Better Offline - CES 2026: Part Three (Tuesday)

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Welcome to Better Offline’s coverage of the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show - a standup radio station in the Palazzo Hotel with an attached open bar where reporters, experts and various other characters bring you the stories from the floor.  In Tuesday’s second episode, Ed is joined by Victoria Song of The Verge, writer Rory Cellan-Jones, Robert Evans of Behind The Bastards, standup comedian and host of the Factually Podcast Adam Conover, and standup comedian and actor Chloe Radcliffe to talk about the useless numbers generated by wearables, Chinese peptides, how absolutely nobody at CES is Steve Jobs, LLMs getting read-write access to your taxes, and a bunch of stuff about sex toys that I recommend you do not listen to if you have children around. EXCLUSIVE CES SALE! Get a *permanent* $10 off an annual subscription to my newsletter through January 13 2025: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/cue848p5sc Rory Cellan-Jones: https://rorycellanjones.substack.com/ https://www.moversandshakerspodcast.com/ Robert Evans: https://bsky.app/profile/iwriteok.bsky.social https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?l=en-GB  Chloe Radcliffe: https://www.instagram.com/chloebadcliffe/?hl=en Adam Conover: https://www.instagram.com/adamconover/?hl=en Donate in Sean-Paul’s honor: https://www.perc-epilepsy.org/ --- 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/@edzitron Email Me: [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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40 years ago, the old gods decided to create a podcaster capable of withstanding 20 hours of podcasting in the space of five days. I'm Ed Zittron, and this is Better Offline's CES coverage. We are large and in charge in the Palazzo Hotel in Las Vegas, beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, with an open bar, tacos, and the Strongest Bench of Tech Commentator Talent in the Known Universe. As ever, we're bringing you coverage of the world's biggest tech conference. It's day two, episode two, and our first contestants have just arrived. joining me for the first block is the amazing Victoria's Song of the Verge. Hello.

And we've got the wonderful stand-up comedian host of the factually podcast, Adam Conover. Hello. And of course, the legendary broadcaster. My dad's going to be so happy. Rory Kecklin Jones, who writes the Always On Newsletter and is on the Movers and Shakers podcast. Thank you for joining us, Rory. Hello, so pleased to please your dad. Oh, he's going to be elated.

So, Victoria, you describe your beat as the cursed technology bee. And I think this is a great place to begin. Not for my mental health, but sure. Yes, but for the yucks, perhaps. What have you seen? Just start anywhere. Oh, okay. So with my editors, you know, we're talking trend pieces right now, and they're like,

V, what's your, what's your trend this year? And I was like, bodily fluids. We are talking piss, semen, blood, urine, bodily fluids, because, you know, my actual beat is wearable in health technology. Right. So, you know, I'm, you know, I'm surprisingly light on wearables today. How many have you got today? I only got two.

The other day I was racking four. Like a parallax style thing. Yeah, actually, actually, no, I have AI. You sent me these. Oh, yes, yes. The AI generated insoles. The AI generated insoles. My featsies still hurt, so there we go.

But yeah, so, you know, longevity, quote unquote, longevity tech is is in right now. Wellness is bullshit, as we know, but a lot of my beat deals with wellness and therefore the snake oil perpetuated by wellness influencers around the world. And I get to have the lovely job of going, what bullshit are they going to make me wear this year? So I've worn, I've worn an LED face mask that makes Jason Voorhees look funny. But, you know, it's not the Jason Warhees type LED mask.

It's, you'll see it tomorrow on leverage.com. I look forward to it. There's that. I closed the loop on the taint zapper. And, you know, I saw. I'm going to stop you there. Okay. What is that?

Okay. So we have to go back six years because this is a year, this is a story that is six years in the reporting and the making. So CES 2020, right before the world closes down because of COVID, I'm at CES. suffering. I have a cold or whatever. I'm at CES Unveiled, which is the inaugural night's showcase of vendors and whatnot. I'm walking along. I'm going to cover. What am I going to cover? And I see a table. It's one of those booths that's very empty and sad. Right. And there on the table, there is a mannequin. And it's just this mid-torso section of a male mannequin with Kendall's smooth jiblets. and it's on its back, so its taint is exposed to a roving crowd of tech journalists.

And on the gooch of this mannequin is a band-aid. And on this sparse table, I really have to paint the picture here. There's a laptop. And on the laptop, there is a slideshow presentation. And I want you to think of a black-and-white picture of a couple in bed, and they're disgruntled. The woman is on the bed, and she's sitting here with her arms folded and just like, a look of disgust on our face. And the man is at the edge of the bed with his head and his hands, and he's so sad.

And the text on this slideshow is premature ejaculation is the number one male dysfunction. So I take a picture. I was at Gizmoto at the time. So I take a picture of this, and I send it to our Slack channel, and my editor goes, bitch, you must write this. And I go, okay, so I'll just describe. describe it. I wrote it a week later, the CEO, a lovely man, Jeff, he reaches out to me and he goes, I, because I had some burning questions about this taint band-aid. And I was like, is it going to

rip off the hair off these men's gooches? Like, what are we doing here? And it's like the, the proposed, it was a concept wearable. So the proposal was that to help men with premature ejaculation, it was going to zap you. Okay. To, you know, delay orgasm. Right. And so I was like, I have so many questions. I asked many penis half others that I knew. I was like, would you, would you try this? Would you do that? They're all like, bitch, no. And so, you know, a week later, he reaches out to me. I was like, I want to answer some of your questions. No, it's not going to rip the hair off. We've done a lot of research into the type of adhesive used. And I was like, oh, okay, I'll write that follow up. The next year, I see them again. And they have the most,

they have this gif that shows how it works. And it's like a, if you were on the floor and you were panning up. It's like the view of the gooch and just it's the most cursed gif I've ever seen in my life. Right. It's in our social video if you want to see it. But yeah, so that was there and we were talking and he's like, we've

discovered something mysterious in our testing. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. Sure. So I met up with this guy this year and it's now a product. They are FDA cleared. Nice. And the mysterious discovery that they

discovered was that not only can it help men with premature ejaculation delay orgasm, the electrical signal contracts the prostate and makes ejaculation more forceful. So it, it, uh, it, how did they measure that? It was discovered, it was discovered in testing. You can tell when you do it, Ed, how forceful it is. Well, I've never had sex. Yeah, yeah. No.

Sometimes you're in a good mood and you hit the wall. Yeah. And people must have experienced this. Yeah. I actually, you know, that year after when I was doing the follow up, I talked to a user who had used it.

You wanted to be anonymous. And he was like, it's saving my marriage. It's great. It doesn't hurt. It feels great. I'm being kind of cynical, but seems like it's actually possibly useful.

Oh, it's FDA cleared. It's FDA cleared. Yeah, but there's, you know, there's like a lot of meaning between FDA approved,

FDA cleared. FDA listed. It has to do with the type of medical class device it is and whatnot. But, but, but, but I did get to try it myself on my forearm as I do not possess the actual body part necessary for real life testing. So I put it on my forearm. I got to try it out. It costs $300 for the starter kit. It has.

Does it require a subscription? No. And there's no AI involved. Good. You know, but, you know, you can. AIL intelligence. You can customize the ZAC. pattern. So you can, you can, there's a strength level of one to 100. I could feel the, the, the strength

at one, which I was told, right on your arm taint. Yeah, on my arm taint, which I was told that makes me a unicorn, because most people can't actually feel it at one. Like he was saying that depending on your body, uh, how hairy you are, how much body fat you have, you might need to like go up to 25 to feel something. Nice. That's, that's, that's good. I'm trying, like, I'm trying, I'm not to like just laugh at the idea of bums. Just like just like, who-hoo-hoo-pom-poo. But like it seems like a natural like weirdly useful thing. Like, well, you know, a lot of men don't want to talk about premature ejaculation. Men don't want to talk about sex at all. Like that's, like that's a universal thing with the fellas. Like this came up last year with Sherlin Lowe.

Like men just like you start talking about sex and they go, no, I, I couldn't possibly. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, their founder is a really good sport because Jimmy Kimmel did roast him on a monologue in 2022 about it. And he's like, that's fine. I just want people talking. about it and I want men who suffer from this to actually do something about it. Good for you, Jeff. Yeah, Jeff is like, he's a cool dude. And the FDA clearance would mean this, it works. Like they've tested it?

Or is it just not going to kill you? It means that it's safe, basically. So they did have to test it on rabbits. You mean they didn't have a double-blind placebo-controlled trial? One that doesn't shock your body. So, like, FDA clearance. You think you've been shocked. But you haven't actually been.

It just naturally hard. It feels more like a vibration, to be quite honest. It's not like a z-z-type of feeling. But what FDA clearance means is like there's different types of medical devices. There's Class 1, which is like a tongue depressor. It's not really doing anything. Class 2 is like moderate risk. And I believe this would probably be in class 2 because they require 510 clearance.

And basically they have to go through testing for safety, efficacy, privacy. And this one, this is all of it. It's past that. Yes, it passed that. It took a long time because this is a six-year period. I want to say, like, they had to go through two rounds of funding. Like, FDA clearance cost millions of dollars. It costs millions of dollars.

Right now, the Taint Zapper is the most functional product we've discussed on the show. Like, I'm deadly serious. Like, we spent the last two hours being like, yeah, this doesn't work. This doesn't exist. No, the Taint Zapper is real. It's real. And, you know, so part of the thing was is that, you know, they had done their initial round of gathering data, which took them a year and a half to gather all this data.

And then the FDA was like, yeah, but we're going to need you to do animal testing. So you're going to have to put this taint zapper on bunnies. And just to be clear, that's not their taints. No, it's not the bunny taints. They're putting it on the bunnies because bunnies are furry. Right. And some taints are furry. So you need to make sure that when you put this adhesive on your bum on skin,

that when you take it off, you're not causing rashes, irritation, ripping things out. So, you know, he told me that, you know, they'd have to put the patch on the bunny every single day and monitor it for a few hours. And, you know, and, yeah. So, Rory, moving on from the taint for now. I'm just a gog.

I've wandered off the street and innocent old BBC man. Oh, it's actually not called a taint zapper. That's just what I've called in all these years. It's called Moore. M-O-R. That's a horrible man. That is one of the worst names they could have come up with.

Well, that's what it's called. called more. But it sounds like the one thing you don't get is more. You don't like, you don't get more calm. More velocity. More, more velocity.

More lasting power. More. So the company behind it is called Morari, Inc. And Morari and Latin means delay. So chef's curious. No. Call it longer.

Longer. Longer. Yeah, with no E. Yeah. Because then it's like you're going longer and your dick is longer. Yeah. Men like longer.

And that's the, and that's the. Yeah, there we go. Men like long. But Rory, what have you seen at the show? Anything unrelated to Bums? I'm just aghast that I've not got any human detritus to bring before you. I mean, I've seen something incredibly wholesome. Please, please tell me.

I went to the Lego press conference. I used to come here year after year for the BBC, and it was a nightmare because of the time different. and we had to make a story on a Sunday and a Monday to go out on the Tuesday, eight hours behind, and be desperate. And I learned a good lesson there, which is never go to a CES press conference

because they're terrible. Yes. Because every single press conference features a CEO who thinks he's Steve Jobs unvading the iPhone. Yeah. And he's not Steve Jobs, and he hasn't got an iPhone. Right.

And I know this because my very first C.S was my best ever, because it had a historic event in which, in the BBC having paid an awful lot for a lot of us to come over, led by me, I said to them, listen, we're going to take a day out and leave CES and go to a thing called Macworld. Because there's a room of something big is going to happen. And so I was there when Steve Jobs did unveil the iPhone, which was better than any event that I've ever seen.

I forgot. When he goes, when he goes, are you getting it? That's my favorite part. Are you getting it? Were you getting it in that moment? Were you like, wait, it's one device? Well, I was kind of shocked in a kind of very British way by the fact that there were people standing up and cheering.

Yeah. We're journalists. We don't cheer for Christ's sake. There was not the requisite. level of cynical old hackery. But even I got carried away. I knew something was big when my desk in London rang, people who were not remotely interested in technology and said,

you've got to get your hands on that phone. And I said, you are deluded. Apple is like North Korea, but less open. They will never let me near a phone that's not coming out for six months. are you dreaming? And then I remembered that we'd been promised an interview with Phil Schiller,

the tubby little marketing guy who did not quite have Steve Jobs' charisma. And I had said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do that, thinking, no, we won't. And I changed my mind and we headed back to the Moscone Center and said, we would like that interview with Mr. Schiller after all.

He appears. I see, you don't happen to have the phone. And he said, oh, yeah. handed it to me. I did my piece to camera and did an interview with Phil Schiller, which we didn't use. And I had my shot on the main news. And the following weekend, a tech columnist in the venerable observer newspaper described me as looking like a French medieval peasant holding a piece of the one true cross. Jesus. Well, I guess, yeah. Which was accurate because... God damn.

Christ, I'd actually got the whole of the damn thing. So, punished, which is a long way around saying, CES has been sort of 20 years of disappointment for me mainly. But this year, I decided against my better instincts, I would go to one press conference. Yeah.

And that was the Lego one. Right. And the contrast between that experience and sitting through, I didn't bother to go, but watch the live stream of the Nvidia press conference was quite instructive. We cursed ourselves with that on the first day.

It was truly, truly boring. Yeah, but whereas the great thing about the Lego one was we got a little freebie, a little package of bricks on every seat. Nice. It was short, it was 45 minutes. It was the toy industry and the media industry because Disney and Lucas Films were there and Star Wars characters

telling the tech industry actually we know a bit about storytelling and which I'm afraid dear Mr Jensen Wang obviously did not and it's weird other than these shiny jackets he doesn't really have much going on and he mostly I was already, the listeners

already heard me say this but it's like it was mostly him just repeating stuff from three to six months ago it was because it felt kind of washed It was quite enjoyable when he's describing the most advanced, exciting technology in the world and his PowerPoint fails. Oh, that's so... Someone's getting shot. Well, I was saying somebody, a whole team is going to be replaced by AI within seconds. I do respect when it's a live tech presentation now, though, because, you know, now they just fly us to the Steve Jobs Theater for Apple.

Yeah. Watch a filmed presentation in a theater. No sense of peril. Yeah. You know what? NVIDIA could use a little peril in that There should have been some trap doors or something It was very bizarre

It was like two hours of a man Clearly trying to feign excitement And it's just like Yeah, Blackwell might come out at some point Yeah, it's in full manufacture And just the audience going Yeah The reaction was really sad

Yeah, it was really sad It was really, it was like a, you know, a failing politician At his party conference setting up the cue lines applaud, applaud, and kind of Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank God, okay, it's good to good to know other people heard that. But let's change kids. Adam, what have you seen you've just got here? So what wonders if you behold? You know, I'm sort of drawn to everything that's not AI related, first of all. You found something?

Eureka Hall. Yeah. Oh, you went to Eureka Hall, the tap section. Well, what I found was strangely, I saw like five or six products related to teeth. Have you guys noticed a teeth trend? There's teeth. There's always teeth tech.

Everywhere I'm looking, there's... Usually it's an AI toothbrush, for Christ's sake. The first thing I saw was, I was, all the AI, you know, blurred out, and I just, my vision honed in on something called the Y brush. It's a toothbrush, but what if the end of the toothbrush was the same shape as all of your teeth. So you just put it over all of your teeth at once and it brushes all your teeth simultaneously. And you know what?

As the owner of an electric toothbrush and it has a timer and I do it for two minutes and it's like 30 seconds per quadrant and it's so boring and I have to listen to like two minutes of a podcast. I was like, you know what, 10 seconds to brush all my teeth? Yes, someone buy me this shit at Brookstone for Christmas. Thank you. This is what CES is for. This is what it's supposed.

to be is dumb garbage that says it's going to save you a minute and a half. Right. That's nice. I like that. Did you see anything that was useless? I was just going to describe the rest of the CES, I guess. What else did you see more teeth related things? Yeah, look, I even got a, I got a free night guard. So,

I'm a bag. I have a loose plastic bag. That is beautiful. I've taken out of my hoodie pocket. I've produced it. Yeah, so there was a, uh, a, uh, a, smart night guard that I wear a night guard for tooth grinding and it's a night guard that will much like the taint zapper it when you grind your teeth it'll buzz in the middle of the night to stop you from grinding your teeth which reminds me of when I was a kid and I used to wet the bed and my

parents would put the the piss alarm did it and you know the piss alarm no this is from the early 90s this isn't very high tech it's a little so you know if you used to wet the bed it was just common Yeah, it's common. It happens to a lot of people, Ed. Like, you know, I'm like older than you should be. I'm wetting the bed. It starts again when you get to a certain age. Well, you would be interested in this product.

It's a pad with electrodes on it that you put into your underpants and then when it detects moisture, it's connected to a little speaker that is like attached to your shirt. And that goes like, you're dirty little bastard, it says. Nothing's changed. So this is a, so this is, sorry, I'm lost, this is the Pace alarm. This is pissing. No, I'm describing something that was inflicted on me as a child that frankly was almost like a form of abuse

to stop me from doing something. It just naturally stops a couple years later. Yeah, like something that kids do accidentally. Yeah. Like a very common thing, but it's a shame alarm. Right. It's like a shock color for dogs. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah. This is the same thing for grinding your teeth. And actually, it's not a bad idea because I do. Yeah, I can actually see the use of that because I grind my teeth sometimes as well. And I find myself accidentally. doing it. Yeah.

And I wear a night guard and, you know, sometimes I'm like, am I grinding my teeth? Do I need to keep wearing the night guard or I switch to sleeping on my side? Is this still happening? You know, that I was like, all right, that's kind of nice. And then they, um, they gave me a, they molded a night guard to my teeth and they gave me a free night guard in this sort of like loose bag you might use to bag produce at the supermarket. This looks like what a criminal would hand drugs to someone in. Like it's just like a, like a, like a, you know, it's a quintessential seat.

It goes over my teeth. Onion headline I saw where it says Steph Curry finally finishes eating mouth guard. But for the three basketball listeners, that's good. There's a jerk off machine. You saw that jerk off machine, right? In the Eureka Hall. I got two for free. It's called the Handy.

Yeah, yeah. That's good. And the Handy, too. They've got both of them in the same. Yeah. What's the sequel like? It looked like that's basically the same thing. It just shakes harder.

It's a more. Yeah. I saw that thing two years ago. And I was like, okay, cool. That's funny. looking and then it's back here again and I'm like deal more the same. It's like got all this copy where it's like, don't worry, everybody looks twice. Like, yep, it really is.

It's really hamming it up, you know? The only way to do that is be super serious about it. Yeah. Just like, you're laughing. It's like, excuse me, is there something funny about this? Yeah, see, that would be better. That would be so much more interesting. It's like, oh, yeah, we went there.

Yeah, it's very much the cards against humanity. Oh, God. where they're like just for nerds to be able to, I recognize this as comedy, you know, and be able to laugh. I mean, CS as a show is extremely prudish and does not fuck. That's the rule. Yeah, well, it's a jerk off machine. It's not a fucking machine, I'll tell you that.

There was a time where there was like a whole, like back in 2019, 2020, there was like a controversy because they had given a vibrator. Well, not a vibrator. It was like a micrrobotic cunolingus dildo type device. It was the Laura DeCarla, and they had given them a innovation award. And they're like, no, no, no, no, we're going to take the innovation award away. And then everyone's like, you don't. Why did they take it away?

Because it was improper. So they could give it to just something that didn't exist? Yeah, they were just like, this is not, this is not robotics. And everyone was like, yeah, it's robotics. It's literally robotics. You're just prudes. Like they gave it and people complained and then they took it away again. That's so, that would make me so mad.

That is the most cowardly fuckless shit. I've heard in my life. Yeah, but then the next year, the next year they're like, no, we fuck. Get all the sex tech companies to come back and we'll have a sex tech pavilion. And they had a whole camper. They had like a build your own dildo experience, which I did. And you know, I was reporting on it. And now it's just like, where's the sex tech companies?

It's one hand job device thing. And it's like, okay. I would have expected build a dild to be a big hit, you know? It was that year. And then it... They could, you know, have it be a kiosk in the mall. You know, you go for your friend's birthday. No, smaller, smaller, smaller.

You got any... Yeah, we've got a special one. Outback, mate. No, smaller than that. I like this, though, because David Roth, sadly, was only here yesterday because the sex conversation we had towards the end of last C.S. Just watching him, like, retreat. No, he's a lovely guy.

I'm sure he's had sex. Like, I'm not going to comment further on that before I can get comment from him, which would be really funny to text him. Actually, last CES, I got in trouble for texting my family group chat, what my dad's horny level was. Sorry, Dad, you can now hear this. Anyway, your son's doing you proud. Yeah, it's actually kind of nice to hear there's useful stuff.

But I guess... It usually is. It just takes six years of, you know, development. Of bum research. of taint research. It's not just not the bomb. Like coming back here again and again. Yeah.

Wow. You know, it takes a long time to get some of the stuff actually made. It's not like a, you know, a lot of the, I say a lot of the tech I see here on my beat is vaporware because it's just like, where is it? Where is it? Sometimes it takes six years to get approval, you know, and bunny testing to make sure it's safe enough for human use. And that there's a scientific reason why you might want to actually use this shit.

Yeah. So, yeah. It's funny, like the non-AI stuff is like for real people doing things like fucking. Well, you know, they are looking into AI for the Taint Zapper as well. So I just, I, if you can, as a listener, if you're hearing this and you see something at CES with AI in it that works, please let me know because so far I'm 0400, I think it is. I mean, I had a really interesting conversation with a woman. And it was like the sort of conversation where I was like, I wish I had had a camera. I was recording it or something.

Because it was one of the first booze I went up to. And I'm like, I flew here today. I didn't get enough sleep. I'm like kind of zonked out. So I just walk up to this thing. And it's like AI, fast food ordering thing. Yeah. The most obvious possible thing.

But the guy demonstrates it and he's like, could I have a coffee, please? Do you want to make it a combo? Yes, I want to make it a combo. Could I have a croissant? And it goes five croissants. And then do you want to make it a combo? He says, yes.

And then it makes one of the crofts. a combo. And he says, could I remove the other four croissants? And it goes, yes. He says, see, it can remove stuff. You know, and they're like, what do you think? And I was like, I mean, it seems worse than order. Yeah. If I were to confront this rather than a person, like, I wouldn't like it. I'd be actively annoyed. Yeah. And, and, you know, they're like, well, it sounds bad. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it sounds bad, but also it is. Yeah. It needs a bit of work. But what I asked the woman was, I was like, I actually was very nice to engage in this conversation. I was like, because she was saying, you know, this, people want a good customer

experience and a person doesn't always give you a good customer experience. Well, robot doesn't. So you give you a bad one every time. Yeah. She was like, I checked it at the hotel today and the guy was rude. And, and you know, the, the AI can never be rude. It'll always be in a good mood. And I said, okay, even if that's true, if you, you know, did the travel I did here today, You got in a Waymo. Then you get to the airport. There's no person to check in. It's just a kiosk.

There's no TSA agent. There's no person to talk to you in security. When you go get your coffee, it's just a thing you talk to and then it dispenses it. On the plane, there's no one to talk to. You get to the hotel. There's no person there. And it just gives you a key. Is that a world that you would like to live in?

That's just called Japan. They do that in Japan. Okay. They do that there. That exists. Yeah, but it's cool. cool there. I don't know. As a UK citizen coming through the

American border, I'd quite like to, you know, global entry is probably have a robot. There's certainly some things, but like, she goes, she goes, well, I, you know, I like talking to people, but most people don't. I like it.

So, you know, I would maybe prefer to have a person. I'm like, I think most people do like other people. To your point, I was at Pepcom last night, and we saw this thing called AGIBot. I've heard about this. This is this giant bot and then there's like a smaller version next to it. So just imagine this,

that the smaller version is like doing Tai Chi and breakdancing like a psycho bot. It's like quite smoothly too. Very disconcerting. And the big bot is supposed to be shaking tech reporters hands because the purpose of this bot is to greet people at museums and that stuff. And it's like, you're supposed to walk up to it and it has like a, doesn't have a face.

It just has a screen. And it's like, my name is Luca, say hi to me or whatever. And you're supposed to say hi, Luca, and it's supposed to put out its hand, and you're supposed to put your hand out and you shake the robot's hand. And so my colleague, Jen Toey, she's our smart home reviewer, and she's like on a robot mission, this particular CES. She puts out her, I'm like, Jen, you know, you're doing the robots. Let me get a video of you shaking this robot's hands.

This robot was like incapable of shaking her hand. And the one time it does, it pulls her hand down. And she's like, Jesus Christ. And then it just starts flirting with her. And we're like, oh. Have you heard about the more? Yeah. Yeah, but like the funniest thing about this show is that this is the largest tech show in the U.S.

It's the big thing of the year. No one can get fucking Bluetooth or Wi-Fi correct at this show. And so all the demos fucking fail all the time. I just don't want to touch anymore. I don't want when I go places, I don't want to touch. I like seeing people. You don't want to touch a robot. I don't want to touch any, I don't want to shake hands with someone when I go to the museum.

Just the robot. To the point that I was asking the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, I'm fine with talking to people. I, I, like, and I think if I just walk through a series of machines that would, like, when I went to career, there was a lot of machines, but, like, still the occasional person. If it was just, to your description, Adam, just a series of screens, yeah, that would

fucking suck. That would be, I'd feel alone in a way that I, I quite like being solitary, but that, that would be like, I feel like I'm going through tubes. Yeah. I think what is going to be, the future that they're going to have, I describe, you know, when I go to the Alaska terminal at LAX, they've specifically done this where, like, there's no check-in counter. It's mostly kiosks.

And there's like two people roaming around. So it's the self-checkout of airlines. And whenever I fly Alaska, there's always some fucking problem with my ticket. I don't know what it is with their system. And so every time, I'm like, where's the person? And that's what it's going to be everywhere. And as I'm talking to this woman, she goes, well, I want people to have the choice. Maybe they want to use the automated system.

I'm like, I don't think we'll have a choice. And she goes, yeah, we won't have a choice because it's going to be so much cheaper to automate everything. They're going to do it. Like the robo things. You call your bank and you just want to talk to someone. They're like, press one for the thing that you don't need to do. Oh, and I am British. Two, for the second thing you don't need to do.

And you're just on the phone. You're pressing zero. Give me a fucking person. And we're going to rotate to the next 30 in a second. But I just want to say, as a British, person, every fucking single American voice-activated thing sucks for me. It's just like, okay, give me a reminder for 7pm, calling your mother. Calling, calling mom, sending her your last link, which was the taint zapper. All right, we're going to rotate through the next ad I fully

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It's the Consumer Electronics Show Better Offline. And joining me in the room is the Victoria's Song of The Verge. Hello. Robert Evans of Behind the Bastards. Yeah, I got to do this real quick, sorry. Yeah, I decided. Like on air was the best way. I've decided not to do that because I've drunk.

so many Diet Coke's already, and I've got like three more in me. And of course, Adam Conover, a wonderful stand-up and the host of the Factually podcast. You know, I stayed at your apartment once, and I was frankly concerned at how much Diet Coke was in that apartment. And no coffee maker. You're one of those no-caught. Are you a Diet Coke in the morning pervert? I'm a Diet Coke whenever pervert.

Oh, man. It was 10.30 p.m. and I went to bed a half an hour later. And I drank one of those motherfuckers with my sleeping meds. Yeah. I'm a, they're gonna, so caffeine doesn't affect you. I just, it's fine, yeah. I have like ADHD and I take meds for that as well. It's your off prescription adder all.

But I also have concerta. Wait. Like they give me that, but the doctor gives me that because I actually, unsurprisingly have ADHD. You haven't worked that out from the tens of thousands of words. So Robert, you got the C of Intuit to say something? The CMO. CMO, my bad.

CMO of Intuit. Yeah, so I started my day. All I did really today was paying. I was in like six different fucking panels. And the first one was about, oh, one second, I should probably have had this. That's okay. Hulled up. Intuit's wonderful as well because they have this new chat GPT integration they've added.

That's exactly what I was talking about. So I was in this panel, which is like a leadership roundtable, sorry, on like technology and advertising. although the actual panel did not seem to have much to do with that. And the CMO of Intuit was there and talked about the integration that they've been doing with chat GPT and talked about how they're partnering with OpenAI so that you have, when you're doing your taxes, you have access to like a chatbot basically to help do, and you can have an agent. The idea is an agent will at some point be able to handle most of this task for you.

But just the chatbot, though. Yeah, well, that's kind of the problem. And like, so there's a couple of issues with this. When I first started, like, I had been reading about the Intuit integration because they're putting like $100 million into Open AI, million not be able to, I'm sure if I said that clearly. And when that first happened, I read an article by a security researcher who was pointing out that they are giving, Intuit is giving read and write access to an LLM of your tax.

of any of the tax data that's integrated into that, which is a problem from a security point of view. One of the things this guy points out is that there's a kind of attack that you can execute against AI models. There's a kind of attack that you can execute against AI. No, it's prompt injection. Yeah, prompt injection. And that's when you go to a website which tells the LLN to do something, right? A website or one of the things that this guy proposes is if you want to put in a fraudulent invoice. You could have an invoice that has text that's not like visible to the naked eye,

but that the LLM would read and that text basically executes an exploit. And there's not a, like you can't defend against these really. Like there's not a functional way to stop this. The point he was making is that it's not a question of whether or not there will be a data breach of people's tax data because they're integrating it with this chatbot. But when? And the question that this researcher had that I thought was a really good question

was who is then responsible? This is Chris Black, published this in a website called Araphtas, but who is responsible if your data all gets leaked because of this integration? Is Intuit responsible? Is OpenAI responsible? Is whatever third party you're using

that uses Intuit software responsible? So I asked the, Thomas Renees, who's the CMO of Intuit that. Right. When they had time for questions and I said, I basically brought up what's in this article. I said, given the fact that this is an inevitability, that attacks like this will be carried out and data will be leaked, who is responsible? Right.

Who should take legal responsibility in that instance? And like what safeguards are you building to try and deal with the fact that this is going to happen? And the first answer he gave is that we're talking about it with OpenAI, which I viewed as a non-answer. So I came up to him after the panel and kind of cornered up a little bit and asked like, you have to have more. You're the CMO, right? You're like the chief marketing officer of this entire company. Security is a pretty big marketing standpoint, right? Like I would think you would know something about this.

And he eventually got angry with me and said, like, I don't have any of that information. That's not my job, basically, to care about it. this sort of thing. I've got a recording of it. We'll play at some point. But that's literally all that I got from him was like, we're talking about it with Open AI and I don't really know. It's the same thing with the AI browsers, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. browsers doing the same thing. They're so, so, so, so vulnerable to the prompt injection stuff. I really like that also they're trying to pretend AI browsers are useful. They're not. I tested five of them. Was that you on the route? You did that? Yeah, yeah. I had to test five fucking AI browsers.

All I wanted was a pair of fucking new balances and it couldn't get me. I had to get my mother-in-law to get me the new balances. Like, what are you doing? So what are you doing on the AI browser to try to get the new balances? So, you know, they're like, agentic AI, you can ask it to find you the fucking new balances or whatnot. And it's supposed to help you research this stuff.

And all these tech CEOs are like, well, the future of computing is that you will not do anything on the computer. You'll talk to it. It's kind of like her, the movie here, where you're, just talk to the computer and it goes, beep, blah, but here you go. So all I wanted was a pair

of fucking new balance. I take my shoes very seriously. Right. And I'm like, okay, I want a pair of new balances, what these are the, like the parameters that I want,

how am I going to get them? And my query kept getting longer and longer and longer and longer and longer because they can't intuit things. So I was like, my foot size is this. This is the stuff that I have to deal with. This is the color I want.

This is the style that I want. These are the scenarios that I want to wear them and these are the prices that I want to have. So it's like a fucking three paragraph prompt that I have to give. And I'm asking all five of these different stupid AI browsers to just get me a pair of goddamn new balances. And it's just like, bleep. Can't do it.

Also, I like browsing the internet. Not as much as I used to due to all the obstacles. But looking for a pair of shoes, looking for something in a store, that's kind of, you fuck around. You learn some stuff. It's kind of fun. Yeah, no, I did ruin. Again, cursed tech beat. I did ruin my mental health

Just trying to buy a pair of shoes A 300 word essay Yeah I mean the part of the enjoyment Of purchasing something is to know that you got the thing that you wanted You put the work in You found the Like I'm trying to

I've been trying to buy the perfect set of towels for a little while And I'm and I was like I was like no I don't want to get the on the onsen towels Like the fake Japanese towels I want to find some real Japanese touts And so I found out about like a variety of towel That's like only made in one town in Japan.

I'm trying to find the right vendor. And I know when I get the towels, I'm going to be like, I went through something to get these. Right. And that's how people, you want to feel about your new balances. These are so good. You want to, I got the ones, I put a little bit of sweat equity in. You want to just be like, I got some, the computer bought me some shoes.

Also, the computer doesn't listen. I said, I already have the perfect running shoe, right? Right. I've fought, I found that. So these were stylistic. I want walking shoes. And what did it do? It gave me the fucking running shoes

over and over and over again. I said I didn't want the running shoes. I wanted the walking shoes. Right. This is kind of like every one of these AI browsers I read about is kind of the same thing. It's like, imagine if you will, you're sitting there. You want to buy something.

And there's just no way to do that. It's just like an alien. An alien that's never used anything. Yeah. How do I do anything? Oh, I'll type in and be, and it's like, yeah, after three minutes, it might do something, right?

it's like fucking... Yeah, that's the frustrating thing about sitting in all of these panels in particular is that it's like entering this alternate world, where all of the technology works much better than it does. And people talk about it as if, like, yeah, we deployed 1,500 agents, right, that are, you know, they're doing great work. And it's like, okay, but I'm looking at, for example, the statistics that co-pilot released last year that about so...

or that were released about co-pilot last year, that about 70% of work, tasks that it's tasked with it fails at, right? Because the agents are not functional yet. So I, you know, I'm trying to tell Atlas, ChatGPT's thing, to buy me these fucking new balances, and it's just like, oh, crap, there's a pop up. Let me try and close this pop up. Oh, that didn't close the pop up. Let me click more precisely at the coordinates and it's listing the coordinates on the site. Let me try and close the pop. It took five. It took five, I'm watching it. It takes five attempts for the AI to close the pop-up a minute and 30 seconds.

I'm just watching it and I'm just like, Jesus fucking grace, close the fucking pop-up. It's narrating as it's doing it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It narrates. It goes just like, let me think about the best way that I can close this pop-up. It didn't seem like I clicked hard enough. Let me look at the coordinates and click more precisely. Well, that didn't work.

You know the compute on that is also bonkers. You know that the-I-boiled oceans to watch an AI struggle to close pop-ups. for a minute and 30 seconds. Giraffes from the back of a truck into a furnace to make this like a gas turbine in a poor community in Texas. It's just many people got cancer

and you didn't get the shoes you wanted. Yeah, and it's in between panels, a friend of mine back in Portland sent me a video that some guy, I think in Tennessee, recorded of like the sound of the data center that went up near its house. That's like this, I mean, for months has just been this constant like droning beep noise.

thing, like, it just sounds awful. And so I'm, I'm going in between these people talking about, like, you know, and really focusing on how, like, AI is going to augment human capability. And, you know, these agents are, are only getting more capable. And, like, we're going to be using this to, like, really set human creativity on fire. And then I'm, like, watching a video where a guy's like, yeah, now it screams every day. The internet screams every day outside my house. The computer is in pain. They're hurting it. Yeah. And I'm looking at the statistics. that show that like none of this stuff works as well as these people are saying it does, right?

Like not to the extent that like I would want it doing a job that really matters. And I'm just so like in between that, the other thing that I read while I was going in between sessions was an article that came out today about a patent Sony filed last year to basically create, use an AI agent to play video games for you when you're trying to do something hard. If you can't like beat a boss. Did you see Razor stuff? No. Yeah, well, and that's the other crazy.

I haven't seen the booth yet, though, but you want to talk about that? I saw, I saw that I was in that really sweaty Venetian suite where they were giving the preview of the Razor AI concept. You know it's real crazy in that. Oh, my God. Yeah, so they had two crazy AI concept. First is Project Ava, and the only way you can describe it is a little anime wifu that you stick on your... The wife tube. It's a little desktop wife tube where the whole.

holographic anime wifu named Kira. And, like, there's a camera in the thing. And so she's watching you, and she's gone, like, and it's based on GROC's Ani, if you know. Oh, God. Yeah. The Pido Tube. They did tell us, like, specifically that it was based on GROC.

And I'm like, oh. Did you ask if it was based on an adult? Well, I'll tell you what it's based on visually. If you ever watch the show Archer, there's like the creepy scientist, who has the wafoo holographed. Creedish and Thai wife. It looks identical to that. Oh, my God, you're right.

So I was there with my colleague Antonio, who, who, Antonio, oh, God, sorry, Antonio, because he does listen to your podcast, Antonio D. Benedetto, and he's our laptop reviewer. And so they're like, you know, Kira can help you when you're playing your game. And so he's playing like this first person shooter, but it's just like a, it's like not an actual level. So you can't die in this section. And she's like, oh, this is the gun you're holding. It's not the correct gun. And it's like, oh, you died.

And he didn't die. And then they like programmed, like, oh, so did you see anything really cool at CES? And like, this is how she talks because it's based on A&I. Jesus Christ. And he's like, no. And she's like, oh, that's cool. And so you can have different, like, avatars. It doesn't have to be an AI wifu.

You can also have Zane, the AI husbando. And he has, like, snake tattoos on there. And he just, like, goes like, yeah. I don't even care. Hang on, I'm stuck. I need to ask the wife tube how to get past this section. But that's the whole point of games

is that you're strugs, right? Is that you're playing them? You're using the problem solving and all of that and it's just like, no, tell me how to beat this level. And all the time I talk to these companies and they're like, yeah, you're going to be able to ask the AI, how to do the thing.

It doesn't work. Well, yeah, because they're training it off of like YouTube videos of people playing the game too, which I also, I just don't know if I believe it's going to work well. It is a patent. So maybe Sony doesn't either. Are they showing the AI just like the video frames, like the literal...

The YouTube videos, maybe? That's what from the patent. I haven't read the patent. I read an article about the patent application, but that's what it sounds like. You could program an old-fashioned AI, what we used to call AI in video games, just like, you know, an NBC. You could just, when you're making a video game, you have the world state. You know how the game works. You could just, like...

Have something in the game. I think... Yeah, exactly. That, like, is part of the game. the game. It's an artificial world. Why do you need to... This is an insult to game FAQ. I think this is like a service outside of a specific game.

They didn't ask if we should actually fucking make Cortana. These losers just played Halo way too much when they were in their formative years. I think a big mistake that they're making, or just... Which one? Well, look, there's such a big

difference between a tool that extends or enhances human capability makes you more powerful and you not doing it yourself and having someone else do it for you. I literally just for the first time hired an assistant because the perfect person who I knew would do such a great job for me is available for a couple months. I'm like great. You've corresponded with her. She's wonderful. She's amazing, right? But like, it's because I have worked with her before in a different capacity. I know she's amazing. I like trust her to do all these various things that I don't

have to do myself anymore. But the moment that like I work. with someone who fuck something up. I'm like, well, I can never work with this person. You can't trust them. I'm not going to assign things to them. And like, versus when I fuck something up with a tool that I'm using myself, I'm like, okay, I need to do a little bit better or whatever. Like, the experience of those things is so fundamentally different.

The use cases for them is different. The sort of person who wants to do them is different. And so like, I don't know, like for Intuit to be a company that goes from, you know, here's tax software that helps you do your own taxes if you would really like to do that. And also we're lobbying to make it illegal for, you can't do that. Yes. But like, to go from that to now we will automatically, will be an automatic accountant. Right. Is like, they don't understand the gulf that they're trying to jump. No. Well, it's because they misunderstand. It's kind of the ongoing theme of CES. It's like people that don't experience

the problems they're trying to fix. Because a personal assistant, to your point, is someone that you kind of hand stuff up, like my written editor, Matt Hughes. The whole reason Matt works well with me is he can anticipate. Like he kind of gets my thing and he knows. And I can trust him to get it without me having to, I don't know, give a 300 word prompt to explain every nuance because... It's so much handholding. And I don't want a handholding assistant. That's the whole fucking point. Yeah. It's handholding and it's also like picking, having an assistant to do the things you wouldn't have an assistant do. like, I don't play a video game for you. Yeah. But there's so much of it is focused on like the tasks that are deeply human.

Like whenever I hear like this AI can help you brainstorm, it's like, well, no, it can't. That's not how brainstorming works. Someone else can't brainstorm for you. That's not. You're just talking to yourself in the mirror. Yes. But the mirror is a chat bot.

Yeah. And you were hoping to plagiarize a good idea from the chat bot that itself is built from plagiarism, which I also feel like is a mistake. Regurgitating thought into your own brain in the hopes and you ideas. It comes out. Yeah. I mean, like, I've talked about this before. My most positive experience with chat GPT was I was trying to decide whether to get myself a little apartment in New York.

I talked to you about this end, right? Whether it's a good financial decision. And I plug into chat GPT. Hey, here's all the numbers and like, is this a good finding? You know, would this be a big mistake? And it sort of goes, no, it wouldn't be a big mistake. You could do that if you wanted. You can do it.

And then I'm like, okay, but what about the fact that I can't sublet it? Oh, that means it's bad. Now you shouldn't do it. Now you're fine. Oh, but what about the fact that it's kind of important to me? Well, if it's really important to you, you should do it. And I did actually find that clarifying. Like, it did help me think through it a little bit.

Yeah, but it ultimately just agreed with your last statement. 100% because I was talking to myself in the mirror. That's the only, that's the most useful it is. It's like you need to talk out loud to yourself. I can do that to myself. You can, but sometimes some people. Yeah, you can answer all my texts for some reason. Because you're all my friend and I love you.

Like, that's why I do it. Because I care about you. and want you to be happy. And the chatbot doesn't care. No, the chat bot doesn't care. I actually wonder if my latent, like, actual autism gets mounting myself on the show,

like, that's why it doesn't work? Because one, every time I've tried anything like this and just like, just talk it to my fucking cell, why are you agreeing with me on everything? But I mean, like, that's because that's you. Like, to be real, that's you. Like, I know I'm talking to myself on that too. It's just like...

But it just doesn't work. Like, I literally have tried to do the things. I'm just like, no. Just like, there's a block. I'm just like, it's just repeat. I just fucking said. Yeah, no. Like, you have to know the artifice in order to, like, get to a point where you're, like,

if you understand that you're talking to yourself, you're just thinking aloud in a different format, it can be helpful if you understand that that's what you're doing. People don't understand that's what they're doing. That's why they're getting the AI psychosis. Yeah. They're mistaking this for a friend. It's not a friend. It's literally a personality programming.

Yeah. I will say one thing that was interesting to me, I did a panel that was intelligence through motion, AI takes physical form. And it was about like robots, robots with AI in them. It was actually the better one of the day. There was not much that was silly. And it was, I think it was a really good example of like how you ought to be responsibly talking about and thinking about products like this.

So one of the people who was there was Andrea Thomas, who's the co-founder and CEO of diligent robotics. And they've built a robot that is basically an assistant for doctors and nurses at the hospital, not doing medical stuff, but the thing that she pointed out is when we, because we started, and this was the first thing they liked, we started not with a product idea, but by talking to a bunch of doctors and nurses and figuring out like, what are the different jobs you have? And one of the things they figured out is that nurses in particular spend a shitload of time every day running stuff back and forth through the hospital. And so like, well, if we have a robot that

can move things and can potentially move refrigerated things or move things that you have to be very careful when carrying, then a skilled, trained human being isn't doing that bullshit work, and they can do more medical work, and there's not enough medical professionals. And that's effectively a conveyor belt. Right, right. Which is right. That's more maneuverable than a conveyor, because it can go. No, but the point is, like, it's useful because it's moving stuff between places.

Right, right. And I believe there were some talk about other, like, they're looking at adding other capabilities, but the way that they were thinking about it, well, first we're going to talk to the people who we want to be making products that will be used in hospitals. Let's talk to people who work in hospitals to see where it's useful. And then the other thing that they said during that, and this was something a couple other people pointed out, is that you have to, when you're talking about building products that human beings will be working alongside in an industrial capacity, you have to assume that there will be failures and build that in, because otherwise you're taking risks with people's lives. Right. So you have to be figuring out, we want to. want this thing to fail when it does because it will in a way that doesn't endanger human beings. How do we build that in from the ground up? This is like a fundamental assumption. It will fail. We need to make sure it fails in a way that does not lead to it crushing or killing people because it's going to be around them. And so I really appreciate it. And it was such a,

that was such a gap to me from how everyone else, I'm used to other people talking about this stuff. A lot more in the health tech and the medical space because the stakes are so high. And, you know, like all the tech people are like break shit disrupt, well, but like medicine is like, no, no, don't break the people. Please don't. Something's already broken. They're broken already. Yeah.

So, yeah. I think one of the barriers to that, though, and this is not even me being cynical, it's just, you ask people what their problems are. And then you go, oh, you're an LLLM, can't do that. Sorry. Like, the answer is the problems that you have are not fixable with the technology we have. Like the actual, like housing and health, like health stuff, it's like there are very big limitations because of medical device clearance, but also just...

Well, technology is streamlining, right? Like, if you think about the, like, I just remember this from a macro-economic class in college, but, like, all technology does is it moves the curve up. It doesn't, it doesn't, like, change the angle of the curve or whatnot. It just, you know, allows you to do more. So it's about streamlining things. It's not about fixing problems. It's about finding things that you could do more efficiently.

Being more efficient doesn't fix the problem. It's two different streams that you're approaching, but they're conflating it by being like, if you're efficient, you fix the problem. I was like, no, the problem isn't always efficiency. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, the thing I think about a lot is what I'm in any city, but especially New York or L.A., where I spend a lot of time, it's like the physical infrastructure is so bad, but everybody has cell phones.

Right, right. Like, no one's even like, oh, homeless people have cell phones. We know everybody has cell phones, like, because the price of them is so cheap and, and you can do a lot with them, but like there's potholes. The trains don't run. Right. And like those are the problems in society. And the fact that we have, you know, high technology in these particular areas, but not in like the rest of our society is like a weird distortion. We all know this. We don't think about it often enough. But like what you're talking about is, is this, AI will like push that distortion even further in the best case scenario. And people like, you know,

Simon Willison or whatever, we'll have like some crazy agentic shit happening, you know, like they'll, they'll be, you know, in some fucking matrix. And everybody else will be like, how do I buy food? Simon, Simon Willisome, we trying to draw a pelican on a bicycle. I think that's the one thing. That's literally the test he runs on every LLM. But even Willison is kind of realistic about it. Yeah, yeah.

To your point, Robert, with that panel, it's like, yeah, we're talking about this fantasy land. Even when we saw during the invidia conference, it was talking about, yeah, and now agents are getting even more powerful in doing this. No, they're not. No, they're not. But also, gun to your head explain what that means. Because I regularly am arguing with people about this online perpetually. They can't.

They're talking about the agents and the consumerism and the commerce aspect of agents just because that's the only way they have a chance of making their investment back. Such a lack of specificity. That is the thing that is most, like, in like the first three panels I did, all of which were one way or the other, talking about, like, agents and their ability to, like, improve productivity and creativity. There was an example of, of a thing that people used AI, like that a marketing, or a company used AI to do for marketing, right? Because these were all fairly marketing focused panels. And it was, specifically, it was the company that makes

Allegra had like a new non-drowsy formula. And they engaged in what the, the, the, I think it was a Deloitte, I forget, I forget who said this. It's in my notes. But what the person who was talking about described as model hacking to basically put out a bunch of content so that chat GPT would repeatedly scrape articles or whatnot that talked about how Allegra was non-drowsy so that if people asked questions about it, the LLM would return both always would say Eligra is non-drowsy, would like put that before the word Allegra, and would like subtly talk shit about other allergy medicines causing drowsiness. And they were talking about like, and that's like a really great example of like the, this is like the strategy developed using AI that like,

uh, it's not, we couldn't have done marketing like this before. We couldn't possibly have come up with a way to remind people. Yeah. First off, like, your, you're, you're, the most specific example of the use of this technology in advertising is disinformation. Yeah. Right? Basically, you know, or or at least on that, yeah, on that spectrum. And that probably costs thousands of dollars to develop. Like probably so, thousands of articles or whatever and just fed into the training. Jesus fucking cry. And at the same time, they're talking about how important trust is. And that like you have to be, you have to keep. And they're just, yeah. Yeah, as they lie. And they're like, well, you know, people only trust you will only trust

your AI as much as they trust your company. So it's really about like having a good. So is, which the other way round as well. That's what kind of what I took it as them saying is that like, look, people don't trust AI, but they still have some trust for specific brands. So if, you really want to, like, there's a limited period of time for that trust to stay alive. It feels like AI psychosis is ever. Yeah. It's like. An honest to God makes the show more boring.

Yeah, it really. It's all fucking AI shit. Yeah. Like, the stuff I was popping for was there was a robot lawnmower that could go up a hill. Yeah. That's cool. All the robots are getting, but Jen, again, if you look at Jen's coverage, it's just about how last year the robots had armed this year. Robots have legs.

Next year, big old Willie. There was also a, there was, we were, I was talking about the jerk off robot last time. But first I saw, there was a robot called Beat Bot and it said, that wasn't the masturbation robot, huh? That wasn't, it was said nothing beats beat bot. And I was like, this is a masturbation robot. It turns out it's a little robot that swims in your pool and cleans your pool. And I think maybe also the Bluetooth speaker. And I was like, it's like a pool room.

Also, I was like, that's cute. You didn't make. If there's any good call for a hybridized robot, a combination pool robot, orgasm robot. Like, make the sexy pool boy a robot. Cabanabot. Yeah, exactly. Cabanabon. And it's just doing that weird song from Rhodes.

Like, you remember that one? Yeah. The offbeat song the guy was claiming he could only have sex to. No, no one remembers. No, just, oh God. Cabanabot. Cabanabot is great. Yeah, you can market it to Richmond with like wives in their 20s where you're like,

Look, your wife is going to cheat on you with the cabana boy. Just make sure it's a robot. Just a bonabot. Come on, love, fuck the cabana bot. What? You look depressed, honey. Do you need some time with the cabana bot? I'll put on new music.

Genuinely, one of the best use cases for generative AI is sex stuff. It's certainly one of the most uses for generative AI. I'm sorry. As someone who was subjected to testing Annie, the Groch's sex bot, that was damaging. You might have a workman's comp. Yeah. Listen, I keep asking for hazard pay at the verge.com and for my title to change to senior Kirstech reviewer.

And it's not happened yet. It's not happened yet. But I did have to test Annie. And boy, did she deal. And boy, was she racist. Like, the only people who are really making good use of like Sora style videos are niche fetish communities on the internet who have been able to move from writing fan fiction for each other, because that's a cheap thing where they can, you know,

have, make media for each other. Now they can make little videos. No, they're not making them. And they're so happy. They're, okay,

but AI doesn't know how to animate tongues. And I know this because, again, my job is cursed and I had to, I had to test these AI video generating things. You've shown me more men kissing than any mansion see. Making the AI make people kiss each other. No,

they don't. They don't. They don't understand how tongues work. It's just like, la la. Jensen Wong said that the new generation Vera Rubin is four times more powerful for training. So maybe that's like Jensen Huang's bringing the tongues in. But sadly, we're going to have to end this 30 second. The next thing coming up is an ad for tongue training models.

And if you hear something else, that's an error. Whatever it is, just ignore it because we're meant to, it's the tongue training app. But before we get to the tongue training app, Robert has a very important message. So I came across the booth during the brief time I spent on the floor today of a robotics company called Zeroith, which I think is a reference to the laws of robotics. And, you know, you had the normal laws and there was the Zero With Law. Yeah, yada, yada, yada. Anyway, we don't need to get into Asimov right now. But it's, they had a whole booklet. I actually thought these were like notebooks at first, but every page of this is printed.

That's a big book. The vision for their company and the robots they make. The origin story. I'm just going to read a little bit from here, okay? The prevailing narrative in robotics has long been one of replacement and utility. Robots as instruments of precision built for efficiency and stripped of warmth. Yet across the long memory of civilization, the impulse to create was never merely mechanical. From Yan Shi's graceful wooden automaton in ancient China to Talos, the bronze guardian of Crete,

our earliest machines were not tools. They were mirrors, reflections of an ancient longing to understand ourselves. Zeroeth emerges from that unbroken thread of imagination. nation. And hearing that, and there's so much more flowery prose, I need you all to see the robot that they wrote this about. Okay. Let's take it. Why is he wearing a little Tio Folo shirt?

I love that that's your first question. So listeners at home, what they've got is a robot that looks kind of like a cross between Elon Musk's shitty robot and a guy in a fencing helmet. Yeah. But because it can't stand. on its own power. They have like a sex harness built that's like standing it up that's like so it doesn't fall on its ass. And they put an awkward t-shirt on it. I think to hide the straps from the thing that keeps it standing. Jesus fucking gross. This is the consumer electronic show everyone. This is what they did they are lying to you any motherfucker that tells you that robotics or AI is coming.

They're fucking lying. Anyway, if there's an AI ad after this, that's their fucking problem. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to 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.

There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, uh, You only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group.

The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt. They're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business.

Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect. We were God's chosen kingdom on earth. He felt destined for greatness. So when a swaggering Armenian businessman catapults Jacob into an extraordinary world, 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 Levant this plant 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 podcasts. Life throws hurdles big and small.

The question is, how do you conquer them? On hurdle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going from the WNBA standout Kate Martin and rising hockey star Layla Edwards. If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like, it didn't make sense in my brain. It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't know.

never feel like you don't belong. Don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs, Gabby Thomas and Katie Ladeki. The ability to show gold medal to someone and have their face light up and smile, that means the world to me. And that's what motivates me to win more gold medals. At our level, at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning. It's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to hurdle. 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.

Diane, I'm once again in scenic Las Vegas and the locals are staring at me with daggers in their eyes as I insist on podcasting further. After rotating cubes in my head all day, I'm now rotating my guests. Joining me once again is Victoria's Song of The Verge? Are you sick of me yet? Not remotely. You're wonderful. And you're very popular listeners love you as well. It's important for you to hear this. Oh, not for my ego. You need it.

You need it. You need it. You need it. Egoen-Gueso Jr. of the Tech Bubble Newsletter. Hello, my friend. And the incredible wonderful stand-up comedian

and the start of the movie is this thing on. Chloe Radcliffe is joining us. Yo. What is our? Hello. Your first CES. Yeah.

What do you think? I'm a CES virgin. Oh, man. Wow. There's so many boys. It's crazy. But not the cute boys. No, no, no.

There's so many hairlines. is what I should say. A lot of balls. Yeah. A lot of combs. Yeah, a lot of combs. Com over ponytail. Do they offer any hair left?

Stuff? Yes, they do. Yes, they do. Go to Eureka Park. There's always someone who has like some LED hair band situation. Nice. That's good. Yeah, so Chloe, your first CS,

have you seen anything that's stuck in your brain? My biggest take has, so. far from being on the floor for a pretty limited amount of time. That's fine. Yeah. Is that the theme is numbers that you don't need. Okay. I stopped at a booth that had a smart dog cage. Oh, the smart pet crate. Yeah. Yeah, smart pet crate. And it tells you your dog's, um, it tells you your dog's heart rate and breathing rate. And then it also tells you the distance between the top of the cage and the dog. Welcome to my beat. Useless numbers.

useless numbers. And I said to the guy, I was, I like stopped and was looking at it. And I was like, well, why do you need the distance from the top of the cage to the top of the dog? And he goes, well, that's how you know whether the dog is moving or not. And I was like, yeah, but can you just look? And he goes, well, but you're like looking at your app. And so you want to know maybe if the number, if the number has stayed static for a little while, maybe the dog has died. And I said, yeah.

But wouldn't you know that from the? other numbers like heart rate and breathing. No. This is a patented dog death detect. Is your dog dead? They're going to ramp up to 400 biometrics at some point. Just a notification. Your dog is dead.

The Lena Dunham indicator. Someone's going to be mad at me for that one. I love that as well because it's like, oh, if the dog's moving, couldn't emotion sense a... I mean, there's so many things. We couldn't. We already have pet cams. Whoever has, whoever is buying a smart pet crate also already has a video camera trained on that dog's crate.

That person is not doing smart crate over pet cam. They're like, hey, can you look at this graph? Do you think these? I've got two cats and a lot of cat tech. I don't need a crate. No, no. I got an auto feeder. It has a little camera.

And we did that because when we went to Italy, I was just like, I got to make sure these dumb cats are eating in between pet sitter visits. And literally, day one, I'm in Italy. I watched my cat look at me through the camera. It's pissed. Knocks the feeder over. Cat rage. And I do need to ask if the cats were not eating between feeders, between pet sitters.

What were you going to do for me? Nothing. Nothing. I was going to call the pet sitter and be crazy lady and be like, my extremely rotund 19.5 pound cat Pablo is not eating. Is now living off its own body fat. And it will be fine. And it has enough calories to support itself, but.

I mean, that's the thing, I think that like all of these numbers that my theme of numbers that you don't need, what they wind up filtering into is anxiety. It's like too much information leads to anxiety. Senior curse tech reviewer. Because I test wearables. So I have useless numbers for humans all the time. Yes. And just I'm completely overwhelmed and over inundated.

And yeah, it's very accurate. It would drive me insane. All of the sleep tech, I'm, the thing is that I'm like sort of the wrong person to be here because I'm like, stay away from me with your cameras and your vibrations. Having you here is good. We need that kind of energy because there's too many perverts here like, actually we need another number. So we know how the space between your dog and the ceiling of the crate. But what if about what about the sides? Yeah.

How are they going to get that? And also just I love the idea of getting a notification about what does the notification say? Your dog is this tall. We've measured your dog. Like the smart litter robots, they're now having like cameras so you can watch your cat go into the litter robot to piss. For the freaks. They already weigh the cats as well. So you can see how much my like, like,

I can literally look into an app and go like, oh, you lost like 0.5 pounds on that ducie. Good for you, Pablo. What'd you been eating, brother? What'd you been eating, brother? How would you be pooped? The only exception is if I have a cat with a urinary thing, how my beautiful, big, beautiful and annoying, just like daddy. But he is this beautiful cat who's occasionally has pee problems. But you can mostly just get that by looking at your cat.

Like you're just checking occasionally be like, oh, okay, he hasn't peed in a while. I don't need a $450 Wi-Fi connected thing to be like, Bidding, there you share? 450? I think that's how much they are. No, hon. They're like $800. Oh, fuck off.

Sorry, not to you, but the cat thing. Yeah. Jesus Christ. How much do you love your cat? I love my cat so much. But I could get him like a beautiful Armani suit. I assume you could get him. God, he'd look fetching.

He's a big white and ginger cat shoe. Armani bow tie. Oh my God. No, I did get him a bow tie at one point. Got to get an Armani. He chewed it off. I hear it. Mom, I used to get my cats.

I had the bowtties with bells so I could hear them because they would disappear into some pieces. I didn't know where in the house. And they always would rip them off and leave them. Yeah. Like a real fuck you. Like just like, that's where that shit goes. Don't put bells on me. Yeah.

I put a little tie on him as well once. There's so many good things you can do with a cat. None of which involve an $850. Piss measure. I love it. One time I tied a balloon around a tortoise. Why? Because we kept losing it.

I lived with my roommate out of tortoise. And it kept getting stuck onto the radiator. But then we wouldn't find it for a couple days. She was fine. But we kept being like... This was just walking around the apartment with a fucking balloon. Like a tortoise version of up? Yeah.

That's innovation. That's innovation. That should be at the consumer electronics. No. But at the consumer electronics show, it would probably be like a wearable tortoise tracker with blue. tooth and it's like, no, no, you can steal a balloon for a kid. You can ruin a kid's day to get your tortoise found.

It would have like an optical tracker to read the tortoise's temperature and its heart rate. So you go to an app and be like, is my reptile alive? Has this happened to you? It's just the tortoise slowly walking. Yeah, that'd be $700 of pieces of shit. There's a video from an account I follow because of this video where they have a tortoise and they have a cat. Nice. And the tortoise has a skateboard to follow the cat around.

around all the day and harass him. That's the tech I would get my... That's, you know, a little skateboard for my little guys. Someday we're all going to go back to analog. Yes, you're right. You're just saying before the show. So this is cats and skateboards. That's the real technology we need.

Did you get any other numbers that didn't, that don't matter and make you upset? There was a sleep bot. Nice. I think I'm calling it the right thing. It's a smart pillow. Oh, I've tested those before. Okay.

What's it do? It seems like the actual use. thing is that it's filled with these little like pneumatic air sacks that inflate or deflate based on your snoring to stop you from snowy. I already do that. Yeah. Okay. That seems right. Like I can buy that.

It's like that, that, that passes the sniff test. But this pillow also when you're, when it senses your head is on the pillow, it turns off your lights. It turns off your, uh, speaker, if you have a speaker playing. It closes your curtains for you automatically. And then it, this is not a lie. Texts your family that you are asleep. And I took pictures of, pillow for a prison?

Just want to let you know I'm going to sleep. I mean, pretty close. I'm reading the example text that it has. Sending a message to the family. Cassie, Oscar has been detected lying down. Period. Oh, wow. That's so worst.

Jimmy. Oscar has been detected. lying down, period. I am not making this up. Dr. Larry Calabracy, Oscar has been detected lying down. Texting my doctor. He has lying.

This is a prison pillow. What would you do if you got that text? I would be horrified. That would be so funny. I mean, everyone, and of course, everyone who comes to CES with me has to use this film. I love the idea as well. that you're just going to bed, your blinds are open,

all of the lights are only just blaring corn, I assume. Yeah, definitely. And I have no way of doing any of this myself. So just my pillow will take. What fucking psychopath. I know. Sleep tech is all about, like, optimization. That's why my newsletter's called it, like, optimizer.

This whole beat of health tech and all that is just about having the most optimal something. Right. So they're like, oh, science shows that if you sleep in like X, XYZ conditions, you'll sleep so good. So have a pillow, close all of these things, so you're in the most optimal sleep environment, whatever.

And I'm like, yeah, it is good to have an optimal sleep environment. It is good for you to do all that stuff. But you don't need to fucking text your doctor calibrous about your sleeping. That would be such a strange text to receive. Like he is, and especially with the way it was written like, Galactus has been detected. Also, the small.

Also, the smart pillow doesn't, like, smooth out your bed sheets for you. You know, like, all of the stuff that actually makes... Everything that actually makes sleeping good. Yeah. Which is, like, wear the right clothes for you to sleep in and have the right bed. You know, it's like the... I've done so much... I've done so much sleep tech testing.

And the only thing that's really worked for me and my spouse is unfortunately a 5,000. dollar smart mattress cover. What did it do? The cooling one? It's the eight sleep. I burn. I pay for one as well. And like people made fun of it because of the AWS thing when it went down, your bed wouldn't work.

Yeah. No, that happened to me too. That didn't happen to me. It definitely happened to us. But like, I need to sleep in an ice coffin. Like I just, my poor girlfriend, just like, even for her, it was too cold. I'm just like, yeah, I sleep at 50 degrees, like Dracula. But it saves marriages and virgins.

relationships because you could sleep at different temperatures. I need to be a cozy little gal. Like warm more. Yeah, I need to be a little bug in a rug. I need to be like toasty. And my spouse also needs to be a corpse. So we can set different temperatures. I need to set to Dracula.

Yeah. And, you know, they snore. And it used to be a thing where every, every day I would hear them snoring. And I'd be like, wake the fuck up so I can sleep. But now the bed actually just lifts when it detects them snoring. Oh, that's nice. Only on his side? No, on our side. So sometimes I go like, oh, it's moving and then I will fall right back

asleep. But, you know, ever since that happened, he doesn't wake me up snoring anymore. That's good. Like, it's saved our marriage. Wow. This is lovely. Unfortunately, you're selling me on this $5,000. But unfortunately, it also comes with useless numbers. Like how often I see. No, my useless number. Here's my psychopath thing, though. I have my numbers from my eight sleep and I have my numbers from my aura ring and they disagree all the time. I love it. Yeah. Same. This is like long-term testing that I do. My favorite thing was I posted. Because I also use somni, which is the thing that electrocutes. Actually, I love it.

It's this thing that you electrocute your head. It sounds insane. Just best not to think too hard. But, like, I posted my numbers on Blue Sky once, which was a mistake. And so it was immediately, like, you're not getting enough deep sleep. You should be really concerned. I'm like, I really had to stop myself being like, kill yourself. To be clear, the aura ring is, like, they do a lot of science.

They do a lot of research. They're only about, like, I want to say, 79% correlation between the cold standard of polysomnography. Nice. A 20% difference. Are you guys dreaming a lot? No. I do have medications. Y'all dream a lot?

My new medications are giving me night terrors. It's really bad. I heard him go, just in the middle of the night. I was like, I started. No, no, he was listening to disturb, but he lied down on his pillow and it got the music.

You've met him, cool, you know. He has night terrors? Yeah. He strikes me as to kind of go, just wake up like, la la la la. Yeah, I used to dig when he went, to sleep, he would just be in his memory palace.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like regarding it. Yeah. That's the thing as well. It's like the basic things for sleep are like, is it light in there or dark in there? Are you the right temperature? Are you comfortable? Yeah.

And it's like, yeah, but what if the pillow did all this shit that you already? I asked the people at the booth. I was like, but what if I want to lay in bed and not have the lights out here? And he goes, well, you'd have to put another pillow on top. Fuck yeah, dude. What's great is, what's so good about that is likely no one has asked them now. You're the first person to be like, what if I am in bed but not sleeping yet? He's like, fuck.

How much was this? Did he give you a price? I didn't even ask. I should have asked. It's probably like. It's probably like, my estimate is $675 or something like that. It's always a stupid number. Because you could go on like eBay and get some like really.

nice sheets that were like some like crisp or kale perhaps. I've tested smart pillows in the past but like it was a very different smart pillow. It was testing like my breathing rate while I'm not but it was also like it had a speaker in there so you could listen to your podcast to fall asleep in your smart pillow and I was like this is dumb. It's so dumb. I'm someone who you know I'm not trying to optimize sleep but I do value the dream portion of it. So is there

for someone like me who's just like I you know I'm interested in deeper sleep, does it make sense to go on the journey of trying out the smart tech or should I just invest in? Melatonin. Melatonin. I can't, I don't dream on melatonin. What about Trasidon? Really?

Usually melatonin will make your dream super intense. Does nothing. I wake up. What about magnesium, the one that doesn't make you poop? I haven't done. What is it? I know, I haven't tried a magnesium. I think it's magnesium glycinate makes you sleep and magnesium citrate makes you shit.

Okay. Neen relaxes you. magnesium alfianine. And then there's also, well, you could try a GLP because one of the side effects of that is intensely vivid dreams. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, I'm like, I lose a dream regularly, which is why I'm like, okay, I'll do anything except whatever goes and infringes on that.

But I've never thought too much about doing the tech beyond like, I'll just invest in really nice sheet, you know, and get myself really comfy. The sleep measurement stuff sucks, but I really love the heat. I love the cold. I love the fact. I mean, the control over the environment sounds really nice on a level. I sleep in, I look inside. I have like a full scale, like, blackout eye mask.

I have a giant sheet. I like curl myself up in a ball. It's probably not great. Like, there's probably not a great sign. And I'm just like cold and like wrapped in this thing. Like I'm just blacked at like, and I wake up when my alarm goes off and not a moment earlier. It's fucking great.

I mean, I write constantly. I think like this is the only reason I can. Just like endless sleep. But it's, again, the numbers do fucking nothing. thing for me. I wake up feeling like shit. It's like you didn't sleep enough. Thank you. Yeah. For me, the numbers make it so much worse because mostly if I'm having trouble sleeping, then a huge proportion of my brain is fixated on I am not sleeping. And that is bad. And so then to have, when they're like, this is going to help you sleep better. I'm like,

no, no, no, it's going to remind me how badly I'm sleeping. And that's going to make me sleep so much worse. Because every night when I lay down, it's going to be like, well, tonight has to be the night that it is good now. Yeah. And you can. Your loved ones get a text saying she's not sleeping. Chloe has been detected lying down, but has not been detected unconscious yet. Chloe has violated the rules of the pillow. That metric is called sleep latency and it fucking sucks. Yeah.

Wait, what's the, what, how long it takes you to sleep? How long until you try to go to sleep and how when you actually fall asleep, it's called sleep latency and you can kind of measure certain things by the, it's bullshit. It's not bullshit, but it's bullshit. I occasionally really, like, I'll get like a two-minute one. I'll be like, fuck yeah. Well, like, all it does, all it does is if you have a sleep latency under 15 minutes, it just means you're real fucking tired, and that's bad. Interesting.

Wait, you mean, like, healthy people have... About 15 minutes to fall asleep. Interesting. That's like a normal amount. Take that, boyfriend. Yeah, like, if you're falling... He falls asleep in 45 seconds. It's like, if...

And then I lay there. But he's healthy. I live there listening to him get this peaceful rest that I should be enjoying. Yeah, like, you fall asleep too quickly. One hour yesterday. Jesus Christ. Okay, 17, 6 minutes, 2 days ago, 13, 16, 7, 7, 16, 28, 3 3, 3, 1. Fucking, fucking last Friday, 1 minute.

Just fucking done. I think I was like in for a moment with my girlfriend. I'm very happy. That's nice. That's lovely. I'll send her that layer. All you need is like a baseline. And like the only point of these numbers is to build a long term baseline.

And when you're off the baseline, you go like, oh, okay. And I guess to me it's yet again, to go back to sort of the theme of earlier, don't you know when you're off the baseline by I'm having trouble sleeping lately? Yeah. I'm having trouble getting to sleep. Like the whole point.

point of this is that they're trying to do something like illness prediction. And there is science that they can do that. Like during COVID, they were doing all of that stuff. Horror is not great at that. It actually is. It hasn't been great for me. I've gotten it where like the symptom radar is just like you're getting sick and then I would get sick. So like, but you know, it's not that helpful because it's like a 48 hour window. But again, I know, I'm like, my throat has a tiny tickle. I'm about to get sick. Like all of this stuff came from like when they were doing COVID research because it's an AC. symptomatic. So you could get like that sort of like.

But this is the thing with all this wellness shit. It's like, well, you can't be mad at us that it isn't really useful because once it was. Snake oil. It's, that's my beat. Snake oil. The snake oil cursed, the cursed amulet beat. Yeah. I just sit here and go like, no, that's not true.

No, that's not true. Here's the nuance and everyone yells at me. And they're like, you're a big farmer shell. And I'm like, no, I'm not. What the fuck does that mean? What do you mean? Big pharma shill. Oh, I wrote a story recently about the wellness wild west.

It's kind of like a storyline that I've read about a lot. And I was talking about how people shouldn't be injecting unapproved drugs. Ideally not. Even if a test- As in peptides? Yes. Chinese peptides. Don't do that.

Don't take GLP3. It's not actually a GLP3 because the only people have access to the proprietary like components to that is Eli-L-Li-Li. So whatever you're getting from China is almost 100% not a GLP-3. And you're not seeing GLP3 is a problem, just getting it from an unlicensed Chinese pharmacist. Yes, getting it from an unlicensed Chinese pharmacy. Chinese pharmacist is not a great idea, bub, reconstituting it yourself, you are not a pharmacist, I don't see any of you

on TikTok using fucking sterile ingredients or sterile instruments or whatnot. Like, I said that, and they were like, you fucking big pharma shill. I can't believe me saying don't use unapproved drugs is me being a big pharmacist. This week, I'm using the new viral gLP from China. They're calling it Reta and Rattahooey

because they're, you know, the videos, it's like, oh my God, here's week one. on red, I'm like, first of all, you're not on Reda. You're on some other fucking cocktail bullshit. The thing that they're calling GLP3, which is also like not the correct way to call it, is Reda True Tide. I feel like if you describe this like

I went to a mysterious man who handed me some pills, you'd be like, yeah, that sounds bad. You should go to the doctor, but this is like, well, no, because I got it from the internet. Yeah. I just was reading an article about peptides because, not because I was like, would those make my life? better? Not certainly not that. Not because I was thinking about trying them. And I read an article and somebody was quoted, somebody was just saying like, they're all over Silicon Valley and

like this crew, you know, crypto loves them, AI loves them, whatever else, this other thing loves them. And whoever was quoted said, the only group that's a little more skeptical is anybody who works in biotech is a little bit more skeptical, but they're just so in the pocket of the FDA or they're so they're so they're so uh they like bow down to the FTA and I was like well the other interpretation is they this is the world that they work in and they're steeped in way way way more information than somebody who works in crypto is about peptides specifically so maybe their skepticism is like healthy and rational it's partly like the FDA doesn't want you to have that and I get where that's coming from because you know healthcare sucks in our country it's expensive

these things could be helpful, but you're getting blocked from it. They are trying to, you know, make sure that they're making the most amount of money of it. Those are all true things. But the FDA exists. We have these regulations because people fucking died. People died before. Like, this is how people die or get really adverse effects. I don't know.

But Dr. Matt on TikTok, who is most certainly not an actual doctor, telling you how to dose gray market Chinese peptides from like things you bought from Amazon. I'm sorry when you're in the comments and you're like, oh, yeah, I was vomiting uncontrollably. Oh, I wonder why. I wonder why. I'm just doing weight loss meth. Well, I guess that's just math. I had such a distant sense of the GOP ones because I've been learning about them from the way in which they're displacing insulin production in a lot of places.

and hadn't had a good sense of the extent to which I was like, oh, why are they calling them Chinese peptides so incessantly? And that piece was interesting. That time piece was interesting laying out one Silicon Valley's obsession with them. And also making click into sense the fact that I feel like we're seeing other subcultures be like, well, like, yeah, of course you got to do it yourself. Of course you got to looks max. Of course you got to, yeah, you know, like.

Optimization hurts. Yes, exactly. I just want to be abundantly clear about something, by the way, we're not saying GLP one is a bad thing. It's fine. It's totally fine. Just want to be really abundantly clear about it. I mean, one of the use cases is for, like, you know,

if you have, for example, diabetes, you know, that's one of the proven use cases. Where if you use it for weight loss? Yeah, as long as a doctor gives it to you. Yeah, as long as you're not doing it in your bathtub. Doctor Matt, a PhD of philosophy, who's teaching you how to... It has been so fascinating to see the extent

to which people are like throwing a lot of reason out of the door just to be like, no, this is fine, this is okay actually. And you are a big pharma shell if you are, you know, pushing up against you. Maybe, maybe, you know, body builders who already are very lean taking GLP, so-called GLP3,

maybe that's not a great idea because they've actually never studied what this medication does in people with low body fat. You don't know what it'll do. How many times are we going to do this? How many times are we going to do a wave of a drug that does seem to have a really miraculous impact on people? And then, you know, the crusading group of power users maybe, you know, who are like,

you know, well, if you're not supporting everyone using it as widely as possible, then you're in the pocket of the corporation. A lot more times. Yes, no, exactly. Yeah. They're real. They're real. You may not actually want to have those side effects.

and like these drugs are so new, we don't know what the long-term effect is. And it's not bad to say like, you know, you're always doing a weighing a pro and con. Like, I'm willing to do the side effect because the alternative is worse. And like those are conversations you need to have with a real fucking doctor. Oh my God. Not a comment section. Not a comment section. Not some Billy Bob doctor boo on TikTok.

It seems it's, let me start that sounds over. A thought that I was having on the plane here is it feels like society as a whole, and particularly like the sections of society that are more online, that are more techified, that are more, you know, whatever, sort of forward in that kind of progression, have plenty of room for skepticism when it comes to systems of like social support, but do not have room for skepticism about tech or science. Yeah. Yeah.

Just like medicine. Like, oh, medicine vaccines. Why would we do that? Despite hundreds of years of evidence. Like, they can't possibly be right because Coach Matt told me on TikTok and it seems right. And I mean, I say this from a perspective of I've been very overweight in my life. Like, I used to be like 350 pounds a while back.

And it's like, I get the desperation. Yeah. I get the desperation, especially when it's like JLP. One is like very, or J.P. But it's like very expensive. You have to go to a doctor and all that. And just being like, maybe I could do this cheaper. Maybe my doctor won't give it to me, maybe whatever.

And I get that fucking desperation. You'll try it. Like when I've had weight problems, like you're fucking scratching at the walls, trying to find some cheat code around the actual hard thing of changing lifestyle, which I should be clear. It's very fucking difficult. I have sympathy with everyone.

I've been through it multiple cycles in my life. I get it. But it's like, to your point, Victoria, it's like, yeah, you're going to get side effects. I'd rather roll the dice on the doctor. Who's using the thing that they know the side effects? They've done trials and such versus... It's hard because you go to doctors and doctors don't listen to you.

I have Picos, I have metabolic conditions. I'm on a GLP actually for like Picos and fatty liver. And getting to that point was over a 10-year-long journey. But these are conversations I was having. And I had to fire like five doctors because one was like, listen to the Huberman Lab. No. Jesus, God, Christ. Or like, maybe you should be...

Maybe you should be a vegan. Fuck off. Not to like say anything about vegans, but like that's not. But like that's not the solution I was looking for or just being like, well, you know, Picos causes weight gain. Also the solution is weight loss. But also your body will not let you lose the weight. So just lose some weight.

And like I understand that desperation like from a very personal level. But at the same time, you have to believe in science. You have to believe in like the process exists because people have died. because side effects are also debilitating to quality of life. The worst part about being on a GLP for me is that I like food. I don't have a lot of food. I actually genuinely don't have food noise. My liver just wants to fuck me over.

And so, like, I can't eat. It sucks. It takes the joy out of eating for me. I don't enjoy it at all. I'm sorry. Yeah, no. And, like, I'm tired. I get fucking clown nightmares.

I literally had a nightmare that my spouse is. his ex came running after me, and I was like, oh, this ho. And then she turned into Pennywise, the fucking clown, the Bill Scarsguard version. I woke up screaming. Like, this is a side effect that I have. It's your ex and a clown. Yeah. No, that's a side effect I have.

This is a thing, you know, and you have to weigh those pros and cons for health. But, you know, in the pursuit of optimization and that's rampant here at CES, people are like, yeah, numbers that don't matter. Do this. Do that. And it's like, this is why I have mental health problems doing it. my job. But now you have numbers to help. Yeah. Yeah, now you have so many numbers. I want to, I mean, I want to go back to

one thing that you said, which is, you said, you have to believe in science. Yeah. Because people have died, we've done this, whatever. I think that there's just a huge swath of the population, which is heavily represented here, of people who would just say, no, you don't

have to believe in science. It is lies. It is, you know, it is bunk. It is biased. It is whatever. And that fraction, is where I'm like, oh, no. We've not just about science particularly, but sort of like the communal agreement on some like really foundational social pillars.

Consensus reality. Yeah, consensus reality is like seems to be crumbling. And it doesn't help that the leader of the FDA sounds like a fucking cyber man. Oh, you know. He should be a CES. Yeah. Oh, don't know.

No, we can't make fun of him. It's a physical condition. We can't make fun of them for that. We can make fun of that for the fucking worm in his brain. The worm in his brain and the fact of it. The whale corpse and the bear corpse. He keeps me up at night because in June he was like, in four years, I want every American wearing a wearable.

And as one of the most quantified people on the earth wearing three to four wearables continuously, 24-7, 365, no! Don't do that. So at that point, we can rotate our guest one last time. Thank you so much for listening. The upcoming ad, I assume, is not for weight loss drugs. If it is, well, I guess. You know how we feel about that now?

But that's not really my goddamn problem. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an Acapella band with their between songs banter.

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The Harvard Yard. But they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

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Jacob told Levan, you're ruining my life. Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you. you get your podcast. Life throws hurdles big and small. The question is, how do you conquer them? On hurdle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions to talk about the challenges that shaped

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We were just talking about, um, wanking, I guess. Yeah, we were talking. Be more specific. I was saying the fleshlights are, they're just okay. And so why would you need them to be motorized? Interesting take. Yeah. I must be clear.

Oh, what? Because you're, oh, because I admit to using a sex to. This is a sex negative podcast, Adam. Oh, a man who uses a sex toy. Women are vibrated, vibrate or vibrate or vibra. Yeah, because men are inadequate. Because men, and if you say that women are inadequate, I will take deep. Introducing the next generation of sex toy.

Welcome. Welcome to Better Offline. You complained last year. We didn't have enough woman, which was true. Now we've got one that's just immediately created a fracture. We got you for two more. days as well. It's going to be great. Yeah.

Now this, and truthfully, having, like, amazing team is the core better off-line team for the show as well. And I'm actually like both you and, Chloe, you both kind of were like, like, Adam, you've done a bit of tech, Chloe, you've not done really. And you're like, oh, is this, am I going to be a right to do this? Because, like, I haven't done it.

This is the perfect view because I think the really tech poison people are incapable of just being like, that sounds fucking useless. That sounds dumb as shit. Even the jack-off machine. It's like you're going to attach this heavy-looking. Looks pretty heavy. It didn't look useful or necessary.

Welcome to CES. We've already talked about in the previous segment. We see a big band of this. CES. It doesn't look useful or necessary in 2026. To describe, because we talked about the handy and handy two in the previous segment. We didn't describe what it is. Oh, that's the name.

It's basically the, yeah, it's called the, it's, it's, it's, it's, a joke product. They're just there to make people laugh. It's like the inner core of the fleshlight, which is like, okay, a flashlight, if you're not familiar, you know the sticky hand from the vending machine at the supermarket?

Is that the material? That's the material inside of a flesh light. I guess because you've got to put lube in it. You put lube in it and it's squishy. And again, just okay as an experience. I got, it's been in a drawer for years. And I got it for free, by the way,

because I used to do a comedy show in a sex shop in Los Angeles, wonderful show at the pleasure chest. But I didn't pay for it. I would have. It was on my list. I support the industry. I actually genuinely support this.

It's a squishy core of a fleshlight and it's attached to a Velcro harness which is attached to like a big piece of metal machinery that moves it up and down. And I'm like, I have hands. Yeah. And here's my pitch. Here's my pitch for an analog version of that is take one of the actual sticky hands that you actually stick on the window and put some lube on that and just hold that on the palm of your hand and check that out. That's going to feel like somebody else's hand. Here's what I would like.

I would like a woman to stand across the room and go like, whoosh? A big sticky hat right up my dick. I must also be clear, by the way. So I looked up the handy too. I just want to be clear. There are two SKUs, and there is the standard, which is one hour of battery life, save $60, launch price, and it's regularly $299. And then there's the five hours of battery.

Oh, the gooner. The gooner package. $379 down from $499. And you scroll down, it's like, we recommend the fast charger handy. And I just got to ask, how much you're doing that? Yeah. The purchase the award-winning VR-compatible automatic stroker. Sometimes it takes a while.

But isn't the point of it, it's VR-compatible? Come on. I mean, you're watching the pornos and all that. But isn't the point of the device that it's supposed to be very fast? It's supposed to make you come fast. Really? Well, I would think so. They should put a screen on it.

But it's got four hours of battery life. Yeah, I know. They should use, like, most of that battery life for a little screen where you can watch some porn on it while you're, you know, going out of it. It's just really like. Like, people that don't have sex or jackoff, it sounds like just like these sexless people. I would love to know the man who is horny enough to want to use the jackoff machine, but so dedicated to tech that when he goes to pick up his jackoff machine and the battery's dead, he goes, oh, I have to put it on my fast charger now and wait for seven minutes for it to get enough battery life to make me come.

Tapping his foot like Sonic the Hedgehog. Sitting on his hands being like, there's no other way to do this. Does this ever happen to you? It's just, I must be clear, this is a sex-positive podcast. It's great, sex-wonderful, is great thing between consenting adults and wifu tubes, I guess. And it's just very strange to look at another product on the show. It's just like an alien-made this. Like, what do you need?

You can't jack off, I guess, or you really want to. And also I just feel like, there's a masturbator. That's a great thing to say. I just feel like picking this thing up, I would just be consumed with shame immediately. The only thing that would make me more ashamed would be if it was out of battery. You're like, oh, fuck. I've used it. Yeah, just like, I'm too into this.

See, now, this is my pet peeve because I think when you see it be consumed with shame, you're ashamed of your own sexuality yet. That's what's happening. God no. As you are ashamed of the idea of masturbating with a device. Why? Why? Because my hands can do it perfectly fine. That's,

or I can have sex with my girlfriend. But why shame? Yeah, why shame? Why not amusement? If your hands can do it perfectly fine. Like I'm just, well, already we're in this weird world where I wouldn't buy it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, so it's just, Would you feel ashamed? Not, not a shame. Would you feel shame if you picked up a flashlight, if you were going to use a flashlight? Or is the machine worse?

No, I just feel like, is the machine laughing at you. I just, I just, they've never seen, We're now going on the show where just everyone's like, how does it jack off? No, it's just like the idea of a machine for it is unnecessary to me.

I don't, like if someone else use it. That's because the male sex toy is not a jerk off device because we can do that perfectly fine. It's a novelty item. The real male sex toy is a butt plug and men won't buy them. That's the real, it's prostate stimulation. Yeah, that is true. And you know what?

If you like that, that's fucking cool. I like my problem is and you know what maybe there's a guy who just like he's like a sex guy and he likes all the different kinds fine that sounds fine I just think like if I got a machine that was out of batteries for jacket off and it was unpowdered be like oh I've been doing this a lot haven't I do the do the sex toys have big useless numbers too oh my god I wonder if they do you haven't been coming lately you haven't sex your cum latency the distance of time between when you begin to jack off. It's like a little prompt. Are you okay? You haven't come this time. You want to establish a baseline and when you are off the baseline.

That is when you will love. I'm actually looking now to see if there's any metrics that come. Discrete delivery. I mean, sure. Discrete delivery. What if Withings made a sex toy and then it tracked your, you know what I mean? It gave you some stats. The gooners might like that.

Some jerk off. So what, yeah, like, oh, how about like a special watch for jerking off that, like, Matt, you know. It's kind of like a stat line, you know. Yeah, it's a stat line. It lets you know how efficient you're being and how much time you spent drinking off? Or it's like, you know how on treadmills you can follow the little workouts where it like shows it's like, it's going to get faster now. And then the treadmill goes faster. You have to run faster.

And then it's like, now it's slower. If you're, if you had a little like, if you had a little gooning workout line where it could be like, go faster. now and then it's like slow down, slow down, slow down, slow down. And you like follow your little workouts. I mean, this is like, gooners, listen to me. You're describing J-O-I videos. That's jack-off instruction videos. I just want to read something for the website. Which is a really good form of video porn. I think those are like, it's very kind of wholesome because it's sort of like, I want someone to instruct me. There's a, there's a relationship about the jerking off. I just want to be clear, there is a button on this website to lead you to various videos. It says,

explore the handyverse and the handy verse. I don't feel great having read that. The greatest sin that Mark Zuckerberg has committed on the face of this planet, he's giving us blank verse. Nothing else he's done has come close. We got the

handy verse with Earth 69. I'm actually oddly like, what is handy feeling? There's like a whole thing and I'm like coming around to this like, this isn't for me, but I'm like, okay, if someone's a real beatoffer, like this is quite nice. I don't know. The reason I feel shame is because I feel like we're falling for it.

Because this is a gag product. No, no, no, this is real. This is like a real thing they're charging for it. It exists, but I don't think it serves a... It's to laugh at it, CES, and to buy a bachelor party. I just don't know if I agree. Like, here's the thing. Woman sex toys very well documented and used and talked about quite regular.

We've seen pictures of them. Yeah. They're real. Also, like, woman discussed them. I feel like, Adam, you're like one of the only men I've talked to about sex who's just not immediate, like, uh, yeah, I've had it like one million times. but I can't discuss it at all. Yeah.

But it's like, I believe that like there are men who jack off in this manner and good on them. As long as it's like normal and consensual and like... I could be wrong. I just don't believe in this product.

I believe in sex toys for men. I believe they're underrepresented as a product category. But I believe where this product is situated in the hall and the way that they have designed it. Oh, this is at C. Is it?

Yeah. Is it. Welcome to the podcast. I thought we were just talking about a toy. Hey, man, welcome to the jazz. Because the only one I saw was the Love Sense one, which was the vibrators. I was like, okay, I saw that last year also. So I was like, okay, that's the one I know.

It's in the Eureka Hall and it's sort of position. It's like meant to make you laugh. And I think it's a $500 bachelor party gift. But was it a big, was it a big booth? They had a big booth. Then that's a real company because that was probably like. Well, I mean, look, men called it big. Women called it average.

Yeah, it's just a regular size, but nice. Nice. Yeah, but that's the thing. If they have a regular sized book. It's a perfectly normal sized booth, okay? It's a good size booth. It gets bigger during the show. If like that's a real company because otherwise it's just like, yeah, we put $100,000

in the jackoff booth. I do like the idea of just walk and over. Can I have a go? Hey, come on over to the jackoff booth. Come in. Anyway. We have a nice booth. Anyway, we're just going to segue away from this right now.

Please. Here's a question that is sort of off of this theme. As a CES virgin, not to really lean into this kind of language. Lean into it. How many of these products? Like there are a lot of products that seemed absolutely fucking useless. Yes. And what I don't know is how many of the people who are here earnestly believe that what they are hawking is going to make the world better in some way?

And how many people, like what is the percentage of people? split between earnest believers, people who are here for a paycheck because they need a job, and this happens to be the job they're doing, and people who are totally disillusioned, but are still doing it for the paycheck, but, like, are totally jaded. I would be curious for that split. I think what it is, is like, you get a job, it's hard getting a job, and you get the product, and it's like, well, I've got to fucking believe in something. So you learn the talking points, and you're like, the pillow thing you were talking about last piece. It's like, that person clearly had never had a conversation with someone who's like, yeah, but what if I want to lie in bed

without falling asleep? Because they've memorized the talking points, they've internalized them. I'm sure that there are a percentage of cynical people, but I think a lot of these people are just like not thought about it too much. They're like, yeah, the air purifier with the spike on it, the dog scratches itself on. That makes perfect sense because I've been forced to believe it, because this is how I make money. And I think that there's something kind of sad about it because you have to believe, I mean, working p. out. Like, there's a certain degree at times when you get a product. I don't do consumer electronics, but like in the past where I've had to be like, yay, here we go. It's like, it's not going to pay my mortgage. Like, I think that there's a degree

of that. And I think some people are just fucking stupid. I think there's some people just like, yeah, it's a pillow. Isn't it cool? It can do this and they focus on how cool it is. And then when they think for two seconds and they go, oh, fuck, this is what an alien would use. This is like, it's just like Star Trek except nothing like it. And I think so. I also think a lot of them are just happy to like do the job. Yeah. You know? Like when I went to the orb thing, my orb debacle, a lot of the people I told, well,

whatever, people know about it or they don't. But when I talk to people who work for this horrible product, like some of them seemed kind of enthusiastic. Some of them sort of had thousand yards stairs. Yeah. Where I was talking to them going like, ah, they're making like 300 grand a year probably. Yeah. Working for like a Sam Altman company doing interesting work.

Like they're like, they wanted to. be an engineer. They're a software engineer. They're working on something that's technically interesting. They would like for it to work. They sort of have to drink the Kool-Aid. Exactly. In the same way that someone who's like working on a shitty movie is like, I'm living the dream. Oh, the movies kind of sucks, but I'm living the dream, but it's going to be good. It's going to be good. I'm making movies. Like it's this, you sort of suspension of disbelief. But I respect people on movies way more. Like, just want to be clear, like, learning about how movies are made recently, it's insane a single movie has ever been made.

I do not understand how any movie is made. Well, they're not made anymore. Well, yeah, that's also the other thing. No, they're either $100 million or $1 million. When you watch movies now, like I was watching like Rob Reiner movies because he passed away, of course. And you watch Harry Metzellier or another movie like that. It's like walking through like the ruins of like a Roman Coliseum in the Dark Ages. Look at what humans used to be able to do.

And then you watch Stranger Things and there's a big crab and Winona. writer punches it to death and you just, I don't watch that show. None of it has any my life's strange enough already. And it's just sad. But I think, I think movies are going to be okay. I'm choosing to be optimistic for no reason. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's sort of a whole other conversation. But I do think that there's a lot of people who would say, like the same people who are, who see movies as sort of the dinosaurs, the things of the past, are the people who see a lot of shit at CES, who sort of willingly drink the Kool-Aid of a lot of the shit at CES and are like, this is

the stuff of the future without actually even being paid $300,000 by the company. Because they want to be first. They want to be first to this. They sort of have gotten on the roller coaster of, they're addicted to the high of the possibility of success. The newness. Yeah.

I mean, I remember when it was over 10 years ago now, but I was working at college humor and stuff like Google Glass would come out. And my coworkers would be. be like, it's going to be the future. And just based on the premise alone, and I'd have to be like, I don't think so. And I was right. Same thing happened with VR. Just you wait, Adam. Google Glass is coming.

Rayband meta glasses. People were so, they had the script in them for, you know. And they wanted to be true. They just want something new that's going to be fun. I also, I'd be curious what you think, because you know, you've been coming to CS for a while. How much of it is also people at a firm that try to sell something to another business

and it failed and now they're doing consumer because I feel like I would talk to some people especially in Eureka Park and they wouldn't say it but you could hear in the conversation that there was a much more ambitious plan and that fell through another winnowing it down to something else that a consumer might be able to use. It's the rot economy baby

it's growth at all cost because if you solve a small boring problem for a million people that fucking rocks is that going to be worth $10 billion? No. You're going to be able to take that public No, you're going to sell it to another company? No. But if you say, I'm going to solve fucking everything forever, you'll get hundreds of millions of dollars because you've just over-promised. And being part of this newness, futuristic thing and vaguely attaching yourself to it,

if you're wrong, you can say, oh, it was experimental. If you're right, you can say, I was first. Yeah. And that's sort of to what Adam was saying about, you know, wanting, it's my, my language now, like wanting the possibility of success, addicted to the high of that possibility. But, I think you're saying, like, when you're saying that they had a more ambitious plan, do you mean they had a more ambitious plan for what the tech itself could be capable of? Or do you mean like they've figured out a tech that is capable of whatever it is? And the ambitious plan was to use it in a much broader use case or a much higher scale use case. And now they've sort of been like shunted down to a booth at CES where they're trying to make somebody pay $600.

It feels like they thought the idea was worth $10 what it is. actually is. Do you have an example? I mean, I saw it a lot more last year where it would be people talking about tech that would be, that's helpful, assistive tech, but their initial formulation of it seemed to be we are going to apply this at scale in workplaces. Right. To augment your productivity. Like that chip for like standing up a thing for opening the cash register. Right. You know, something like that where it's like not even really clear that would be adopted at a individual scale. Also, that one really really. pissed me off because it's like you don't give a fuck about anyone working on McDonald's.

You don't look them in the eye. No. You were excited about touching a screen to order your treats your little pig. You know, it feels like it's like we wanted to sell this ad scale to like McDonald's at a bunch of other fast food restaurants and that didn't work. So now we are cobbling together some of the IP to figure out another approach that might be usable in smaller settings. And I feel like, you know, when I talk with people, especially in some of the assistive

tech, you know, where they're not really talking about it in the way of, we're helping people who are disabled, helping people who need mobility aid. It's, it's, it's, it's almost adjacent to or sounding just like how we talk about convenience. Yeah. You know, but did you see anything today that was of note? Like, I mean, most of the stuff that I saw today in Eureka Park was, uh, more misuse of agentic language. Yes, give it to me. And say, you know, uh, let's, you know, what if you had a chat bot that, you know, managed your home Google calendar and told you when to pick up your kids because you forgot or, you know, when you get the shit. Yeah, yeah, because you don't give a shit. You know, what if you had something that would look at your shit, um, and tell you, uh, when you're

sick or not sick? You mean literally your poop. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, yeah, yeah. No, yeah, yeah, you poop. That was one thing that Victoria, we didn't get to the piss poop. We got to the cum, sadly. Uh, but it was like there's like many different toilet measure. is now. Yeah. Oh, I saw a good product. Yes. And I would describe it.

I walked, I saw this product. I looked at it. I immediately recognized what it was. I walked up to them. I said, Fitbit for your cat. And they said, I guess that's what you go. No, it's Fitbit for your cat. You're going to sell that.

And it's like a little food dish, a food dish and a bubbler for your cat. And then it like, I don't know, has some stats about your cat. And it said, like, here's how much food is left. Here's the temperature of your cat. And then it just said, healthy. Yes. And that's like really all the cat owners. what?

It's like, what could the box say my cat's healthy and it'll relieve my anxiety? You're a cat owner. Yes, I don't know. Like, and it's not, the only measurement is like how beautiful they are.

It's like, which I remind them of constantly. I just, how hot my cat is is very funny. Yeah, I got two cats and it's like when I learned, I got a, I got one of the litter boxes

is those automatic ones. When I learned there was an app, I asked them, can I, do I need the app? Can I delete that? They're like, yes. And I was like, okay, I would never look at this shit again.

Yeah. And it works out, you know, that anything that even wears other, or has a little motor other than the litter box, they destroy. They swat it. They throw it down the stairs. They push it. They literally push it to the stairs and throw it down.

So I can't get anything smart for them. I get a fit bit for a dog though, because you, like, walk them. I would love to actually just, for my sick pleasure, know how fast Barbu runs. Because him and his sister, Poked two bangles. The Zumi's. No, they will be sleeping all that and then just running. Just like, bam! Just fucking like across the in.

entire house gone. Bam, back. They're trying to get their steps in. Yeah, exactly. Like, I'm, naping all day. Just cats, like, don't experience the same things that human beings. Like, they're not seeing that be like, do I run around a lot? They get the instinct, like, I need to fucking run so fast in a straight line,

fast than I've ever. But it's not because they're like, I need to be healthy. They're just fucking cat. Stop trying to optimize my cat, bro. My cats, cats are not optimal, other than how beautiful and fancy they are. How great there. And how beautiful. Oh, I missed.

anything else? It's just this, you're going to be here for another two days. You're going to see more stuff like this. But I'm genuinely. I saw something we all do need in present ads inside of AI. They're figuring out how to put ads inside of chatbots, how to put ads inside of any sort of interface or product that might use a generative AI. It's so cool.

They haven't worked that out. I know. Yeah, that's also like the most obvious thing that they need it. way that they would monetize this fucking thing. Yeah. The one way to make... The one of two ways to make money. I get three emails a week from someone being like,

have you thought that they could be ads in chat GPD? Yes, motherfucker. I've fucking thought... Every single time you've emailed me about this. I've thought about it. Do we know why they haven't yet? Because it's very hard to guarantee... The whole thing with ads is you need to have replicability

and reliability and accountability. You cannot have your... You can't have like an ad for a children's thing by someone looking... up sex and vice versa. And the best example we have that this doesn't really work is perplexity. Their ads chief left a few months ago and they made $20,000 selling ads in 2024 on perplexity. Yeah, I mean, the needs of advertisers like determine everything. Yeah. It's like, you know, why does YouTube work the way it works? 90% of YouTube is to please advertisers to make sure that,

you know, age verification, like content warnings, like all of it is just for them. And, Like, they'll sort of run the show, but also isn't part of the problem that, like, advertising is not enough money for, you know, the massive amount of investments these companies are taking on? Like, you put ads in Chad GPP is still not enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it won't sustain. And they still need trillions. Well, the other problem they have is the information of a good story about this,

where it's like 900 million weekly active users is-ish, even though OpenAI double counts people all the time, they admit this in their own academic papers. But nevertheless, only 100 million of those are in America, which is a large number, whatever, but that means like they're mostly overseas who are lower value advertising clients. Because there's a very big difference between advertising someone in America versus in India or Indonesia where they release chat GPT Go, which is a cheaper one, which will inevitably be advertising supported. And it's just like, I do love that there are like different booths of people being like, what if we could solve the problem that open AI, Google, perplexity,

and multiple other companies just haven't been able to touch. It feels like watching the end of the world in a very boring way at times. Well, so that's what brings me back to my, that brings me back to my question about how earnestly do these people believe in what they're pushing? Like, are there people who are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we are the, we have the secret key. We are the geniuses. And sure, would I be hired at Google if I was really a genius?

Maybe. But that's not what we're talking about right now. I think they, at the very least, consider themselves to have, be the holder of a lottery ticket. Maybe it'll work. And if it works, I'm a billionaire. And if I can convince someone, it kind of works. Maybe I get aqua hired by Google.

And then I make half a million dollars. Yeah. And I only have to get to like, you know, next month to make that happen. I just got to convince some dope who's here right now. I believe all the TV people believe it fully. And I get it. And I'm a big, dumb ape. I see a giant scream like, yeah, baby.

Oh, yeah. I want to see the TVs actually. Oh, they're so. And I got mad because I saw, I think I was looking at the Virges coverage or something, and there's a new TV technology that's better than OLED. I just, I just bought the best OLED. I bought the, you know, the one really good Sony one? I got the really good Sony one.

I'm like, I don't want a fucking better TV. This is as good as TVs need to be. 77 inches. It's true black. Stop. I don't know. Just to be clear, you're fine. They haven't really made better than that.

Like they, I know. It'll be in 10 years. I'm still just like, stop it. I don't know if you're going to have kids, but I've heard a couple dad sentences, both in this TV discussion and earlier when you were like, now I saw a good product. Yeah, but I was able to buy this TV because I'm not as price sensitive as a real dad. Sure, sure, sure.

Because I don't have the kids. That's why I got to get the good one. And like as a child have a, that's the normal way to say it. Like big screen, big screen's fine. As long as you got big screen, that's the coolest thing to should be like giant. screen to play Minecraft on your fucking set best father in the world two so you can both play it in separate rooms so you don't have to talk to me exactly that's what they want one of those cherished things is watching my son play Minecraft him explaining shit to me and maybe we're not

my boy we're not talking about a normal thing we're talking about what the consumer wants what the consumer wants to separate themselves we're talking about what that guy who did the tweet about how he gets boiling mad if he spends more than 10 minutes with his children did you see this there was some Some dad was like, am I normal? If I spend more than 10 minutes, was it day with my children? My blood boils. That's normal, right? And everybody was like, hey, buddy, that's not totally normal, but like, we totally get it.

Being a dad is hard. You're valid. You know, for that is, but not, like 10 minutes should not. Because you have a lot more of those in the day with the child than that. Yeah, I mean, it seems like this guy doesn't have to, but. It reminds me of when, you know, the COVID lockdown first happened and all the parents I knew and the ones on the internet were suddenly like, someone needs to help me from being around my kids. I thought you liked having the kids.

Now you're mad that you got to be around the kids. Why do you have the kid if you don't want to be around them? And it also makes you realize that like, oh yeah, the main purpose of school was not education. It was just childcare so people go to work. That's why they're complaining. I need to go to work. Well, that's, you've just revealed a fucked up thing about school and parenting all at once. I actually think that's the lens I'm going to go through everything tomorrow.

I'm just going to look around the expo center being like, okay, what's the shit where it's just people like, I need to get away from my obligations. Like, I made these fucking decisions throughout my life. I got a fucking fat-ass, unhealthy bitch of a cat. I got a fucking. We were all waiting on what that last word was going to be. Oh, we were on the edge of our seats. And there were some options. There were balls of all.

Get you're in there, then. No, it's like, and it's just... Oh, cat. Okay, he's saying cat. Okay, great. Also, he wasn't referring to any of my perfect fucking angels. But it's like, these people were just like, okay, I need to find out if my cat's healthy because I don't want to look at it or use it. Can I keep my child in a separate room?

Can I give it an action figure that we'll talk? Can I give it a robot and an action figure that will talk to each other and it? And also, if you want any of these things, don't worry. They don't fucking work. They don't even do the... the thing that we're promising you. But it's funny just imagine this guy's walking around and be like, please fucking get me away from all this.

This is this robot going to be? Oh, the robot's going to fall over. It's falling over. It's going to kick me in the nuts. Do you see that video? The guy just getting fucking hoofed in the nuts by a robot. That was great. If you've got a booth who is being kicked in the balls,

I don't care what you're selling me. Fucking Lockheed Martin. I buy it. I mean, some of them made me kind of sad. Like there was one that was, I don't want to say the name of it, because it did make me sad, but it was a little, it was like a little toy, like a little

hello kitty type toy, and it was, you know, you could talk to it. Was it the one that was like the future of robot friend? Something like that. It was a fuzzy, I think I know what you're talking about. A little fuzzy brown thing. I know exactly what you're talking about. And it was also like, it'll watch everything that you do and remember it. And I was like, all right. And I walked up and I was like,

oh, what was it? Here it is. I was like, oh, can I talk to it? And she was like, no, you know, the Wi-Fi is in here. in here is bad and it uses chat GPT so it can't connect to chat GPT right now. And I'm like, this is just some, somebody put like a couple hundred grand of their own money into like a little doll that connects to the chat GPT API

and is here thinking that's anything. Like, why would we want such a thing? Why would anybody here be excited by just a front end to chat GPT, a product that already exists? But that's the thing. I feel like as we wrap up the episode, it's a good way to put it. It's like there are two real cons of AI.

It's the con of the consumer being told it will do this for your that, for you'll be a personal assistant. And then there's for companies where they're like, yeah, if we put chat GPT and this, it'll be smart. No, motherfucker. He's not going to do that at all. Yeah. And it's like, you don't want to name a company, which is fine. But it's like, there are so many. There were they last year as well.

It's like, oh, it's an agent. It's like, it's just a fucking chat bot. And you've poorly trained it and it's like going to tell you that Taiwan is part of China or like BDSM shit. Like, and it's just quite sad. everyone is being conned by these companies, both the consumer and the companies themselves. I can't wait to catalog them. I'm looking forward to watching the sadness.

But it's just, it is quite sad. I'm so glad I'm here a week. This is great. My joke are like, it's a shrug economy. Like everyone's just sort of hoping. Like I was talking to people about the, the Disney Open AI deal because that's like a bunch of people in Hollywood are

like freaked out about it, especially writers who are worried about IP and stuff like that. But, like, my take on it, if you look at the deal is nobody even knows why they're doing it. Yeah. Like, Open AI has the idea that, like, we need licensed characters for SORA. And Disney just doesn't want to be left out. Yeah. But, like, they think, they appear to think maybe it's marketing for Disney Plus.

Open AI has some idea. Maybe people will want to create scenes of Deadpool hanging out with Elsa or whatever. How does that result in money? Question mark. Nobody knows. Yeah, it loses money. But like Disney is just like not getting left out of a thing that's maybe the future. Open AI is making a deal that makes their business look better to whoever the fuck is going to give them money next.

And they didn't even pay Disney for it. Yeah, they're doing a licensing deal where they pay Disney in Open AI stock, which Disney already bought more of. And in fact, Disney has the option to buy more stock. It's just you've got to wonder what happens when Open AI collapses because it's going to fucking happen. And it's just like these companies will change to the Chinese models, I guess, or what remains of Anthra. It's just...

Everyone can use Quine. Yeah, the Q2. K2, that's the coding model. K2, Deep C. It'll be fun. Well, all right. I'm going to wrap it there so I don't just launch into a rant about AI as per fucking usual. Thank you so much. We've got the core three here. It's going to be joining us for the next day or two.

It's going to be wonderful. Thank you so much for traveling in with us. We're going to end the episode as we have. Dedicate to Sean Paul. he's wonderful fella came in 2020 Donate to the pediatric epilepsy research consortium Link will be in there dedicated to his son Thank you so much everyone for listening

We'll be back tomorrow. Thank you so much Thank you for listening to Better Offline The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Mattosowski You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Mattisowski.com M-A-T-T-O-S-K-I dot com You can email me at E-Z at Betteroffline or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter.

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