In short
Better Offline Podcast Episode Summary
Podcast Title
Better Offline
Description Better Offline is a weekly podcast that critically examines the tech industry's influence on society, dissecting the manipulative tactics employed by tech elites aiming for unchecked growth. Hosted by Ed Zitron, the show combines storytelling, interviews, and panel discussions to unveil the motivations behind the tech industry's most powerful players.
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Episode Title
Better Offline CES 2025: Day 5 - Pt. 2
Episode Description In the second part of the fifth day covering the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in 2025, Ed Zitron is joined by guests Robert Evans, Gare Davis, and Kyle Chouinard to discuss labor issues, the overall vibe of CES, and the implications of the industry's growth-at-all-costs mentality.
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Key Takeaways
General Impressions of CES
- Overall Sentiment: The tone of CES 2025 is seen as increasingly stale, with many exhibitors expressing disappointment over the lack of innovation compared to previous years.
- Focus: The discussions reveal a tension between the excitement around technological advancements and the corporate realities of profit-driven motives.
Innovating vs. Disrupting
- Transformation of Labor: The conversations highlight how growth-focused strategies often sideline the needs and welfare of workers.
- AI and Automation: The panelists explore the promise and peril of AI technologies, including their potential to replace human jobs while simultaneously offering new efficiencies.
Accessibility Technology
- Notable Innovations: Discussions included a company showcasing AI-driven solutions aimed at enhancing accessibility for disabled individuals.
- Contrast with Consumer Gadgets: The episode contrasts innovative accessibility tech with more frivolous consumer products, underscoring a misalignment in tech priorities.
The Human Element
- Real-World Impact: The panel emphasizes the importance of considering the human experiences behind technology, arguing that tech should solve real problems rather than merely exist as a profit-making tool.
- Connection Through Tech: The episode touches on the positive aspects of technology, including its ability to foster connections and solve everyday challenges.
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Featured Guests
- Robert Evans: Recognized for his critical insights and humor regarding the tech industry, with a focus on how it impacts labor and society.
- Gare Davis: Known for his journalistic approach to tech discussions, emphasizing the human aspect behind technologies.
- Kyle Chouinard: A local Las Vegas reporter providing insights into how CES affects the local community and its workers.
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Conclusion The podcast episode encapsulates the broader themes of CES, combining humor, critical analysis, and personal anecdotes while advocating for a technology landscape that prioritizes human experiences and social equity over mere profit. The discussions challenge listeners to reflect on the implications of tech innovation and its effects on society as a whole.
Final Remarks Listeners are encouraged to engage with the show's content, share feedback, and anticipate future discussions centered on how technology continues to shape our lives. The episode wraps up with acknowledgments to the production team and guests, emphasizing the collaborative nature of the show.
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Links & References
- [Better Offline Website](https://betteroffline.com)
- [Cool Zone Media](https://coolzonemedia.com)
- Social Media handles for hosts and guests provided in the original episode description.
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Note This summary is a synthesis of the discussions and key themes from the podcast episode and is intended for educational purposes.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
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4:01We're still here. We're still in Las Vegas.
4:15I'm still at Zitron, 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 Defecta. Hello. And Edward Anguesso, Jr. Hello. and uh carl chenard of the las vegas sun and all week has just been awesome people kyle i talked over you i apologize just saying hello yeah that's enough so kyle it's ed's show okay getting ahead of yourself no so you're a general assignment reporter so what have you been covering at the show uh 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 text coming uh and i I get to cover it from a local angle and how it affects Vegas and specifically, you know, what shown here could be implemented in the city in the next couple of years.
5:18So can you talk a little bit about that? I'm a local. Yeah. I'm out in Green Valley. Out in Henderson. Well, no, it's still Las Vegas. No HOA. 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...
6:00What direction? I like that. No, like if you like it facing south or west or north. Oh, sorry, for your... Okay, that makes more sense. For a second, you've been brutalized by CES long enough that I'm just like, okay, man, they've got moving windows now. No, the windows, I wasn't told this, but I'm pretty sure they're stationary. I'm 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 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 have they been remotely giving on I mean if the answer is you don't know Yeah, I'm not sure.
7:05No, no. But this is not a failing on you. This is them being like, thank God. Thank God we don't have to say the thing is, which is we are selling this to the points guy and airlines and hotels because that's the thing. These hotels around here are like data warehouses. Oh, yeah. The amount of shit they collect on you is crazy, not just through the... I actually... This is a question. Do you know anything about data collection practices here? And this is... I don't either. So if you don't... Yeah, I'm not super familiar with it. I mean, surveillance is nothing new in Las Vegas. You know, it's not rare to find hotels working with the government.
7:41That's pretty normal. In what ways do they work together? You know, FBI, if they're looking for something. I'm not, I honestly don't know the specifics. No, but if there's even, because I love living here, but I'm also a weird, greasy freak. And I understand what Vegas is, which is you walk in here if you've not been to Vegas, so you haven't spent a lot of time here. There are cameras everywhere. Everywhere you go, not in the rooms, I think. No. But in the hallways, in the casinos. And there are, you may think that the scariest place cameras can look at you is a bank. It's actually a casino. They are watching.
8:20And you can make the glib, 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. Yeah, walking to Allegiant's fun. I have season tickets, man. I want to die. Can you walk it?
8:56You can walk from the MGM. Yeah, it's not Delano anymore. it's W. But I usually would just park there and walk. I went to the Syracuse game. This is a question that I have always struggled with here. In Los Angeles as well, any of the New York person. I like the idea of being able to either take mass transit or walk to a thing. Las Vegas isn't big enough. Theoretically, 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... Not CEO, the other guy.
9:34Oh, I do not know. Don't worry. I was talking to him, and he was like... I was asking for a bit of advice on CES, and he's like, every walk is longer than you think it is. That's actually great conference advice. 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.
10:16It's K-E-E. What a great name. They described it as, I have it here, a 24-7 butler in the palm of your hand. Amazing. 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.
10:51I mean, that's what they told me. I want to see for myself. No, no, 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 say At a big Las Vegas scale hotel 300 rooms it's not that big That's still pretty big That's 10 rooms per person But a lot of it also is apartments and you don't need as many stuff 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.
11:30Okay. And I am going to have a piss fit. You are going to disappear. I am going to. Well, I will be disassociating. But that's the, that's so it's just frustrating because it's like, theoretically, an AI hotel could work in the sense that if there were defined user preferences, that they could just kind of move around them. I'm not talking about generative AI. I'm talking about theoretically algorithms that are capable of knowing a user's preference, but only in a much larger hotel system like, I don't know, Marriott. Yeah. Well, it's interesting you say that because I asked them about that. I asked, you know, is there any interest from hotels in the area?
12:09And 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 they'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.
12:47I'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. This is the place where you get infantilized. Right, that's more of what you would, in some ways, 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.
13:23But 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 artists. 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. 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.
14:07Which feels like the thing's to upgrade rather than this. Which is, and 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 certain, everything's connected to each other. I have so much fucking trouble selling that. 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. Do you think they're going to upgrade an entire multifaceted system? It seems like an unrealistic proposition. Yeah, when I was talking to a professor from UNLV, great guy.
14:43Carl, you're a real journalist also. Very clear here. This guy's great. I'm trying to be very, very accurate in my wording. One thing you told me is that that's one of the main reasons. I mean, hospitality is, Vegas is kind of unique, but hospitality as industry is not known for being on the cutting edge. It's known for kind of, not that I swear 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.
15:17It'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 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.
15:49They're at West. And so we were talking earlier about this being kind of like a decent use of AI. Like there are still good uses of AI. No, I would love to hear them. And so it's a real-time translator that works specifically for longer form presentations. In a city like Las Vegas, that's obviously very important. We have a convention authority. and the way it works is that once it's set up by the event all you do is scan a QR code and then you can have a real-time translation of whoever'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?
16:30It'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 I've talked to about, I can't speak any other languages, I can barely speak English. I thus have no experience with it. But everyone I talked to is like, there are these subtleties. Yeah. And it sounds like, so 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.
17:13They 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. 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 taxes. We love our money. Thank you. We can't have that. Thank you. You understand. We love our slot machines.
17:43That's why we don't have state income tax. Our beautiful slot machines, we love them, folks. But it's like Vegas is quite intolerant of just shit that don't work because shit that don't work is extremely unprofitable. Yeah, and when you're working in the hospitality industry, your main job is to keep people happy. And when you run into... Vegas people are babies. And when you are running into tech issues, and this was, again, this professor, he's giving me all my lines. What was the professor's name? Oh, let me get it up. No, no, don't worry about it. No, no, no, no. Look, this show can be quite cynical and shitty and I say words that people don't like and they get upset with me and they email me every day and they say, Ed, I hope you die.
18:28Ed, 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, ah, 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 hitting you. 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. 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.
19:06So I'm more willing to humor the idea that they would have this translation thing. Just because, putting aside all my feelings, Vegas would simply be like, no, this fucking sucks. It's going to get between the customer and the slot machines. But I mean, when you're running a conference, I mean, especially conference like CES, having real-time translation when I think every panel's in English. Yeah. Very anglophobic. Well, anglophobic. Not anglophobic. Anglocentric. When, you know, I'm talking to people and there's a billion languages here. And you mentioned working class. Another part, this is for a story I'm publishing later.
19:42I talked to the culinary union about their tech protections. Cool. What did they say? So they have, they've been working since 2018, probably longer actually, but they've gotten protection since 2018, specifically regarding tech replacing workers. With that, when tech gets introduced to, that would affect someone's job, they have to, and they've negotiated this, they get a six month notice. Cool. And part of that, there's kind of two things that come out of that. One, that gives them time to kind of work out the kinks. One example, Ted Papa George, the treasury secretary, treasury secretary, told me was there was this new system for housekeepers that basically was sending them all across different zones, all across different floors.
20:28And 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 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, you know, the industry, stay with the union, you know, keep their pension. And there's also a pretty decent severance package if your job is eliminated from. That is so fucking cool. Work in union, man. No, I fucking.
21:06Simply accept no substitutes. That's the thing. Like I live here and people like, ed you live in a vending machine and that's why i like it but also there are actual really strong unions yeah there's there's a strike i've been covering at virgin yeah yeah so well what's the strike i care way more about that than the dude oh yeah yeah so uh they've been on strike for a little bit now regarding which who is this this is virgin hotels right with the culinary union uh the latest proposal um 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.
21:41And 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 30 cent 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... They're a private company as well. Yeah. So kind of. So they used to have their casino run by Mohegan, which you can't look. like the tribe. So like you can look at that data and their casino, 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.
22:23Like 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. A lot of them are, there's a what? It's the Leuna Pension Fund, one of them in Canada. That owns the hotel. It's part of the ownership group. And then there's another company called Fengate. So the company points to, 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.
23:05Yeah, 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 at the Vegas related while you've been here? Yeah. So the other major Vegas company I was looking at was a robotic 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 Apatou by Bruno Mars I'm not familiar I haven't listened to a song since 2007 it is funny that they had the robot bartender not making drinks but it was like it might have been at some point but 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 Hustler so but the thing it was interesting because it was drawing a crowd by its little dance with the music and I was talking to someone with the company and they were like you know The show of it, the spectacle.
24:33Can I ask, at what point do we get past spectacle and into just being there? Thank you. And he's like, spectacle's part of the cell. This is Vegas. Right, this is Vegas. You say the quiet power out loud. Spectacle is part of the cell. Yeah, I am. That's also CES too, though, right? Yeah, but Vegas is honest about it. Yeah. Yeah. And then they had another system that was a lot more utilitarian. You also, by the way, can find some of their robots at all the Boyd Gaming, or not all of them. What are the Boyd Gaming? That's like the off-strip, Sam's Town and those ones. Somebody was telling me about that the other day.
25:10It's at the Orleans, Aliente, 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?
Read the full transcript
25:54So you have the bartender robot, which is, I have the prices. Can it tend bar? Like clean? I mean like actually serve drinks reliably. How does it accept the drink order? I'm aware of how drinks are made. I'm not sure. He's doing like the drink miming. Make 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 Finishing. Yeah, there's one downstairs. as we saw last night. I'm going to fight it. That's like a point of sale system where you just kind of tap on a tablet and it gives you the drink.
26:35So 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 and 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 weird way. But the thing is, the bartenders here are fascinating.
27:15Oh 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 his good 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. Yeah. But also people experiencing. Yeah. This kind of comes back to another one of the things that we kind of keep bumping up against with going down there is this idea that somehow the important thing, I understand it from a business perspective, but from any other perspective, the idea that you want to remove human interaction from every process.
27:55in every transaction? The thing, I keep saying this, I asked them about that. And both this company and I think Atom has 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. Well, 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, Papa.
28:44Was that the pet? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've heard good things, weirdly. Like previous episodes. Yeah, they're kind of like, look, I was not initially that into the idea, but it's very large eyes. I have my cat and I love my cat. Yeah, right. I was going to say a lot of people are willing to settle for living things. But yeah, the co-bot thing. 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. And then you had the ProPublica story that came out this week.
29:19About? Which was? About Elon. What about him? Did he do something bad? Don't tell me if he did something fucked up. Did Elon do something against labor rights? No. I got to ride the hyperluxer 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. 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.
29:54Are they just letting him dig tunnels because it gives them money? Well, I mean, it's... I have not covered this enough to answer that. That's fine. Sorry, I must be clear. I'm not holding you to account here. You didn't do the reporting, but it's just like, it feels like such an aberration because one of the things that destroys people about Vegas is that everything is convenient at all times. Everything's 15 minutes. Exactly. Thank... God damn, it's so good to have a real resident here. I've been here five months. I've been here three years, baby, and you know it better than anyone. And it's like, wow, I can have Diet Coke whenever I need to.
30:31The problem is there are people who have other kinds of Coke they can get in 15 minutes. And then there are other proclivities they can fuel in 15 minutes. Is this what they mean by 15-minute cities when you hear that phrase? That's what it is, right? This is the other 15-minute cities. 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 so yeah Prim had a pretty bad I believe they had a pretty bad gaming report come out recently and by the way if they ever find a way to get people quicker to Prim hundred billion dollar industry I'm just giving people ideas what's Prim?
31:31Prim 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 in the sense that there is a strange authority with money that has created the city yeah just the prince from Qatar you know he's also misquite he's ambitious It's a strange, but I don't have enough prim EXP. You should do some shrooms and go into the city and find prim. Ask Robert to go to the gas station. Let's find Silicon Valley's Eldorado. Let's go. But the larger point is that Vegas is intolerant of things, not because of good or bad, but because of efficiency. Oh, yeah. It's all about efficiency.
32:10And 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 myself. Which is a great description of Vegas. This may destroy you, but... It might not be great for, you know, there's AI being put into everything, all that stuff, but I mean, look, it's a very large conference that the city makes good money off of and we just had a recent F1 report or recent November gaming revenue report and F1 not performing the way people want it to.
32:50So, 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.
33:24Mr. David Roth, where can people find you? Defector.com, the website. And I do the distraction podcast there. Well, you're on. Okay. Well, just move past that. 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 doing it. I am still. I'm still doing another podcast. Cut it. I'm still on X believe it or not the everything app I'm on there too but only for banking I don't really use it for social networks anymore I put my CAT scans in there and see what Grok tells me about it it's like lol you have disease your discs are very cheeky you get the Elon butthead laugh when it uploads successfully you're like cool it's processing Wait Kyle where can people actually find you?
34:18Kyle underscore Chouinard C-H-O-U-I-N-A-R-D and then thelasvegassun.com or just lasvegassun.com Edom Gueso Jr. I am on Twitter and Blue Sky the foreign agent registry at Big Black Jackupin I won't say for which country but you can guess for my newsletter it's the techbubble.substack.com and for my podcast, This Machine Kills. You can find me at wheresyourhead.at for my newsletter and the podcast is called Better Offline. And you're thinking, this seems way too honest for it. What's it 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.
35:14You 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, and I won't feel any pain by their products.
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36:14Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-iHeart to get started. That's 844-844-iHeart. Jan Marselech was a model of German corporate success. It seemed so damn simple for him. Also, it turned out, a fraudster. Where does the money come from? That was something that I always was questioning myself. But what if I told you that was the least interesting thing about him? His secret office was less than 500 meters down the road. I often ask myself now, did I know the true Jan at all? Certain things in my life since then have gone terribly wrong.
36:58I don't know if they followed me to my home. It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story. Because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.
37:11listen to hot money agent of chaos on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hey this is matt jones and i'm drew franklin and this is nfl cover zero we're just here to try to give you an nfl perspective a little bit different did you see the colt's Pretzel. That was my other big takeaway from that. What was that? Oh, my. We think NFL coverage should be informative and entertaining. And twice a week, that is exactly what you're going to get. Listen to NFL Cover Zero with Matt Jones and Drew Franklin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
38:05ass, pedophiles, robbers. They are sitting there waiting for the vulnerable thing. They're waiting for the unprotected. I'm Dr. Leslie, forensic psychologist. I advocate for safety and awareness of predators while wearing pink. When you were described to me as a forensic psychologist, I was like snooze. We ended up talking for hours and I was like, this girl is my best friend. This is a podcast where I cut through the noise with sarcasm, satire, and hard truths. I'm not going to fake it and force it. But would you force an orgasm? Because that's like a different layer. The car accident you didn't want to see but couldn't turn away from.
38:42In this episode, I discuss personal safety and self-defense tools, instincts, and strategies to protect yourself and your loved ones in everyday life and high-risk situations. Listen to Intentionally Disturbing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.
39:28That's another CES miracle. It's beautiful. Carl Chouinard from Las Vegas Sun. Hi there. And of course, Edward Anguesso 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 was actually okay.
40:15And then I went to a few at the RNC earlier last year. Right, and that's the Republican National Convention. Correct, correct. so it's a good panel for journalists to go to speaking of disinformation but yeah this was on Thursday that we were we walked into the LVCC went to this panel and it was one person in front of me did fall asleep yeah I thought it was what was the panel about also it was about misinformation, disinformation and deep fakes and I think if you didn't know much about it it probably could be a little helpful. But for, I think, a CES audience, maybe not as much. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was talking about various tools to identify AI-generated or deepfaked information or pictures, videos, and a whole bunch of the previous visual tactics a few years ago.
41:15It was 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 negatives. So there's another technology that a whole bunch of companies like Microsoft is making a big push for it as well as Adobe. It's kind of like a build in systems for when you generate AI content that clearly identifies it as such in the metadata. And that's something I heard a lot about last year, and they talked about it here.
41:58I 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. We will use that against AI, or 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.
42:46yeah 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 like it's a lot of the misinformation that gets published I mean if you go on 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 anything 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 AI images, right?
43:47Images of politicians in debaucherous acts, all these sorts of things. But they also advertise AI's ability to make specifically
44:01user-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? Well, yes, but like, you know, if you're working for a campaign and you want to target specific voters, you can analyze their social media presence, you know, whatever kind of information about them is in certain data sets that can be bought and make, you know, an AI written press release specifically for them. And this is something I also like asked a question about, you're talking about these AI metadata watermarks for images but what about for text?
44:49How will I be able to know if an email I'm getting from a politician was written by a person or written by a robot? They're like, well you can't. We simply aren't going to worry about that. I walked up to y 'all afterwards and I was like, I guess the lesson is that we're all screwed? That was the main takeaway. That was what the DHS was saying. Which I was like, maybe, oh God. That was the main takeaway I had was everyone pretty much saying like, this is going to get worse. And it's an arms race. And like all this stuff, it's an arms race. And it is. And like, you know, they, they gestured towards, you know, quote unquote, bad guys or like, you know, foreign state actors.
45:28Specifically, Iran does, you know, a lot of work on this. Russia. But, you know, I think in some ways the focus on those two might be kind of lifted as the new, as the new administration focuses more on China. but specifically for like, for like, uh, just disinformation using AI tools, uh, Iran and Russia, like the past year has been like the main players targeting us voters. It is so wild. We just have, I'm, 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, it's a huge project.
46:05Considered an act of war. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's an extension of like cold war stuff, right? Like it's, So we just have wars that are like not really. Yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much. I mean, I'm also describing how colonial Britain worked by paying people not to like teach people to write. So I realize I'm like the Bill Belichick of atrocities here. But it's just very frustrating to hear this stuff and not really know what to do about it. Because it could happen here. There's amazing work on disinformation for a couple. Something to do about it. As like a person, okay. No, but you know, no.
46:40Okay. It is a huge problem, and there really isn't much to do realistically. 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. Fact-checking has kind of failed as a large project. I almost feel like what they actually need is vibe-checkers. 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.
47:22Is 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 Jiu Jitsu Kaisen. It's a very disappointing manga. very unfair the end of Demon Slayer far better and I get similar terrible ending they took out the US 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 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.
48:10No, I know. Good guess. No, no, it was like anti-anti, was it that one? 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. It's one of the host club ones. Yes. Just to be clear, Gare is the best dressed of any of us, and also fucking rocking like an actual manga-related outfit, and nailing it. I spent a lot of money on this. As you should have, it looks great. I found a very nice blue blazer that I defaced by putting on the orange patch. No, this is good. This is good. I've been admiring your fits. I feel like back home, I'm usually the best dressed.
48:51I'm about to say dress best. Your pants are fantastic. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. But no one's saying anything about me. Your leather jacket's good. The boots are good. Thank you. Personally, I think you should have gone with the Aviator shades. Personally, I think you should have gone with the shades. I'm here to interview you. 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 is also not cheap.
49:27Oh, no. No, he won't. No. Derrick 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. Oh, is that his name? Derek? Derek Guy. Derek Guy. Which is so fucking funny to be like the menswear guy and your second name is Guy. Very cool. Very cool. It works out. He nailed it. He nailed it. No, I would love for him to walk around the show floor. I think it could do some real psychic damage. As long as he doesn't rate my fit. 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.
50:03so I lost a lot of weight this year and this is not me trying to actually conjure up people saying anything, I'm fine what I'm saying is I lost all the weight and I bought a bunch of clothes and I took a picture and I'm like I still feel like shit so I emailed Derek Guy as one normally does in tears and I was like why do I feel bad still? because I was like, you know what? if he doesn't respond, he doesn't respond 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.
50:33And he explained the concept of aesthetics. He responded. Yeah. No, Derek's amazing. Okay, he's like the Chomsky of fashion. He's super cool. He's so chill. The Dick Monfort for the Rockies fan. I'm going to shoot him an email. Chomsky still responded to emails. Well, the reason he does this is kind of what I was addressing with Gare, which is he isn't there to 86 people. He's there to try and explain what looks and feels good. And he talks about clothing and social language. And he said, you have no aesthetic. I think you're wearing trainers with a thread belt. My shit was busted. I look terrible because of the clothes, not because of me.
51:06I 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 should have gone up to him and talked to him Yeah you have notes about the convention I do This is my actual job Okay, yeah, I forgot why we're here.
51:57We're just, you know, yapping. We're just a tech conference. The YAP index is over 5 ,000 right now. Yeah, Japanese. No, but, yeah, 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. This is like Coco Melon shit where it's like put this in front of your kid or it's like consumer products for the anxious parent.
52:33Both. 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.
53:20Now, 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 like a physical book that they read with the Alexa machine that then can make them like 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 else and talk this is what my parents did to me this is what I was thinking about in the panel, like 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 when my little brother was growing up you just don't realize how bad shit a child is until 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 yeah 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 um and taking the fucking parenting thing of having an imagination about what your child could be is so fucking sickening.
55:18I'm getting angry. Now, unfortunately, I actually felt relatively better about this product. It's basically kind of just like, it's kind of just a visual it's kind of just like a visual novel 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 a villain in this setting and it'll generate an AI story for your child generating new content so unlike Storyland or unlike Readyland Poe the AI bear is actually generating live content unreviewed by moderators, just straight to your child.
56:11It's$50 on Amazon. You can order this thing right now and talk to it. 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. ChatGPT does have guardrails for content, but but those guard whales don't always reliably work but they're better than nothing and content moderation is an issue that we're working on but your product has hit the market I'm going to work on an issue we're working on moderation isn't a great answer not a good answer and this is something even the other guy with the AI storybook mentioned it's pretty easy to make your AI kids toy not say swear words or even talk about sex or drugs.
57:09But one thing that's even harder to moderate is what if it says inaccurate or actually 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... Exactly. Generative AI models, they don't even understand how the training data truly interacts with the system. Totally. They don't know how this shit truly works. The only useful thing in quantum computing related to AI right now is the fact that they can actually have models that can discern what their training data does. So the idea of my child interacting with them with these, I realize now nothing actually makes me angry other than harms to my child, at which point I might actually go falling down mode.
57:54Such a good movie, too. Such a great movie. Now, the last thing about this panel is that it actually opened with this person from the company IDO. IDO PlayLab 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 thoughtful in how they produce media for kids. And 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, how do we think about it and what do we really want out of it?
58:38Some of the way this lady presented stuff was a little bit odd. She kind of presented all of the data findings as shocking surprises, which I think may have been tailored for the CES audience. I feel like more attention to the details isn't bad. 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 generation, 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.
59:29So the issue is that they know what's up. They know what's up, which is, you know... That's a vibe. If you're in businesses, it's either a hurdle to overcome or some insights to help you, you know, maybe 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.
1:00:07Let's say you've had a friend breakup. Would you rather an AI tool counsel you through that process, bounce ideas off, 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 friendship. It's so fucked up. To preserve human friendship. 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 buddy yeah about that you want to connect with the computer I mean this is what happens when this is what happens when everyone starts reading Marcus Aurelius a little too closely so true I don't know that reference I'm an idiot people need to stop quoting books to me I think it's good that you don't know this Is that the guy from Gladiator?
1:01:26Yes, yes Yes, Ed Actually, Russell Crowe did say one of the funniest things on Twitter which is he responded to one of the CNN reports I believe at the time and he was just like blocked, plonker which is one of the funniest things to say Anyway, let's just ignore my Willis Stein nature This was the same thing that she was talking about is this thing where what we're all seeing is these AI products designed to replace the role of human friendship. And another thing she presented is this surprising... Not solving the problem of meeting people. No, no. It's actually helping you overcome the fact that you lost a friend.
1:02:06It's trying to be like, hey, it's okay if you lost a friend. This AI can be your friend instead. Yeah, the solution... Yeah, sorry. I mean, the solution to 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 chatbot sites, I think Character AI, you're like, oh, okay, well, you know, you seem in interviews to be earnest about like people are lonely, maybe we can't replace, but we can offer a salve that helps people get back to the point where they have human friendships again.
1:02:42What 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.
1:03:35journal a great deal What if this could handle icebreaker questions and get over hard life experiences to make it easier for you? One of my favorite little perverse things was this Slavoj Žižek one time said he doesn't like sex. Who is this? He's a Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalytic. He sniffs a lot. Oh, you mean Žižek. Yeah, Žižek. And he was talking about how the ideal sexual encounter for him is two people taking their sex toys and those sex toys playing with each other. Exactly. This is exactly what he's talking about. That's disgusting. 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.
1:04:18No, 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 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't 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 could only get through like data research.
1:04:56And she's talking about like there is like Gen Z sees value in having like bad dates. I fucking hate how I'm discussing Gen Z. And actually overcoming challenges in life. And that's actually a core part of being human. And we don't want that process smoothed over. Tech can't solve the hardship of life. The hardship is part of life. That's what makes life worth living. Gail, how old are you? I'm in my early 20s. Sorry, I didn't want to get specific. No, you're fine. So you're Gen Z. Yeah, I am, yeah. How do you feel about these assumptions? I mean like again like this is these are questions that she's like that she's posing to like you know focus groups of like Gen Z but like I care more about your opinion they're really pandering is it accurate well no because they assume such a base level of stupidity that they're like kind of offensively like even like framed the fact that I would be like would you rather have an AI go on dates for you like why would you ever ask me that that's fucking stupid Some of the fun parts about romance Wow, said the word correctly Romance They're always saying this about me with how words go Is fucking up Exactly Revealing parts of yourself that get banged off someone And 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.
1:06:37Right. You want to optimize every part of life. And what if that optimization actually isn't the point? What if this idea in the tech industry that we have to optimize and smooth over every hardship misses the entire point of living? And you have all these tech bros being like, oh yeah, huh, I guess so. Maybe we shouldn't smooth over all the problems. It's a very, maybe I'm getting this reference wrong. It's a very Patrick Bateman-like thing of like, I am optimizing everything to the T and I will keep it going. I mean, no, specifically in the book, that is like the sort of train of thought he has is he's like kind of emptily engaging with life at the very superficial level while being empty empty and craving something else.
1:07:30The final point she had is like, and again, this is all kind of pandering. You're saying like Gen Z, but this is across a lot of people. She said like, Gen Z doesn't trust AI to understand the nuance of their lives. And I as a millennial, of course, do. But yeah, it was not a panel because on one hand you have these like AI toys for kids and then you have this woman with this company that works with Sesame and she's like, yeah, actually Gen Z doesn't want AI to run their lives. And you're like, yeah, who could have thought? After extensive testing. As we approach the final second of the thirds of Better Offline, Gare, where can people find you?
1:08:14Well, I am on X, the Everything app. The Everything app where I do banking. At Hungry Bowtie, as well as Blue Sky, at Hungry Bowtie app, at Hungry Bowtie dot 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? I can be found on X, the everything app. I agree. At Kyle underscore Chouinard, and then my writing's on lasvegasun.com. Oh, yeah, and Edward Nguesso, Jr. In the real world, I live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest in Washington, D.C.
1:09:00Zip code 2050. That's a nice neighborhood. It's kind of nice. It's got a great view of everything. Nice. 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.
1:09:40Frankly, I barely understand what I'm doing when I am talking. Because Matt Ossowski over here heals me. Jesus Christ, I can't even say hears. we're keeping it. Matasowski 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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1:10:57Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-iHeart to get started. That's 844-844-iHeart. Jan Marsalek was a model of German corporate success. It seemed so damn simple for him. Also, it turned out, a fraudster. Where does the money come from? That was something that I always was questioning myself. But what if I told you that was the least interesting thing about him? His secret office was less than 500 meters down the road. I often ask myself now, did I know the true Jan at all? Certain things in my life since then have gone terribly wrong.
1:11:41I don't know if they followed me to my home. It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story. Because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.
1:11:55Listen to Hot Money, Agent of Chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:12:08Hey, this is Matt Jones. And I'm Drew Franklin. And this is NFL Cover Zero. We're just here to try to give you an NFL perspective a little bit different. Did you see the Colts pretzel? That was my other big takeaway from that game. What was that? Oh, my. We think NFL coverage should be informative and entertaining. And twice a week, that is exactly what you're going to get. Listen to NFL Cover Zero with Matt Jones and Drew Franklin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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1:13:50So 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 to. 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.
1:14:29Oh, 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 robots are back. Okay, there's like some stuff from space and there's a big head. Kind of fucking weird, I guess. Anyway, welcome to Better Offline. I'm Ed 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 Defecta Edward Ongueso Jr., of course, will now have to turn another mic What's up?
1:15:04Kyle Chouinard 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... Drink about that.
1:15:42Thank 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.
1:16:17and that's ideal. Have you introduced this product? I didn't talk about it. I'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 like cute little guys are part of the, like that's one of the things this year. Again, enough about me. But that like this, the TCL is the most, I've looked at this also and they have like a whole little video of like a tow-headed child interacting with this thing. Yes. And his parents, the kid's parents are kind of like standing off to the side being like, super, let's - I'm calling my lawyer.
1:16:54You want to like go to the movies or whatever? But it's the most, it's probably the cutest of the cute little guys, but then also easily the most sinister. The most evil. 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 the kid did nothing wrong 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 he looks like that he looks like he's not been outside oh my fucking god huge bags under his eyes never seen the kiss of the son or his mom You do not know what vitamin C is, little boy, but don't worry.
1:17:47Or D. D. Well, I'm British. It's 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. 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. Okay, well, let's start on an easy point. We'll just go around. How's everyone feeling at this point of CS? We are at the end. Let's start with Gare because you are probably the second least likely to say something legally actionable.
1:18:35And 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 kind of all that makes all of the slop sorting worth it so I was happy to find a few of those in Eureka Park I also had my fair share of fun no absolutely not we're not gonna 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 gonna be last year's show again I kind of relaxed myself to being like I can just kind of do it I can kind of just like fuck off so I talked to a flying car company how real was that?
1:19:30it was real I was waiting to interview someone and instead one of their 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 feel 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. 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 it was a huge drone and I got exactly right it was 20 minutes up in the air it launches from something that looks like a cyber truck it launches out of the 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 ask them what's your plan for that what if you're in a populated area and they said no we'll have guardrail software to make sure it doesn't land in populated areas.
1:20:39We have some of the people from Knight Capital. I'm launching this thing right in the middle of Midtown in Manhattan. I'm going to do Hover for 20 minutes. Which brings me to the second thing 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? They did not like that. Why? I don't know what kind of PR training these guys had.
1:21:25I 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's strike, just kill you, just gun in your mouth. Just don't answer, die. Like it's the best way you could go about this. That you would get into commercial aviation and not have an answer to the 9-11 question is just... That's in the past. So I was able to relax and have fun, you know, with moments like that. You had fun. You know, once it became clear and it was just like, you know, AI software was like the king of this year once again.
1:21:59A whole bunch of things that used to be like, you know, actually kind of like all of the like university projects in eureka park which sometimes has like a really cool new thing right now all of that creativity is being is just being channeled into ai software um and that's in some ways disappointing to see some of the some of the software is like good like it works it can solve problems but it's also again like it's 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.
1:22:35Oh, 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 the Joker's feel, where you're like, it gets worse and I get better. I'm just fucking suffering, and 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.
1:23:10That's where Robert does his best work. And he was like locked in. I was like, hey. And he got like some of the way past me. He was like, do you fucking need something or whatever? It's like, oh, man, it's from yesterday. Same table that we were at. Oh, my God. Well, in my defense, there were really huge cell phones there, like massive, like literally an inch and a half thick, rugged cell phones. 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?
1:23:43I did not feel big time. I was just like, damn, this guy is like 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 mention Robert Evans to. Oh, my God, the Behind the Bastards guy. And I was like, this is a fucking guy with the weird avatar. Oh, you want to do a podcast about tech? Fucking ass. What are you going to do about it, mate? I don't need money. It 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.
1:24:31Oh, 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 wade into it with your pants off. You're just like, I will see everything. And speaking of Metallica, I heard a pretty good Master of Puppets cover at the MGM Grand in the top three covers of Master of Puppets that I've heard on that exact same stage at the MGM Grand. No longer interested in the text. So where was this? It was right near the skeeball.
1:25:07Okay. Well, I know 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 i we're all fucking here every january but it has been interesting getting wonderful reports 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 never put into my voice but it's interesting to get this view and then bring reporters in and talk and they're like yeah well we're here and we saw stuff but there's also an ephemera that is kind of hard to cover in objective journalism kyle totally yeah it's i i i thought that my my main takeaway from the week was uh the politics of it um i mean from i was at panasonic's um keynote and immediately you had people from the consumer tech association talking about tariffs.
1:26:20I mean, I, I walked by people wearing a department of government efficiency shirts. Um, really? Yeah. Which was really interesting. Did you hit them? No, I did not. Um, my, I'll take care of it. Nope. No, don't. Crimes are bad. Uh, but yeah, I mean, tariffs were just such a thing. I think a CNN article also wrote about it. Um, they were just kind of looming over the entire event. and it seems like 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.
1:27:02Yeah, 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 saying? Like you're allowed to say... Let's not repeat the actual... Yeah, no, I'm not. But it's basically you can just insult trans people, you can insult gay people, Jewish people. You can refer to women as property too. Really? I mean at this point I'm just like you could say anything.
1:27:40I think it actually is worth mentioning, like specifically, like the types of like insults around like mental illness that you're now allowed to call to like call queer people, but not call other types of people actually is worth actually is worth mentioning. Like it's like it's a huge change. 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.
1:28:21You 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 poison ville, 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.
1:29:10they're getting smaller, they're getting more capable I'm seeing glasses that are designed for navigation, that are designed for recording I did see to what you were saying about politics a lot of glasses that were specifically marketed based on their ability to aid TikTok that I'm like, in a week that might not be such a good business 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.
1:29:50See, this is the thing that tech can actually do. This is the thing that I, and I've said this many times in episodes, I'm not anti-tech. I wish tech was able to do the thing they promised, but I love technology. The only reason I know literally every person I'm looking at in this room is through posting. And I'm not even kidding. And this is the sickening thing that upsets my father. No, my dad's very proud. My therapist kind of, like my multiple lawyers. Anyway, the idea that one can do that. But the internet and tech is fully capable of making these wonderful connections. Like genuinely, I laugh about the Robert Evans thing.
1:30:27He 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 podcast and these are all digital things tech is fully capable as much as i can be cynical and angry about this stuff the reason i'm fucking angry is it's fully capable of helping people and we've all experienced it yeah that was the bit that i sort of was struck by again it's 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.
1:31:02I mean, I didn't realize that it was like you could have a conversation with someone speaking another language. I didn't see anything that cool. But the accessibility tech stuff for me too, I found not just really impressive, but really heartening to see that. The bit that was strange, and we obviously have talked about this in previous episodes and stuff, is the sort of contortions that are required in order to make that marketable in a way that, like, it's not like, it's not a niche market to be like an old person or to be disabled. Like one way or another, that's like, most people will experience that at some point in their life.
1:31:38And yet like the way that you have to sort of, this was something that really struck me from yesterday that we talked about, you know, enough that I probably shouldn't be bringing it back up again, that like you still have to come up with some sort of like industrial application to it, or you have to say AI, or you have to do the stuff in order to get people to invest in the 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.
1:32:26And I say this as someone who runs a fairly successful podcast. I have 51 ,000 subscribers. I have a successful PR firm. I have 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 a really good with something that you're very upset about. People love to be laughed at for that. I don't think people realize the capacity for technology to bridge the gap between your own body's, I don't want to say failure, but inability to fully complete an action.
1:33:08And I think people are, myself included, at times. It's an assistive aid. Exactly. But technology is one of the greatest, What was that you said again? Jesus Christ. Assistive aid. Thank you. Assistive aids. And I nearly fucked it up again. Nevertheless, technology for me as a person has been something that's allowed me to bridge with so many of you. I will tear up on the fucking show. People I love, people that I've been able to experience through their own writing and connections to them. But most of 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.
1:33:50Totally. 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. 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.
1:34:21Never. Never again. And 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 in your head. We talked to them yesterday. 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...
1:34:55We like the use case. 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 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 being able to do sort of like a retail cashier, secondary labor productivity aim. Yeah, I mean, there was a – because, like, mine was very much geared towards quadriplegics, but not – because it won't work if you have – as long as you have that muscular control, like, above your neck, like, it will work because it reads micro gestures of your face.
1:35:45And 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. a bit of fucking works because what we talked about it it seemed to I don't have the ability to like thoroughly vet that but they did a demo 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 like almost like a retainer that you put in and it gave you the same it was a similar sort of idea yeah you used your tongue for it we were struck by that 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.
1:36:32We've entered the Dada section of the Eureka Park. But all of those booths together were like a tenth of Samsung's booth. And all of them were people utilizing significant ingenuity to attempt to solve problems for real human beings who 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.
1:37:21But then kind of similar to what you were just saying, sometimes you actually you literally can't get that made unless you have to conjure up some sort of secondary application which is a shame and a problem with how tech innovation proceeds right because you must show growth you must be like this is how this is going to turn there should be no reason why you have to consider anything other than that immediate uh and an urgent use case which is like someone losing the ability to communicate with the outside world and to regulatory avoidance. So from the earlier conversation we've had several times regarding regulatory power and authorized medical devices.
1:38:04So all of these products, I've sounded negative for you're trying to skirt and avoid these requirements. However, the agencies that certify them to want to help people, they want people to go through this process. So these are the things that the FDA loves to see, 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, 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.
1:38:55So 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.
1:39:31I 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 on, 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.
1:40:09And 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 spirit of darts, too. It's a product that generates a mist. Oh, no! That sweeps over your fruits and vegetables to stop them from spoiling. What? Using plasma. No. Plasma? No. 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 groceries. and it'll extend the shelf life by 33%. And if that's a real thing, that's massive, right?
1:40:48I have no ability to vet this based on what I know from CE. I have absolutely no ability to vet the fear of dust. I'm going to huff that mist. I'm going to huff that mist. I did, buddy. Didn't get high. So it's useless as far as I'm concerned. So quick question. It extends the shelf life of 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 yeah you're trying to not sell yeah some people are into that that's like the most innocuous like that actually sounds good like it's similar to something you would see and they just called it like like doom slayer like but it's for your cucumbers like we just came up we thought it sounded cool it's like palantir the doom slayer has done some great work uh but also two things well let's just focus on one which is what the fuck does the mist what's it made up 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 so far just the mold because I asked if it was dangerous and they said no and again I have no ability to vet the viridox people at this moment I'm not trying to shit on that maybe this will massively improve the world it just seemed like a product that caused the apocalypse.
1:42:10That was when somebody said, we make a mist called Viridux. I was like, oh, you're going to kill everyone I love. Okay, great. It's like in a wet market that spreads like a virus from a bat. So any 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 Viridoc 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...
1:42:50How did you want Jujutsu Kaisen to end? Okay. Well, thank you for asking. Welcome to Jujutsu Kaisen. Did you want Get Over the Lug? Is that what you want? 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 mind guard, and I'm being very fucking serious. You made this podcast happen. You suffer the consequences. It's called sorcery fight. The ending of Jujutsu Kaisen involves a bit where Mr.
1:43:26Ryan 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 was. Treating unfairly. And then it's just a simple dream sequence, which is very unfair for them. Rigged. Rigged. Unfair for Mr. Ran and Seekner. See, now I'm thinking the Beardox apocalypse has happened because I am trapped in a room at the Venetian link with five different Trump impersonators. The eldest did not want the future. I'm so sorry to my listeners. I'm glad you're in hell with me. I can see it in your eyes. I'm sorry.
1:44:04This 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. And 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.
1:44:46Oh, yeah. Who is one of the single most talented people I have met in my fucking life and my boss. Comment. There we go. And Robert turned to me a year ago and said, you seem to be more pissed off at these people than anyone. And he was wrong only because I was yet to get pissed off enough. Robert has been insanely supportive of me in a creative means that no one else has. And honestly, everyone in this room has. Gare turned to me and said, you seem to just be a series of grievances. And Gare was completely correct. It has been so fun hearing you get progressively more angry over the course of a year.
1:45:27It'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? Should we make sure? 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 Viridox installed in my home.
1:46:03And that's another CES miracle. Which leads me to the last thing that I'll say. 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, Gerson. There we go. And Robert, I was sitting at the bar and Robert was upstairs waiting for a table and we got a table. Hard to do. Honestly challenging. And I said, it's another CES miracle. There was two people sitting next to me who turned and was like, what CES are...
1:46:47There was two people sitting next to me who turned and said, what CES are you going to? This has been terrible. I had a great if brief conversation with these people who were two exhibitors now I was a bad journalist I was too drunk that makes you a good one I did not learn which company they were from but there were two people who were exhibiting at CES and like this feels just like last year's CES and I was like yes this is what me and all my friends have been saying 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 and this is like 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?
1:47:45I'm like 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, right after 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, and that would be every room I walked into, every 30 minutes, I would see a thing that was like, I didn't know technology could do that until this exact second. And that's just not CES anymore. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, it's like, even as a soft touch, you can be impressed by a cool new TV screen.
1:48:21It's not the first TV screen, not to brag. But there is like – yeah, there's certainly that sense. It's interesting that like the people that are showing here were also kind of like, what am I doing? Like I feel like – What am I doing here? Yeah. I think the – and what Better Offline has tried to do with this entire show is CES is a combination of people who don't want to be here and do want to be here. And a lot of the people that want to be here 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 and yes and 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.
1:49:13I wanted to do this. I booked this months ago. Robert then booked much later for It Could Happen Here and Robert, please give. I was hung over. For fall. He is actually, Sophie is so much stronger willed and That's very true. Willing to respond, but Robert has been an incredible mentor and I'm going to be sentimental and you're just going to have to fucking suck it up, alright? 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.
1:49:54It's that formats demand things in certain ways. And the way to talk about tech is no longer as flat as, and the product exists or tech company sucks. I can do both. But the thing is, having these different voices, having these people talk about their experience of CES is on some level an explanation of how the tech industry feels. They're in this thing where you have this dichotomy between this vast milieu of different things that are like, hey, what if this happened? You'd then give me money. What would that be like? Well, I'd have the money and then you'd have the product. And did something good happen?
1:50:33Oh, I don't care. And then you have these people like, I'm gonna fucking solve people with eye twitches. People with twitching in their eye, which turns out to be a huge industry of people who are genuinely fucking suffering. People with way bigger problems, like mobility problems, having their problems solved in real time, but the people that get talked about are, I have the most massive television. And no, I actually take that back. It's not even the big TV. I want a larger TV. I want like a 250-inch fucker. I want to watch the Raiders lose. Well, that was – so I had a moment at the Samsung booth when they were showing off one of those transparent TVs, and there was a lady whose whole job – Another one?
1:51:14Another one. Well, I'm still confused by those. No, and that was LG last year. Oh, maybe it was LG. I think it was LG. Yeah, 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 ham waver. And it was this recognition as they're like walking. As we, Garrison and I sat through a guy who played us AI-generated ska and tried to convince us that we no longer needed human musicians. Even better. Great. No. I'm completely horny now. No. The next time someone played. That is a real falling down situation.
1:51:52It is very much a falling down situation, yes. but the realization that like there is a chunk of guys running big tech who see holding your hand behind the transparent TV is a thing that human beings should do but not making music and like that upsets me it's just it's frustrating because entering into this and the format that I created in a Google Doc three weeks ago and some people even read it the goal was to try and pull out how the show affects people and indeed the implications of this show do I'm now going to return to the sentimental bit I was diverted by I want to thank every single fucking person who listened to this but also join me on this Gare Davis one of the single insanely young and in a non-specific way I realize the single most talented person to come into anything associated with tech.
1:52:53Insanely 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? He's doing the actual jack-off gesture in front of the computer. Robert and Sophie Lichtman, who will never get enough compliments.
1:53:32And 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 had 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.
1:54:11This 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? Better offline, don't go wrong. 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 was trying to do like a sincere moment and like kratom is like oxycontin if it was like Robert 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 like make these connections.
1:54:50Because 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, you little pig. but the thing is these people beyond when and even a year ago i didn't think i could fucking do this and now look at me i'm a fucking ultra pons 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 and the bastards it could happen here 16th minute heard politics uh 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 offline 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.
1:56:08Phil Broughton, health physicist. He's picked me up two or three times when I've been like shit my pants. Not literally. I've never shit my pants around you. Let's not talk about that further. But the truth is Phil has been here for multiple CES's tending bar. Grab the mic, you motherfucker. Tending bar for people 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.
1:56:46He replaced it. I like this one, by the way. One of my, that would be Alberta Premium at Caster Crank Thrive. That was a goddamn journey that made fury for weeks finding it. Phil, I love 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 the 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 Eber and it's genuinely I'm getting a little emotional but thank you David Thanks for having me, for real.
1:58:04I feel the same. Edward and Graysa Jr., you are an undiscovered talent, and anyone fortunate enough to listen to this should know they should hire you immediately, because when you finally take off, when you finally get big enough, you are the single most capable... Grab the microphone, motherfucker. Hello. I said, when I get my gun. Which one you're buying? Okay, let's walk back 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. Oh.
1:58:44I'm really trying. Sorry, no more, no more. I know you're not done. Ed, there really isn't another writer that can do the kind of labor reporting you do and the understanding of the human experience that you can do. you are just at the beginning and I can't wait to bring you back on this show and have you do more I love all of you so much but also your potential is barely your potential is barely getting started is some shit you'd see on a CES banner though this is the worst it's ever gonna 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.
1:59:31Any singles want to email me? Like, that's what's on my... Look, darling, I know I vomited in your car, but let me assure you, this is the worst I'm ever going to be. Oh, my God. Carl Channard. You may think I just met you. That's true. You came on this show completely... You were actually well prepared. You had a laptop out, which fucking rocks. You actually, like, took this seriously, much like I did with my laptop 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 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.
2:00:28Of 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, to Matt Ossowski. Matt Ossowski 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 i and i bring up matt hughes here my word editor who has been so patient with him megan wenistrama over at penguin who's also been patient reading the dross i assume she says it's good but back to matt asowski matt has been here since the beginning when I was really not fucking confident about this show and I was genuinely experiencing like real anxiety and worry.
2:01:29Matt 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're 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 podcast voice. Like a big bird, if you play Final Fantasy XV, 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.
2:02:06And 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 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.
2:03:07and I feel like I learned a lot. Mr. Anguaza. Had a great time. And I'm not going to make any more legally actionable threats. Thanks.
2:03:20Yeah, Kyle, 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 has been lovely, has been lovely to watch. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for your listeners. If you've got to this point, I'm so sorry.
2:04:04but 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 Ossowski, Phil Broughton, and Ed Ungueso 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. We, 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.
2:04:48We'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. 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 me faith, given their faith, Jesus Christ, in the show in the last year. It's only going to get better, but next CES is going to be weirder. Gare has ideas. I have ideas. And it's just going to be sharper. It's just going to be weirder. And you have another episode.
2:05:33There'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 am really grateful for everyone who contacts. I love everyone who listens. I genuinely am so grateful. I am not really good at hiding any of the me in this, and a lot of podcasts are very performative. Phil can speak to this more than anyone. on. I'm not really good at like pretending. There is no off switch. I genuinely love you all. Thank you for listening.
2:06:18Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Ossowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at matasowski.com, M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I.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.wheresyoured.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.
2:07:19We'll see you next time.
2:07:32the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. Did it occur to you that he'd charmed you in any way? Yes, it did. But he was a charming man. It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story. Because this ties together the Cold War with the new one. I often ask myself now, did I know the true Jan at all? Listen to Hot Money, Agent of Chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you want to hear the secrets of psychopaths, murderers, sex offenders? In this episode, I offer tips from them.
2:08:17I'm Dr. Leslie, forensic psychologist. This is a podcast where I cut through the noise with real talk. When you were described to me as a forensic psychologist, I was like snooze. We ended up talking for hours and I was like, this girl is my best friend. Let's talk about safety and strategies to protect yourself and your loved ones. Listen to Intentionally Disturbing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's important that we just reassure people that they're not alone and there is help out there. The Good Stuff Podcast Season 2 takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a nonprofit fighting suicide in the veteran community.
2:08:52September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join hosts Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. One Tribe saved my life twice. Welcome to Season 2 of The Good Stuff. Listen to The Good Stuff podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Gemma Spegg, host of The Psychology of Your 20s. This September at The Psychology of Your 20s, we're breaking down the very interesting ways psychology applies to real life, like why we crave external validation. I find it so interesting that we are so quick to believe others' judgments of us and not our own judgment of ourselves.
2:09:28So according to the study, not being liked actually creates similar pain levels as real-life physical pain. Learn more about the psychology of everyday life and, of course, your 20s this September. Listen to The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.
From the publisher
Welcome to Better Offline’s coverage of the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show - a standup radio station in the Venetian with an attached open bar where reporters, experts and various other characters bring you the stories from the floor.
In Part 2 of our 5th day covering CES, Ed Zitron is joined by Robert Evans of Cool Zone Media, Gare Davis of Cool Zone Media, Kyle Chouinard of Las Vegas, Nevada, to talk labor, the true vibe of CES, and how growth-at-all-costs thinking crowds out real solutions to problems. And, of course, how much Ed loves everybody.
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