we have this one person to say. Oh, yeah, Vegas definitely has that. Yeah. So this isn't that. No.

This is about more the experience for the person by... And I mean, to be fair, a lot of hotels, and I talked to a professor, I talked to a lot of people about this, a lot of hotels have just a billion different legacy systems running every single function.

Which feels like the things to upgrade rather than this. Which is, and this is, that's kind of their point. Is that what they're trying to do? It's one completely integrated system for the entire hotel. You know, point of service, everything is connected to each other. They're going to have so much

fucking trouble selling now. So, yeah. Sorry, just, there's no way. It's why we have airlines on 90s computers. Like, you think the, the Grotsie system of Venetian? Yeah, people know I use the Venetian a lot. Do you think they're going to upgrade an entire multifaceted system?

It seems like an unrealistic proposition. Yeah, when I was talking to a professor from UNLV, great guy. You're a real journalist also, very clear here. This guy's great. I'm trying to be very, very accurate, my wording. One thing he told me is that that's one of the main reasons. I mean, hospitality is, Vegas kind of unique, but hospitality is industry is not known for being on the cutting

Yeah. It's known for kind of, not that I swear, it's saying, being very stubborn and not really changing it. And one of the reasons they're kind of stubborn and don't really adapt to the times as quick is because of that. Because there's a million systems interacting with each other. And when you change one, oh God, that took down everything. It's an equilibrium thing. You can't just mess with one part of a hotel. And that's kind of why, like, for a new hotel, for them, it's like, okay, let's not make a billion systems and then have to integrate.

them all later. Let's just get it at the outset. They can't be the first windows of hotels, though. They cannot. Yeah, I'm not sure if there's other companies having that, but they were emphasizing that quite a lot. I'm just imagining startups will do that. So what else have you seen? Moving off of hotels. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the

most interesting things I saw was from this company Sorensen, which I believe is based in Utah. They're at West. And so we were talking earlier about this being kind of like a decent use of AI. Like there are still good uses of AI. No, I would love to hear them. And so it's a real-time translator that works for specifically for like longer form presentations

in a city like Las Vegas that's obviously very important we you know we have a convention authority and the way it works is that once it's set up by the event all you do is scan a QR code and then you can have a real-time translation of whoever speaking at the front on your phone in I think it's 25 languages and one of the cooler parts about is that they also trained it with different dialects. Okay, I was going to say, so is this generative AI? It's a lot of training, training data. Sure, but is it a generative model?

Is it a newer technology? I believe this is generative model. Right. So my one concern with that, and I'm glad that you mentioned dialects, is everyone that I've talked to about, I can't speak any other languages, I can barely speak English. I thus have no experience with it, but everyone I talked to is like there are these subtleties. Yeah. And it sounds like, so how, with extra dialects? So it's, like all good things, it's a very human solution to that where they just have a lot of really trained people that,

you know, pretty consistently are checking the models to make sure that they're working. It's not, they don't just set it to the side. They were really big on this. They don't just set it to the side and hope it works, that they are pretty consistently checking it with a group of trained professionals. One of the reasons I love having you here is being able to respond with this, which is Vegas is quite intolerant of bullshit. Weird for this place. It's the, you can bring whatever you want to CES, but it's like, oh, you want to sell to our beautiful casinos

with our beautiful slot machines that bring us our tax. We love our money and we can't have that. Thank you. You understand, we love our slot machines. That's why we don't spend, we don't have state income tax. Yeah. Our beautiful slot machines, we love them, folks.

But it's like, Vegas is quite intolerant of just shit that don't work. Because shit that don't work is extremely, unprofitable. Yeah, and when you're working in the hospitality industry, your main job is to keep people happy. And when you run into... Vegas people are babies. And when you are running into tech issues,

and this was, again, this professor, he's giving me all my lines. What was the professor's name? Oh, let me get it up. No, no, no, no, no. Look, this show can be quite cynical and shitty, and I say words that people don't like, and they get upset with me, and they email me every day, and they say,

Ed, I hope you die. Ed, I imagined the Cybertruck hang you. Ed, I imagined a Ford F-150 hanging you. Ed, I thought of a Ford F-150 raptor hanging you. You bounced and you went, ah, I'm in so much pain. What's the professor's name? His name is Mette Erdem. He is UNLV's resorts,

sorry, the chair of UNLV's Resorts, gaming and golf management department. Ed, I imagined a Prius here. Anyway, but that's the thing. I want these people on here because there is a thing I love about Vegas where there is a dishonest honesty where it's just, you can't just fling shit here

because it's a very working class city. It's a very, it's a pragmatic city in many, many different ways. So it's kind of like I'm more willing to humor the idea that they would have this translation thing. Yeah. Just because putting aside all my feelings, Vegas would simply be like,

no, this fucking sucks. It's going to get between the customer and the slot. But I mean, when you're running a, I mean, especially conference like C, CES, having real-time translation when I think every panel's in English. Yeah. Very anglophobic. Well, anglo-sendric.

When, you know, I'm talking people and there's a billion languages here. And you mentioned working class. Another part, this is the first story I'm publishing later, I talked to the Culinary Union about their tech protections. Awesome. Cool. What did they say? So they have, they've been working

since 2018, probably longer actually, but they've gotten protections since 2018, specifically regarding tech replacing workers. With that, when tech gets introduced to, that would affect someone's job, they have to, and they've negotiated this, they get a six-month notice. And part of that, there's kind of two things that come out of that. One, that gives them time to kind of work out the kinks. One example, Ted Papa George, the Treasury Secretary, Treasury Secretary told me was there

was this new system for housekeepers that basically was sending them all across different zones, all across different floors, and they're like, hey, this is, you're going to break the backs of the workers here. Yeah. And so with that time, they were able to get a fix, no problem. And what it also does is that if a job gets eliminated, or if a position is eliminated, that, like, Vegas has a, there's plenty of jobs. Yeah.

So, especially in the hospitality industry. So it gives people the time to find somewhere else within the industry, stay with the union, keep their pension. And there's also a pretty decent severance package if your job is eliminated from tech. That is so fucking cool. Working union, man. No, I fucking accept no substitutes. That's the thing.

Like, I live hearing people like, Ed, you live in a vending machine. That's why I like it. But also, there are actual really strong unions here who will fuck your ass up. I've been covering it Virgin. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, well, what's the strike? I care way more about that than the do-des.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they've been on strike for a little bit now regarding... Who is this? This is Virgin Hotels. Right. With the culinary union. The latest proposal, and this was from a little bit ago, was... Well, the original proposal, I believe, was no raise for the first couple years of the contract.

And this was from Virgin. From Virgin. And then the secondary proposal, at least the secondary proposal, all I heard about is a journalist, was a consistent 30 cent per hour raise per year. Wasn't the argument from Virgin they couldn't afford anything? Yeah, and honest. How true was that? So it's hard because the...

They're a private company as well. Yeah, so kind of. So they used to have their casino run by Mohegan, which you can look like the tribe. Right. So like you can look at that data and their casino earned, I think it was the only one that was, I think, losing money.

Wow. Which isn't great. So, again, they do have a point. Like, Virgin is not a super successful hotel when it comes to its casino. But what the union keeps pointing at is all, you know, these giant corporations, a lot of them in, there's a what? It's the Leuna Pension Fund, one of them in Canada that owns the, owns the hotel, is part of the ownership group. And then there's another company called Fengate. So, you know, the company points.

to, you know, we're an off-strip property, we can't give you strip pay. And the union's pointing at their management saying, you definitely have the money. If you want to invest in Las Vegas, you have to invest in the workers. And they've consistently said, go back to Canada. Yeah, so I just want to be clear. Kyle can't say this and is no way offering any opinion in what I'm going to say, which is solidarity now. Fuck you, Virgin. Now, moving on, what What else have you seen at the Vegas-related while you've been here? Yeah, so the other major Vegas company I was looking at was a robot company that's been here for a while. That's rich tech.

Okay, tell me about them. So they work on a couple different things. So you have like this Adam, it's called Adam. It's a bartender robot. And when I was at the booth for CES, it was kind of interesting because I didn't see demos of the robot making drinks. But it was a bartender. Yeah, it's like a bartender. So it has two arms.

It can do everything. And the thing that was surprised me was, like, the main thing that brought people over to the booth was when the robot was dancing to Apatou by Bruno Mars. And I think Rose. I'm not familiar. I haven't listened to a song since 2007. It is funny that they had the robot bartender not making drinks, but it was like. It might have been at some point when I was there. It was consoling another robot.

Everyone was cut off. You are better than her. Yes, the stripper loves you. Oh, God. Go back to hustler. So, but the thing, it was interesting, because it was drawing a crowd by its little dance with the music, and I was talking to someone with the company,

and they were like, you know, the show of it, the spectac. Because I asked, like, you know, at what point do we get past the spectacle and into just being there? Thank you. And he's like, spectacle's part of the cell. This is Vegas. Right. You just say the quiet power.

Spectacle is part of the cell. Yeah, yeah. That's also CS too, though, right? Like, it seems like all of us stuff. Yeah, but Vegas is honest about it. Yeah. Yeah. And then they had another system that was a lot more utilitarian.

You also, by the way, can find some of their robots at all the Boyd gaming, or not all of them. What are the Boyd Gaming for those? That's like the off-strip, that Sam's Town and those ones. Somebody was telling me about it the other day. It's at the Orleans, Alliante. I might be pronouncing that wrong. Sorry, I'm new here. And Suncoast.

Cool. So they'll have like delivery robots like delivering food. And then this other robot's Skylark. And that's more like getting a robot to clean floors and make deliveries and stuff like that. And so, I mean, you know, like all things, the main, one of the main things preventing it from mass adoption is price. What was it? They used to have a lot of robots used to be like you just, it's like I think it was like $180,000. But now they're working on.

off more of like a subscription model. Oh, baby. Much of that. Many such cases. What can this robot do exactly? So you have the bartender robot, which is, I have the prices. Can it tend bar? Like clean?

I mean, like, actually serve drinks reliably? How does it accept the drink order? I'm not sure about the- I'm aware of how drinks are made. I know. He's doing like the drink, miming. Make it a little hand motion. And you also probably, does it also come with like an

inventory system Yeah, like how does it know? I'm not sure exactly how it's inventory system works, but I know for like tipsy robot, which is kind of like the other, that's actually at the Phoenician. Yeah, there's one downstairs we saw it. And that has like...

That's like a point of sale system where you just kind of like tap on a tablet and it gives you the drink. So I imagine it would be something similar to that. I'm not positive, but I imagine it's probably a similar system to tipsy robot. Because it feels like it probably, it's probably not too hard for them to be like,

Okay, as long as we catalog and keep every single drink in a certain place, and maybe if you, like, make a request that's outside the bounds of the inventory, then it says, do you mean? Yeah. Would you rather? Right. I feel bad about these, though, because there are two cities that have my heart, New York and Las Vegas.

Those are my favorite. I got here in a weird way, and I will probably leave here in a weird way. But the thing is, the bartenders here are fascinating. Oh yeah, fun to talk to. I don't want a robot replacing them because first of all, I don't believe the robot would do as good a job. But also, that was not me coughing for any ironic reason. I really was just coughing.

The bartenders hit rock. But also, like, the accumulated experience of witnessing Vegas is what makes a bartender marvelous. It's all about people watching. Yeah. But also people experiencing. Yeah. This kind of comes back to another one of the things that we kind of keep bumping up

against with going down there is this idea that somehow the important thing, I understand it from a business perspective, but from any other perspective, the idea that you want to remove human interaction from every process and every transaction? The thing, I keep saying this, I ask them about that. And both this company and I think Atomans also said this. They don't want to replace humans. They want them to work alongside them. They want to augment them.

The phrase I was told was co-bub. Well, that is... A little parallel place. It's Cobot. So instead of it being a robot replacing you, it's one you work with. That is loathsome. I don't like the idea of like, unless the robot is like doing annoying things. You don't want a robot understudy?

No. What if it just sat on your arm and looked at you and blinked some? These stories, Popple. No. Was that the pet? Yeah, yeah. We've heard good things, weirdly. Like, previous episodes,

yeah, they're kind of like, look, I was not initially that into the idea, but it's very large eyes. Like, people are really... I have my cat and I love my cat. Yeah, right. I'm saying a lot of people are willing to settle for living things.

But, yeah, that... The Cobot thing. I just, also, it sounds like something said by someone who has not worked a job in a while. It also sounds like the hyperloop shit, where it's basically, it takes two people. to get two people into a car that then takes them someplace.

It's not... And then you had the ProPublica story that came out this week. About... Which was? About Elon. What about him? Did he do something bad? Did Elon...

Don't tell me if he did something... What the fuck up? Elon! Do something against labor rights? No. Let me... Oh, yes. I got to ride the Hyperloops when I went over to the convention center yesterday,

and it was fully the dumbest shit I've ever done in my life. I really loved it. I thought it was amazing. Yeah, I need to give this a proper read, but ProPublica published a piece called Elon Musk's boring company is tunneling beneath Las Vegas with little oversight. Oh really? Well, I'm sure they're probably doing a good job. That's

the weird thing, though. It's like this city seemed more resistant to that kind of stuff. Are they just letting him dig tunnels because it gives them money? Well, I mean, it's I have not covered this enough to answer that. That's fine. Sorry, I must be clear. I'm not holding you to account here. You didn't

do the reporting. But it's just like, it feels like such an aberration because one of the things that destroys people about Vegas is that everything is convenient at all times. Everything's 15 minutes. Exactly. Thank God damn. It's so good to have real resident here.

I've been here five months. I've been here three years, baby, and you know it better than anyone. And it's like, wow, I can have Diet Coke whenever I need to. The problem is there are people who have other kinds of Coke they can get in 15 minutes. And then there are other proclivities they can fuel in 15 minutes. Is this what they mean by 15 minutes? cities when you hear that phrase. Yes.

That's what it is, right? Yes. This is the author. 50 minutes. It's a thought of play. It's a 15 minute city run by cars. Yeah. Actually, that's really weird.

I'm so glad you're on the last episode. This is valuable information about Vegas. The thing is the result of every proclivity, Jesus Christ, being available at all times, is that Vegas is just like, nah, man, I understand you've got this new tech

and you're very horny and you raise all this money, like very exciting. However, you're between the beautiful slot machines and our beautiful customers who are anyone who is here, and they ain't going to Prim. Yeah, Prim had a pretty bad, I believe that had a pretty bad gaming report come out recently.

By the way, if they ever find a way to get people quicker to Prim, $100 billion industry. I'm just giving people ideas. What's Prim? Prim is a city that is far further than it looks. Oh, it's Nevada Neum. You guys did one of those?

That's cool. No, yes. in the sense that there is a strange authority with money that has created the city just a prince from Qatar you know he's also mistaken he's ambitious it's strange but I don't have enough prim expe

you should do some shrooms and go into the city and find Pram like it's Alderran go to the gas station let's find Silicon Valley's Eldorado let's go but the larger point is that Vegas is intolerant of things not because of good or bad

but because of efficiency Oh yeah, it's all about efficiency. And that's the weird thing. CS exists in this very inefficient way here. And it's just, Vegas is like, I'll take a little. Well, yeah, I mean, it might be inefficient for the tech industry, but it's a great moneymaker for the city. It's a really imagine, which is a great description of Vegas.

I mean, this may destroy you, but. It may not be great for, you know, there's AI being put into everything, all that stuff. But, I mean, look, it's. a very large conference that the city makes good money off of. And we just had a recent F1 report or recent November gaming revenue report. And F1 not performing the way people want it to. So, I mean, these conventions are in, I mean, they keep the city afloat. Especially, I mean, when people couldn't travel here in 2020, I mean, I wasn't here, but I was thinking about it.

Yeah, then you know. It's so strange. But also the depression here was. It was terrible. Like, this is a working class city. And when you think about CES, you think, a lot of engineers and such. Vegas is a place which is very working class and the effects of these conferences are quite pronounced. Yeah. And it's important. It's important

for the city. So very meaningful ending for a third of the episode there. Mr. David Roth, where can people find you? Defector.com, the website. And I do the distraction podcast there. Well, you're on. Okay. Well, just move past that. So you messed up the order there.

Oh, I did. I'm sorry. No, no, no, no. It's gone. I don't get any second shot at this. Or not. Work of people. Yeah, take it over. I'm still... I'm still... I'm still on a podcast. Cut it.

I'm still on X, believe it or not. I... The everything app. Yeah. I'm on there too, but I only... Only for banking. I don't really use it for social networks anymore. I put my cat scans in there.

Yeah, right. See what Groc tells me about it. It's like, oh, well. You have disease. Your discs are very chuggy. You get the... Elon Budhead laugh when it uploads successfully. You're like, cool, it's processing.

Hey, Kyle, where can people actually find you? Kyle underscore Shenard, C-H-O-U-I-N-A-R-D. And then Las Vegas sun.com. Or just Las Vegas Sun.com. Edom Guaiso, Jr. I am on Twitter and Blue Sky and the Foreign Agent Registry

at Big Black Jackapin. I won't say for which country we can guess. For my newsletter, it's the techbubble.substack.com. And for my podcast, this machine kills. You can find me at where's your head. dot at for my newsletter. And the podcast is called Better Offline.

And you're thinking, this seems way too honest for it. What's he going to do to me next? And the answer is nothing. This is a clean break. We're about to go to some advertisements. And you're going to listen to them intently. or else you are committing crimes against me. And I know you love the crimes you do on this show.

You love to fill up the Reddit, something that will be called Exhibit A through Z. And I regret the crime jokes, but I'm not going to stop them. Anyway, the following ads, very legit about companies or podcasts. You're going to listen to them, download them. I won't feel any pain by their products. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and whole. hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

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the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger.

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Jacob told Levan, you're ruining my life. Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And we're back. So we have replaced David Roth using science with Gare, Davis, you are here for me. It could happen here. I am. The Cool Zone Media product. We're colleagues. How are you doing? I'm so tired. I've walked so many steps this week. I feel like I have new energy. That's the problem. I'm going into the last day with more energy than I

had when I arrived with it. That's another CES miracle. It's beautiful. Carl Shenard from Las Vegas Sun. Hi there. And of course, Edward on Guaiso Jr. That's really bad. Yeah. Kyle, you were at the same panel. Tell me about this panel. So it was this panel done by a number of tech companies. Adobe had a spokesperson there, as well as one of the DHS science and technology representatives. It was ostensibly about deep fakes, AI generated information and disinformation and misinformation. And I've been to a lot of these panels over the years. I went to one. last year at CES, put on by Deloitte. That was actually okay. And then I went to a few at the RNC earlier last year. Right. And that's the Republican National Convention.

Correct, correct. So, you know, it's a good panel for journalists to go to, speaking of disinformation. But yeah, this was on Thursday that we were, we walked into the LVCC, went to this panel, and it was one of, One person in front of me did fall asleep. Yeah, I thought it was... What was the panel about also?

It was about misinformation, disinformation, and deep fakes. And I think if you didn't know much about it, it probably could be a little helpful. But for, I think, a CES audience, maybe not as much. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was talking about, you know, various tools to identify, like, AI-generated or deep-faked, like, information or, you know, pictures, video. and a whole bunch of the previous visual tactics, a few years ago, it's pretty easy to spot an AI image.

It's maybe slightly harder now. It depends on the model. With how fast that is developing, especially for stills, it's going beyond like visual detection. You have to actually create tools to detect this. And those tools can also be prone to false positives. And false negatives.

And so there's this another technology that a whole bunch of companies, like Microsoft making a big push for it, as well as Adobe, is kind of like a build-in systems for when you generate AI content that clearly identifies it as such in the metadata. And that's something I heard a lot about last year, and they talked about it here. I think they called it Providence. Providence, yeah. Providence was the word of the day. Yes, that was the word that they used, was these Providence systems

as opposed to like a detection systems, which is like post post-hoc, you know, we will use that against, you know, or suspected AI content that was, you know, maybe not generated with this built-in information. Yeah, so how was the panel, though? Was it useful? Like, did it make profound statements,

or was this more CES law? I mean, I wouldn't call it CES, slop. Because there's the ones where you just sit there for half an hour and go like, well, that was half an hour, I could be doing something else.

Yeah, I mean, it was good for learning the basics, and they talked about, you know, how, like you mentioned, it was a lot easier to detect things a while ago. One thing I wish they, and this is not what you're really your question, but one thing I wish they did talk about was just how text-based

a lot of this, like AI misinformation is. Yes. Yes. Like, it's a lot of the misinformation that gets published. I mean, if you go on XV Everything app. As I do for my banking. Of course. I mean, I go into, I can't even read the comments anymore

because I have to scroll through a billion blue checks. And so many of them are just like obviously AI generated based off analyzing the image and then writing the most basic comment possible. So I wish there was a little more focus on that, if you want to do anything. No, sure. I mean, like, that is, that is a massive section of it. And this is something even I asked a question about at the Republican National Convention at Microsoft's panel being like, you have all these tools for like AI images, right? You know, images of politicians and in debauchrous acts, you know, all these sorts of things. But they also advertise like AI's ability to make specifically, like, like a specific, like a user specific political like press releases. Basically like like, like, like, like, you know, like a, a, like, a, like, a, like, a, like, a, like, a, like, a user-us specific, like, like, you know, like, like, like, a, like, like, a, like, like, like, a. a campaign can send an email based on a voter's profile that can be tailored using AI to specific voters. And like, what could go wrong with that?

And also... Do you mean creating data to specifically push voters in one direction? Well, yes, but like, you know, like... They'd never do that. If you're working for a campaign and you want to target specific voters, you can analyze their social media presence, you know, whatever kind of information about them is in certain data sets that can be bought and make an AI written press release specifically for them.

And this is something I also asked a question about. You're talking about these AI metadata watermarks for images. But what about for text? How will I be able to know if an email I'm getting from a politician was written by a person or written by a robot? They're like, well, you can't. We simply aren't going to worry about that. And like, I mean, I walked up to y'all afterwards.

and I was like, I guess the lesson is that we're all screwed? Yeah, we all are screwed. I mean, that was the main takeaway. That was what the DHS was saying. Which I was like, maybe, oh, God. That was the main takeaway I had was everyone pretty much saying, like, this is going to get worse. And it's an arms, and like all this stuff. It's an arms race.

And it is. And, like, you know, they gestured towards, you know, quote unquote bad guys or like, you know, foreign state actors. Specifically, Iran does, you know, a lot of work on this, Russia. but I think in some ways to focus on those two might be kind of lifted as the new administration focuses more on China but specifically for like disinformation using AI tools Iran and Russia like the past year

has been like the main players targeting US voters it is so wild we just have this is a real dumb guy statement do we just have other countries who are just fucking with the US citizenry and it's just like a thing that happens Oh yeah, it's a huge. It's like a, it's a huge project.

But it's not considered an act of war. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's an extension of like Cold War stuff, right? Like it's... So we just have wars that are like not really. Yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much. I mean, I'm also describing how colonial Britain worked by paying people not to like teach people to write. So I realize I'm like the Bill Belichick of atrocities here. But it's just very frustrating to hear this stuff and not really.

really know what to do about it. Because it could happen here. There's amazing work on disinformation. Something to do about it. As like a person, okay. No, but no, no. Okay. It is a huge problem and there really isn't much to do realistic.

Like, we have tried to make fact checking work the past few years. And I don't think Americans are that much better at identifying false or genuine information. Like, fact checking has kind of failed as a, as like a large, as a large project. Yeah. I almost feel like what they actually needs is vibe checkers. I mean, they need someone to tell you. No, but it's why do I feel bad looking at this? What I'm saying is everyone needs therapy.

Jesus Christ. And astrologers and psychics. State mandated therapy is the solution here. Yeah, definitely. A state mandated vibe checker. Is this real? I'm going to apply to be Trump's vibe checker. What do you think about this?

It's not getting me good vibes, boy. It's giving me the egg. It's a big egg. Don't like it. Don't read the end of Jiu-Jitsu Kaysen. It's a very disappointing manga. Very unfair. The end of demons laugh, far better.

And I will get seven. Similar. Terrible ending. They took out the U.S. superhero. Only JoJo's bizarre adventure is holding up. For me, it was normal. I didn't know both of you were weaves. This is interesting.

I am a. I am a... I just appreciate other cultures. Oh, I don't give a shit. I'm a huge weeb. Do you know what I'm wearing? I was wondering if that was a reference. You look like you might hunt something.

Explain this one, Gere, because I actually don't... No, I... Good a guess. No, no, it was like that one? No. It's a chainsaw man, right? No. Oh, I thought you were one of the agents.

It's one of the club ones. Orrin High School host club. Yes. One of the host club ones. Yes. Just to be clear, Gare is the best dressed of any of us and also fucking rocking like an actual manga-related

outfit and nailing it. I spent a lot of money on this. As you should have, it looks great. I found a very nice blue blazer that I defaced by putting on the Oren patch. Describe this is good. This is good. I've been admiring your fits.

I feel like back home, I'm usually dressed the best dress. I'm about to say dress best. You're just great. Your pants are fantastic. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. But no one's saying think about me. Your leather jacket's good. The boots are good.

Thank you. Personally, I think you should have gone with the aviator shades. Personally, I think you should have gone with the shade. The aviators. I'm here to interview you. I would love.

I'm not curious with sure, but. I was talking about this with my boss, Robert Evans last night. We should bring the menswear guy here one year and have him walk around CES. Oh, my God. You have anticipated my dynamo.

Ed. Oh, that's such a good. He is also not cheap. Oh, no. No, he won't, no, Derek Guy is a legend. I love him. And he also knows what he's worth and should. He should.

It's a pro-labor podcast. Is that his name? Derek. Derek. Derek. Which is so fucking funny to be like the menswear guy and your second name is guy. Very cool. It works out.

He nailed it. He nailed it. No, I would love for him to walk around the show floor. I think it could do some real psychic damage. No, but the truth. He doesn't rate my fit. I never want him to put his eye of soren on me. I'm terrified.

I say this with my not quite parisocial, but here's my Derek Guy's story. So I lost a lot of weight this year and this is not me trying to actually conjure up people saying anything. I'm fine. What I'm saying is I lost all the weight and I bought a bunch of clothes and I took a picture and I'm like, I still feel like shit. So I emailed Derek Guy as one normally does in tears and I was like, why do I feel bad still? Because I was like, you know what? If he doesn't respond, he doesn't respond. Yeah, yeah.

But if he does, he can help me. deal with something, like an emotional thing where I'm like, I feel better about my body, but I don't like what's on it. And he was like, you have no aesthetic. And he explained the concept of aesthetics. He responded. Yeah, no, Derek's amazing. Okay, he's like the Chomsky of Fashion.

He's super cool. He's so chill. The Dick Monfort for the Rockies fan. I'm going to shoot him an email. Chomsky still respond to emails. Well, the reason he does this is kind of what I was addressing with Gare, which is he isn't there to 86 people. He's there to try and explain what looks and feels good.

And he talks about clothing and social language. And he said, you have no aesthetic. You're wearing, like, trainers with, like, a thread belt. My shit was busted. I looked terrible because of the clothes, not because of me. I would actually love him to do that, but also walk around being like, this shit look fucking good. Because I feel like, and with this show especially, if you're just a hater while loving nothing,

you're just vacuous. Occasionally, you see a very well-dressed Asian businessman. They're fucking rocks. And then you see a lot of Asian businessmen in very ill-fitting suits, but occasionally you'll see one guy who has that shit on. Yes. I did see someone who

had that shit on and they were like looking at other people's fits with disgust. That's what I've been doing all week, baby. Fashion pedants I really just should have gone up to him and talked to him. Yeah, you have notes about the convention we're at. Right. I do. This is my actual job. Okay, yeah, I forgot what we're here.

We're just, you know, YAPN. We're just a tech conference. The YAP index is over 5,000 right now. Yeah, Japanese were... No, but, yeah, please. Bring us back to why we're actually mentioned. Well, so I guess one thing I was spending almost all of yesterday doing, as we've been indundated with these AI products, is learning about all of the AI products targeting your offspring, your kids who are being raised now with AI the same way my generation was raised with social media. Nice on a mine.

This is like cocoa melon. shit where it's like put this in front of your kid or it's like device like consumer products for the anxious parent you know both these things kind of these these things kind of overlap um the first thing i did yesterday morning was a hand a panel called raising AI kids responsibly great title because this could either mean you're making an AI child that you get to raise or it's about how do you raise kids in the world at AI now it was the latter I kind of wanted the former. I hate all of it. It was bad.

It was, in some ways it was bad and, you know, a little bit cringe. But there's also some interesting, you know, stuff set here. There was two products that were, that were displayed. One of them was from this company called Readyland, who I believe partners with Amazon. It's basically like, it's an AI storybook that interacts with an Alexa machine. Now, one thing about them that I think is actually really good, they don't, they don't, they don't generate any new AI content. It's just using AI to stitch together,

basically kind of a choose-your-own-adventure book, but for kids to have a physical book that they read with the Alexa machine, that then can make them talk to characters, change the story in different directions. But all the content is pre-baked. It just gets assembled in different ways. Just one idea.

As a father of a son, the son of a mother, a brother of a sister, you can do this thing. when you were reading to your child where you can think of something and talk. This is what my parents did to me.

Imagination. This is what I was thinking about in the panel. I'm like, yes, this is cool. You know, it's safer than a whole bunch of the other stuff I'm seeing. But how this kind of steals away the joy of reading to your kid.

And also listening to their demented little minds come up with extra extension. One of the best parts, when my little brother was growing up, you just don't realize how bad shit a child is. So I avoid talking about. talking about my son in general, I won't name him because I believe he should have his own destiny. But one of the most wonderful parts of being a father is having my son come and talk to me about

something he just thought up. And it will be something Minecraft related. And he will explain something I did not know about Minecraft. And he will like, he will explain something in such detail that I've never even considered in my life. And it's something quite simple. But it's because he's being allowed to go off in these. directions with no prompting, with no...

Yeah, no, totally. I mean, my... It's beautiful. Yeah, and it's like the idea of depriving children of this makes me so fucking angry. Especially when it's targeting like five-year-olds, which is like where it gets more upsetting to me. And taking the fucking parenting thing of having an imagination about what your child could be is so fucking sickening. I'm getting angry. This is, now, unfortunately, like, I actually felt relatively better about this product.

because it's basically kind of just like... I'm not saying it's a visual... It's kind of just like a visual novel of, you know, like those... Like those visual novel games, but you have a physical book that you're reading. Now, compared to the other product called Poe, the AI teddy bear,

which I also saw... Edgar Allan Poe, the classic happy guy. It is so much worse. It is what it sounds like. It's a teddy bear that comes with an app where you can put in certain, like, parameters for like, I want the story starring this character

with this archetype as the villain in this setting, and it'll generate an AI story for your child generating new content. So unlike Storyland, unlike Readyland, Po the AI is actually generating live content unreviewed by,

unreviewed by moderators, just straight to your child. It's $50 on Amazon. You can order this thing right now and talk to it. I'm putting my tongue in my cheek when did I do when I'm pissed off about. I'm like, yeah, where's this guy? going to hang out later.

You're low-key tweaking right now. I'm like, I'm like, uh, names, places. Um, he did talk about,

he's like, you know, like chat TPT does, does have guardrails for content, but, but those guard whales, you know, don't always reliably work,

but they're better than nothing. And, and content moderation is an issue that we're working on. I'm like, yeah, but your product has hit the market. Yes,

like you are selling. Yeah, we're working on the issue. isn't a great answer. No, for sure, not a good answer. And this is something, like,

even the other guy with, like, the AI story book mentioned, he's like, it's pretty easy to make, like, your AI kid's toy not say swear words or even,

even, even, like, talk about, like, sex or drugs. But one thing that's even harder to moderate is, like, what if it says, like, inaccurate

or, or actually, like, like, like, dangerous information, you know, like, what if it goes in a really weird

direction and starts, like, and starts, like, talking about, you should stare at the sun so that you can, exactly, No, but generative AI models, they don't even understand how the training data truly interacts with the system.

Totally. They don't know how this shit truly works. The only useful thing in quantum computing related to AI right now is the fact that they can actually have models that can discern what their training data does. So the idea of my child interacting with them these, I realize now like nothing actually makes me angry other than harms to my child, at which point I might actually go falling down mode. So such a good movie too It's such a great movie So a good movie Now the other

The last thing about this panel Is that it was It actually opened with this person From the company Ido Ido Play Lab Partnerships Who was the first company To partner with Sesame Workshop

To make to make apps for kids So I'm like This is interesting Like Sesame Workshop usually Yeah they consider I consider being like Pretty thoughtful in how they produce

Media for kids And like if they're choosing to partner with this company maybe I'll listen to what they say. And they didn't have anything to sell. They just had data that they've been collecting on how Gen Z thinks about AI, this thing that's becoming increasingly invasive in our lives.

Like, how do we think about it and what do we really want out of it? And some of the way this lady presented stuff was a little bit odd. She kind of presented all of the data findings as shocking surprises, which I think may have been tailored for the CES audience.

Sure, but also, I feel like more attention to the details isn't bad. Sure, and like this is what she said her data like showed. And you can you can look this stuff up on their website. The main question she asked is what if the tech savvy generation Gen Z isn't buying what we're selling anymore? Fucking hell, imagine a customer doesn't want the thing you're building. She said like, you know, Gen Z is typically seen as early as like early adopters, early users. And they usually are.

But they also come with the most amount of informed. opinions about how badly the tech feels, how cringingy it is to use, and how it affects their sense of humanity. So the issue is that they know what's up. They know what's up, which is, you know, that's a vibe. If you're in businesses, it's either a hurdle to overcome or some insights to help you, you know, maybe, maybe pivot or change in a completely different direction. She identified, like, the key areas of tension around AI for Gen Z is, one, creative expression, you know, its ability to, you know, have us feel proud of the art that we make and how it affects human relationships. And she brought up a few questions or, like,

examples of the types of stuff that she's, that she's, like, you know, asking, asking people as a part of this, like, data collection is like, let's say you've, let's say you've had a friend breakup. Would you rather an AI tool, kind of like, like, like, like, counsel you through that process, you know, like, you know, like, the bounce idea is off.

They can try to, try to, like, move on or figure out, like, what happened. Um, or do you want, like,

a temporary friend replacement? Do you, do you want the AI to become a friend for you instead? Would you rather, would you rather that be your friend for the time being?

And like, no, we, we actually don't want AI friends. That's, that's not what we want. Which is a lot of stuff at CES here,

it feels like. A lot of AI this year is, like, is like about replacing human friendship. And it's so fucked up to preserve human friendship.

Right. Sorry. It's fucked up because the idea of tech at least 10 years ago was they would bring us closer together

and would allow for deeper connections. Now it's like, ugh, buddy. Like, yeah, about that. You want to connect with the computer? I mean, this is what

happens when, I mean, all these, you know, this is what happens when everyone starts reading Marcus Aurelius a little too closely. So true.

I don't know that reference. I, I'm an idiot. People need to stop quoting books to me. I think it's good that you don't know this. Is that the guy from Gladiator? Yes. Yes, Ed.

Actually, Russell Crowe did say one of the funniest things on Twitter, which is he responded to one of the CNN reports, I believe, at the time. And he was just like, blocked, plonker. Which is one of the funniest things to say. Anyway, let's just ignore my Willis style. No, but this was the same thing that she was talking about. It's like, you know, this thing where what we're all seeing is like

these AI products designed to replace the role of human friendship. And another thing she presented as like this surprising... Not solving the problem of meeting people. No, no, it's not actually helping you overcome the fact that you like lost a friend. It's trying to be like, hey, it's okay if you lost a friend.

This AI can be your friend instead. Yeah, the solution... Yeah, sorry. I mean, the solution to like this lowliness epidemic, especially young people are going through, I can't imagine is more robots. You know, and... Yeah. One thing I keep thinking about...

I think that's driving alienation. One of these guys who did, who does like these companion bot, chat bot sites, I think character AI, you're like, oh, okay, well, you know, you seem in interviews to be earnest about like people are lonely, maybe we can't replace, but we can offer a salve that helps people get back to the point where they have human friendships again. What does he believe about people? And it's just like, let's hang homeless people. You know, let's murder the poor.

Like this sort of, it's not a coincidence that someone building that sort of firm has such deeply pathological views. And it's so fucked up as well because the idea of an AI you can bounce ideas off of is not inherently a terrible idea. We sit there, we think about shit and the idea of having a log of it. I journal a great deal and I think many people listening to this do. There's an idea of looking at this. But they're like, yeah, what if you're, journal was a person. Now, it gets worse.

Hell yeah. The next thing that you use as an example is like, what if there's an AI that's trained on your preferences, trained on your dating preferences, what you're like aesthetically? Yes. And what if that could instead go on your first dates for you? What? What? I fuck those up on my own.

What if this is literally a black mirror episode? What if this could like handle like icebreaker questions and like get over like hard life experiences to make like easier for you? One of my favorite little perverse things was there's Slavois-Zegh one time said he doesn't like sex. What he would like. He's just a Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalytic. He snicks a lot.

He's, you know, who you mean Zizek? Yeah, Zizek. And he was talking about how the ideal sexual encounter for him is two people taking their sex toys and those sex toys playing with each other. Exactly. And this is the... This is exactly what he's talking about. That's disgusting. And the ideal...

That's perverted. No, the ideal... The pure perversion of that is two people using those sex toys together to get each other off. No, that's great. That's wonderful. That's good perversion. Yeah, this is a pro-sex podcast, Jesus Christ. The one where you send an avatar that is not real.

You threw it in a different room. Completely autonomous from you as yourself. What are you? British evil. Mark of the Beast. And it was odd because this is why what she was saying was so odd because she presented this as like a surprising revelation that. Oh my God. Gen Z would rather live life themselves than have an AI live your life for you.

I can tell you that. And like that was what she was trying to say, but it was so odd having it presented like some like surprising, like exclusive fact that you could only get through like data research. Yeah. And she's talking about like there is like, Gen Z sees value in having like bad dates.

I fucking hate how they're discussing Gen Z. And actually like, and actually like overcoming like challenges in life. And like that's actually a core part of being human. And we don't want that process like smoothed over with, like, tech can't solve the hardship of life. The hardship is part of life. That's what makes life worth living. And like, yeah, how old are you?

I'm in my early 20s. Sorry. I didn't want to get, so you're Gen Z. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you feel about these assumptions? I mean, like, again, like, these are questions that she's, like, that she's posing to, like, you know, focus groups of, of like Gen. But I mean, but I care more about your opinion.

They're really pandering. They're, they're, is it accurate? Well, no, because they assume such a base level of stupidity that they're like kind of offensively like even like framed. The fact that I would be like,

would you rather have an AI go on dates for you? Like, why would you ever ask me that? That's that, that's fucking stupid. Some of the fun parts about romance. Wow, said the word correctly. Robots. They're always saying this about me with how words go.

is fucking up. Exactly. Revealing parts of yourself that get banged off someone you feel bad. You learn about yourself that way. Exactly. And that's what she was saying. It's like,

that's actually what people want. People don't actually want AI to live to like live your life for you. And she specifically provided a pushback against this idea in the tech industry where like the smoothest possible path is the best one. Right.

You want. This is a good panel kind of. You want, you want, to optimize every part of life. And like, what if that optimization actually isn't the point? What if this idea in the tech industry that we have to optimize and smooth over

every hardship misses the entire point of living? And you have all these tech bros being like, oh, yeah, huh, I guess so. Maybe we shouldn't smooth over all the problems. It's like a very, maybe I'm getting this reference wrong. It's a very like Patrick Bakeman-Batman like thinking of like, I am optimizing everything to the T.

and I will keep it, keep it going. I mean, no, specifically in the book. You know, that is like the sort of train of thought he has as he's like kind of emptily engaging with life at the very superficial level while being empty, craving something else. The final point she had is like, and again, this is all kind of pandering

because you're saying like, you're saying like Gen Z, but like this is like across a lot of people. It's like, but she said like, Gen Z doesn't trust AI to, understand the nuance of their lives. And I as a millennial, of course, do. But yeah, so it was not a panel, because on one hand, you have these, like, like AI toys for kids.

And then you have this woman with this company that works with Sesame. And she's like, yeah, actually, Gen Z doesn't want AI to run their lives. And you're like, yeah, who could have thought? So, as we approach the final second of the thirds of people, better offline.

Yeah, where can people find you? Well, I am on X, the Everything App, the Everything app, where to be banking. At Hungry Bowtie, as well as Blue Sky, at Hungryboytie. At Hungrybotai.com. And it could happen here. And the podcast, with me, Robert Evans,

and a few of our other colleagues where we cover sometimes tech, but, you know, politics, culture, disinformation, all that kind of fun stuff that greases the wheels of our society. Yummy. Kyle. I can be found on X, the Everything app.

I agree. At Kyle underscore Shinarid and then my writing's on Las Vegas on dot com. Oh yeah, and Edward L.Gueso, Jr. You can, in the real world, I live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest in Washington, D.C. Zip code 20500. That's a nice neighborhood. It's kind of nice. It's got a great view of everything.

Nice. What else? I'm at Big Black Jacobin on Twitter and Blue Sky. And this machine kills is my podcast. And the techbubble.substack.com is my newsletter. You are approaching the final third of the final two-part episode of the Consumer Electronics Show. And I just want to say something to you, which I'll elongate at the end of this.

I'm so grateful for you giving me your patience with this. I will say, I need you to listen to the ad. I don't know actually what happens after I'm done talking. I never do. Frankly, I barely understand what I'm doing when I am talking because Mattisowski over here heals. Jesus Christ, I can't even say his. We're keeping it. Mattisowski hears me mess up my name, mess up the name of companies, or just mess up a word. But you know, I keep reading because podcasting is in my blood and that's who I am and that's my identity. It's very normal and healthy. Please listen to the ads. Please download the podcast. Please buy the product. If they don't give me another contract, it's going to be very bad. My therapist is going to be mad. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.

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Yep, that's me, Clivert Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show.

This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment. And the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger.

So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me,

your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing,

we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it. and we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person

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he doesn't look back. Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, meeting the president of Turkey. I'm Michelle McPhee, and this is one of the most shocking criminal conspiracies I've ever come across. When Jacob met Levan this went to a billion dollar fraud. But with two kings from entirely different worlds, just how long can their empire survive? The largest tax investigation in American history. You need to tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Jacob told Levan, you're ruining my life. Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcast. So we enter the end of the truly unified end of the Better Offline podcast, this incredible week, and I'm not even going to do any like sardonic shit. I'm just so happy. I'm surrounded by people who are super game to make podcasts too. I'm like genuinely like near tears of how happy I am with everyone being game for this. Everyone has been so amazing. All the journalists who have joined us, it's just been the best fucking week of a week that is generally quite depressing.

Also, it feels like a good point to admit two things. One, I watched Neogenesis Evangelion. Oh, great. And I was a teenager, and I did not understand the subtext. Oh, yeah. So the whole time for most of my life was watching this show and being like, damn, these robots are fucking cool. And then like, some weird shit happened, I guess.

I'm like, okay, but the robots are back. Okay, there's like some stuff from space and there's a big head. Kind of fucking weird, I guess. Anyway, welcome to better offline. I'm Ed Zichron. We are joined by everyone. We're joined by Robert Evans of Cool Zone Media. That's right. David J. Roth, who is going to have to grab the mic.

Hello. Of Defector. Edward Onguoso Jr., of course, will now have to turn another mic. What's up? Kyle Shanard of the Las Vegas son. Hello. And Gare Davis of It Could Happen here, Cool Zone Media and Associated Properties. Hello, hello, hello.

We're at the end of CES. We have one more positive masculinity day coming after this, but this is really the close-out as all of us just slop ourselves into the remaining quarters of this convention center. I could not have had more fun if I tried, but next year I'll try. Robert, how has the show been?

How would you summarize the show? It was great. I mean, obviously, AI is here to stay. This is the worst it's ever going to be. Everything's... Thank you. Only going to get better. and thank God, you know, there's this little kid that I help take care of, and it takes a lot of time, as you know, as a father, Ed, a lot of time and a lot of effort to raise a child, and I'm just excited that TCL has a solution to that problem.

It's what I've always dreamed, which is that you keep like a hamster-like feeder in a water, like you just took up a hose to the room, and you lock the child in with a robot until they're 18 or 20. Like the room. Exactly. Yeah, it's perfect. You know, as long as you get like one of those lights that gives you some sense. sun kind of effect. They won't die probably. And that's ideal. Have you introduced this product? I can talk about it.

I'll introduce. Oh, wait, no, no, we have not. Oh, we're just into the disparagement part of the show then. No, I'll move on. No, I mean. Well, this is in the, we had talked about how like cute little guys are part of the,

like that's, again, enough enough about me. But that like this, the TCL is the most, I looked at this also, and they have like a whole little video of like a tow-headed child interacting with this thing. Yes. And his parents, the kids' parents are kind of like standing off to the side being like super listen. I'm calling my lawyer.

You want to like go to the movies or whatever? But it's the most, it's probably the cutest of the cute little guys. But then also easily the most sinister. The one comes from evil. Yeah, it's the most sinister. Well, Ann, you say tow-headed. I had a disagree with Garrison. So I'm wondering how you thought, because I felt like they cast that child because it looked

like he had leukemia. it definitely well I don't want to say anything bad about the kid right I don't know the kid did nothing wrong yeah yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah he did well what he looked like was honestly the scenario you described which is basically

like we're growing a child the way that people grow mushrooms in their house yes we're going to like a Benet-Loxu experience

okay oh my fucking God yeah huge bags under his eyes never seen the kiss of the son or his mom you do not know what vitamin C is, little

boy, but don't worry. Or D. D. Well, I'm British. The first robot specifically for children that look the way the actor Brad Doroff looks right now is designed for that. I don't know who that is. I'm the host of this fucking thing.

You need to... Okay, so we've also got Phil our bartender, we should talk in. Hello, thank you, Phil. Very good. That's enough. Thank you. I really don't know how to direct this at this. point because I invited like seven people into this.

You can. Okay, well, let's start on an easy point. We'll just go around. Has everyone feeling at this point of CES? We are at the end. Let's start with Gare because you are probably the like second least likely to say something legally actionable. And I realize that is now a challenge.

You haven't had all the conversations I've had with gear? What am I doing? I don't know. I feel fine. I was able to find some cool stuff despite having to sort through lots of slop. There's always one or two gems at CES that makes all of the slop sorting worth it.

So I was happy to find a few of those in Eureka Park. I also had my fair share of fun. No, absolutely not. We're not going to do free publicity. Agreed. That's my job, and it costs money. Anyway. But no, I was also able to have a little bit of fun. As soon as I realized that this show was just going to be last year's show again,

I kind of relaxed myself to being like, I can just kind of do what, I can kind of just like fuck off. So I talked to a flying car company. How real was that? It was real. Hell yeah. Real fake. I was waiting to interview someone and instead, one of their like PR guys walked up to me.

He was like, hey, can we interview you about your thoughts on this flying car? I'm like, absolutely. I wish that happened to me. Like, I would just say, I will kill myself. It was just every answer. The phrase CES miracle gets used a lot. That really was. Did you do it, though?

Oh, I did. Hell yeah. I talked a lot about my concerns around safety for these flying cars. I predicted it has 20 minutes in the air. It was actually a huge drone, and I got exactly right. It was 20 minutes up in the air. It launches from something that looks like a cyber truck.

It launches out of the classic non-blow-up thing. It launches out of the trunk of the cyber truck. You can get 20 minutes in the air and then you're going to crash. Which is my goal. You will have some kind of AI-assisted landing and I can ask them like... So I am crashing.

What's your plan for that? Like what if you're in a populated area and you're like... And they said, no, we'll have guardrail software to make sure it doesn't land in populated areas. So like... We have some of the people... from Knight Capital.

I'm launching this thing right in the middle of Midtown Manhattan. No. I'm going to do hover for 20 minutes, which brings me to the second thing that they asked me about. It was like, like, what's, you know, what's maybe some of your concerns

or like, what's the first thing you think of? I'm like, well, a few weeks ago, a few weeks ago, a Deloitte consultant drove a car into like, into 15 people in a, in a terrorist attack. Right. Like, same day, someone used a cyber truck to make a bomb? What if some rich guy loses his mind and flies this thing into a building?

And they did not like that. Why? I don't know what kind of PR training these guys had. I don't know if they were prepared for that. Obviously good enough PR training that they're like, this person seems nice. Let's ask them what they think. Turning to my client, just kill you, kill, like just gun in your mind. Just don't, don't answer die. Like, it's the best way you could go about this. That you would get into commercial aviation and not have an answer to the 9-11 question is just... That's in the past. So I was able to relax and have fun, you know, with moments like that.

You had fun. You know, once it became cleared, it was just like, you know, like, AI software was like the king of this year once again. A whole bunch of things that used to be like, you know, actually kind of, like, all of the, like, university projects in Eureka Park, which sometimes has like a really cool new thing. Right. Now all of that creativity is being, is just. just being channeled into AI software. And that's in some ways disappointing to see

some of the software is like good, like it works. It can solve problems. But it's also, again, like it's part of the slop. There's also a lot of slop software. I feel like we're in the slop society. I feel like we're at this point where everyone here, I think, is experiencing some form of mental damage from being here too long.

Oh, yeah. But also the thing. Not me, baby. To be clear, this is the one commonality. I have with Robert, which is, Robert is the only person I've seen exhibit the same thing of, like, the Joker's feel,

where you're just like, you're like, it gets worse and I get better. I'm just fucking suffer, and like, the more I suffer, the stronger I get, and the more intrigued I get with the more pain I get. He's also the only person that I saw that I recognized on the floor of the South Hall of the convention center where it was just, like,

cell phone cases. Like, not technology, but just, like, Chinese stuff designed to be sold on Amazon. That's where Robert does his best work. And he was, like, locked in. I was like, hey, and he got, like, some of the way past me. He was like, do you fucking need something or whatever? It's like, oh, man, from yesterday, the same table that we were at.

Oh, my God. Well, in my defense, there were really huge cell phones there. Like, massive. Like, literally an inch and a half thick, rugged cell phones. Okay. I had to look at them. I had to touch them. We're not reporting on them.

I have nothing to say about them. I had to feel them. Are we establishing that, Robert Evans accidentally big times people. Is that what we're saying here? I did not feel big time. I was just like, damn,

this guy is like on another level. I will give, I will give the most derisive view of, I did not know who Robert Evans was before August 2023. A fact I am regularly reminded of by everyone else I mentioned Robert Evans too. Oh my God, the behind the bastards guy. And I was like,

eh, this is a fucking guy with a weird avatar. Oh, you want to do a podcast, but take. Fucking that. What are you going to do about it, mate? Oh, need money.

It turns out, I heart radio corporation, thank you, no negative statements right now. All of you actually need this. But nevertheless, it is really fun being here with Robert, because Robert, again, is one of the only people who experience this CES in the way I do, which is the Metallica song Frantic, where you're just like, it's not great, but you're here. Oh, yeah.

And it kind of bangs, but not for the reasons. Everyone else feels. Totally. St. Anger fans line up all three of us. but it's also really fun being here this time because last year I was but a babe and very nervous now I'm just like oh no you you wade into it with like your pants off like you're just like I will see everything

and speaking of Metallica I heard a pretty good master of puppets cover at the MGM grand in the top three covers of master of puppets that I've heard on that exact same stage at the MGM grant no longer interested in the text so where was this it was right near the the ski ball okay well I know where we're... Dinner is cancelled, fellas. That's where I'm going. But it is interesting because

talking to the various reporters here about CES and why we do this, and no one can answer that question, by the way. It's just like, I... We're all fucking here every January. But it has been interesting getting wonderful reporters like Kyle and getting it could happen here, Robin Gere, getting Ed and Dave in,

like, truly like, I don't want to say objective, but like, fresh. looks and then Robert and Gare of course who are very much used to. Robert is a separate creature. I mean that with more love than I can ever put into my voice. But it's interesting to get this view and then bring reporters in and talk and they're like, yeah, well, we're here and we saw stuff. But there's also an ephemera that is kind of hard to cover in objective journalism, Kyle. Totally.

Yeah. It's, I thought that my main takeaway from the week was. the politics of it. I mean, from, I was at Panasonic's keynote, and immediately you had people from the Consumer Tech Association talking about tariffs. I mean, I walked by people wearing Department of Government Efficiency shirts.

Oh, really? Yeah. Which was really interesting. Did you hit them? No, I did not. I'll take care of it. No, I won't. Crime's a bad.

But, yeah, I mean, tariffs were just such a, a thing, I think a CNN article also wrote about it. They were just kind of looming over the entire event, and it seems like, I mean, Trump coming in pretty soon, is just kind of hanging over everyone's heads on top of all the tech.

So, I mean, who's that? What? Who's Donald Trump? No, sorry, keep, please continue. I'm doing a bit. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think of what I was trying to say. The political feeling. Yeah, there's there's a political feeling there and at the same time CES is happening, you're seeing

this shift from meta that's just I mean, especially on their their new policies regarding comments about trans and just other queer people. The insane shit they're allowed. Yeah, what was it saying? Like you're allowed to say... Let's not repeat the...

Yeah, no, I'm not. Yeah. But it's basically you can just insult trans people, you can insult gay people. Without any issue. Jewish people. You can refer to women as property too. And I can actually I mean at this point I'm just like you could say anything I think it actually is worth mentioning

specifically like the types of like insults around like mental illness that you're now allowed to call to like call queer people but not call other types of people actually is worth actually is worth mentioning like it's a huge change it's just an interesting show because it desperately wants to be

apolitical amoral bereft of these feelings but it still shows it in the things they show the collection of data, the kind of surveillance aspect. And it sucks because it feels like this show could be better. Because on the fringes of the conversations we've had of like, yeah, everyone's creating solutions for problems that they haven't even come up with you. You get these things, the skincare product, the cane for blind people that can tell you what's coming up,

really useful things. The translation stuff we talked about. Exactly. Like, yeah, like actual translation for a conference, so you could go to a conference in Taiwan and actually, like, Computeech is one of the most important conferences in the world. Some really impressive, like, tech to assist people who

are disabled. I thought accessibility tech was, like, my main highlight. That's what Eureka was best at showing. Yeah, it's weird that Eureka, the Poisonville, actually had some good shit in it for that. And it had, I would say, the one consistent form factor

for consumer tech that seems to be getting a lot better every year, and it reminds me of how phones and tablets felt 10 years ago is glasses. Tell me all. They're getting smaller. They're getting more capable. I'm seeing glasses that are designed for navigation, that are designed for recording. I did see to what you were saying about politics, a lot of glasses that were specifically

marketed based on their ability to aid TikTok that I'm like, in a week that might not be such a good business. Yeah. I had a full conversation with someone speaking Chinese. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. wearing to the same thing. That's fucking cool. That is objectively very cool.

It's great. And was it a conversation with nuance? Like it was... Yeah. Yeah. More than I'd have been able to do, you know, on my own before. We talked about making specific, specific dinner plans, what we do for work. See, this is the thing that tech can actually do.

This is the thing that I... And I've said this many times in episodes. I'm not anti-tech. I wish tech was able to do the thing they promised. But I love technology. The only reason I know... Literally every person I'm looking at in this room is through posting. And I'm not even kidding.

And this is the sickening thing that upsets my father. No, my dad's very proud. My therapist, kind of, like my multiple lawyers. Anyway, the idea that one can do that. But the internet and tech is fully capable of making these wonderful connections. Like, genuinely, I laugh about the Robert Evans thing. He found me through a podcast called Western Kubuki with my friend Caleb Wilson, June and other people who are wonderful. Alex as well.

Like, great podcast. and these are all digital things. Tech is fully capable as much as I can be cynical and angry about this stuff. The reason I'm fucking angry is it's fully capable of helping people.

And we've all experienced there. That was the bit that I sort of was struck by, again, as like somebody who hasn't covered this stuff as much and has had sort of, you know, the same sort of experience, like a normal middle-aged person's experience of tech.

I was blown away by the capacities of the things that were, I mean, like, I didn't realize that it was like you could have a conversation with someone speaking another language. Like, I didn't see anything that, that cool. But the accessibility tech stuff for me, too,

like I found not just really impressive, but really, like, heartening to see that. The bit that was strange, and we obviously, like, have talked about this in previous episodes and stuff, is the sort of contortions that are required in order to make that marketable in a way that, like, it's not, like, it's not a niche market to be, like, an old person or to be disabled, like, one way or another,

that's like most people will experience that at some point in there. Yeah. And yet, like, the way that you have to sort of, this was something that really struck me from yesterday that we talked about, you know, enough that I probably shouldn't be bringing it back up again, that, like, you still have to come up with some sort of, like, industrial application to it, or you have to say AI,

or you have to do this stuff that in order to get people to invest in this stuff, which is expensive to develop and expensive to produce, you have to say the words that the money people want to hear. The market. Which is also, like, another of the sort of political aspect, here, that you've got this, like, in some ways, many, in many ways, like a sort of, I'm tempted not to use this word, but I will say that it is like a good-hearted intention. It feels like,

especially with the disability tech, that is, like, actually aimed at using this new human capability to make people's lives better, and yet you still have to fucking pitch it to sociopaths if you want to get the thing made. And I say this as someone who runs a fairly successful podcast. I have 51,000 subscribers. I have a successful PR from. I have had emails about this. I have dyspraxia, which is a coordination of disability. It limits my bit. I'm wearing zip-up boots, which look are banging.

But I can't tie my shoes. And this is an embarrassing thing about my life. I fucking hate tying things. I physically can't do it. And you explain this to people and they laugh, which is a really good with something that you're very upset about. People love to be laughed at for that. I don't think people realize the capacity for technology

to bridge the gap between your own body is, I don't want to say failure, but inability to fully complete an action. And I think people are, myself included at times. It's an assistive aid. Exactly. But technology is one of the greatest. What was that you said again? Jesus Christ.

Assistive aid. Thank you. Assistive aids. And I nearly fucked it up again. Nevertheless, technology for me as a person has been something that's allowed me to bridge with so many of you. I will tear up on the fucking show. People I love, people that I've been able to experience through their own writing and connections to them.

But most of CS isn't fucking this. It's about bridging gaps between money people and money people to another money person so they can sell nothing to nobody. Totally. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that's disheartening is I was at like the Samsung booth, which is massive. You know, it's the size of a very large house, like a mansion. and every square foot is tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in terms of both the cost to rent it and the cost to like these displays they've got are very advanced. A lot of effort is just going into making the presentation as advanced as possible. And what I'm saying on display there is like, well, we've got a fridge that lets you know when your milk is off.

And at the cost of you can never ever have a guy over to repair your fridge. Never, never again. And you compare that to, in Eureka Park today, we saw a company who had a small booth that was maybe like, like four feet wide, five feet wide, called NACI, that their attempt was to develop like a way to allow people to control computers and interface with their machine, with their phone, in a way that is similar to how Neurrelink works, but without any sort of surgery.

So it's an earpiece you wear in your head. Oh, yeah, you talked to them yesterday. So does this look real? We kind of made fun of this, but if this is real, awesome. It seemed to, like... We like the use case... We like the use case for... people who were not able-bodied.

But what happened when we came up to the booth, the first pitch we got was for retail. And then the product guy came up and was like, no, that's not even like real. What's real is you can use this if you are someone who's not really able to use your arms or to move the rest of your body, you can slightly tilt it.

And that makes more sense than like being able to do a kind of like a retail cashier, secondary labor productivity, aimed. Yeah, I mean, there was a, because like my mind was very much geared towards quadriplegics, but not just, but other, because it won't work if you have, as long as you have that muscular control, like above your neck, like it will work, because it reads micro gestures of your face. And the live demo they did, you could see the signal coming into the phone when he would make microgesters, and it would like, it would, you know, control the phone. So it seems like it works.

I can also see, I can't see like a retail app for like, you've got your smart glasses while you're It's probably a fucking works because what we talked about yesterday. It seemed to. But it's like, but it's like, I don't have the ability to like thoroughly that that, but they did a demo. Yeah, so this is a thing because I think also there were three or four of them where it's like. Yeah, there were variations. There was the one that was like almost like a retainer that you put in and it gave you the same. It was a similar sort of idea.

Yeah, you use your tongue for it. Sorry, yeah, you used your tongue for it. We were struck by that because it was a guy standing completely still with no expression on his face. a bunch of people standing around and recording them on their phones. We've entered the da-da section of the Eureka Park. But all of those booths together were like a tenth of Samsung's booth. And all of them were people utilizing significant ingenuity to attempt to solve problems for real human beings who are suffering as opposed to the Samsung booth,

which was this massive edifice of capital attempting to solve the problem of like, well, what, if your milk goes bad? Yeah, no, and that's the thing. I think also, you know, David, you talked about this a bunch too. I'll pick them. Inventive stuff was the most interesting. Of a few friends were neurodegenerative diseases. And, like, some of the stuff that gets made and offered to be able to give finer control over tasks that you need to do, especially when you have sudden jumps and what you're able to do or not do.

Very impressive. But then, like, kind of similar to what you were just saying, sometimes you actually, you literally can't get that made unless you have to, you have to. you conjure up some sort of secondary application, which is a shame and a problem with how tech innovation proceeds. And it's, you must show growth. You must be like, this is how this is going to turn into $1 billion.

There should be no reason why you have to consider anything other than that immediate and an urgent use case, which is like someone losing the ability to communicate with the outside world. The reason is regulatory avoidance. Yeah. Yeah. So from the earlier conversation, we've had several times regarding regulatory power and authorized medical devices. So all of these products, I have sounded negative for you're trying to skirt and avoid these requirements.

However, the agencies that certify them to want to help people, they want people to go through this process. So these are the things that the FDA loves to see. see and it's hopeful. Yeah, I mean, I guess the, you can talk about capital. I mean, the main worry is that if there's no growth opportunity for a product, then there's no investment. And it just kills products that have a one, you know, use purpose. And there's, that's all there is to it, because that's all there needs to be to it.

And I think that's one thing that struck me as well is that everything needs to have bells and whistles that aren't hugely necessary. So one of the themes I've discussed on this show is the rock economy, the idea that everything is growth at all costs, and some of you at the very beginning were very unfair. You're saying that he's just angry at nothing. I'm angry at everything. I love that when you do your Donald Trump voice, I can tell now.

I like turn my head. But it's, I hope it's been obvious how pernicious this problem is, because there are companies doing really useful things. And I talk about my dyspraxia because I don't know, whatever platform I have, I want people to realize, if you fucking have this and someone makes fun of you, give me their email, I will personally make them regret being online. This is a personal thing. I was bullied. I will bully back. Very unfair to them. But the point is, there are real solutions to real problems, real things being fixed today by companies that are actually raising money. And then you've got the Samsung milk simulator that uses generative AI to assume when your milk won't go bad as opposed to looking at the fucking top. And then I'll banter you a little bit. And the Bailey bought the walks in, your milk has expired.

I did see a product that I would say was my best in show in terms of products that you see an ad for in the first three minutes of a zombie movie. And then it causes the outbreak and like that's the end of the world scenario. And it was called Viradocs. Oh, that's not good.

It does Veridogs do. It's a product that generates a mist. Oh, no. That sweeps over you. your fruits and vegetables to stop the most foiling. Using plasma? Plasma? And here's the thing.

They explain this to me. They said it extends the shelf life of like you can put this little box up and it'll get the mist over groceries in your kitchen or you can use it in like a grocery store to get all of the grain. And it'll extend the shelf life by 33%. And if that's a real thing, that's massive, right? I have no ability to bet this based on what I know from C.E. Like I have absolutely no ability to bet the beer.

that mist. I'm gonna huff that mist. I did, buddy. Didn't get high. So it's useless as far as I'm concerned. So quick question. It's like, it sends the shelf life of your vegetables

leaves you glowing, youthful. Yes. And then also like there's like a 70% chance you grow a tail. Hey, hey, hey, whoa. Sign me up. Yeah, you're trying to not sell.

Some people are into that. It's also that that's like the most innocuous. Like that actually sounds good. Like it's similar to something you would see. And they just called it like, like Doomslayer But it's for your cucumbers Like we just came up

We thought it sounded cool But the Domeyre The Doomsayer has done some great work But also two things Well let's just focus on one Which is What the fuck does the mist What's it made up?

The way they explained it Is that it's a mist And it kills Before you actually get like mold Staring to form It kills them So it extends the period of time You?

No the mold It's so far just the mold mold. It said, because I asked if it was dangerous, and they said, no. And again, I have no ability to vet the Viridox people at this moment. I'm not trying to shit on that. Maybe this will massively improve the world. It just seemed like a product that caused the apocalypse.

That was the, when somebody said, we make a midst called Viradox. I was like, oh, you're going to kill everyone I love. Okay, great. It's like in a wet market that spreads like a virus from a bat. So any 9-inch Nails fans here? Like a year zero I'm thinking of? This is the big hand from the year zero. Yeah, again, this scene right now

could be the start of the apocalypse movie. Yeah, no, okay, contagion. And then the one of us who's alive in three weeks like is thinking back to this is they're fighting off the aerodox zombies. And I'll use this up to contagion. Again, to complain about the end of Jiu-Jitsu Kisen, the manga.

I'm going to just really put this in the... How did you want Jujutsu Kalyzen? in the end. Okay. Well, thank you for asking. Welcome to... Did you want? Get over a little

into the weed, shit? I'm going to take a break. Well, first of all, the people of the Jiu-Jitsu high school thing they do, very unfair to Mr. Ryan and Sukina.

Right. Second of all, they spend a lot of time building up abilities that do not manifest into an interesting plot point. Are these real people? Are these your cartoons?

No, this is a manga, and I'm being very fucking serious. You made this podcast happen. You suffer the consequences. It's serious, Robert. So, okay, the ending of Jiu-Jitsu Kaysen involves a bit where Mr. Ryan and Sukina, Mr. Sotero-Gojo, is very unfairly treated. They show him winning a battle, and then, at the end of the battle, he's dead.

He's treated so unfair. So he lost. Treating unfairly. And then it's just a simple dream sequence, which is very unfair for the... Rigged. Rigged, unfair for Mr. Ryan and Sikina. See, now I'm thinking... And now I'm thinking the Birox Apocalypse.

There was a conspiracy against the room at the Venetian. Five different Trump impersonators. The elders did not want the future. I'm so sorry to my list. I can see it in your eyes. I'm sorry. This is how David Roth feels about the Mets. So I'll move us back to the podcast.

As we wrap this bad boy up. I have no ability to vet it based on the conversation I had. You never will. I genuinely want to thank everyone else in this. room because we're doing another episode tomorrow, but this show has been conceptually one of the more insane things I have done, and I must give real credit to Sophie Lichtenen, who is one of the hardest working and also most patient people in history. Oh, yeah. And Sophie's going to... Oh, yeah.

No comment. She is the only person who can really move, Robert. Oh, yeah. Who is one of the single most talented people I have met in my fucking life. and my boss. There we go. And Robert turned to me a year ago and said, you seem to be more pissed off at these people than anyone.

And he was wrong, only because I was yet to get pissed off enough. Robert has been insanely supportive of me. In a creative means that no one else has. And honestly, everyone in this room has. Gare turned to me and said, you seem to just be a series of grievances. And Gare was completely correct. It has been so fun hearing you get progressively more angry

over the course of a year it's been a real treasure and I mean it sincerely I say this as someone who's a peer of yours the work you make seems to get better every episode and you're incredible at it thank you so much you're getting none of this Robert you're just very good at right I say this as someone who is profiting off of you are you in a statin

should we make sure I don't know what that is like just heart medication I'm just I'm just worried No, dude, I am like the healthiest I've ever been. My V-O-2 Max is like doing well. My doctor's really happy. They don't know what it did. Ever since I got a Virodocs installed in my phone. And that's another CES miracle.

Which leads me to the last thing that I'll say is the first thing we all said on episode one is this feels like the CES from last year. And we're not the only ones to think that. Last night, I was at the chandelier in the Cosmo. That is the place. Now we can write off the drinks. Thank you, Gaines. And there we go. I was sitting at the bar and Robert was upstairs waiting for a table and we got a table.

Hard to do. Honestly challenging. And I said, it's another CES miracle. There was two people sitting next to me who turned and was like, what CES are? there was two people sitting next to me who turned and said, what CES are you going to? This has been terrible. I had a great,

if brief conversation with these people who were two exhibitors. Now, I was a bad journalist. I was too drunk. That makes you a good one. I did not learn which company they were from. But there were two people who were exhibiting as CES. And they're like, this feels just like last year's CES. And I was like, yes, this is what me and all my friends have been saying.

Like, it is, it has been so disappointing. And it's not just us, like, you know, somewhat tech critical journalists. It's people who actually, like, go to CES to present, who are saying the exact same thing. Like, yeah, this is, this is last year's CES, but worse, because there's nothing new. Yeah. And this is, like, I did not feed them this. They turned to me and said this, like, unprompted. And they're like, what kind of miracles are you?

seeing. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, that was sarcastic. It's remarkable to see, and David, I'm going to guess your knees are about as bad as mine. But starting out in 2010, like, right after kind of the iPad came out, there was so much excitement every year of, like, I'd never seen a thing that could do this. Every year, I'd never seen a thing that could do, like, and I would, that would be every, like, 30 minutes. I would see a thing that was like, I didn't know technology could do that until this exact second. And that's just not CES. And that's just not CES. anymore. Yeah, I mean, it's like, even as like a soft touch, you can be impressed by like a cool

new TV screen. It's not the first TV screen, you know, not to brag. But there is like, yeah, there's certainly that sense. It's interesting that like the people that are showing here were also kind of like, what am I doing? Like I feel like, what am I doing here? Yeah. I think the, and what better offline has tried to do with this entire show is CES is a combination

of people who don't want to be here and do want to be here and a lot of the people that want to be here, other people that already live here to sell services to those who are visiting. But the fundamental problem with CES is that the show itself doesn't seem to be serving the use case of making things happen in the future. It's like, how can we make the present continue for longer? Yes! Yeah! And the thing is, something I've tried to do with this, and I should be clear about what this is. Everything you're hearing this week is something I came up with about five weeks ago. I wanted to do this. I booked this months ago. Robert then

booked much later for it could happen here and Robert, please. I was hung over. He is actually, Sophie is so much stronger, willed and that's very true. Willing to respond. But Robert has been an incredible mentor and I'm going to be

sentimental and you're just going to have to fucking suck it up, all right? We're an award nominated podcast. I can do whatever the hell I want. But what I think this show needs, going forward is more independent voices, and it means bringing in people like Kyle from Las Vegas' son. Hello. And allowing them to speak, because it isn't so much the problem these journalists can't say what they want,

is that formats demand things in certain ways. And the way to talk about tech is no longer as flat as, and the product exists, or tech company sucks. I can do both. But the thing is, having these different voices, having these people talk about their experience of CES, is on some level an explanation of how the tech industry feels. They're in this thing where you have this dichotomy between this vast milieu of different things that are like, hey, what if this happened?

You'd then give me money. What would that be like? Well, I'd have the money, and then you'd have the product, and did something good happen? Oh, I don't care. And then you have these people like, I'm going to fucking solve people with eye twitches, people with twitching in their eye,

which turns out to be a huge industry of people who are genuinely fucking suffering. People with way bigger problems, like mobility problems, having their problems solved in real time, but the people that get talked about are I have the most massive television. And no, I actually take that back.

It's not even the big TV. I want a larger TV. I want like a 250-inch fucker. I want to watch the Raiders lose. Well, that was... So I had a moment at the Samsung booth when they were showing off one of those transparent TVs and there was a lady who's a job.

Another one? Another one. Well, probably the same one. Huh? No, and that was LG last year. Oh, it was LG, yeah. I think it was LG, yeah. It all blurs together.

There was a lady behind a transparent whose whole job was when the TV went transparent to waver hand behind it. And I was like, that's your job. Ah, the hand waver. And it was this recognition as they're like walking. As we, Garrison and I sat through a guy

who played us AI-generated Sky and tried to convince us that we no longer needed. What the fuck does that? Human musicians. Even better. Great. No. The next time someone played...

That is a real falling down situation. It is very much a falling down situation, yes. But the realization that there is a chunk of guys running big tech who see holding your hand behind the transparent TV as a thing that human beings should do, but not making

music. And like, that upsets me. It's just, it's frustrating because entering into this and the format that I created in a Google Dog three weeks ago, and some people even read it, the goal was to try and pull out how the show affects people and indeed the implications of this show do. I'm now going to return to the sentimental bit I was diverted by. I want to thank every single fucking person who listened to this, but also join me on this. Gare Davis, one of the single, insanely young, and in a non-specific way, I realize, the single most talented person who come into anything associated with tech, insanely young, but also is insanely prescient, and aware of the social issues, but also the context of basically everything they look at. Robert Evans, the single most focused but disorganized person I've ever met, but also someone who cares. so deeply and has such an innate talent at finding talent and empowering those voices.

Without Robert Evans, I would not have done this, and I did try and wave him off when he offered the podcast to me. I was like, yeah, mate, sure you're a fucking budget, don't you meant, is doing the actual jack-off gesture in front of the computer. Robert and Sophie Lichtenen, who will never get enough compliments. And by the way, universal law with better offline, if you don't love Sophie, I will fucking kill you. Not literally, but I will think of it. about it very fucking aggressively. Robert has actually have faith in me

that most people haven't, and the result is a fucking successful tech podcast that does things more successfully than most of the tech podcasts out there. Otherwise, Robert supports Gare, who has been so incredible

and will do better work than I will ever do. But you know what? That's what doing good shit is, knowing the people who do things well. What I've been really excited about this year is getting to meet David and Edward and now getting to meet you. This is the first time we're in a room together.

No, it's not. We talked yesterday. Oh, shit. I was so drunk. I'm so sorry, Kyle. During the panel? During the panel? Oh, no, no.

I was just high on mushrooms for the panel. Oh, okay. I was fucking lit, though. They're from a gas station. And I've got some Kratum still in my pocket if you want. I'm okay. I was trying to do like a sincere moment. Yes.

Back to Ed. Back to Ed. If it was like. Robert. Robert. No. He's taking the microphone. No, let Robert finish his fucking thing about mushrooms.

It's been very exciting to get to meet these folks, some of whom I had been reading for a while, and some of whom I'm excited to start reading and get to make these connections. Because in a CES that is so anti-human, it's nice to make connections to people. And I'm about to harpoon you with sincerity. Robert and Sophie have been the single,

and Gare as well, have been the most single supportive creatives I've ever fucking worked with my life. I have had issues with believing in myself and believing what I can do. I have talent, whatever. Like, who fucking cares? Email me, you're mad. You're listening to this, your little pig.

But the thing is, these people beyond what and even a year ago, I didn't think I could fucking do this. And now look at me. I'm a fucking ultrapons. And it rocks. And I believe what Cool Zone Media does is the future of fucking creativity. The idea that a big corporation can give someone multiple seasons to work out their audience, work out what they're building.

You look at it behind the bastards. It could happen here, 16th minute, with politics, cool people who did cool stuff. There is so much cool shit that comes out of the idea of, damn, what if you give people more time to build something than seven minutes? What if you didn't rush them to make something good?

Better off line at the beginning was fucking rough, but we worked it out, and you people seem to like it, and the people in this room are fucking adore, but don't worry, we're not done. Phil Broughton over there Phil Broughton, health physicist. E's picked me up two or three times and I've been like shit my pants, not literally.

I've never shit my pants around you. Let's not talk about that further. But the truth is, Phil has been here for multiple CES's tending bar. Grab the mic, you motherfucker. Tending bar for people are not ultimately doing the thing of asking them why they are here.

I think that is the most valuable thing you can do in the Consumer Electronics Show, asking people the reason they are there and finding out what it is they actually fucking cared about and you do that so well while also serving various bourbons and I was even like, I don't like this one.

He replaced them. And I like this one by the way. One of my, oh, that would be Alberta Premium at Gas Frank Thrya. That was a goddamn journey that made fury for weeks finding it.

Phil? I love you. Oh, thank you. I love all of you, seriously. Thank you. One of the things that made me happy is for everyone that I picked up at an elevator by the time we'd hit the 28th floor I knew what I was serving you Thank you so much man

David Roth David Roth is someone I brought here No take the fucking mic You grab the goddamn mic I will shove it in your mouth We all know how good I am Ed Which is why it's necessary to remind people David Roth is actually my favorite writer

and he is one of the single most empathetic people who understands why people enjoy stuff and his sports writing and cultural writing is genuinely influential over everything I've ever done and I'm absolutely going self-indulgent there's nothing a single fucking person in this room could do it Matt Asowski's just sitting there being like, yep, vacuuming up but David Roth being here is like watching the movies with Ebert

and it's genuinely I'm getting a little emotional but thank you David and thanks for having me for real I feel the same. Edwin Grasso Jr. You are an undiscovered talent and anyone fortunate enough to listen to this shit now they should hire you immediately

because when you finally take off, when you finally get big enough, you are the single most capable grab the microphone, motherfucker. Hello. I said when I get my gun. Yeah. Okay, let's walk back the gun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, let's cut that out now. The words. When I get my...

Matt, this is still keep it in, but just to be clear, the gun was a metaphor. Right. For my potential. I'm really trying. Sorry, no more, no more. I know you're not done. Ed, there really isn't another writer that can do the kind of labor reporting you do

and the understanding of the human experience that you can do. You are just at the beginning. And I can't wait to bring you back. on this show and have you do more. I love all of you so much, but also your potential is barely your potential is barely getting started. It is some shit you'd see on a CES banner, though.

This is the worst it's ever going to be. This is the worst I'll ever be. That's right. That's right, brother. That's what I put on hinge. It is very funny. I might feel that. I actually might put that on hinge.

Any singles want to email me? Like, that's what's all. Look, darling, I know I vomited in your car, but let me assure you, this is the worst I'm ever going to be. Oh, my God. Kalshanard. You may think, I just met you. That's true. You came on this show completely.

You were actually well prepared. You had a laptop out, which fucking rocks. You actually, like, took this seriously, much like I did with my laptop out of that I don't have in the preparation. I definitely did. Here's the thing. On an instinctual level when your first thought is labor, that says a lot about you as a person. It's incredible that you immediately jump to the hospitality workers in this city

that are befalled by the various conferences. And you thought, how the fuck does this affect them? Because when it comes to better offline and what this fucking show actually means, it's what the actual effects of technology are on people. So thank you for joining us. Of course. And please keep doing your shit.

You're going to be back on because we live in the same city. We do. And I will be finding you. Oh, God. Oh, God. So many more actionable threats in these episodes than I'd expect it. That's not a threat, it's a promise. Oh, thank you.

I wouldn't thank me. And then, of course, to Matt Osowski. Manasowski is our producer, and he is the silent party who has been sitting here patiently, the entire show, working through texting me time signals. When I text him, I have burped. He edits that out because it's happened three. times, I believe. Matt, and I bring up Matt Hughes here, my word editor, who has been so patient with him, Megan Wernestromo for a penguin, who has also been patient reading the dross, I assume.

She says it's good, but back to Matt Osowski. Matt has been here since the beginning when I was really not fucking confident about this show, and I was genuinely experiencing, like, real anxiety and worry. Matt encouraged me, work with me, and edited. Matt, love you, man. Thank you. so much for your hard work this entire week. Could you come over to the microphone and just say hello? Hello. Matt Asowski is a protected party. If you ever wrong, Matt Asowski, I will destroy you.

Actually, everyone in this room, but really like if you fuck with Matt Asowski, I will actually fucking peck out your eyes. Good podcast voice. Like a big bird, if you play Final Fantasy 15, specifically the zoo bird, very big bird. You've been listening to the better offline CS experience. I am so grateful that you've been here. And tomorrow you'll get a final wrap-up episode,

but this is really like the rap night. I am actually really grateful for everyone who came in. Everyone has really fucking showed up and just done an incredible show for a show that is so regularly, so fucking miserable and so lifeless about people that people are imagining rather than real people.

And everyone's been here and just shown an incredible fucking show. I'm so grateful to everyone for being here. Thank you. And I'm now going to pass the microphone around starting with Zai who's been here, Zay please join us. Thank you for...

Hi, hello. You've been wonderful taking photos, thank you. And then we'll now go to Robert Evans. Thank you, Robert. I just want everyone to know that, you know, as the Verox, miss, takes your loved ones. Ed cares about you. Phil.

I want to thank everyone. It's been a pleasure to be here and to serve. To serve and be of service. David Ruff. Thanks very much. It was a good time and I feel like I learned a lot. Mr. Anguasa. I had a great time

and I'm not going to make any more legally actionable threats. Thanks. You can just say. Yeah, this was my first CES ever and I really enjoyed figuring out what was real and what wasn't and support local

journalism. Yeah. Well, and thank you, Ed, for putting this whole space together. This has been a fantastic escape away from the show floor. I spent five hours in the Venetian today coming up here was a wonderful reprieve. And you really put this all together. So thank you so much.

And your hard work over the last year on Better Offline has been lovely. Has been lovely to watch. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for your listeners. If you've got to this point, I'm so sorry. But also, thank you for your patience.

hope I've successfully encapsulated CES, I've given you the various juxtapositions of the show. Tomorrow you'll have a wonderful positive masculinity day as the remaining crew, me Matt Asowski, Phil Broughton and Edunguoso Jr., kind of like smooth ourselves out, real smooth-like.

But today's the last day of the show. Email me, EZ or EZ, if you're one of those people, at betteroffline.com. Please, let me, know what you thought. A lot of you have emailed like, we had, we didn't have enough woman on this. Next year, we're going to fucking correct that. We luckily got Victoria's song, Carissa Bell, and of course, Sherlyn Lowe, who really balanced that out. We'll do a better job last time.

Wow, the concept of time is fucked up. Nevertheless, we'll do a better job next year. And I love your feedback and I actually read all the emails. Will I respond to them? It gets increasingly harder each week, which is a good sign, I guess. Either way, I'm very grateful for all of you. A lot of people have given, a lot of people, given me faith, given my, given their faith Jesus Christ in the show in the last year. It's only going to get better,

but next CES is going to be weirder. Gare has ideas. I have ideas. And it's just going to be sharper. It's just going to be weirder. And you have another episode. There's going to be more Verinox, too. Palpatine will be back.

CES 20. 24 part three. I'm actually going to try and contact Ian McDermott. But anyway, thank you so much for listening. I know it's a lot of audio and I am really grateful for everyone who contacts. I love everyone who listens. I genuinely am so grateful. I am not really good at hiding any of like the me in this. And a lot of podcasts are very performative. I feel can speak to this more than anyone. I'm not really good at like pretending. There is no off switch. I genuinely love you all.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Mattersowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Mattisowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-S-K-I.com. You can email me at E-Z at Better Offline.com or visit Better Offline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat.

Where's YourEd.com to visit the Discord and go to our slash Better Offline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and Friends. me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michelle McPhee, and I've been unraveling the strangest criminal alliance I've ever reported on. A Mormon polygamist and an Armenian businessman. Multi-million dollar house,

Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, a billion dollar fraud. But how long can this alliance last? Tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, coaches and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world, like, I can do anything.

I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal. but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential.

Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win. A win is a win.

Yep, that's me, Cliford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Cliford Show. This is a place for raw, unfilled of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to The Cliford Show on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok. podcast network on TikTok. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.