Better Offline CES 2025: Day 5 - Pt. 2
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I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together on the Really No Really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does

Does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's...

We're still here. We're still in Las Vegas. We're still here.

I'm still Hedzitron, and this is Still Better Offline. This is the second episode of Day 5, our last two-parter. And I was trying to think of something like glib and kind of sardonic to say, but I'm just going to be honest. I've had one of the best weeks of my life. I've just been really enjoying myself. We've had so many really, really great guests. We've got David J. Roth, of course, from Defector. Hello. And Edward...

And Graysaw Jr. Hello. And, uh...

Kyle Chouinard of the Las Vegas Sun. And all week, it's just been awesome people. Kyle, I talked over you. I apologize. Just saying hello. Yeah, that's enough. So, Kyle, it's Ed's show. Okay, getting ahead of yourself. No, so you're a general assignment reporter. So, what have you been covering at the show? Well, it's pretty unique for me because, you know, a lot of the media that comes here is from, you know, across the country, across the world, looking at whatever new tech's coming.

And I get to cover it from a local angle and how it affects Vegas and specifically what's shown here could be implemented in the city in the next couple of years. So can you talk a little bit about that? I'm a local. I'm out in Green Valley. Out in Henderson. Well, no, it's still Las Vegas. No H away. Yeah. So yeah, I was talking to a couple different companies this week. One of them was Autonomous Hotel, which is, they call it the first AI-powered hotel. Okay, can you define any of that?

Yeah, so a lot of what that means is collecting a lot of user data and then using that to personalize kind of the experience of... It's a hotel slash apartment, so there's going to be some split between there. But for the hotel, it's, you know, like, remembering your coffee order, what direction you like your windows. And then when you come...

What direction I like that you're going. No, like if you like it facing south or west or north. Oh, sorry. Okay, that makes more sense. You've been like brutalized by CES long enough that I'm just like, okay, man, they got moving windows now. No, the windows, I wasn't told this, but I'm pretty sure they're stationary. Well, saying somewhere else. So yeah, there's a lot of pretty much just data scraping from the week. I asked about data privacy and stuff like that.

And they were all about whatever data they collect is the user giving it to them. Did they sell it? I imagine no. They said they were... Really more re-gifting in this scenario. No, they said they're...

put a lot of emphasis on keeping that data very secure. I was talking with the culinary union. No, no, but sorry, I had to push back. Secure is not the same as not sharing it, though. Have they been remotely giving on... I mean, if the answer is you don't know... Yeah, I'm not sure. No, no, but this is not a failing on you. This is them being like, thank God, thank God we don't have to say the thing which is we are selling this to the points guy.

and airlines and hotels, because that's the thing. These hotels around here are like data warehouses. Oh yeah. The amount of shit they collect on you is crazy. Not just through the, I actually, this is a question. Do you know anything about data collection practices here? And this is, I don't either. So if you don't, I'm not super familiar with it. I mean, surveillance is nothing new in Las Vegas. Uh, you know, it's not rare to find hotels working with the government. Um, that that's pretty normal. Um,

In what ways do they work together? You know, FBI, if they're looking for something. I honestly don't know the exact specifics. No, but if there's even...

I love living here, but I'm also a weird, greasy freak. And I understand what Vegas is, which is you walk in here, if you've not been to Vegas, or you haven't spent a lot of time here, there are cameras everywhere. Everywhere you go, not in the rooms, I think. But in the hallways, in the casinos, and there are... You may think that the scariest place cameras can look at you is a bank. It's actually a casino. They are...

They are watching. Oh, yeah. And you can make the glitch, ooh, the eye in the sky. No, for real, though. It's one of the safest places to be. Yeah. Because they are watching you. And they're watching you because you could do stuff with their money, which is not good. But anyway, continue. So you've seen this AI-powered hotel. Yeah, and it's opening next couple months. Which one? Where is it? It's actually by Allegiant. It's, I think, like a mile away from Allegiant. It's not on this trail. Oh, so it's one of the closer places to Allegiant. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Walking to Legion is fun. I have season tickets, man. I want to die. Can you walk it? You can walk from the MGM. It's not Delano anymore. It's W. But I usually just park there and walk. I went to the Syracuse game.

Yeah, this is a question that I have always sort of struggled with here as a, and, you know, in Los Angeles as well, any of the sort of as a New York person that like, I like the idea of being able to either take mass transit or walk to a thing. And yet, like, Las Vegas isn't big enough, like theoretically, like your phone will tell you that's a 45 minute walk. And yet I feel like most of that is just fully impractical. Yeah, I mean, it isn't that bad to get to though. I was talking with, oh God, what's the CTA? No.

Not CEO, the other guy. Oh, I do not know. Don't worry. I was talking to him and he was like, you know, asking for a bit of advice on CES. And he's like, every walk is longer than you think it is. That's actually great conference advice. So, but I'm still kind of confused. This AI hotel, what else does it do other than allegedly remember my preferences? Because I have an idea.

You could have some sort of data base, like a place for data. And you could put the data in that base, and then you could simply remember which way my thing... What does AI do with this bit? So a lot of it's with their app. So they have this thing, it's KEE. What a great name. They described it as, I have it here, a 24-7 butler in the palm of your hand.

Sure. So it's just a lot of the requests that you'd be making, not really having to go through a human, just saying it into your phone and putting it in your room. Right, but this doesn't add functionality to the hotel, surely, because a butler brings you things. Yeah, so a lot of the functionality is just, I guess, having to avoid humans. I mean, I asked them about that, like, hey, how many humans are going to be working here? And it's around 30. In a hotel? Which is not a lot.

That's what they told me. I want to see for myself. This isn't your company. Don't worry. I'm not mad at you. 30 full-time and part-time employees? That's what they said. At a big Las Vegas scale hotel. 300 rooms. It's not that big. That's still pretty big. Oh, yeah. That's 10 rooms. But a lot of it also is apartments, and you don't need as many staff rooms.

It is funny that that's basically where the AI thing goes from being like... It's like an application on your phone. It's like that, but it's AI. Suddenly you get to where the actual rubber meets the road on all of this stuff, which is fewer people. I am going to stay there, and I am going to do an episode. Okay. And I am going to have a piss fit. You are going to disappear. Well, I will be disassociating. But that's so...

It's just frustrating because it's like, theoretically, an AI hotel could work in the sense that if there were defined user preferences, that they could just kind of move around them. I'm not talking about generative AI. I'm talking about, theoretically, algorithms that are capable of knowing a user's preference, but only in a much larger hotel system like...

I don't know, marry it. Yeah. Well, it's interesting you say that because I asked them about that. I asked, you know, is there any interest from hotels in the area? And they said, you know, currently we're trying to get everything up and running and ready to go, but that there was a lot of interest from other hotels in kind of the system we're making. And right after I got on my interview, I saw someone from a Vegas hotel, a representative from a Vegas hotel come by and talk. Because this isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility for...

thinking about Marriott, for example, they have, I don't know why I'm talking up like a publicly traded hotel firm, but like Marriott's pretty decent. Like you can put your shit into it. And the frustration I have with the AI part is that, yeah, I've specified what kind of hotel, pillow even, very different from a hotel, that I like in a hotel stay.

I'm just not sure what else this does other than what Dave is suggesting, which is what if we just had less people? Well, it's the same thing as the stuff that we were talking about yesterday with the smart homes. There's a lot of that with AI-related stuff. And it seems like some of it, it's like a degree of convenience that doesn't just verge upon, but goes fully into infantilization or just like...

Which is the place where you get infant. Right, that's more of what you would, in some ways, like it makes more sense with a hotel. Isn't that what a hotel's for? Yeah, sort of, right? Like you're removing variables from the equation. But it also feels like there are very obvious AI things a hotel could do, such as making check-in quicker. Yeah, you check in with their eyes. No, but making sure the cleaning is done based on when, like, I don't know. I ain't no tech doer, but...

I don't know if I had an algorithm that would say, and I'm sure Vegas has these where it's like, okay, we have a hotel of X size and Y number of people come in on a Friday. So we can say that we need this much, but we have this one person. Oh yeah, Vegas definitely has that. Yeah.

So this isn't that? No. This is about more the experience for the person. And I mean, to be fair, a lot of hotels, and I talked to a professor, I talked to a lot of people about this, a lot of hotels have just a billion different legacy systems running every single function. Which feels like the things to upgrade rather than this. Which is, and this is, that's kind of their point. Is that what they're trying to do? It's one completely integrated system for the entire hotel. You know, point of service, everything is connected to each other. Oh, they're going to have so much fucking trouble selling now.

So, yeah. Sorry, just, there's no way. It's why we have airlines on 90s computers. Like, you think the Grazi system of Venetian, yeah, people know I use the Venetian a lot. You think they're going to upgrade an entire multifaceted system? It seems like an unrealistic proposition. Yeah, when I was talking to a professor from UNLV, great guy. You're a real journalist also, very clear here. This guy's great. I'm trying to be very, very accurate in my wording. Mm-hmm.

One thing he told me is that that's one of the main reasons. I mean, hospitality is Vegas kind of unique, but hospitality as industry is not known for being on the cutting edge. It's known for kind of

not the best way to say it, being very stubborn and not really changing it. And one of the reasons they're kind of stubborn and don't really adapt to the times as quick is because of that. Because there's a million systems interacting with each other and when you change one, oh God, that took down everything. It's an equilibrium thing. You can't just mess with one part of a hotel. And that's kind of why for a new hotel, for

for them, it's like, okay, let's not make a billion systems and then have to integrate them all later. Let's just get it at the outset. They can't be the first windows of hotels though. They cannot. Yeah. I'm not sure if there's other companies having that, but they were emphasizing that quite a lot. I'm just imagining startups will do that. So what else have you seen moving off of hotels? Yeah. I mean, I think one of the most interesting things I saw was from this company Sorenson, which I believe is based in Utah. They're at West. And,

And so we were talking earlier about this being kind of like a decent use of AI. Like there are still good uses of AI. No, I would love to hear them. And so it's a real-time translator that works for, specifically for like longer form presentations in a city like Las Vegas. That's obviously very important. We have a convention authority. Yeah.

And the way it works is that once it's set up by the event, all you do is scan a QR code and then you can have a real-time translation of whoever's speaking at the front on your phone in I think it's 25 languages. And one of the cooler parts about it is that they also trained it with different dialects.

Okay, I was going to say, so is this generative AI? It's a lot of training, training data. Sure, but is it a generative model? Is it a newer technology? I believe it's a generative model. Right. So my one concern with that, and I'm glad that you mentioned dialects, is everyone that I've talked to about – I can't speak any other languages. I can barely speak English –

thus have no experience with it. But everyone I talked to was like, there are these subtleties. Yeah. And it sounds like... So how... With extra dialects... So it's...

Like all good things, it's a very human solution to that where they just have a lot of really trained people that pretty consistently are checking the models to make sure that they're working. They don't just set it to the side. They were really big on this. They don't just set it to the side and hope it works. That they are pretty consistently checking it with a group of trained professionals. One of the reasons I love having you here is

being able to respond with this, which is Vegas is quite intolerant of bullshit. Weird for this place. It's the, you can bring whatever you want to CES, but it's like, oh, you want to sell to our beautiful casinos with our beautiful slot machines that bring us our tax. We love our money. Thank you. Thank you. You understand we love our slot machines. That's why we don't spend, we don't have state income tax. Yeah. Our beautiful slot machines. We love them folks.

But it's like Vegas is quite intolerant of just shit that don't work. Because shit that don't work is extremely unprofitable. Yeah, and when you're working in the hospitality industry, your main job is to keep people happy. And Vegas people are babies. And when you are running into tech issues, and this was, again, this professor, he's giving me all my lines. What was the professor's name? Oh, let me get it up. No, no, don't worry about it. No, no, no, no, no. Look, it's...

This show can be quite cynical and shitty, and I say words that people don't like, and they get upset with me, and they email me every day, and they say, Ed, I hope you die. Ed, I imagined a Cybertruck hitting you. Ed, I imagined a Ford F-150 hitting you. Ed, I thought of a Ford F-150 Raptor hitting you. You bounced, and you went, I'm in so much pain. What's the professor's name? His name is Mehmet Erdem. He is UNLV's resorts, sorry, the chair of UNLV's resorts gaming and golf management department.

Ed, I imagined a Prius here. Anyway, but that's the thing. I want these people on here because there is a thing I love about Vegas where there is a dishonest honesty. Where it's just, you can't just fling shit here because it's a very working class city. It's a pragmatic city in many, many different ways. So it's kind of like I'm more willing to humor the idea that they would have this translation thing. Yeah. Just because...

Putting aside all my feelings, Vegas would simply be like, nah, this fucking sucks. It's going to get between the customer and the slot machines. But I mean, when you're running a con, I mean, especially conners like CES, having real time translation when I think every panel's in English. Yeah. Very Anglophone, well, Anglos, not Anglophone, Anglicentric. Um, when, you know, I'm talking to people and there's a billion languages here. Um, and you mentioned working class, uh, another part, this is for a story I'm publishing later. Um,

I talked to the culinary union about their tech protections. Awesome. Cool. What did they say? So they have, they've been working since 2018, probably longer actually, but they've gotten protection since 2018, uh, specifically regarding tech replacing workers. Uh, with that, when tech gets introduced to that would affect someone's job, they have to, and they've negotiated this, they get a six month notice, uh,

And part of that, there's kind of two things that come out of that. One, that gives them time to kind of work out the kinks. One example, Ted Papa George, the treasury secretary, treasurer secretary, told me was...

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

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

That's why I like it. But also, there are actual really strong unions here who will fuck your ass up. There's a strike I've been covering at Virgin. Oh, yeah. So, what's the strike? I care way more about that than the doodads. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, they've been on strike for a little bit now regarding... Who is this? This is Virgin Hotels with the culinary union.

The latest proposal, and this was from a little bit ago, was, well, the original proposal, I believe, was no raise for the first couple years of the contract. And this was from Virgin? From Virgin. And then the secondary proposal, at least the secondary proposal I heard about as a journalist, was a consistent $0.30 per hour raise per year. Wasn't the argument from Virgin they couldn't afford anything? Yeah. How true was that?

So it's hard because the, the, they're a private company. Yeah. So kind of, so they used to have their casino run by Mohegan, which can look like the, the tribe. Um,

So you can look at that data, and their casino earned, I think it was the only one that was, I think, losing money. Wow. Which isn't great. So again, they do have a point. Virgin is not a super successful hotel when it comes to its casino, but what the union keeps pointing at is all these giant corporations. There's the Leuna Pension Fund, one of them in Canada, that owns the

owns the hotel or is part of the ownership group. And then there's another company called Fengate. So, you know, the company points to, you know, we're an off-strip property. We can't give you strip pay. And the union's pointing at their management saying, you definitely have the money. If you want to invest in Las Vegas, you have to invest in the workers. And they've consistently said, go back to Canada.

Yeah, so I just want to be clear. Kyle can't say this and is no way offering any opinion on what I'm going to say, which is Solidarity Now...

Fuck you, Virgin. Now, moving on, what else have you seen that the Vegas related while you've been here? Yeah, so the other major Vegas company I was looking at was a robotics company that's been here for a while. That's Rich Tech. Okay, tell me about them. So they work on a couple different things. So you have like this Atom, it's called Atom. It's a bartender robot. And when I was at the booth for CES, it was kind of interesting because I didn't see demos of the robot

making drinks. But it was a bartender. Yeah, it's like a bartender robot. So it has two arms, it can do everything. And the thing that surprised me was the main thing that brought people over to the booth was when the robot was dancing to Appa 2 by Bruno Mars and I think Rosé. I'm not familiar. I haven't listened to a song since 2007. Your view? It is funny that they had the

robot bartender not making drinks, but it was like... It might have been at some point when I was there, it wasn't. It was consoling another robot. Everyone was cut off. You are better than her. Yes, the stripper loves you. Go back to Haslund.

So, but the thing, it was interesting because it was drawing a crowd by its little dance with the music. And I was talking to someone with the company and they were like, you know, the show of it, the spectacle. I asked like, you know, at what point do we get past the spectacle and into just being there? And he's like, spectacle's part of the sell.

This is Vegas. You say the quiet power out loud. Spectacle is part of the cell. That's also CES too though, right? Yeah, but Vegas is honest about it.

And then they had another system that was a lot more utilitarian. You also, by the way, can find some of their robots at all the Boyd Gaming, or not all of them. What are the Boyd Gaming? That's like the off-strip, that Sam's Town and those ones. Somebody was telling me about them the other day. It's at the Orleans, Aliante, I might be pronouncing that wrong, sorry, I'm new here, and Suncoast. Cool. So they'll have delivery robots delivering food.

And then this other robot, Skylark, and that's more like getting a robot to clean floors and make deliveries and stuff like that. And so, I mean, like all things, one of the main things preventing it from mass adoption is price.

What was it? They used to have, a lot of robots used to be like you just, I think it was like $180,000. But now they're working off more of like a subscription model. Oh, baby. Much of that. Many such cases. What can this robot do exactly? So, you have the bartender robot, which is, I have the prices. Can it tend bar? Like clean? No,

I mean, like, actually serve drinks reliably? Yeah. How does it accept the drink order? Yeah, I'm aware of how drinks are made. I'm not sure. He's doing, like, the drink miming. Making a little hand motion. Does it also come with, like, an inventory system? Yeah, like, how does it know? I'm not sure exactly how its inventory system works, but I know for, like, Tipsy Robot, which is kind of like the other... That's actually at the Phoenician. Yeah, there's one downstairs. I'm going to fight it.

That's like a point of sale system where you just kind of like tap on a tablet and it gives you the drink. So I imagine it would be something similar to that. I'm not positive, but I imagine it's probably a similar system to Dipsy Robot. Because it feels like it's probably not too hard for them to be like, okay, as long as we catalog and keep every single drink in a certain place.

And maybe if you make a request that's outside the bounds of the inventory, then it says, do you mean? Would you rather? I feel bad about these, though, because there are two cities that have my heart. New York and Las Vegas. Those are my favorite. I got here in a weird way, and I will probably leave here in a weirder way, but...

The thing is the bartenders here are fascinating. Oh, yeah. Fun to talk to. I don't want a robot replacing them because, first of all, I don't believe the robot would do as good a job. But also that was not me coughing for any ironic reason. I really was just coughing. The bartenders here rock. But also like the accumulated experience of witnessing Vegas is what makes a bartender marvelous. It's all about people watching.

But also people experiencing. Yeah. This kind of comes back to another one of the things that we kind of keep bumping up against with going down there is this idea that somehow the important thing, I understand it from a business perspective, but from any other perspective, the idea that you want to remove human interaction from every process and every transaction. The thing, I keep saying this, I asked them about that. And both this company and...

I think autonomous also said this. They don't want to replace humans. They want them to work alongside them. They want to augment them. The phrase I was told was cobot. A little parallel play. It's cobot. So instead of it being a robot replacing you, it's one you work with. That is loathsome. Okay.

I don't like the idea of like, unless the robot is like doing annoying things. You don't want a robot understudy?

Yeah, what if it just sat on your arm and looked at you and blinked sometimes? Tell me stories, Pop-Pop. Was that the pet? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've heard good things, weirdly. Like previous episodes. Really? Yeah, they're kind of like, look, I was not initially that into the idea, but it's very large eyes. I have my cat and I love my cat. Yeah, right. As I said, a lot of people are willing to settle for living things.

But yeah, that, the co-bot thing. I just, also, it sounds like something said by someone who has not worked a job in a while. It also sounds like the Hyperloop shit where it's basically, it takes two people to get two people into a car that then takes them someplace. Like it's not. And then you had the ProPublica story that came out this week. About? Which was? About Elon. What?

What about him? Did he do something bad? Don't tell me if he did something. Did Elon do something against labor rights? No. I got to ride the Hyperloop when I went over to the convention center yesterday and it was fully the dumbest shit I've ever done in my life. I really loved it. I thought it was amazing. Yeah, I need to give this a proper read, but ProPublica published a piece called Elon Musk's Boring Company is Tunneling Beneath Las Vegas with Little Oversight.

Oh, really? Well, I'm sure they're probably doing a good job. That's the weird thing, though. It's like this city seemed more resistant to that kind of stuff. Are they just letting him dig tunnels because it gives them money? Well, I mean, I have not covered this enough to answer that. Sorry, I must be clear. I'm not holding you to account here. You didn't do the reporting. But it's just like it feels like such an aberration because –

One of the things that destroys people about Vegas is that everything is convenient at all times. Everything's 15 minutes. Exactly. Thank God. Damn. It's so good to have a real resident here, which is great. I've been here five months. I've been here three years, baby. And you know it better than anyone.

And it's like, wow, I can have Diet Coke whenever I need to. The problem is there are people who have other kinds of Coke they can get in 15 minutes. And then there are other proclivities they can fuel in 15 minutes. Diet Coke. Is this what they mean by 15-minute cities when you hear that phrase? Yes. That's what it is, right? Yes. Except in Saudi Arabia they'll kill you. It's a 15-minute city run by cars.

Yeah, actually, that's really weird. I'm so glad you're on the last episode. This is valuable information about Vegas. The thing is, the result of every proclivity, Jesus Christ, being available at all times is that Vegas is just like, nah, man, I understand you got this new tech and you're very horny and you raised all this money, like very exciting. However, you're between the beautiful slot machines and our beautiful customers who are anyone who is here and they ain't going to prim.

Yeah, Prim had a pretty bad gaming report come out recently. By the way, if they ever find a way to get people quicker to Prim, $100 billion industry. I'm just giving people ideas. What's Prim? Prim is a city that is far further than it looks. Oh, it's Nevada Neom? You guys did one of those? That's cool. No, yes, but...

In the sense that there is a strange authority with money that has created the city. Yeah, just a prince from Qatar, you know. He's also miskeen. He's ambitious. It's strange, but I don't have enough prim EXP. You should do some shrooms and go into the city and find prim. Ask Robert, go to the gas station. Let's find Silicon Valley's El Dorado. But the larger point is that Vegas is intolerant of things not because of good or bad, but because of...

Oh, yeah. It's all about efficiency. And that's the weird thing. CES exists in this very inefficient way here. And it's just Vegas is like, I'll take a little. Well, yeah. I mean, it might be inefficient for the tech industry, but it's a great moneymaker for the city. I can only imagine. Which is a great description of Vegas. I mean... This may destroy you, but... It may, you know, it might not be great for, you know, there's AI being put into everything, you know,

All that stuff. But, I mean, look, it's a very large conference that the city makes good money off of. And we just had a recent F1 report or a recent November gaming revenue report. And F1 is not performing the way people want it to. So, I mean, these conventions are in – I mean, they keep the city afloat. Especially, I mean, when people couldn't travel here in 2020. I mean, I wasn't here, but I was thinking about it. Yeah, then you know. It's so strange. I mean, it was – But also the depression here was – It was terrible.

Like, this is a working class city. And when you think about CES, you think of a lot of engineers and such. Vegas is a place which is very working class, and the effects of these conferences are quite pronounced. Yeah. And it's important. It's important for the city. So, very meaningful ending for a third of the episode there. Mr. David Roth, where can people find you? Defector.com, the website. And I do the distraction podcast there. Wow.

Okay, well, just move past that because you messed up the order there. Oh, I did. I'm sorry. No, no, no, no. It's gone. I don't get any second shot at this? Yeah, take it over. I'm still... Cut it. I'm still on X, believe it or not. The Everything app. I'm on there too, but only for banking. LAUGHTER

I don't really use it for social networking anymore. I put my CAT scans in there to see what Grok tells me about it. Grok's like, "LOL. You have disease." "Your discs are very cheeky." You get the Elon butthead laugh when it uploads successfully. It's like, "Hahaha." You're like, "Cool, it's processing."

Wait, Kyle, where can people actually find you? Kyle underscore Shannard. C-H-O-U-I-N-A-R-D. And then LasVegasSun.com. Or just LasVegasSun.com. Edun Gueso Jr.,

I am on Twitter and Blue Sky and the Foreign Agent Registry at Big Black Jacobin. I won't say for which country, but you can guess. For my newsletter, it's thetechbubble.substack.com. And for my podcast, This Machine Kills. You can find me at whereisyourhead.at for my newsletter. And the podcast is called Better Offline.

And you're thinking, this seems way too honest for it. What's he going to do to me next? And the answer is nothing. This is a clean break. We're about to go to some advertisements and you're going to listen to them intently or else you are committing crimes against me. And I know you love the crimes you do on this show. You love to fill up the Reddit, something that will be called Exhibit A through Z.

And I regret the crime jokes, but I'm not going to stop them. Anyway, the following ads, very legitimate companies or podcasts. You're going to listen to them, download them. I won't feel any pain. Buy their products.

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I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together on the Really No Really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does

Does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That?

And we're back. So we have replaced David Roth using science with Gare Davis.

You are here for me. It could happen here. I am. The Cool Zone Media product. We're colleagues. How are you doing? I'm so tired. I've walked so many steps this week. I feel like I have new energy. That's the problem. I'm going into the last day with more energy than I had when I arrived. That's another CES miracle. It's beautiful. Carl Chouinard from Las Vegas Sun. Hi there.

And of course, Edward Ongueso Jr. Hello! That's really bad. Gare, Kyle, you were at the same panel. Tell me about this panel. So it was this panel done by a number of tech companies. Adobe had a spokesperson there, as well as one of the DHS science and technology representatives. It was ostensibly about deep fakes,

AI-generated information and disinformation and misinformation. And I've been to a lot of these panels over the years. I went to one last year at CES, put on by Deloitte. That one was actually okay. And then I went to a few at the RNC earlier last year. Right, and that's the Republican National Convention. Correct, correct. So, you know, it's a good panel for journalists to go to, speaking of disinformation. Yeah.

But yeah, this was on Thursday that we walked into the LVCC, went to this panel, and it was one person in front of me did fall asleep. What was the panel about? It was about misinformation, disinformation, and deepfakes. And I think if you didn't know much about it, it probably could be a little helpful. But for, I think, a CES audience, maybe not as much.

Yeah, I mean, it was talking about various tools to identify AI-generated or deep-faked information or pictures, videos, etc.

and a whole bunch of the previous visual tactics a few years ago, it's pretty easy to spot an AI image. It's maybe slightly harder now. It depends on the model. But with how fast that is developing, especially for stills, it's going beyond visual detection. You have to actually create tools to detect this. And those tools can also be prone to false positives. And false positives.

false negatives. And so there's this, another technology that a whole bunch of companies like Microsoft making a big push for it as well as Adobe is kind of like a build in systems for when you generate AI content that like clearly identifies it as such in the metadata. And,

And that's something I heard a lot about last year and they talked about it here. I think they called it Providence. Providence, yeah. Providence was the word of the day. Yes, that was the word that they used was these Providence systems as opposed to detection systems, which is like post-hoc systems.

We will use that against suspected AI content that was maybe not generated with this built-in information. Yeah, so how was the panel, though? Was it useful? Did it make profound statements, or was this more CES slop? I mean, I wouldn't call it CES slop. Because there's the ones where you just sit there for half an hour and go like, oh, well.

That was half an hour. I could be doing something else. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it was good for learning the basics, and they talked about how, like you mentioned, it was a lot easier to detect things a while ago. One thing I wish they, and this is not really your question, but one thing I wish they did talk about was just how text-based a lot of this AI misinformation is. It's a lot of the misinformation that gets published. I mean, if you go on X, the everything app,

As I do for my banking. Of course. I mean, I go into, I can't even read the comments anymore because I have to scroll through a billion blue checks and so many of them are just like obviously AI generated based off analyzing the image and then writing the most basic comment possible. So I wish there was a little more focus on that. If you want to

No, sure. I mean, like, that is a massive section of it. And this is something even I asked a question about at the Republican National Convention at Microsoft's panel, being like, you have all these tools for, like, AI images, right? You know, images of politicians in debaucherous acts, you know, all these sorts of things. But they also advertise, like, AI's ability to make specifically, like, specific images

user-specific political press releases. Basically, a campaign can send an email based on a voter's profile that can be tailored using AI to specific voters. And like...

What could go wrong with that? You mean creating data to specifically push voters in one direction? They never do that. If you're working for a campaign and you want to target specific voters, you can analyze their social media presence, whatever kind of information about them is in certain data sets that can be bought and make an AI written press release specifically

And this is something I also asked a question about. You're talking about these AI metadata watermarks for images, but what about for text? How will I be able to know if an email I'm getting from a politician was written by a person or written by a robot? Well,

Well, you can't. We simply aren't going to worry about that. I mean, I walked up to y'all afterwards and I was like, I guess the lesson is that we're all screwed. Yeah, we all are screwed. I mean, that was the main takeaway. That was what the DHS was saying. Which I was like, maybe, oh God. That was the main takeaway I had was everyone pretty much saying like, this is going to get worse and worse.

It's an arms race. And it is. They gestured towards quote-unquote bad guys or foreign state actors. Specifically, Iran does a lot of work on this. Russia. I think in some ways, the focus on those two might be kind of lifted as the new administration focuses more on China. But specifically for disinformation using AI tools,

Iran and Russia like the past year has been like the main players targeting US voters it is so wild we just this is a real dumb guy statement do we just have other countries who are just fucking with the US citizenry and it's just like a thing that happens oh yeah it's a huge it's like a it's a huge project but it's not considered an act of war

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

very frustrating to hear this stuff and not really know what to do about it. Because it could happen here, there's amazing work on disinformation. There's something to do about it. As like a person, okay. No, but no, no. It is a huge problem and there really isn't much to do realistic. Like we have tried to make fact-checking work the past few years and I don't think Americans are that much better at identifying false or genuine information.

Like fact checking has kind of failed as a large project. I almost feel like what they actually need is vibe checkers.

I mean, they need someone to tell you. No, but it's, why do I feel bad looking at this? What I'm saying is everyone needs therapy. Jesus Christ. And astrologers and psychics. State mandated therapy is the solution here. Yeah, definitely. A state mandated vibe checker. Is this real? I'm going to apply to be Trump's vibe checker.

What do you think about this? It's not giving me good vibes, boy. It's giving me the ick. It's a big ick. Don't read the end of Jujutsu Kaisen. It's a very disappointing manga. Very unfair. The end of Demon Slayer, far better.

And then you get seven. Terrible ending. They took out the U.S. superhero. Only JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is holding up. For me, it was normal. I didn't know both of you were weebs. This is interesting. I am a weeb. I just appreciate other cultures. Oh, I don't give a shit. I'm a huge weeb. Do you know what I'm wearing?

I was wondering if that was a reference. You look like you might hunt something. Explain this one, Gare, because I actually don't know. No, I know. Good guess. No, no, it's like anti, anti, was it that one? No, there's a... No. It's Chainsaw Man, right? No. Oh, I thought you were one of the agents. It's one of the club ones. Orin High School Host Club. Oh, okay, okay, okay. One of the host club ones. Yes. Just to be clear, Gare is the best dressed of any of us and also fucking rocking like an actual manga-related outfit.

nailing it. I spent a lot of money on this. As you should have. It looks great. I found a very nice blue blazer that I defaced by putting on the Orin patch. Describe it. No, this is good. I've been admiring your fits. I feel like back home, I'm usually dressed the best dress. I'm about to say dress best. Your pants are fantastic. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. No one's saying anything about me. It's okay.

Your leather jacket's good. The boots are good. Thank you. Personally, I think you should have gone with the aviator shades. Personally, I think you should have gone with the shades. The aviator. I would love. I'm not Kara Swisher, but. I was talking about this with my boss, Robert Evans, last night. We should bring the menswear guy here one year and have him walk around CES. Oh, my God. You have anticipated my dynamo. Ed. Oh, that's such a good idea. He's also not cheap.

Oh, no. No, he won't. No. Derek Guy is a legend. I love him. And he also knows what he's worth and should. He should. It's a pro-labor podcast. Is that his name? Derek Guy. Which is so fucking funny to be like the menswear guy and your second name is Guy.

Very cool. It works out. He nailed it. I would love for him to walk around the show floor. I think it could do some real psychic damage. As long as he doesn't rate my face. I never want him to put his eye of Sauron on me. I'm terrified. I say this with my...

Not quite parasocial, but here's my Derek Guy story. So I lost a lot of weight this year, and this is not me trying to actually conjure up people saying anything. I'm fine. What I'm saying is I lost all the weight and I bought a bunch of clothes and I took a picture and I'm like, I still feel like shit. So I emailed Derek Guy as one normally does in tears and

And I was like, why do I feel bad still? Because I was like, you know what? If he doesn't respond, he doesn't respond. Yeah. But if he does, he can help me deal with something like an emotional thing where I'm like, I feel better about my body, but I don't like what's on it. And he was like, you have no aesthetic. And he explained the concept of aesthetics. He responded. Yeah. He,

No, Derek's amazing. Okay, he's like the Chomsky of fashion. He's super cool. He's so chill. The Dick Monfort for the Rockies fans. I'm going to shoot him an email. Chomsky still responds to emails. Well, the reason he does this is kind of what I was addressing with Gare, which is...

He isn't there to 86 people. He's there to try and explain what looks and feels good. And he talks about clothing as social language. And he said, you have no aesthetic. You're wearing like trainers with like a thread belt. My shit was busted. I look terrible because of the clothes, not because of me. I would actually love him to do that, but also walk around being like, this shit looks fucking good. Because I feel like, and with this show especially,

If you're just a hater while loving nothing, you're just vacuous. Occasionally, you see a very well-dressed Asian businessman. They're fucking rocks. And then you see a lot of Asian businessmen in very ill-fitting suits. But occasionally, you'll see one guy who has that shit on.

Yes. I did see someone who had that shit on and they were like looking at other people's fits with disgust. That's what I've been doing all week, baby. Fashion pedants. I really should have gone up to him and talked to him. Yeah, you have notes about the convention we're at.

This is my actual job. Okay, yeah, I forgot why we're here. We're just, you know, yapping. The yap index is over 5,000 right now. Please bring us back to why we're actually meant to. Well, so I guess one thing I was spending almost all of yesterday doing, as we've been inundated with these AI products, is learning about all of the AI products targeting your offspring.

your kids who are being raised now with AI the same way my generation was raised with social media. Nice on the mind. This is like Coco Mellon shit where it's like put this in front of your kid or it's like device, like consumer products for the anxious parent. You know, both. These things kind of overlap.

The first thing I did yesterday morning was I attended a panel called Raising AI Kids Responsibly. Great title, because this could either mean you're making an AI child that you get to raise, or it's about how do you raise kids in the world of AI. Now, it was the latter. I kind of wanted the former. I hate all of it.

It was bad. In some ways it was bad and a little bit cringe, but there's also some interesting stuff said here. There was two products that were displayed. One of them was from this company called Readyland, who I believe partners with Amazon. It's basically an AI storybook that interacts with an Alexa machine. Now, one thing about them that I think is actually really good

They don't generate any new AI content. It's just using AI to stitch together basically kind of a choose-your-own-adventure book, but for kids to have a physical book that they read with the Alexa machine that then can make them talk to characters, change the story in different directions. But all the content is pre-baked. It just gets assembled in different ways. Just one idea. As a father of a son, son of a mother, a brother of a sister...

You can do this thing when you're reading to your child where you can think of something and talk. This is what my parents did to me. Imagination. This is what I was thinking about in the panel. Yes, this is cool. It's safer than a whole bunch of the other stuff I'm seeing. But this kind of steals away the joy of reading to your

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

wonderful parts of being a father is having my son come and talk to me about something he just thought up. And it will be something Minecraft related. And he will explain something I did not know about Minecraft. And he will like, he will explain something in such detail that I've never even considered in my life. And it's something quite simple, but it's because he's being allowed to go off in these directions with no prompting, with no,

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

relatively better about this product. It's basically kind of just like... I'm not saying it's inherently... It's kind of just like a visual novel. Like those...

like those visual novel games, but you have a physical book that you're reading. Now, compared to the other product called Poe the AI Teddy Bear, which I also saw... Edgar Allan Poe, the classic happy guy. It is so much worse. It is what it sounds like. It's a teddy bear that comes with an app where you can put in certain parameters for like, I want the story starring this character with this archetype as the villain in this setting, and it'll generate an AI story for your child generating new content. So unlike...

Unlike Storyland, or unlike Readyland, Poe the AI Bear is actually generating live content unreviewed by moderators, just straight to your child. It's $50 on Amazon. You can order this thing right now and talk to it. He...

I'm going to put my tongue in my cheek when I do what I'm pissed off about. I'm like, where's this guy going to hang out later? You're low-key tweaking right now. I'm like, names, places. He did talk about, you know, like, ChatGPT does...

does have guardrails for content, but those guardrails don't always reliably work, but they're better than nothing. And content moderation is an issue that we're working on. I'm like, yeah, but your product has hit the market. Like you are selling. Yeah, we're working on moderation isn't a great answer. No, not a good answer. And this is something like even the other guy with like the AI storybook mentioned, he's like,

it's pretty easy to make like your AI kids toy, not say swear words or even, even, even like talk about like sex or drugs. But one thing that's even harder to moderate is like, what if it, what if it says like inaccurate or, or actually like, like, like, uh,

like dangerous information. What if it goes in a really weird direction and starts talking about... You should stare at the sun so that you can regenerate aura. Exactly. Generated AI models, they don't even understand how the training data truly interacts with the system. Totally. They don't know how this shit truly works. The only useful thing in quantum computing related to AI right now is the fact that they can actually have models that can discern what the training data does. So the idea of...

my child interacting with them I realize now like nothing actually makes me angry other than harms to my child at which point I might actually go falling down mode

Such a good movie, too. It's such a great movie. Such a good movie. Now, the last thing about this panel is that it actually opened with this person from the company IDO, IDO Play Lab Partnerships, who was the first company to partner with Sesame Workshop to make apps for kids. So I'm like, this is interesting. Sesame Workshop usually, I consider being pretty...

pretty thoughtful in how they produce media for kids. And like, if they're choosing to partner with this company, maybe I'll listen to what they say. And they didn't have anything to sell.

They just had data that they've been collecting on how Gen Z thinks about AI, this thing that's becoming increasingly invasive in our lives. Like, how do we think about it, and what do we really want out of it? And some of the way this lady presented stuff was a little bit odd. She kind of presented all of the data findings as, like, shocking surprises, which I think may have been tailored for the CES audience. Sure, but also, I feel like more attention to the details isn't...

Sure, and this is what she said her data showed. And you can look this stuff up on their website. The main question she asked is, what if the tech-savvy Gen Z isn't buying what we're selling anymore? Fucking hell, imagine a customer that doesn't want the thing you're building.

She said Gen Z is typically seen as early adopters, early users, and they usually are, but they also come with the most amount of informed opinions about how badly the tech feels, how cringey it is to use, and how it affects their sense of humanity. So the issue is that they know what's up.

They know what's up, which was, you know, if you're in businesses, it's either a hurdle to overcome or some insights to help you, you know, maybe pivot or change in a completely different direction. She identified like the key areas of tension around AI for Gen Z is one, creative expression, you know, its ability to, you know, have us feel proud of the art that we make.

and how it affects human relationships. And she brought up a few questions or examples of the types of stuff that she's asking people as a part of this data collection. It's like, let's say you've had a friend break up. Would you rather an AI tool counsel you through that process

bounce ideas off and try to move on or figure out what happened? Or do you want a temporary friend replacement? Do you want the AI to become a friend for you instead? Would you rather that be your friend for the time being? No, we actually don't want AI friends. That's not what we want. Which is a lot of stuff at CES this year, it feels like. So much of AI this year is about replacing human friendships.

And it's so fucked up. To preserve human friendship. Right, sorry. It's fucked up because the idea of tech at least 10 years ago was they would bring us closer together and would allow for deeper connections. Now it's like...

Ugh, buddy. Like, yeah, about that. You want to connect with the computer? I mean, this is what happens when, I mean, all these, you know, this is what happens when everyone starts reading Marcus Aurelius a little too closely. So true. I don't know that reference. I am an idiot. People need to stop quoting books to me. I think it's good that you don't know this. Is that the guy from Gladiator? Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes, Ed. Actually, Russell Crowe did say one of the funniest things on Twitter, which is he responded to one of the CNN reports, I believe at the time, and he was just like, blocked, plonker, which is one of the funniest things to say. Anyway, let's just ignore my...

philistine nature. This was the same thing that she was talking about. It was like, you know, this thing where what we're all seeing is like these air products designed to replace the role of human friendship. And another thing she presented as like this surprising... Not solving the problem of meeting people. No, no, it's

it's not actually helping you overcome the fact that you lost a friend. It's trying to be like, hey, it's okay if you lost a friend. This AI can be your friend instead. The solution to this loneliness epidemic, especially young people are going through, I can't imagine is more robots.

You know, and... Yeah. One thing I keep thinking about... That's driving alienation. One of these guys who did, who does like these companion bot, chat bot sites, and then character AI, you're like, oh, okay, well, you know,

You seem in interviews to be earnest about like people are lonely. Maybe we can't replace, but we can offer a salve that helps people get back to the point where they have human friendships again. What does he believe about people? And it's just like, let's hang homeless people. You know, let's murder the poor. Like this sort of, it's not a coincidence that someone building that sort of firm has such deeply pathological views, I think. And it's so fucked up as well because-

The idea of an AI you can bounce ideas off of is not inherently a terrible idea. We sit there, we think about shit, and the idea of having a log of it, I...

journal a great deal and I think many people listening to this do there's an idea of looking at this but they're like yeah what if your journal was a person it gets worse the next thing that's used as an example is like what if there's an AI that's trained on your preferences trained on your dating preferences what you like aesthetically and what if that could instead go on your first dates for you

What if... I fucked those up on my own. This is literally a Black Mirror episode. What if this could handle icebreaker questions and get over hard life experiences to make life easier for you? One of my favorite little perverse things was this... Slavoj Zizek one time said he doesn't like sex. He's just a Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalytic. He sniffs a lot. He's...

You know? Oh, you mean Zizek. Yeah, Zizek. And he was talking about how the ideal sexual encounter for him is two people taking their sex toys and those sex toys playing with each other and fucking. And this is the... This is exactly what he's talking about. That's disgusting. The ideal... That's perverted. No, the ideal perversion, the pure perversion of that is two people...

using those sex toys together to get each other off. No, that's great. That's wonderful. That's good perversion. Yeah, this is a pro-sex podcast, Jesus Christ. The one where you send an avatar that is not real. Where you do it in a different room. Completely autonomous from you as yourself. What are you, British evil? Mark of the Beast. And it was odd because this is...

This is why what she was saying was so odd because like she presented this as like a surprising revelation that Gen Z would rather live life themselves than have an AI live your life for you. I can tell you that. And like that was what she was trying to say but it was so odd having that presented like some like surprising like exclusive fact that you can only get through like data research. And she talked about like like

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

Gail, how old are you? I'm in my early 20s. Sorry, I didn't want to get... No, you're fine. So you're Gen Z. Yeah, yeah. How do you feel about these assumptions? I mean, again, these are questions that she's like,

that she's posing to like, you know, focus groups of, of, of like, but like, but I care more about your opinion. They're really pandering. They're there. Is it accurate? Well, no, because they assume such a base level of stupidity that they're like kind of offensively, like even like framed the fact that I would be like, would you rather have an AI go on dates for you? Like, why, why would you ever ask me that? That's that, that's fucking stupid. Some of the fun parts about romance are,

Wow, said the word correctly. They're always saying this about me with how words go is fucking up.

Revealing parts of yourself that get banged off someone you feel bad. And you learn about yourself that way. Exactly. And that's what she was saying. That's actually what people want. People don't actually want AI to live your life for you. And she specifically provided a pushback against this idea in the tech industry where the smoothest possible path is the best one.

Right. This is a good panel. You want to optimize every part of life. What if that optimization actually isn't the point?

What if this idea in the tech industry that we have to optimize and smooth over every hardship misses the entire point of living? And you have all these tech bros being like, oh yeah, huh, I guess so. Maybe we shouldn't smooth over all the problems. Maybe I'm getting this reference wrong. It's a very Patrick Bakeman

Bateman like thinking of like I am optimizing everything to the T and I will you know keep it keep it going I mean no specifically in his book in the book you know that is like the sort of train of thought he has as he's like kind of emptily engaging with life at the very superficial level while being

um, emptying, craving something else. The final point she had is like, and again, this is all, it's all kind of pandering. So like, you're saying like, you're saying like Gen Z, but like, this is like across a lot of people. It's like, but she said like, Gen Z doesn't trust AI to understand the nuance of their lives. And I as a millennial, of course do. Yeah.

But yeah, it was not a panel because on one hand you have these AI toys for kids and then you have this woman with this company that works with Sesame and she's like, yeah, actually Gen Z doesn't want AI to run their lives. And you're like, yeah, who could have thought? As we approach the final second of the thirds of Better Offline,

Yeah, where can people find you? Well, I am on X, the everything app. The everything app, where do you go banking? At Hungry Bowtie, as well as Blue Sky, at Hungry Bowtie. At HungryBowtie.social. And it could happen here. And the podcast, with me, Robert Evans, and a few of our other colleagues, where we cover sometimes tech, but politics, culture, disinformation, all that kind of fun stuff that greases the wheels of our society. Yummy. Kyle, what's your favorite thing about the show?

I can be found on X, the everything app, at Kyle underscore Shannard. And then my writing's on LasVegasSun.com. Oh, yeah. And Edward Unguayso Jr. You can. In the real world, I live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest in Washington, D.C. Zip code 2050. That's a nice neighborhood. It's kind of nice. It's got a great view of everything. Nice. Yeah.

What else? I'm at BigBlackJacobin on Twitter and Blue Sky. And This Machine Kills is my podcast. And the techbubble.substack.com is my newsletter. You are approaching the final third of the final two-part episode of the Consumer Electronics Show. And I just want to say something to you, which I'll elongate at the end of this. I'm so grateful for you giving me your patience with this. I will say, I need you to listen to the ad

I don't know actually what happens after I'm done talking. I never do. Frankly, I barely understand what I'm doing when I am talking because Matasowski over here heals me.

Jesus Christ, I can't even say his. We're keeping it. Matuszewski hears me mess up my name, mess up the name of companies, or just mess up a word. But you know, I keep reading because podcasting is in my blood and that's who I am and that's my identity. It's very normal and healthy. Please listen to the ads. Please download the podcast. Please buy the product. If they don't give me another contract, it's going to be very bad. My therapist is going to be mad.

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I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, is

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

Two things. One, I watched Neo Genesis Evangelion. Oh, great. And I was a teenager and I did not understand the subtext. Oh, yeah. So the whole time for most of my life was watching this show and being like, damn, these robots are fucking cool. And then like...

Some weird shit happened, I guess. I'm like, okay, but okay, the robot's back. Okay, there's like some stuff from space and there's a big head. Kind of fucking weird, I guess. Anyway, welcome to Better Offline. I'm Ed Zitron. We are joined by everyone. We're joined by Robert Evans of Cool Zone Media. That's right. David J. Roth, who is going to have to grab the mic. Hello. Of Defector. Edward Ongueso Jr., of course, will now have to turn another mic. What's up?

Kyle Chenard of the Las Vegas Sun. Hello. And Gare Davis of It Could Happen Here, Cool Zone Media, and Associated Properties. Hello, hello, hello. We're at the end of CES. We have one more positive masculinity day coming after this, but this is really the closeout as all of us just slop ourselves into the remaining quarters of this convention center.

I could not have had more fun if I tried, but next year I'll try. Robert, how has the show been? How would you summarize the show? It was great. I mean, obviously AI is here to stay. This is the worst it's ever going to be. Everything's...

Thank you. Only going to get better. And thank God. You know, there's this little kid that I helped take care of. And it takes a lot of time. As you know, as a father, Ed, a lot of time and a lot of effort to raise a child. And I'm just excited that TCL has a solution to that problem. It's what I've always dreamed, which is that you keep like a hamster-like feeder in a water, like you just hook up a hose to the room, and you lock the child in with a robot until they're 18 or 20. Like the room.

Like the room, exactly. Yeah, it's perfect. You know, as long as you get like one of those lights that gives you some sun kind of effect, you know, they won't die probably. And that's ideal. How?

Have you introduced this product yet? I did not. We'll introduce it. Oh, wait, no, no, we have not. Oh, we're just into the disparagement part of the show then. No, I'll move on. No, I mean... Well, this is in the... We had talked about how cute little guys are part of the... Again, enough about me. But the TCL is the most... I looked at this also, and they have a whole little...

video of like a tow-headed child interacting with this thing. And his parents, the kid's parents are kind of like standing off to the side being like super, let's go to the movies or whatever. But it's the most, it's probably the cutest of the cute little guys, but then also easily the most sinister. Yeah, it's the most sinister. Well, and you say tow-headed. I had a disagreement with Garrison, so I'm wondering how you thought, because I felt like they cast that child because it looked like he had leukemia.

It definitely... Well, I don't want to say anything bad about the kid, right? The kid did nothing wrong. He was fine. He looked ill. Yes, he did. What he looked like was honestly the scenario you described, which is basically like we're growing a child the way that people grow mushrooms in their house. Yes. He looks like that. He looks like he's not been outside. Okay.

Oh my fucking God. Yeah, huge bags under his eyes, never seen the kiss of the sun or his mom. You do not know what vitamin C is, little boy, but don't worry. Or D. D.

Well, I'm British. The first robot specifically for children that look the way the actor Brad Dourif looks right now. It's designed for that. I don't know who that is. I'm the host of this fucking thing. You need to... Okay, so we've also got Phil, our bartender. We should talk in. Hello. Thank you, Phil. Very good. That's enough. Thank you.

I really don't know how to direct this at this point because I invited like seven people into this. You can. Okay, well. You're here with us. Let's start on an easy point. We'll just go around. How's everyone feeling at this point of CES? We are at the end. Let's start with Gare because you are probably the second least likely to say something legally actionable.

And I realize that is now a challenge. You haven't had all the conversations I've had with gear. What am I doing? I don't know. I feel fine. I was able to find some cool stuff despite having to sort through lots of slop.

There's always one or two gems at CES that makes all of the slop sorting worth it. So I was happy to find a few of those in Eureka Park. I also had my fair share of fun. No need to name them. No, absolutely not. What?

We're not going to do free publicity. Agreed. That's my job and it costs money. Anyway. But no, I was also able to have a little bit of fun. As soon as I realized that this show was just going to be last year's show again, I kind of relaxed myself to being like, I can just kind of do what...

I can kind of just like fuck off. So I talked to a flying car company. How real was that? It was real. Hell yeah. Real fake. I was waiting to interview someone and instead one of their like PR guys walked up to me and was like, hey, can we interview you about your thoughts on this flying car? I'm like, absolutely. I wish that happened to me.

I would just be like, I will kill myself. Just every answer. The phrase CES miracle gets used a lot. That really was one. Did you do it, though? Oh, I did. Hell yeah. I talked a lot about my concerns around safety for these flying cars. I predicted it has 20 minutes in the air. It was actually a huge drone, and I got exactly right. It was a...

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

So I'm crashing. What's your plan for that? Like, what if you're in a populated area and you're like, and they said, no, we'll have guardrail software to make sure it doesn't land in populated areas of like,

We have some of the people from Knight Capital. I'm launching this thing right in the middle of Midtown Manhattan. I'm going to do hover for 20 minutes. Which brings me to the second thing that they asked me about. What's maybe some of your concerns or what's the first thing you think of? I'm like, well, a few weeks ago, a few weeks ago, a Deloitte consultant drove a car into 15 people in a terrorist attack.

Same day, someone used a cyber truck to make a bomb. What if some rich guy loses his mind and flies this thing into a building? And they did not like that. Why? I don't know what kind of PR training these guys had. I don't know if they were prepared for that. Obviously good enough PR training that they were like, this person seems nice. Let's ask them what they think. Turning to my client strike, just kill you. Just kill you.

gun in your mouth. Just don't answer die like it's the best way you could go about this. But you would get into commercial aviation and not have an answer to the 9-11 question. It's just... That's in the past. So I was able to relax and have fun with moments like that. You had fun. Once it became clear, it was just like AI software was the king of this year once again. A whole bunch of things that used to be actually kind of...

all of the university projects in Eureka Park, which sometimes has a really cool new thing, now all of that creativity is just being channeled into AI software. And that's in some ways disappointing to see. Some of the software is good. It works. It can solve problems. But it's also, again, it's part of the slop. There's also a lot of slop software. I feel like we're in the slop society. I feel like we're at this point where

Everyone here, I think, is experiencing some form of mental damage from being here too long. Oh, yeah. But also the thing... Not me, baby. To be clear, this is the one commonality I have with Robert, which is...

Robert is the only person I've seen exhibit the same thing of like the Joker's feel. Where you're just like, you're like, "It gets worse and I get better." I'm just fucking suffering and like the more I suffer the stronger I get and the more intrigued I get with the more pain I get. He's also the only person that I saw that I recognized on the floor of the South Hall of the convention center where it was just like cell phone cases.

Like, not technology, but just, like, Chinese stuff designed to be sold on Amazon. That's where Robert does his best work. And he was, like, locked in. I was like, hey. And he got, like, some of the way past me. He was like, do you fucking need something or whatever? Like,

It's like, oh man, it's from yesterday. Same table that we were at. Oh my god. In my defense, there were really huge cell phones there. Like massive. Like literally an inch and a half thick rugged cell phones. I had to look at them. I had to touch them. We're not reporting on them.

I have nothing to say about them. I had to feel them. Are we establishing that Robert Evans accidentally big-times people? Is that what we're saying here? I did not feel big-timed. I was just like, damn, this guy is on another level. I will give the most...

derisive view of I did not know who Robert Evans was before August 2023 a fact I am regularly reminded of by everyone else I mentioned Robert Evans to oh my god the behind the bastards guy and I was like this is a fucking guy with a weird avatar oh you want to do a podcast about tech

Fucking hell, what you gonna do about it, mate? I need money. Turns out, iHeartRadio Corporation, thank you. No negative statements right now. All of you actually need this. But nevertheless,

It is really fun being here with Robert because Robert, again, is one of the only people who experiences CES in the way I do, which is the Metallica song Frantic, where you're just like, it's not great, but you're here. Oh, yeah. And it kind of bangs, but not for the reasons everyone else feels. Totally. St. Anger fans line up, all three of us.

But it's also really fun being here this time because last year I was but a babe and very nervous. Now I'm just like, oh no, you weighed into it with like your pants off. Like you're just like, I will see everything. Speaking of Metallica, I heard a pretty good Master of Puppets cover at the MGM Grand in the top three covers of Master of Puppets that I've heard on that exact same stage at the MGM Grand. No longer interested in the text. So where was this? It was...

It was right near the skee-ball. Okay, well, I know where we're going. Dinner is canceled, fellas. That's where I'm going. But it is interesting because talking to the various reporters here about CES and why we do this, and no one can answer that question, by the way. It's just like, we're all fucking here every January.

But it has been interesting getting wonderful reporters like Kyle and getting It Could Happen Here, Robin Gare, getting Ed and Dave in, like, truly, like, I don't want to say objective, but, like, fresh looks. And then Robert and Gare, of course, who are very much used to... Robert is a separate creature. I mean that with more love than I can ever put into my voice. But it's interesting to get this view and then bring reporters in and talk, and they're like, yeah, well, we're here, and we saw stuff.

But there's also an ephemera that is kind of hard to cover in objective journalism, Kyle. Totally. Yeah. I thought that my main takeaway from the week was the politics of it. I mean from – I was at Panasonic's keynote and immediately you had people from the Consumer Tech Association talking about tariffs. I mean I walked by people wearing Department of Government Efficiency shirts wearing

Oh, really? Yeah. Which was really interesting. Did you hit them? No, I did not. I'll take care of it. No, don't. Crimes are bad. But yeah, I mean, tariffs were just such a thing. I think a CNN article also wrote about it. They were just kind of looming over the entire event. And it seems like, I mean, Trump coming in

pretty soon, is just kind of hanging over everyone's heads on top of all the tech. Who is that? What? Who's Donald Trump? Trump? No, sorry. Please continue. I'm doing a bit. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think. The political feeling. Yeah, there's a political feeling there. And at the same time CES is happening, you're seeing this shift from meta that's just –

I mean, especially on their new policies regarding comments about trans and just other queer people. The insane shit they're allowed. Yeah. What was it? Like you're allowed to say – Let's not repeat the – Yeah. No, I'm not. Yeah. But it's basically you can just insult trans people. You can insult gay people. Without any issue. Jewish people. You can refer to women as property too. Yeah.

Really? I mean, at this point, I'm just like, you could say anything. It actually is worth mentioning, specifically the types of insults around mental illness that you're now allowed to call queer people, but not call other types of people, actually is worth mentioning. It's a huge change. It is.

It's just an interesting show because it desperately wants to be apolitical, amoral. Totally. Bereft of these feelings, but it still shows it in the things they show, the collection of data, the kind of surveillance aspect. And it sucks because it feels like this show could be better because on the fringes of the conversations we've had of like, yeah, everyone's creating...

solutions for problems that they haven't even come up with yet. You get these things, the skincare product, the cane for blind people that can tell you what's coming up, really useful things. The translation stuff we were talking about. Exactly, like actual translation for a conference so you could go to a conference in Taiwan and actually, Computex, one of the most important conferences in the world. Some really impressive tech to assist people who are disabled.

I thought accessibility tech was my main highlight. That's what Eureka was best at showing. It's weird that Eureka, the poisonville, actually had some good shit in it for that. I would say the one consistent form factor for consumer tech that seems to be getting a lot better every year and that reminds me of how phones and tablets felt 10 years ago is glasses. They're getting smaller. They're getting more capable. I'm seeing...

Glasses that are designed for navigation, that are designed for recording. I did see, to what you were saying about politics, a lot of glasses that were specifically marketed based on their ability to aid TikTok that I'm like, ooh, in a week that might not be such a good business. I had a full conversation with someone speaking Chinese. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fucking cool. That is objectively very cool. It's great. And was it a conversation with nuance? Yeah, yeah.

More than I'd have been able to do on my own before. We talked about making specific dinner plans, what we do for work. See, this is the thing that tech can actually do. This is the thing that I, and I've said this many times in episodes, I'm not anti-tech. I wish tech was able to do the thing they promised, but I love technology. The only reason I know literally every person I'm looking at in this room is through posting. Yeah.

And I'm not even kidding. And this is the sickening thing that upsets my father. No, my dad's very proud. My therapist kind of, like my multiple lawyers. Anyway, the idea that one can do that. But the internet and tech is fully capable of making these wonderful connections. Like genuinely, I laugh about the Robert Evans thing. He found me through a podcast called Western Kabuki with my friend Caleb Wilson, June, and other people who are wonderful. Alex as well, like great podcasts. And these are all digital things. Tech is fully capable as much as,

I can be cynical and angry about this stuff. The reason I'm fucking angry is it's fully capable of helping people. And we've all experienced that. That was the bit that I sort of was struck by, again, as like sort of somebody who hasn't covered this stuff as much and has had sort of, you know, the same sort of experience, like a normal middle-aged person's experience of tech.

I was blown away by the capacities of the things that were there. I mean, like, I didn't realize that it was, like, you could have a conversation with someone speaking another language. Like, I didn't see anything that cool. But the accessibility tech stuff for me, too, like, I found not just really impressive, but really, like, heartening to see that. The bit that was strange, and we obviously, like, have talked about this in previous episodes and stuff, is the sort of contortions that are required in order to make that marketable in a way that

It's not a niche market to be an old person or to be disabled. One way or another, most people will experience that at some point in their life. And yet, the way that you have to sort of... This is something that really struck me from yesterday that we talked about enough that I probably shouldn't be bringing it back up again.

That like you still have to come up with some sort of like industrial application to it or you have to say AI or you have to do this stuff in order to get people to invest in this stuff, which is expensive to develop and expensive to produce. You have to say the words that the money people want to hear. The market. Which is also like another of the sort of political aspects here that you've got this like in some ways many – in many ways like a sort of –

I'm tempted not to use this word, but I will say that it is like a good-hearted intention, it feels like, especially with the disability tech, that is actually aimed at using this new human capability to make people's lives better. And yet you still have to fucking pitch it to sociopaths if you want to get the thing made. I say this as someone who runs a fairly successful podcast. I have 51,000 subscribers. I have a successful PR firm.

I've had emails about this. I have dyspraxia, which is a coordination disability. It limits my – I'm wearing zip-up boots, which look all banging. But I can't tie my shoes, and this is an embarrassing thing about my life. I fucking hate tying things. I physically can't do it. And you explain this to people, and they laugh, which is really good with something that you're very upset about. People love to be laughed at for that.

I don't think people realize the capacity for technology to bridge the gap between your own body's, I don't want to say failure, but inability to fully complete an action. And I think people are, myself included, at times... It's a assistive aid. Exactly. But technology is one of the greatest...

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

But most of CES isn't fucking this. It's about bridging gaps between money people and money people to another money person so they can sell nothing to nobody. Totally. Yeah, I mean that's one of the things that's disheartening is I was at like the Samsung booth, which is massive. It's the size of a very large house, like a mansion. Yeah.

And every square foot is tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in terms of both the cost to rent it and the cost to like these displays they've got are very advanced. A lot of effort is just going into making the presentation as advanced as possible. And what I'm seeing on display there is like, well, we've got a fridge that lets you know when your milk is off. And at the cost of you can never, ever have a guy over to repair your fridge. Never, never again. And that's,

You compare that to, in Eureka Park today, we saw a company who had a small booth that was maybe like four feet wide, five feet wide called Naki, N-A-Q-I, that their attempt was to develop like a way to allow people to control computers and interface with their machine, with their phone in a way that is similar to how Neuralink works but without any sort of surgery. So it's an earpiece you wear on your head. We talked about that.

Oh, yeah. You talked to them yesterday. Does this look real? We kind of made fun of this, but if this is real awesome. It seemed to like... We like the use case for people who are not able-bodied. But what happened when we came up to the booth, the first pitch we got was for retail. And then the product guy came up and was like...

No, that's not even like real. What's real is you can use this if you are someone who's not really able to use your arms or to move the rest of your body. You can slightly tilt it.

And that makes more sense than like being able to do a high, like sort of like a retail, uh, cashier, uh, secondary labor productivity aim. Yeah. I mean, there was a, cause like my mind was very much geared towards quadriplegics, but not just, but the other, cause it won't work if you have, as long as you have that muscular control, like above your neck, like it will work. Cause it reads micro gestures of your face. Um,

And the live demo they did, you could see the signal coming into the phone when he would make micro gestures and it would like, it would, you know, control the phone. So it seems like it works. I can also see, I can't see like a retail app for like, you've got your smart glasses while you're biking. It just a little bit fucking works because what we talked about yesterday. It seemed to. But it's like, but it seemed. I don't have the ability to like thoroughly vet that, but they did a demo. But it also sounded conceptual. Yeah, so this is the thing because I think also there were three or four of them where it's like,

Yeah, there were variations. There was the one that was almost like a retainer that you put in, and it gave you the same. It was a similar sort of idea. You used your tongue for it. Yeah, you used your tongue. Sorry. Sorry, yeah, you used your tongue for it. We were struck by that because it was a guy standing completely still with no expression on his face and a bunch of people standing around him recording him on their phones. We've entered the da-da section of the Eureka Park, but...

But all of those booths together were like a tenth of Samsung's booth, and all of them were people utilizing significant ingenuity to attempt to solve problems for real human beings who were suffering, as opposed to the Samsung booth, which was this massive edifice of capital attempting to solve the problem of like, well, what if your milk goes bad?

Yeah, no. And that's the thing. I think also, David, you talked about this a bunch too. I'll pick them. Inventive stuff was the most interesting. I have a few friends with neurodegenerative diseases. And some of the stuff that gets made and offered to be able to give finer control over tasks that you need to do, especially when you have sudden jumps in what you're able to do or not do.

Very impressive. But then kind of similar to what you were just saying, sometimes you literally can't get that made unless you conjure up some sort of secondary application, which is a shame and a problem with how tech innovation proceeds. And it must show growth. It must be like this is how this is going to turn into $1 billion. There should be no reason why you have to consider anything other than that immediate...

an urgent use case, which is like someone losing the ability to communicate with the outside world. The reason is regulatory avoidance. So from the earlier conversation we've had several times regarding regulatory power and authorized medical devices. So all of these products I have, I've, I've sounded negative for you're trying to skirt and avoid these requirements. Um,

However, the agencies that certify them to want to help people, they want people to go through this process. So these are the things that the FDA loves to see, and it's hopeful.

Yeah, I mean, I guess you can talk about capital. I mean, the main worry is that if there's no growth opportunity for a product, then there's no investment. And it just kills products that have a one-use purpose, right?

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

I hope it's been obvious how pernicious this problem is because there are companies doing really useful things. And I talk about my dyspraxia because, I don't know, whatever platform I have, I want people to realize if you fucking have this and someone makes fun of you, give me their email. I will personally make them regret being online. This is a personal thing. I was bullied. I will bully back. Very unfair to them.

But the point is, there are real solutions to real problems, real things being fixed today by companies that are actually raising money. And then you've got the Samsung milk simulator that uses generative AI to assume when your milk won't go bad as opposed to looking at the fucking top. And then it'll banter you a little bit.

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

that generates a mist that sweeps over your fruits and vegetables to stop them from spoiling using plasmon.

Plasma? And here's the thing. They explained this to me. They said it extends the shelf life of like you can put this little box up and it'll get the mist over groceries in your kitchen or you can use it in a grocery store to get all of the... And it'll extend the shelf life by 33%. And if that's a real thing, that's massive, right? I have no ability to vet this based on what I know from CE. I have absolutely no ability to vet this. I'm going to huff that mist. I'm going to huff that mist. I did, buddy. I did.

Didn't get high. So it's useless as far as I'm concerned. So quick question. It sends a shelf life to your vegetables, leaves you glowing, youthful,

Yes! And then also, there's like a 70% chance you grow a tail. Hey! Hey! Hey! Whoa! Sign me up for free? Yeah, you're trying to not sell down. Some people are into that. It's also that that's the most innocuous. That actually sounds good. It's similar to something you would see and they just called it like Doom Slayer. But it's for your cucumbers. We just came up, we thought it sounded cool. It's like Palantir. The Doom Slayer has done some great work. But also, two things.

Well, let's just focus on one, which is... What the fuck does the mist... What's it made of? The way they explained it is that it's a mist and it kills before you actually get, like, molds starting to form. It kills them. So it extends the period of time. Kills what, you? No, the mold. The mold. It's so far just the mold. Because I asked if it was dangerous and they said no. Oh.

And again, I have no ability to vet the Viridox people at this moment. I'm not trying to shit on them. Maybe this will massively improve the world. It just seemed like a product that caused the apocalypse. That was when somebody said, we make a mist called Viridox. I was like, oh, you're going to kill everyone I love. Okay, great. It's like in a wet market that spreads like a virus from a bat. You know?

So any Nine Inch Nails fans here? Like a Year Zero I'm thinking of? This is the big hand from the Year Zero. Yeah, again, this scene right now could be the start of the apocalypse movie. And then the one of us who's alive in three weeks is thinking back to this as they're fighting off the Radox zombies. And I'll use this as a contagion. Again, to complain about the end of Jujutsu Kaisen, the manga. I'm going to just really put this in the...

How did you want Jujutsu Kaisen to end? Okay, well, thank you for asking. Welcome to Jujutsu Kaisen. Did you want Get Over the Lugas? Is that what you wanted? I'm going to take a break. Well, first of all, the people of the Jujutsu high school thing they do, very unfair to Mr. Ryan and Sukuna. Right. Second of all, they spend a lot of time building up abilities that do not

manifest into an interesting plot point. Are these real people? No, this is a manga and I'm being very fucking serious. You made this podcast happen. You suffer the consequences. It's called Sourceway Fight. The ending of Jujutsu Kaisen involves a bit where Mr. Ran and Sukuna, Mr. Satoru Gojo, is very unfairly treated. They show him winning a battle and then at the end of the battle,

He's dead. He's treated so unfairly. Because he lost. Treating unfairly. Got chopped in half. And then it's just a simple dream sequence, which is very unfair for them. Rigged. Rigged. Unfair for Mr. Rann and Sukuna. See, now I'm thinking the Viridox apocalypse.

There was a conspiracy against the ghetto family. Five different Trump impersonators. The elders did not want the future. I'm so sorry to my listeners. I can see it in your eyes. This is how David Roth feels about the Mets. So I'll move us back to the podcast. As we wrap this bad boy up.

I have no ability to vet it based on the conversation I had. You never will. I genuinely want to thank everyone else in this room because we're doing another episode tomorrow, but...

This show has been conceptually one of the more insane things I have done, and I must give real credit to Sophie Lichterman, who is one of the hardest working and also most patient people in history. Oh, yeah. And Sophie's going to- Oh, yeah. No comment. She is the only person who can really move Robert. Oh.

Oh, yeah. Who is one of the single most talented people I have met in my fucking life. And my boss. There we go. And Robert turned to me a year ago and said, you seem to be more pissed off at these people than anyone. And he was wrong only because I was yet to get pissed off enough. Robert has been insanely supportive of me in a creative means that no one else has ever.

And honestly, everyone in this room has. Gare turned to me and said, you seem to just be a series of grievances. Yeah.

And Gabe was completely correct. It has been so fun hearing you get progressively more angry over the course of a year. It's been a real treasure. And I mean it sincerely. I say this as someone who is a peer of yours. The work you make seems to get better every episode and you're incredible at it. Thank you so much. You're getting none of this, Robert. You're just very good at writing. I say this as someone who is profiting off of you. Are you in a statin?

I don't know what that is. Just heart medication. I'm just worried. No, dude, I am like the healthiest I've ever been. My VO2 max is like doing well. My doctor's really happy. They don't know what I did. Ever since I got a Viradox installed in my home. And that's another CES miracle. Which leads...

Which leads me to the last thing that I'll say is the first thing we all said on episode one is this feels like the CES from last year. And we're not the only ones to think that. No, it's true. Last night, I was at the Chandelier in the Cosmo. That is the place. Now we can write off the drinks. Thank you, Gary. There we go. And...

I was sitting at the bar and Robert was upstairs waiting for a table and we got a table. Hard to do. Honestly, challenging. And I said, it's another CES miracle. There was two people sitting next to me who turned and was like, what's CES or...

There was two people sitting next to me who turned and said, what CES are you going to? This has been terrible. I had a great, if brief conversation with these people who were two exhibitors. Now, I was a bad journalist. I was too drunk. That makes you a good one. I did not learn which company they were from. No problem. But there were two people who were exhibiting at CES. And they're like, this feels just like last year's CES. And I was like, yes, yes.

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

what kind of miracles are you seeing? I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That was sarcastic. It's remarkable to see. And David, I'm going to guess your knees are about as bad as mine. But starting out in 2010, like right after kind of the iPad came out, there was so much excitement every year of like, I'd never seen a thing that could do this. Every year, I'd never seen a thing that could do like, and that would be every room I walked into, every like 30 minutes, I would see a thing that was like, I didn't know technology could do that until this exact second. And I was like,

And that's just not CES anymore. Yeah, I mean, it's like, even as a soft touch, you can be impressed by a cool new TV screen. It's not the first TV screen, not to brag. But there is, yeah, there's certainly that sense. It's interesting that the people that are showing here were also kind of like, what am I doing? What am I doing here? Yeah. I think the, and what Better Offline has tried to do with this entire show is,

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

Everything you're hearing this week is something I came up with about five weeks ago. I wanted to do this. I booked this months ago. Robert then booked much later. It could happen here. And, Robert, please. I was hungover. For fall. He is actually. Sophie is so much stronger willed and willing to respond. That's very true.

Robert has been an incredible mentor and I'm going to be sentimental and you're just going to have to fucking suck it up, all right? We're an award-nominated podcast. I can do whatever the hell I want. But...

What I think this show needs going forward is more independent voices. And it means bringing in people like Kyle from Las Vegas Sun. And allowing them to speak because it isn't so much the problem these journalists can't say what they want. It's the formats demand things in certain ways. And the way to talk about tech is no longer as flat as, and the product exists or tech company sucks. I can do both. But the thing is,

Having these different voices, having these people talk about their experience of CES is on some level an explanation of how the tech industry feels. They're in this thing where you have this dichotomy between this vast milieu of different things that are like, hey, what if this happened? You'd then give me money. What would that be like? Well, I'd have the money and then you'd have the product. And did something good happen? Oh, I don't care. And then you have these people like, I'm going to fucking solve everything.

People with eye twitches, people with twitching in their eye, which turns out to be a huge industry of people who are genuinely fucking suffering. People with way bigger problems like mobility problems, having their problems solved in real time. But the people that get talked about are, I have the most massive television. And no, I actually take that back. It's not even the big TV. I want a larger TV. I want like a 250-inch fucker.

I want to watch the Raiders lose. Well, that was – so I had a moment at the Samsung booth and they were showing off one of those transparent TVs and there was a lady whose whole job – Another one? Another one. Well, I'm still confused by those. No, and that was LG last year. It was LG, yeah. I think it was LG, yeah. It all blurs together. There was a lady behind a transparent TV whose whole job was when the TV went transparent to wave her hand behind it. And I was like, that's your job. Ah, the hand waver.

And it was this recognition as they're like walking. Garrison and I sat through a guy who played us AI-generated ska and tried to convince us that we no longer needed human musicians. Even better. Great.

No, the next time someone plays... That is a real falling down situation. It is very much a falling down situation, yes. But the realization that there is a chunk of guys running big tech who see holding your hand behind the transparent TV as a thing that human beings should do, but not making music, and that upsets me. It's just, it's frustrating because...

entering into this and the format that i created in a google doc three weeks ago and some of some people even read it the goal was to try and pull out how the show affects people and indeed the implications of this show do i'm now going to return to the sentimental bit i was diverted by i want to thank every single fucking person who listened to this but also join me on this

Gare Davis, one of the single insanely young and in a non-specific way, I realize, the single most talented person to come into anything associated with tech, insanely young but also is insanely prescient and aware of the social issues but also the context of basically everything they look at. Robert Evans, the single most focused but disorganized person I've ever met.

But also someone who cares so deeply and has such an innate talent.

at finding talent and empowering those voices. Without Robert Evans, I would not have done this. And I did try and like wave him off when he offered the podcast to me. I was like, yeah, mate, sure. You got a fucking budget, don't you, mate? He's doing the actual jack off gesture in front of the computer. Robert and Sophie Lichtman, who will never get enough compliments. And by the way, universal law with better offline. If you don't love Sophie, I will fucking kill you. Not literally, but I will think about it very fucking aggressively.

Robert has actually have faith in me that most people haven't. And the result is a fucking successful tech podcast that does things more successfully than most of the tech podcasts out there. Otherwise, Robert supports Gare, who has been so incredible and will do better work than I will ever do.

But you know what? That's what doing good shit is, knowing the people who do things well. What I've been really excited about this year is getting to meet David and Edward and now getting to meet you. This is the first time we're in a room together. No, it's not. We talked yesterday. Oh, shit. I was so drunk. I'm so sorry, Kyle. During the panel? During the panel? The disinformation panel. Oh, no, no. I was just high on mushrooms for the panel. Oh, okay. I was fucking lit, though. They're from a gas station. And I've got some kratom still in my pocket if you want. I'm okay. I'm okay. Yeah.

I was trying to do like a sincere moment. Back to Ed. Robert, no. He's taking the microphone. No, let Robert finish his fucking thing about mushrooms. It's been very exciting to get to meet these folks, some of whom I had been reading for a while, some of whom I'm excited to start reading and get to make these connections. Because in a CES that is so anti-human, it's nice to make connections to people. And I'm about to harpoon you with sincerity.

Robert and Sophie have been the single... And Gare as well. Have been the most single supportive creatives I've ever fucking worked with in my life. I have had issues with believing in myself and believing what I can do. I have talent, whatever. Like, who fucking cares? Email me, you're mad. You're listening to this little pig. But... The thing is, these people beyond when even a year ago, I didn't think I could fucking do this. And now look at me. I'm a fucking ultra-ponce. And...

It rocks. And I believe what Cool Zone Media does is the future of fucking creativity. The idea that a big corporation can give someone multiple seasons to work out their audience, work out what they're building. You look at it behind the bars, this could happen in your 16th minute. Politics, cool people who did cool stuff. There is so much cool shit that comes out of the idea of, damn, what if you give people more time to build something than seven minutes?

What if you didn't rush them to make something good? Better Off Line at the beginning was fucking rough, but we worked it out and you people seem to like it. And the people in this room are fucking adore, but don't worry, we're not done. Phil Broughton over there. Phil Broughton, health physicist. He's picked me up two or three times and I've been like shit my pants. Not literally. I've never shit my pants around you. Let's not talk about that further. Okay.

The truth is Phil has been here for multiple CESs, tending bar, grab the mic, you motherfucker. Tending bar for people and ultimately doing the thing of asking them why they are here. I think that is the most valuable thing you can do in the Consumer Electronics Show, asking people the reason they are there.

and finding out what it is they actually fucking cared about. And you do that so well while also serving various bourbons. And he was even like, I don't like this one. He replaced it. And... I like this one, by the way. One of my... That would be Alberta Premium at Gas Crank Thrive. That was a goddamn journey that made Fury for weeks finding it. Phil, I love you. Oh, thank you. I love all of you, seriously. Thank you. One of the things that made me happy is...

For everyone that I picked up at an elevator, by the time we'd hit the 28th floor, I knew what I was serving you. Thank you so much, man. David Roth. David Roth is someone I brought here. No, take the fucking mic. Grab the goddamn mic. I will shove it in your mouth. We all know how good I am, Ed. Which is why it's necessary to remind people. David Roth is actually my favorite writer.

and he is one of the single most empathetic people who understands why people enjoy stuff and his sports writing and cultural writing is genuinely influential over everything i've ever done and i'm absolutely going self-indulgent there's nothing a single fucking person in this room could do it matt osowski's just sitting there being like yep vacuuming up but david roth being here is like watching the movies with eba and it's genuinely i'm getting a little emotional but thank you david

Thanks for having me, for real. I feel the same. Edward Ngueso Jr., you are an undiscovered talent, and anyone fortunate enough to listen to this should hire you immediately because when you finally take off...

When you finally get big enough, you are the single most capable. Grab the microphone, motherfucker. Hello. I said when I get my gun. Which one are you buying? Okay, let's walk back to the gun. Okay, let's cut that out now. The words. When I get my. Matt, this is still keep it in, but just to be clear, the gun was a metaphor. Right.

For my potential. I'm really trying. Sorry, no more, no more. I know you're not done. Ed, there really isn't another writer that can do the kind of labor reporting you do and the understanding of the human experience that you can do. You are just at the beginning.

And I can't wait to bring you back on this show and have you do more. I love all of you so much, but also your potential is barely getting started. It's some shit you'd see on a CES banner though.

This is the worst it's ever going to be. This is the worst I'll ever be. That's right. That's right, brother. That's what I put on Hinge. I might steal that. I actually might put that on Hinge. Any singles want to email me? That's what's on me. Look, darling, I know I vomited in your car, but let me assure you, this is the worst I'm ever going to be. LAUGHTER

Oh my god. Carl Chenard. You may think I just met you. That's true. You came on this show completely... You were actually well prepared. You had a laptop out, which fucking rocks. You actually took this seriously, much like I did with my laptop. Of course. The laptop that I don't have and the preparation I definitely did. Here's the thing. On an instinctual level, when your first thought is labor, that says a lot about you as a person. It's incredible. Yeah.

that you immediately jumped to the hospitality workers in this city that are befalled by the various conferences, and you thought, how the fuck does this affect them? Because when it comes to better offline and what this fucking show actually means, it's what the actual effects of technology are on people. So thank you for joining us. Of course. And please keep doing your shit. You're going to be back on because we live in the same city. We do. And I will be finding you. Oh, God. Oh, God.

So many more actionable threats in these episodes than I'd expected. That's not a threat. It's a promise. Oh, thank you. I wouldn't thank me. And then, of course, the Matasowski.

Manasowski is our producer, and he is the silent party who has been sitting here patiently the entire show, working through, texting me time signals. When I text him, I have burped. He edits that out because it's happened three times, I believe. Matt...

and I bring up Matt Hughes here my word editor who has been so patient with him Megan Wernestrom over at Penguin who's also been patient reading the Dross I assume she says it's good but back to Matt Osowski Matt has been here since the beginning when I was really not fucking confident about this show when I was genuinely experiencing like real anxiety and worry

Matt encouraged me, worked with me, and edited. Matt, love you man. Thank you so much for your hard work this entire week. Could you come over to the microphone and just say hello? Hello. Matt Osowski is a protected party. If you ever wrong Matt Osowski, I will destroy you. Actually everyone in this room, but really like if you fuck with Matt Osowski, I will actually fucking peck out your eyes like a big- Good podcast voice. Like a big bird. If you play Final Fantasy 15, specifically the zoo bird, very big bird.

You've been listening to the Better Offline CS Experience. I am so grateful that you've been here. And tomorrow you'll get a final wrap-up episode, but this is really like the wrap night. I am actually really grateful for everyone who came in. Everyone has really fucking showed up and just done an incredible show for a show that is so regularly so fucking miserable and so lifeless about people that people are imagining rather than real people. And everyone's been here and just shown off

incredible fucking show. I'm so grateful to everyone for being here. Thank you. And I'm now going to pass the microphone around, starting with Zai, who's been here. Zai, please join us. Thank you for... Hi. Hello. You've been wonderful taking photos. Thank you. And then we'll now go to Robert Evans. Thank you, Robert. I just want everyone to know that, you know, as the Virenox mist takes your loved ones, Ed cares about you. Phil?

I want to thank everyone. It's been a pleasure to be here and to serve. To serve and be of service. David Ruff. Thanks very much. It was a good time, and I feel like I learned a lot. Mr. Onguesa. I had a great time, and I'm not going to make any more legally actionable threats. Thanks!

You can just say it. Yeah, this was my first CES ever. And I really enjoyed figuring out what was real and what wasn't and support local journalism.

Yeah. Well, and thank you, Ed, for putting this whole space together. This has been a fantastic escape away from the show floor. I spent five hours in the Venetian today. Coming up here was a wonderful reprieve. And you really put this all together. So thank you so much and your hard work over the last year on Better Offline. Thank you.

has been lovely to watch. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for your listeners. If you've got to this point, I'm so sorry. But also, thank you for your patience. I hope I've successfully encapsulated CES and given you the various juxtapositions of the show. Tomorrow, you'll have a wonderful Positive Masculinity Day as the remaining crew, me, Matt Osowski, Phil Broughton, and Edun Gueso Jr., kind of like

smooth ourselves out. Real smooth-like. But today's the last day of the show. Email me, ez, or ez, if you're one of those people, at betteroffline.com

Please, let me know what you thought. A lot of you have emailed like, we had, we didn't have enough woman on this. Next year, we're going to fucking correct that. We luckily got Victoria Song, Carissa Bell, and of course, Sherlyn Lowe, who really balanced that out. We'll do a better job last time. Wow, the concept of time is fucked up. Nevertheless, we'll do a better job next year. And I love your feedback, and I actually read all the emails. Will I respond to them? It gets increasingly harder each week,

which is a good sign i guess either way i'm very grateful for all of you a lot of people have given a lot of people given me faith given my given their faith jesus christ in the show in the last year it's only going to get better but next ces is going to be weirder gear has ideas i have ideas

And it's just going to be sharper. It's just going to be weirder. And you have another episode. There's going to be more Viranox, too. Palpatine will be back. CES 2024 Part 3. I'm actually going to try and contact Ian McDermott. But anyway, thank you so much for listening. I know it's a lot of audio, and I...

I'm really grateful for everyone who contacts. I love everyone who listens. I genuinely am so grateful. I am not really good at hiding any of like the me in this. And a lot of podcasts are very performative. Phil can speak to this more than anyone. I'm not really good at like pretending. There is no off switch. I genuinely love you all. Thank you for listening.

Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at mattosowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I dot com.

You can email me at ez at betteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat.whereisyoured.at to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Yeah.

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