This Week in Tech 1066: "A Supercomputer in Your Pocket"

January 12, 2026

Host: Leo Laporte
Guests: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy (The Verge), Jason Heiner (The Deep View), Father Robert Ballecer, SJ

Episode Overview

This annual CES (Consumer Electronics Show) wrap-up features firsthand impressions from three on-the-ground tech experts: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy (The Verge), Jason Heiner (The Deep View), and Father Robert Ballecer, SJ—the Digital Jesuit. The episode serves as a lively, insightful journey through the major themes and standout products from CES 2026, with a particular focus on robotics, AI in the home, advanced chips, smart home standards, accessible tech, and the broader trends shaping both consumer and enterprise technology.

Main Themes

• The Maturation of AI and Robotics:
  Both practical and quirky, robots captured attention—particularly their new levels of dexterity, autonomy, and failures (falling over and causing minor havoc). “Physical AI” emerges as a new framing for embodied intelligence, moving beyond humanoid shapes to domain-specific capability.

• The Race for Local AI Compute:
  New generation chips from Nvidia (Vera Rubin), AMD, and advanced small-form data centers are pulling AI workloads out of the cloud, bringing “supercomputers in your pocket” closer to reality.

• Smart Home, Evolved:
  Smart home tech feels “grown up” with the arrival of affordable, interoperable devices, tangible improvements in standards (Matter, Thread, Alero), and companies like IKEA making connected homes mainstream and accessible.

• Sustainability and Privacy at Scale:
  Concerns over power/water use in data centers and privacy/security with interconnected devices and home-mapping robots thread through tech’s ongoing expansion.

Episode Highlights & Key Discussions

1. CES Energy & Vibe

• CES as Tech’s “Super Bowl”
  Jennifer: “For a tech nerd, it's like the Oscars and Christmas and the super bowl all at once.” (01:42)

• Fatigue and Fun:
  Attendees chronicled the epic walking with some clocking 30–40+ miles on pedometers, but agreed that the excitement outweighed the exhaustion.

2. Humanoid Robots: Impressive, Flawed, and Hilarious

• Falling Robot Follies

  • Jennifer recounts robots meant to do laundry toppling over—sometimes onto her.

    • “Jupiter weighs 170 pounds and hurts when it falls on you, which it did.” (05:46)

  • Non-autonomy still the norm: Most show floor demos were remote-controlled for safety.

  • The “chimpanzee in your house” problem: robots have strength but limited judgment or reliability.

  • On humanizing robots:

    • “If there were a big metal box falling over, you'd have run… but you saw a humanoid and tried to help.” (06:22)

• World Models and Digital Twins
  Jason: Siemens and others are integrating digital twin simulation and physics models with robots, enabling rapid deployment without endless tweaks.

  • “With this new model, …they were able to simulate all of it. … Instead of two or three days… took less than two hours.” (13:29)

• Switchbot & 'TikTok-Trained' Robots:

  • Some robots are getting trained via TikTok and thousands of repetitive actions in mock homes.

  • Jennifer: “He [the CEO] told me that they train the robots on TikTok, which made me very worried.” (15:16)

• Key Takeaway:
  Rather than one generalist humanoid, the future is specialized robots and household AI hubs—vacuum robots that sort laundry; arms for kitchens; robots that orchestrate connected smart appliances.

3. Robots that Climb Stairs & Jump

• Roborock Saros Rover
  • Jennifer’s standout: “A robot vacuum that can not only climb stairs but it can clean them, too.” (18:17)
  • The show saw demos for robots with little legs that jump over transitions and clean surfaces previously missed by standard robots.

4. Chinese Tech Ascendancy

• Dreametech & Roborock Disruption

  • Rapid innovation and booth size growth, knocking legacy players like Roomba out.
  • “Dreamy came out with their first product and it was better than Roborock’s.” (24:25)

• Concerns over Security & Privacy:

  • Local (on-device) processing is valued, but many devices still use cloud servers.
  • “Anything connected to the Internet, you are going to have security risks.” (27:17)

5. Father Robert's Top 5 CES Gadgets Countdown

(breaks interspersed throughout show; see timestamps for details)

1. Strut EV Mobility Device (32:21)

• Smart, autonomous wheelchair: high-tech sensors, self-driving, collision avoidance. “15,000 is what I was looking at for a standard electronic motorized wheelchair.” (35:17)

2. Dynsys Z1 Exoskeleton (73:44)

• Lightweight, wearable, knee-assisting exoskeleton for mobility and joint pain relief.

3. Jackery Solar Marsbot (93:11)

• Solar-tracking, mobile power bank—a “solar panel on wheels” that autonomously finds the sun.

4. LG Mobility Transparent Windshield Display (126:51)

• Contextual info heads-up display for cars, minimal distraction, possible future for AR driving.

5. Nvidia Vera Rubin Chip & Platform (160:07)

• “The platform is actually a combination of six different components…all the silicon in a Rubin data center spends more of its time processing and less time waiting…3.5 times faster than Blackwell[,] requires one quarter the number of GPUs…10x more efficient in inference token costs…”
• "[I]gnore most of [AI hype] because, well, there’s only so many AI enabled appliances and dancing robots I can take. However, as part of my day job … Nvidia’s announcement … caught my attention above all else.” (160:07)

6. Supercomputers in Your Pocket & Next-Gen Chips

• Portable Data Centers & Local AI

  • Father Robert possesses a not-yet-released AI compute “box,” enabling local, private AI workloads (video editing, real-time translation), bypassing the cloud.
  • “You can do everything local—…put together a 4k video lasting about 30 seconds in about 90 seconds.” (39:14)

• Nvidia Vera Rubin, AMD Strix Halo, Competition & Efficiency:

  • Chips are becoming drastically more efficient (“8x the work per watt over last gen”), enabling new workloads.
  • “It makes economic sense to just no longer use the Blackwell chips that you’ve got in reserve. Just buy all brand new Vera Rubin chips.” (46:44)

• Sustainability Concerns in Data Centers:

  • “For Elon’s 2-gigawatt data center, he’s going to be losing about 79 million gallons of water a year.” (53:29)

7. Smart Home Gets Mainstreamed

• Surge in Standards:

  • “It was a great show for smart home standards like Matter and Thread and Alero.” (151:01)
  • Companies like IKEA & Acara making devices cheaper, easier, more interoperable.

• Hands-Free Smart Locks:

  • “The first smart lock to support Apple HomeKey’s hands-free unlocking—using UWB and directionality.” (108:14)

• Buttons Are Back!

  • Jennifer: “Physical controls are so key in the smart home… Now, they’ve got a clear, solid connectivity layer that they can use that connects… So it means that… more features, bringing better things to your smart home devices…” (151:01)

8. Quirky, Memorable Gadgets and Concepts

• Dreamy Halo Hair Dryer:

  • Giant, smart, AI-enabled, lamp/hair dryer hybrid (28:04).
    • “It's as tall as a human almost… instead of having to hold a blow dryer, you can have the Dreamy Halo dry your hair.” (29:23)

• Lego Smart Bricks:

  • Connected, character-aware, interactive, sound-and-light-enabled Lego sets for new levels of play (57:29).

• Toilets With Cameras:

  • Jokingly, one of the more “traditionally” weird CES display types—analyzing your output for health tracking (102:20).

• Emotional Support AI Toys:

  • The rise of AI “companions” for kids & adults (“Little Milo”)—sparking concerns about replacing real connection (63:47).

9. Other Notables & Show Trends

• Meta’s Smart Glasses & Wearables:

  • The always-there AI assistant is on the way, with companies racing to offer displays, teleprompters, and conversational assistants in glasses – but nobody’s quite nailed mainstream appeal.

• Sustainability, Efficiency, & Quantum Computing:

  • Pressure for AI hardware efficiency and experimentation continues ("Quantum is very real...there are companies actually commercializing it now,” 171:08).

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:

  "If [a robot] can't open a [laundry] bottle, what is it going to be doing in my home?" (07:52)

  “This really felt like the year the smart home kind of grew up.” (150:44)

• Jason Heiner:

  “The difference [with digital twin robotics] was…they had already simulated all of it…what would have taken two or three days...took less than two hours.” (13:29)

  “We'll see some companies coming out to sort of differentiate themselves because there obviously are concerns [around privacy].” (27:17)

• Father Robert Ballecer:

  “With this box…you can do everything local…for places where we cannot use current translation services because they all require us to send conversations away. That’s a no-go.” (39:56)

  “The platform is actually a combination of six different components...by tightly integrating all six, Nvidia has greatly reduced the bottleneck between each, enabling rack scale integration.” (160:07)

• Leo Laporte:

  “As I become more and more enamored of AI, I kind of want to have it with me.” (85:20)

• On TikTok-Training Robots

  "He [the CEO] told me that they train the robots on TikTok, which made me very worried." (15:16)

Conclusion: Broader Takeaways

• The future is physical AI and specialized robots, not generalist humanoids.
• Local, private AI compute is on the rise, driven by next-gen chips and privacy needs.
• Home automation and smart homes are finally realizing their promise—thanks to powerful standards and accessibility.
• Efficiency, sustainability, and privacy will be core challenges as tech’s reach continues expanding.

Selected Segment Timestamps

• 03:59 – Jennifer’s run-in with falling laundry robots
• 13:29 – World models, simulation, and AI-powered robotics
• 18:17 – Roborock Saros Rover conquers stairs
• 32:21, 73:44, 93:11, 126:51, 160:07 – Father Robert’s Top 5 CES Countdown
• 39:14 – Portable local AI data center
• 108:14 – Arrival of UWB hands-free smart locks
• 127:49 – LG transparent display in car windshields
• 151:01 – Smart home “grows up” with real interoperability and accessibility
• 171:07 – The “Foundry” and quantum computing at CES

For the full conversation and rich anecdotes—including robot accidents, $10 IKEA speakers, and emotional AI pets—listen to the complete episode or catch highlight clips on TWiT’s YouTube channel.