The Chaser Report - Farewell Bluetooth, We Hardly Knew Ye | WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

After 1300 episodes of Welcome To The Future, we've officially run out of Bluetooth and AI products to review. Which means it is time to start planning for the future of the future. Plus, Dom and Charles brainstorm what future robots they'd actually want.---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the future, future, future, future. Oh my goodness, it's another one of the episodes that we gaze into the crystal ball of technology to work out what brilliance is coming through the pipeline. Charles, you remember those heady days when the notion of a new technology being released was actually, you know, unambiguously exciting and positive and did feel like the future rather than just another descent into a hellscape of a dystopia. Oh, that was a while back now.

I kind of feel like it was always a bit shit, though. Except when Steve Jobs was alive, maybe. When new versions of MS DOS came out, you know. Yeah, all right. Oh, wow. This one's in colour. So I've got a proposal for you, Dom. How's lovely.

About Welcome to Future. So you know how Welcome to the View series is usually about Bluetooth devices? It has been the one theme. And I mean, we should salute for all the years the podcast has existed. And it was a segment on the radio show before it was a podcast, by the way.

And it's on its own feed. So we're getting up to about 10 years of Bluetooth being reliably terrible just in terms of our podcast and then another 10 years of the technology being around before that. So we're probably 20 years into Bluetooth underwhelming.

Yes, yes. Cheers to you, Bluetooth. Not many technologies are that bad for that long. But I want to suggest that we pivot. Really? Yes. Okay.

So welcome to the future of welcome to the future. Future, future. Because I reckon what we should be talking about is climate dystopia. Oh, because we've done, I mean, we pivoted to sort of AI dystopia. And that, I mean, while that was fun, it did get a bit repetitive. So we don't do that so often these days. Yeah. The point's almost too obvious now.

Prince Bluetooth was sort of, I don't know, sweeter. and had more silly products involved, whereas AI is more all-encompassingly terrifying. Do you think maybe if we move to a climate dystopia, no one will listen to us at all? Because it is the most depressing of all the... Because I was just reflecting, like, you know how it's still 38 degrees

and England's basically burning down, the midlands of all? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just, you know, that's the future. Like, the future is here. Welcome to the future. Like, 2026 is the... the future. This is the future that, you know, for the last 40 years we've been being told will happen.

You say that, Charles. You say that with your naysaying and your worries and you, oh, it's a bit hot. Oh, oh, there's a climate emergency just because of the data and the experiences we all have. But Charles, do I see before me as I survey the planet? Do I see a massive global consensus that it's gone too far on? We need to act as rapidly as possible to save ourselves and to basically, you know, come together as one humanity to protect our planet? No. No, well, but I would I'd argue that we have a complete consensus among non-Fuckwits. Do you see what I mean? Like, if you exclude fuckwits from that equation, then yes.

Everyone agrees we should do something about climate. I say it's got to get a lot hotter. We're not at the point now where, if you think about it in terms that everyone can understand, we're not at the point yet where, I mean, if your house is actually on fire, everyone wants to, you know, escape and save themselves and look after whatever, you know, their position. So clearly we need to heat things up if anything's going to happen. I think we're not at the point yet where action is compelled, Charles.

Another five to ten degrees might just do it. But for now, take your alarmism. Okay. So you're saying, let's not go down that part. No, I'm saying let's see what you got. Well, to be honest, I haven't really thought this through. It was more just to sort of like spitballing here for topics to talk about. Because I think the problem is, you know, I think we're at the,

end of the road in terms of gadgets. Like the capital investment across the globe is going into AI, right? Yeah, yeah. People are not investing in a Bluetooth pad future. The most innovative product that we will see, you know, like our children will see in their lifetime from here on in, is basically that probably towards the end of this year, Apple will introduce a phone that folds, right? Yeah, yeah. And it will be hailed as, oh my God, this is the greatest thing ever. Even though Samsung's already basically released that phone already to time. Well, they released their first folding phone 10 years ago this year. But they've actually, the form factor that Apple was going to do that no one had done before.

Yes. Apple, Samsung's now done. But the funny thing is, everyone goes, how the hell did Samsung beat them? The answer is Samsung makes the screens for Apple. That's right. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. They knew.

So you're saying there's just not going to be that much of a step change. So what it means is that all the gadgets that are coming through recently are actually just crappification of, you know, like really cheap, shoddy versions of ideas that felt a bit sci-fi at some point in the last 10 or 15 years. And now it's just like cheap versions of that. So I'll give you a couple of examples. You know, Ray Ban, like, you know, for 10 years we've been trying to get VR. are headsets right. And the actual way the market is moving is not to make them better and more high tech and actually invest capital in making them sort of actually magical or wonderful or in some ways. It's actually going down the path of, well, how can we strip away all the features

and just make them into creep phones or creep glasses? You know, how do we just, I know, we'll just put a camera on them that'll do, you know, to the point where ANCO can sell an $80 smart glass. A whole episode on the ANCO. Yeah. And that's actually, that's the killer app is creep glasses. Same with e-books, right? Like, e-books are so close to being something that's actually good, right? But they're just a bit shit.

But all the innovation in the e-book market is about making them smaller and cheaper. Right? Like, nobody has, because AI has all the money, there's no sense that, oh, well, why don't we actually create an e-book that where you can actually actually. read decent articles and decent books in a way that isn't just linked to some sort of annoying ecosystem like Amazon that sort of prevents you from accessing everything that you'd want. Like it's all closed off and just a bit shit. And you just go through all the sort of product categories and they're all just about making things shitter and cheaper rather than actually

coming up with something that would bedazzle and... You know, Steve Jobs would be just, you know, rolling in his grave, going, what the fuck? There's something Apple could innovate in. Graves. Graves, funerals. Yes. No one's done any work in that space for a very long time. There are smart.

To allow you to turn in your grave, wishing that the climate apocalypse had been addressed. Well, it's actually tells us, I've been thinking about this for a while. Like, the thing is that, Jeremy in maths, and it's very rarely that I have any understanding in maths or bring it into the podcast. But do you remember the concept of an asymptote in maths? It's like it's a curve that gets closer and closer to a line but never actually touches it. I think in some circumstances they can touch. But imagine, yeah, the curve is, and that's what's happening with technology.

It's like the chase's satire. Yeah. It always went up close to the line, but never crossed the line. Oh, I thought you were going to say it never quite meets the mark. All right. Anyway, whichever it is. But yeah, this is the thing. I mean, I was thinking about this in terms of video games yesterday, right?

Like, the step change in our lifetime between like really crappy. Like, do you remember text? based video games. Before there was, like, even graphics, a hay-kind. Yeah, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the game. All that sort of stuff. And then we had the most basic crap graphics.

And I remember playing, like, Karateka and Prince of Persia and stuff, which is like really, for that period, very, very advanced graphics. I even remember playing Space Invaders for the first time. I remember where I was when I first played Space Invaders. Oh, wow. It was about a six-year-old. It was at my dad's hospital where he worked in the sort of student's rec room.

I'm just going, oh, my God, that's amazing. It is the best thing ever. And so all these technologies, like, how much better can a phone be? And the answer is it's already come so far. Yeah, can I only get X-in. So you're saying there is no innovation left. Oregon, that's rubbish. I think you're right in saying that they're going to get, like, getting cheaper and more mass-produced and whatever, and they're not investing in it.

But I do think, like, the step changes in so many areas of technology, like, what are they going to do to be so dramatically better that hasn't already been done? Okay, well, let's have a break, and then after the break, we'll come up with the top five gadgets that we want to see on the road. And what would a dramatic improvement actually look like? Yeah. And because the thing that's made me really worried about what you're saying, about the lack of investment in everything else because of AI, that makes me really worried that I'm not going to get to, one of the things I'm most wanted in the entire world. Oh, what? So I explain after the break. Welcome to the future.

Charles, it's been, you know, we've had the technology. revolution for decades. And we've actually addressed this before. What I want more than anything else is a robot to clean my fucking house. Like, that's all I, all I want is actually labor saving, like put the clothes, do the washing, all that sort of stuff. I don't, you know, look after my children to treat everyone in my life with some degree of basic love and affection that I can't muster. But no, in tears, actually the business of having it just everyday life has not got an easy. emotional labour. That's what you want to do.

I mean, there's the bit that's the joke. But no, the extra thing is, none of that, we were promised an easier future. Yes. And it isn't in any way easier. Robots are doing nothing. Like, yes, okay, there's a dishwasher. But we've had dishwashers for 30 or 40 years. What is it that, when's life going to get any easier due to technology?

Well, in China, there is a sort of humanoid robot revolution going on. Like, I've seen them dancing on the stage and falling over. And what they're saying is, it doesn't. It doesn't matter that the humanoid robot takes, you know, two hours to fold one t-shirt. No, get on to it. Because actually, and the whole reason why it is going to be a humanoid robot that takes over the domestic space rather than, say, a room barrel or something that has a different design, is because actually human spaces are designed for human bodies. And human technologies are designed for people. Yeah, and so what you want is something that will actually just slip into it really up.

But if you actually look at how AI is going, you go, okay, well, maybe that's true, but a more realistic version is that what will actually happen is the humanoids will set everything up for us to do the work. Because I feel like that's what Claude and ChatGPT increasingly do. They sort of set the framework for the work that you've got to do. And then you have to proof-free them and check it and do all the work yourself. If that's true, the impact of AI on higher education is not going to be as bad as everyone thinks it's going to be. Well, we're just going to be, they're going to be our new overlords are going to be the AI. And I think the same with the humanoid robots, because there's going to be things that the humanoid robots are going to take 15, 20, 25 years to learn how to do. Like, I imagine things like, you know, doing the dishes and stuff like that is going to be, you know, packing.

Is it's a while off, right? But instead, in the meantime, it'll be like, darling, Can you line up the dishes so that the humanoid robot can put them in the dishwasher? Oh, okay. There'll be a whole lot of sort of, we'll just be designing our, like I reckon the next 10, 15 years is actually us reconfiguring our own lives to, you know, make it more accommodatable to these robots, right? To the point where we then find ourselves in 25 years slaves to the robots in the same way that we're slaves to our fucking phones. Oh, yeah. I wouldn't want to disappoint my phone. Yeah, exactly.

Like, you're stuck to it, and there's nothing you can do about that. I mean, that's the technology that I want to see developed, which is an actual way to make it so that you don't actually have to interact with the world via a phone. Like, if you go out of your house and you want to find a map, there are no physical maps anymore. You have to have a phone. If you want to pay for something, you have to have a phone. Like, everything is based around the phone now.

There's a photo. And they're terrible. There's a photo of like a desk from, you know, 20, 30 years ago with all different things that are on it, like the diary, the phone, like the contact list, the telephone, the calculator, all these. The life partner. Yeah, that's right. That's right. All of the friends, all of which have been encompassed into the phone. And you're right, this is no, we live in a world that's now increasingly navigable only with those devices.

There's no alternative whatsoever. And the whole idea, do you remember when, like, the Apple Watch launched? And the whole idea was, well, you won't need your phone anymore. You won't need your phone anymore. You'd go down to the shops and you can just, like, if somebody needs to call you, they can call you on your watch and you won't have to, like, I've never done that. And I've owned one of those watches for a very long time. Yeah.

Just because you can't actually rely on anything without it. But also, I was just thinking about, I would so love a robot that could just, like, just fold and put away laundry and change the sheets. on the bed, like the most mind-nummingly boring tasks that there are. And the number of things you have to do to be able to do, it's genuinely difficult to do. But Dom, see, this is the illusion, right? Like, rich people. Do you think rich people are happy?

I can only imagine. Their Instagram accounts suggest that they are. No, but the whole problem with rich people is that they eliminate all the friction in their lives. They employ a housemaid to fold their washing. They employ a chef to do their dinner. and actually it's those little bits of life that actually are the sum total of what makes happiness.

Like, you know, cooking and cleaning up and all that stuff is family time. That's when you have arguments with your family about who's going to fucking do the dishes. No, I agree. Some of that stuff. You know, they're the memories that, you know, they'll discuss for years and years in therapy.

But in the very unlikely event, that I ever get genuinely rich enough to hypothetically be able to employ someone to fold my laundry for me and put it away and change whatever that stuff. I don't think I'd want to because I don't think anyone should have to do that. Like, I really don't like the idea of anyone having to do that. Yeah, for you. For me. Because it's awful. Why do robots not have those rights as well?

What makes you think that? Am I a robotist? Yes. Am I discriminating against sentient robots? Before we even have them yet? I do apologize for this sort of behavior. I don't realize my blindness. And to our future overlords, I sincerely apologize.

I was not part of this conversation. This is a dom idea. I didn't realize, Charles, that I was, what I... I think you need to go to a re-education camp. Charles, you're right. What I actually need to do... Run by Anthropic. Is, yeah.

They're going to have to rename the company Misanthropic one of these days. No, I need to change my life to make it easier for the robots. Yes. That's otherwise I'm discriminating. Yes. This is the new mindset. So it's not how can the robot make my life easier? How can I make the robot's life easier?

Yes, I'm glad you've come around. Wow. Is this what it felt like for the first people who... Well, in some ways, though. Yeah. That they were, you know, prejudiced? Yes. And it's liberating.

It's liberating, isn't it, Dom? It feels liberating when you submit. To the rule of a higher, more intelligent, more capable being. I mean, Charles, bring it. It's actually frees you up. I just, I know that people are going to judge me for this in the future. This is going to come back to haunt me years later. Yeah.

But I just want to be clear that any smart robot, any smart device, any general intelligent, you know, what do they call it? What's the term? But there's a term in robotics for the, you know, general task robot. Out of visual general intelligence. No, no, no. It's the equivalent of that for robots. The generalist robot that can do anything. So the non-specific task robot.

Yeah. If it has Bluetooth, I'm not going to respect it. I'm really sorry. If it has any form of Bluetooth connection, I'm going to be. That's a real life. Yeah. Sorry. God, you're such a bigot.

Such a blue. I'm not robotist. You're a Bluetoothist. You're a Bluetooth bigot. Yeah, I am. We're part of the Acona class network. Catch you tomorrow, tomorrow. Well, unless I've just been cancelled.

Or in Bluetooth speak, disconnected. Ha-ha-ha.