While this year’s CES is 40% larger than last year, it’s still much, much smaller than the pre-China virus shows. The South Hall which is normally a gigantic two-story exercise in burning calories and sore feet, was empty this year. Despite the reduced size, I still managed to walk an (for me at least) amazing 34+ miles in four days of exploring. Usually, blisters are my unrelenting dark passenger, but I got lucky this year.<\/p>\n
Notables missing were drones, GoPro, 3D printers, flying cars and a vast sundry of the smaller usual attendees. The past hawkers of Crypto and NFTs were mercifully reduced as well. CES cost bucks to attend and since the expected crash (“crash” is putting it mildly) occured, it’s no surprise they weren’t here. This however doesn’t mean there wasn’t some weirdness in attendance …<\/p>\n
I’m having a real issue this year to designate a winner due to the circumstances of reduced presence of companies and inventors. More thought is required …<\/p>\n
If there was one thing at the show that is best described as a scary and an ever-present undercurrent, was AI<\/em><\/a>. Even some in the tech industry are clearly worried about it now. It seemed anyone that was pitching it kept focusing on how secure it was and non-threatening … if it was that safe, why would that be bulk of their pitch? The larger companies (Google, Meta, etc.) would only mention they’re using it with literally zero mention of how … from the quiet conversations I had, I truly believe that a few of their sharper folks are becoming concerned and sadly, more than a few have never even considered the consequences. Do they realize they probably can’t control it at a certain point? If I can take some liberty with a “Game of Thrones” inspired parable, it’s this: you have a fire breathing dragon in a cage the size of a cat, that enjoys the occasional hotdog … when the dragon grows as large as a football stadium, it eats whatever\/whenever\/whoever it wants … that’s the potential of AI currently. NO one at those companies truly understands the consequences … figuratively, they can’t see the forest for the \u201cmoney or ESSP<\/a>\u201d trees. However, in all fairness, I sincerely believe that few people do, excepting those who read science fiction, and are watching fiction not-so-slowly, quietly becoming fact. For mega maniacs like Bezos, it’s viewed as an untapped ATM for building their second\/third\/fourth\/ninth superyacht. A more accurate description currently of AI, is a fire in your garage and you only have a single bucket of water to fight it, but you waited too long to douse the initial flame … on the positive side, it’s getting rid of all the vermin and bugs \u2026 while it\u2019ll take a bit of time to burn to the foundation, eventually, it’ll still burn the house down as well. Their response is that their hidden cash will protect them and allow them to live life on their terms … preferably on 600+ foot yachts swarming with hand-picked attractive servants under NDA contracts and limitless cases of champagne. In case you weren’t aware, the superyacht companies, unprecedentedly, are literally swamped with orders that will take untold years to fulfill. In particular, the one I’m thinking of, is currently expected to be finished in around four to six more years<\/em> … bear in mind, this is after more than two years of current construction. Is this the billionaire’s idea of a fallout shelter? In complete seriousness, I don’t think this is just the hubris of billionaire narcissists … should you like a tiny, but still not so benign taste of what I’m talking about, look into ChatGPT.<\/p>\n Right now, the dragon has jumped from the size of a cat, to about the size of a large dog on a very weak leash held by a clueless and remorseless bald guy whose favorite toy, other than supermodels and his friend’s wives, is a rocket shaped like a sex toy. Not very reassuring \u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While this year’s CES is 40% larger than last year, it’s still much, much smaller than the pre-China virus shows. The South Hall which is normally a gigantic two-story exercise in burning calories and sore feet, was empty this year. Despite the reduced size, I still managed to walk an (for me at least) amazing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2251"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2262,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions\/2262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}