AI Robot Slaves and other CES Miracles

Summary

Podcast Summary: "AI Robot Slaves and other CES Miracles"

Podcast: It Could Happen Here, Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts
Air Date: January 12, 2026
Hosts: Jordan (Robert Evans), Garrison Davis
Guest: Ben Rose Porter (sociologist, CUNY)

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Episode Overview

This episode is a ground-level dispatch from the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The hosts, joined by sociologist Ben Rose Porter, dissect the buzz, contradictions, and questionable innovations in the world of artificial intelligence and robotics. The discussion centers around the dominance of large language model (LLM) "wrappers," the widespread but hollow integration of AI (especially ChatGPT), and the sometimes unsettling marketing narratives—like robots as emotional companions or helpers—that surround these products. Underlying it all is skepticism about whether any of this is advancing technology or just gluing the appearance of progress atop existing products.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Ubiquity and Superficiality of AI at CES

• LLM "Wrappers" Everywhere:
  Most new products are not fundamentally new but are familiar devices (earbuds, glasses, necklaces, pins, toys, robots) with an LLM like ChatGPT/Amazon’s Gemini bolted on.
  • Jordan (02:18): “About 70% of the chatbot enabled products that I tried to interact with could not converse with me or could not do so in a functional way...the majority of those products just don't function.”
• Dependency on Cloud Connections:
  Because these AI-powered devices require an active internet connection (nothing is really on-device), the crowded convention's poor Wi-Fi meant almost nothing actually worked.
• Culture of Hype and Pretend Progress:
  Many demos are smoke-and-mirrors, hinging on speculative “potential” rather than concrete, demonstrable features.

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2. Robots That Don’t Really Work

• No Real Advances in Home Robotics:
  Companies like LG showcase home assistant robots (e.g., "Cloyd") that can kind of move household items or fold laundry—badly.
  • Garrison (06:17): “The robot knows exactly how you want your croissants done. You don't even have to tell the robot. It already knows. And that's something that was stressful.”
  • Jordan (05:19): “Like LG's Cloyd ... we watched it ... [in] a demo where they're presumably... working better than it normally does. Cause it's a demo.”
• Dubious Claims of Empathy/Personality:
  Companies (and their PR staff) make wild claims about robots “knowing you,” having “core memories,” or “experiencing” things.
  • Jordan (07:23): “I talked to a couple of different people at booths who... that was the thing they were emphasizing: this is an AI that feels and gets to know you and has a relationship with you. And it's very... not what they would want publicly, because that's crazy. And none of the products actually work that way.”
• Are They Just Building (Non-Sentient) Robot Slaves?
  The ethical implications are skirted by insisting these are not sentient, despite marketing hinting otherwise.

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3. Cheap Trick Demos and Hollow Marketing

• Fake Skits, Real Absence:
  Product demos rely on actors, with robots barely responding, but the act emphasizes “emotional connection” and “turning data into empathy.”
  • Ben (08:54): “The selling point of the robot was, I think they said, turning data into empathy. God knows what that means... None of it can actually be presented.”
• Sex Robots Now Have ChatGPT:
  Even sex dolls get AI “conversation” capabilities, but the focus remains on spectacle, not substantive improvement.
  • Garrison (11:06): “It activates my uncanny valley response way more... I could not look at the thing for very long.”

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4. Commodification of ‘Empathy’ and the Upsell Society

• AI as a Tool for Transparent Manipulation:
  Some AI “innovations” target maximizing corporate revenue by steering consumer choices, e.g., car assistants that push products based on partnerships.
  • Jordan (22:13): “If Burger King wants to move... a specific kind of whopper... we can push it... If [Coke] want[s] to move Vanilla Coke... whenever people order anything, we can have it say, do you want to add a Vanilla Coke?”
  • Jordan (24:05): “They were the only thing... talking about [the] actual end users, as... a thing that you can pull extra money out of by tricking them... The product [is]: this machine can upsell you every minute of your day.”
• Endless Value Extraction:
  The speculative “promise of endless value,” both for customers and (especially) for companies.
  • Ben (19:58): “If you give over everything, there is this vague promise of transcendence and that like you will escape... misery...”

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5. On-Device AI: Rare, Sane Innovations

• Positive Standouts:
  Some booths showcase genuinely useful on-device AI (translation or transcription not reliant on the cloud).
  • Jordan (13:08): Describes “Trans AI,” a Korean on-device translator with real utility and privacy benefits.
  • Garrison (17:28): “And that's why I did respect... companies like Trans AI... no matter where I am, even if I'm not connected to the Internet, I can translate and I can transcribe using this device. That's real utility.”
• Privacy vs. Surveillance Divide:
  Clear contrast between companies prioritizing user privacy (keeping data on-device) and those seeking to hoover up as much user data as possible and push it to the cloud.
  • Jordan (18:52): “That is... the most fundamental difference... between the companies that are embracing... AI: the ones whose default was like... we shouldn't have that on the cloud versus... why wouldn’t you put literally everything on the cloud?”

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6. Tech Industry Running on Hype, Not Advancement

• Combining Old Products, Calling it New
  • Garrison (31:22): “So instead of actually having anything new... they're combining two older products and trying to pass it off as a new thing.”
  • Jordan (31:49): “Neither of these things are new.”
• Big Brands Are Absent or Hollow:
  Fewer major players display meaningful devices. Many booths instead push cloud solutions or industrial data applications, indicating a lack of fresh consumer products.
  • Garrison (32:23): “You see this walking through, like, the central hall... The Samsung booth isn't there. The Nikon booth isn't there. The Sony booth is mostly a car... a lot of these big companies are really absent from actual products.”

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7. Self-Inflicted Problems and Illusory Solutions

• Solving Problems Tech Created:
  “Innovations” like in-car AI that yells at distracted drivers exist only because cars are now giant screens creating distractions.
• Spectacle > Substance:
  Home robots are less advanced than adjacent industrial robotics, but are marketed with extra layers of “AI” that add little or no value.
  • Garrison (33:57): “They're either trying to solve problems that they created or inventing solutions to things that aren't really problems.”

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8. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Absurd Marketing of Robot Personality:

• Jordan (07:23): “Anytime you say, like, well, are you just saying you built a slave? Like, are you saying there's thinking, sentient robots that you have live in your house and do your laundry, isn't that a slave? And it's not actually because the robot doesn't think...”

On Empathy-As-Upsell:

• Jordan (40:06): “But reducing the concept of empathy to the robot knows when you might want snacks is kind of evil... Empathy means the robot knows when to serve you is like a bad way to talk about empathy.”

On Corporate Cynicism and Anthropomorphizing AI:

• Ben (40:09): “Our robot learns empathy by being instrumental to you and useful... the core of empathy.”
• Jordan, sarcastically (40:16): “We made our robot watch four hours of videos from Gaza and it immediately said, I bet those kids want a Hyundai Elantra...”

A Moment of Bleak Comedy:

• Garrison (38:07): “You know how you always want to hit your kid in the head with a liquor bottle? Now this anger with this tiny child sized robot.”
• Ben (39:05): “I would love to just do a booth where it's like we're teaching our robots hate. They know how to hate.”

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9. Overall Tone and Takeaways

• The hosts mix sarcasm, exhaustion, and academic critique to capture the gap between tech industry promises and physical realities.
• They note the performative, theatrical aspect of the CES show—where “futuristic” is almost entirely branding.
• Underneath it all is a warning: most “AI” products are neither as useful nor as novel as they seem. Corporate interests use the language of empathy, intelligence, and connection to either extract more data or sell more stuff, not to advance real human thriving.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:41 – Opening context, introduction at CES
• 01:36 – First impressions: most chatbot-enabled products don’t work
• 02:50-04:10 – Everything is now a physical wrapper for ChatGPT
• 05:19-07:48 – LG’s “Cloyd” robot: underwhelming demos and “robot memory”
• 08:04-10:14 – The “Amybot” demo and the emptiness of “data into empathy”
• 10:32-12:04 – Sex robots, uncanny valley, and what adding AI really means
• 12:49-13:43 – On-device AI (Trans AI translator) as genuine innovation
• 17:49-19:26 – Wearable emotion-tracking devices—a privacy crossroads
• 22:13-24:38 – AI built to upsell: The Soundhound AI case
• 29:28-32:47 – Why is LG pushing “Cloyd”? Running on fumes, branding over substance
• 33:57-34:56 – Tech “solutions” that solve problems caused by tech
• 37:51-39:19 – Bleak humor about child-companion robots and AI “sin eater” function
• 39:19-40:43 – The hollowing out of “empathy” and the closing thoughts

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Final Thoughts

This episode delivers a caustically funny but earnest examination of tech industry self-delusion, with a sharp focus on AI’s role as both cultural placebo and corporate tool. Beyond the glitzy promises, what’s really for sale is a vision of the future where “empathy” is a language game, “connection” is a data transaction, and most real needs have been lost in a feedback loop of hype.

“Anyway, welcome to the future, everyone. It’s a CES miracle.”
– Jordan (40:39)

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Jordan]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

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[Ben Rose Porter]

Media.

[Jordan]

What'S pippin my bops? It's. It could happen here. A podcast that is sometimes competently introduced, but not on the days that I'm recording. We're at ces, the Consumer Electronics show, seeing what the tech industry has in mind for all of us. Right. This is a show where the industry talks to itself and its investors and clients about what the future is going to be. And so Garrison Davis and I are going to sit down with you and tell, based on our explorations and investigations this week, what the future of artificial intelligence means for all of us and for the world. Garrison.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Hi.

[Jordan]

How you doing?

[Garrison Davis]

I'm tired.

[Jordan]

Yeah, you look tired.

[Garrison Davis]

It's been a long week.

[Jordan]

It's been a long week.

[Garrison Davis]

Convention walking.

[Jordan]

Yeah, we've worked very hard.

[Garrison Davis]

I've talked to too many robots.

[Jordan]

Yeah, I've talked to a lot of chatbots.

[Garrison Davis]

I mean, it's a bit of a stretch to say. We've talked with them.

[Jordan]

I've talked at a lot of chatbots. Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

And sometimes they respond and sometimes they don't.

[Jordan]

I guess one of the things that's kind of shocked me is because, like, despite being very critical about AI and the industry, I have actually a pretty good idea of what these things are capable of. And I know that ChatGPT and Gemini and the other very, like, they're capable of doing some things that look very impressive. They are capable of conversations, you know, that can be fairly in depth and that can cover a wide variety of topics. And so one of the things that has surprised me is that as I have gone up and tried to communicate with every various chatbot enabled, AI enabled product, about 70% of the time, it's not actually capable of responding to me in a way that makes any sense. Like, the majority of those products just don't function.

[Garrison Davis]

Sorry, my.

[Jordan]

Was that literally your AI and your phone?

[Garrison Davis]

Yes.

[Jordan]

Yelling at us? Yes. Case in point.

[Garrison Davis]

I was trying to pull up one of the, one of the AI robots that we saw today and I guess this is something that we talked about on better offline a bit in the main thing this, this year is the complete, the complete like victory of like Chat GPT.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Across. Not just, not just like it's like.

[Jordan]

A cultural victory within the tech industry.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

And it's moved into like the physical world through like their API licensing.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

So many of the quote unquote products this year is building a physical thing around ChatGPT.

[Jordan]

We have a, a necklace that has ChatGPT and you can talk to it. We have a pin that ChatGPT is in and you can talk to it and have it do things like transcribe an interview. Earbuds, there's, there's earbuds, there's glasses, tons of glasses. There's little tiny robot dogs of the glasses.

[Garrison Davis]

Every, everything has, has Chat GBT inside it. And that's the main thing that makes it a like unique or special compared to, you know, the types of products we've seen, we've seen before.

[Jordan]

And I would say again, when I say that like 70% of the chatbot enabled products that I tried to interact with could not converse with me or could not do so in a functional way, it's not because the chatbots aren't able to talk to you because they are anyone who's not like you can, it's that all of the chatbots require an active Internet connection because the vast majority of these products do not have anything on device. And when you're in a crowded convention floor, the Internet is bad and so they just don't work. And it kind of, it's one of those, I'm sure most of these products would work better in the real world, but also the fact that they're all completely hobbled by their access to data is kind of one of the things. It's one of the seams that you can see here.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, the LLM wrappers. So LLM wrappers and robotics are the big things this year. Often these things are combined.

[Jordan]

What do you mean by an LLM wrapper, Garrison?

[Garrison Davis]

Well, this is the thing that we're talking about. It's this physical product that's built around something like ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude or a number of like the Chinese made ones. Right. A lot of Chinese companies here. So these physical products, whether those are, you know, headphones, earbuds or in many cases little tiny robots whose main, main feature is that you can talk to, can talk to it and what you're actually talking to is like a filtered version of ChatGPT.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

And there's a lot of products for kids that we've seen, like robots for kids. Because there's a lot, a lot of robotics this year as well. These, these are the two things that after years and years of them trying to find a new thing for each ces, they've like settled on not, not actually having anything. It's a year of robotics not having anything new. Because like we've, we've seen robotics before.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

At other years. And this is the year that they're combining their physical robotics, which aren't new, but combining them with ChatGPT and presenting it as a new product.

[Jordan]

Look at the old intelligent robot. And the robot can't do more tasks than it used to. Right. Like we're still, we're doing really good. If it can slowly and not very competently fold.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Oh my.

[Jordan]

Like LG's Cloyd, which is a robot designed to be in your home and do chores for you and visibly does not do them. Well. We watched it. No, A demo where they're presumably. It's presumably working better than it normally does. Cause it's a demo.

[Garrison Davis]

No. I went to the first Cloyd demo and they had like three different setups for different stories for like different use cases for Cloyd. One's with a family, one's, one's with like a single guy and one's with like a, like a middle aged woman. And with the family, the robot's able to find keys that are lost. Notably what that means is that Cloyd is moving keys around the house, which might actually contribute to the problem of losing keys being lost.

[Jordan]

Where did the fucking robot.

[Garrison Davis]

Because the robot is picking up your keys and moving them somewhere else. The robot can put a tray of croissants in an oven and the robot knows.

[Jordan]

Here's an it's croissant.

[Garrison Davis]

And the robot knows exactly how you want your croissants done. You don't even have to tell the robot. It already knows. And that's something that was stressful.

[Jordan]

That's the power of AI over and.

[Garrison Davis]

Over again, is that it will start to know what you want. So you won't need to tell.

[Jordan]

They have a memory. So many of these products with the big selling point is like it's got a memory and the ram, they can't stop themselves. And I think some of this was like the actual companies and the way that they're structuring their ad campaigns But a lot of this was just. Most of the companies here hire PR people who don't regularly work for the company and don't know much about the products, and they're just there to demo stuff. And some of it is those people just defaulting to. Well, they're talking about how this thing like, like, remembers and knows you. So I'll talk about how it, like, it has a personality, it has memories, it has experience, it has core memories. You know, it has preferences and like a personality. It wants things. I talked to a couple of different people at booths who, like, that was the thing they were emphasizing is that like, this is an AI that feels and gets to know you and has a relationship with you. And it's very number one. Not what they would want publicly, because that's crazy. And none of the products actually work that way. But the attempt to convince people that what we have done is create a robot that lives in your home and does chores and it can think and feel. And anytime you say, like, well, are you just saying you built a slave? Like, are you saying there's thinking, sentient robots that you have live in your house and do your laundry, isn't that a slave? And it's not actually because the robot doesn't think, because they're not actually. What they were saying was true. It would be a problem. Right?

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, you could introduce yourself however you want. Introduced.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Oh, I'm Ben. Ben Rose Porter. I am an academic. I'm a sociologist at cuny.

[Garrison Davis]

And you have accompanied us through the wonderful world of Las Vegas and CES this year. I always like bringing people to witness the. The beautiful world.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Yeah, I've been brought to this place very far from God, Las Vegas and the Tech Convention Center. There is this moment where we were walking through and it was the Amybot.

[Garrison Davis]

For kids, which me and Robert saw last year. That little oval owl looking robot. Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Rose Porter]

And they had this. She's gotta be an actress. And she was doing like a little skit with the Amybot where it was like, it was like Amy Bop's birthday or something. And she was like, very clearly having this. This very produced. It reminded me exactly of how, like cheap telenovela's, like actors talk, where she was just like, wow, Amy, you've really gotten to know me over the years. And it was bizarre in that one. The selling point of the robot was, I think they said, turning data into empathy.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes, it's able to turn data into empathy.

[Ben Rose Porter]

God knows what that means. But also that like, so clearly the robot turns data into empathy. But also we cannot show you the robot doing anything concretely. So we will have a person. It was just this very one sided like skit where this person was doing this really overly emotional like back and forth with the robot where the robot would just respond with like the bare minimum like phrases. And so like what they're selling is, is questionable if anyone wants it and all speculative. It's all, none of it can actually be presented. It's all like the potential to do this and then, and then even the way that they're actually showing that is mostly just cheap tricks. There's another booth where they had the sex robots. And I was just, it was shocking because the stand like you're at this convention, you've presumably you know, gone through a lot to get here and your, the image you're putting forward of your robot that you know you're selling as the sex robot. It's like this cheap AI image. Not even one of the good ones like that there are like clear artifacts and blurry weird lines and things and that you could google an anime JPEG and get a better image for this. So just even the smoke and mirrors of it was cheap.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, that was at loveance is the sex robot booth. And yeah, they had, they had two products. One was like, just like you know, silicon like realistic human skin sex robot which is similar to like you know, those horrifying sex dolls. Except now we have an LLM inside. It's another one of those LLM rappers except it's wrapped around a red headed woman.

[Jordan]

Garrison. I find that very offensive. It's actually some people are just. Are not capable of talking to women or other human beings of any kind.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, people with adhd, it's actually a.

[Jordan]

Disability where people can't know other people and can only have sexual gratification through a creepy robot.

[Garrison Davis]

I apologize for my, for my on air ableism.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

But no, again, this is the year LLM rappers and now they're putting it. Yeah, putting it in a sex bot. Which is more unnerving to me than a regular sex doll. Because a regular sex doll you kind of know it's an object. Like it's, it's not trying to be much more than an object.

[Ben Rose Porter]

It can't.

[Garrison Davis]

You can't you can you put it in positions. But it's, it's static.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Ben Rose Porter]

This.

[Garrison Davis]

Because this thing tries to kind of engage with you. It activates my uncanny valley response way more because it's like it's kind of trying to pretend to be a person. And like I I could not look at the thing for very long. They just like started like. I just felt bad.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And some of that's probably my latent Protestantism, but I, it's, I just feel, I just felt bad. But the, the other product they had like around the corner was this, was this like you know, anime style like, like Avatar, which was, which is on like a screen that you can talk to and it's synced up to a, like a jack off robot.

[Jordan]

Right.

[Garrison Davis]

So you can, you can engage with this. Finally you can engage with this like this like blonde, blonde hair, blue eyed anime woman. As it's, as it connects to like a little, a little like jack off machine. And that was their, that was the other product which did not work because there was no WI fi in the Venetian.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

So we could not see it. But the jack off machine was still going strong.

[Jordan]

Yeah. So you could say, I guess that like. Well obviously there's, there's fundamental issues with like having wi fi be decent. When you've got 70,000 people like all cramming themselves into a room, of course that's going to cause problems. The chatbots and the devices using them are actually capable of more, they're more impressive than you're giving them credit for just because the WI fi didn't work. But also if all you built is a shell that without the Internet and access to someone else's chatbot doesn't do anything.

[Garrison Davis]

This is the big problem.

[Jordan]

You haven't really made a product.

[Garrison Davis]

All these products are going to brick. As soon as ChatGPT raises its API costs, they're going to do one of two things. They're either gonna stop working or they're gonna move their chatbot provider to a different one that's gonna behave differently. And then it's fundamentally a different product.

[Jordan]

That's why periodically I would run into someone where it's like everything that we do is on device and everything, even the ones that we're still. Cause you almost have to say that whatever you're doing is AI and stuff. Like there was a company that I came across because of their name. Because I just saw the name Trans AI and I was like, well, I gotta go see what that is.

[Garrison Davis]

I did see that as well.

[Jordan]

And it's simply, I believe they're a Korean company, but it's just a company that makes like a translator. Right. And they make it specifically, it's like the size of a smaller smartphone. It looks kind of like a smartphone. And you set it down and it will on device, it does not touch the cloud at all for any reason. It can translate. So if you want to have a conversation with someone in a foreign language, it can, like, like, live translate for you both. And also it will transcribe whatever conversations you're having. And they were like, yeah, this is for people who want to transcribe notes when they're at college. It's for people who are doing interviews, journalists and stuff.

[Ben Rose Porter]

So.

[Jordan]

And it was a really good. It seemed to be a good product. I've not gotten to test it outside of the show floor.

[Garrison Davis]

I saw. I saw a few of these.

[Ben Rose Porter]

One of the big differences I saw between, like, the few. There were, like, two or three or four booths that we saw where the product. I was like, I had a positive.

[Jordan]

I was like.

[Ben Rose Porter]

I walked away with some mildly positive. Was that almost everything else talk about, like, the sort of insatiability of capital.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Is that it has to sell. The. The sex doll was a perfect example of this in that, you know, if you make a sex doll and you put the chatgpt inside of it and then you sell it as, this is a sex doll. It's an object you fuck. But now you can, like, you could have sexy conversation with it. Still an object, but, like, you know, that's fun for some people.

[Jordan]

That's a new thing that people didn't have before. It is new.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Yeah. And it's a phenomenon you could clearly show off. It's like, oh, you can, you know, now the sex doll can, like, say your name and stuff. But almost all of the booths that were selling some kind of AI product, it was like, we have to sell the opportunity to, like, transcend, like, your mortal shell and become a part of the cosmos itself. Like, the sex doll was literally sitting in this corner talking to no one and saying stuff like, I'm about emotional intelligence and building a connection, getting to know you and reaching into your soul. And it's like, it clearly cannot do this. And the few products that were good were the ones where the people showing it were just able to, like, just put that aside and just say, here's what the product does.

[Jordan]

Right?

[Ben Rose Porter]

Here's what it can do concretely.

[Jordan]

And that has become my baseline. First question, which is like, have you done anything with your product? And if all that you've done is we invented a new device that didn't previously have a chatbot that it connects to through data that someone else built, you didn't do anything. That's not a product. That's not real. So kind of my first. My Filter was like, is there anything here beyond another way to interact with a completely different product that you didn't make?

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[Garrison Davis]

To go back to like the AI note taking devices which I saw a.

[Jordan]

Few where there's a bunch of them.

[Garrison Davis]

And it will take notes for you. I saw like a lot of these like marketed to like a college student.

[Jordan]

And it's the thing that it is a thing that machine learning because I hate that it gets lumped in with AI but machine learning has gotten a lot better. Really good.

[Garrison Davis]

It's good at note taking and here's.

[Jordan]

The thing, and that's valuable and there's.

[Garrison Davis]

Different devices that you can get it on. Like I saw like, like a note taking pen that's like a pen that just automatically takes notes for you. And that was, you know, kind of like, kind of kind of fun. But the thing is you can do this exact same thing on your phone with the Chat GPT app. It's the exact same thing.

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

You don't need it in a pen. Just turn your phone and it'll auto do the notes for you. The actual product part is useless. The whole idea of the smartphone is that you have everything you need already on it.

[Jordan]

And that's why I did respect again companies like Trans AI where it's like no, this is actually on device and this is a thing, this is a utility that my phone doesn't have which is that no matter where I am, even if I'm not connected to the Internet, I can translate and I can transcribe using this device. That's real utility. And Trans AI is not the only company. A couple of Companies had products like that.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, we saw this emotion tracking pendant, which is.

[Jordan]

Oh, my God.

[Garrison Davis]

On device, which. Which listens to everything.

[Jordan]

So you said motion, not emotion.

[Garrison Davis]

No, emotion.

[Jordan]

Oh, emotion.

[Garrison Davis]

But it listens. It listens to everything you're saying. It doesn't upload anything to cloud, but it, in the AI is on device, so it listens everything. It is, like emotional sentiment, anal analysis. It also monitors your breath and your heartbeat. Because the necklace, like, rests, like, on your chest. And then it, like, talk. Then it can, like, analyze, like, around, like, six or seven. That's mystic. Seven different emotions. And, like, it was, like, fine. Like, I don't. I would never need this thing to tell me how I'm feeling. I know how to feel. But, like, it might be fun for some people to, like, track how they're feeling or be like, oh, I was more stressed. I was more stressed this week than, like, last week. And, like, still.

[Jordan]

And there's. There's even. There's at least a degree of baseline optimism that you have for the product when it's like, okay, this is a device where you're trying to track people's emotions. And your immediate first thing you decided as a company was, this can't go on the cloud. That would be your responsibility.

[Garrison Davis]

This is why that was the first thing I asked.

[Jordan]

Right. And that is, I guess, the most important fundamental difference between companies and people here and between the companies that are embracing to some extent, AI is the ones whose default was like, well, but we're doing something that involves emotions or that involves interviews or conversations that people might not want. We shouldn't have that on the cloud versus the people who are like, why wouldn't you put literally everything on the cloud? Why don't you want your health and medical data on the cloud? Why don't we want your financial data on the cloud? Right. Like, that is kind of like the most fundamental difference that you see between people here.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Part and parcel of the insatiable. Like, just drive for endless value. And probably the comparisons between this convention and its location, Las Vegas, are really overlaid and at this point. But, I mean, there is something about, like, you know, the appeal of. Of gambling is the promise of the speculative promise of endless value and how all of these technologies are selling themselves off of endless value. And for the producer side, that means like this. This device has endless function potentially. You know, we say endless functions, especially.

[Garrison Davis]

With these, like, AI devices.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Yeah, yeah. But from the consumer side, it's from a. Well, if you just give yourself over to, you know, to to the God of capital. If you, if you just bleed into the machine and connect yourself to the cloud and give over like everything, and it really is everything. I mean, there's like AI towels that are like analyzing your sweat. If you give over everything, there is this vague promise of transcendence and that like you will escape the, like the misery of the world that this place is just both completely blind to and then also without ever saying it, like also responding to it entirely.

[Jordan]

First off, obviously you're coming at this from more of a left wing perspective, so you probably don't understand that gambling always works and you're definitely going to win. So first off, you know, no, Vegas.

[Garrison Davis]

Really is the anarcho capitalist paradise.

[Jordan]

It sure is. But no, I like, like what you're saying is they want you to give everything over. There is absolutely. There's not outside of again, the odd booth where you find sane people, which is almost how I think about them in my head. Where it's like, yeah, where you're putting front and forward. This stays on the device. You don't have to be online. We are not exposing your data.

[Garrison Davis]

It's like seeing a lighthouse in like, in like a horrible like rainstorm and you're sailing on a ship and you can't see anything. And every once in a while you'll see a booth with like a real person. God, it's like talking about it solving like oh, finally.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Yeah, it's a spectrum between Talking to the AIs, talking to the real few people and then the, the other people who are kind of in between the two.

[Jordan]

And it was, I, I went from seeing this app where the whole purpose of this, this company that makes like agentic AI solutions who I'm, I'm scrolling to find their, the company name right now. All of it is they're making agents that you can put in like point of sale things or you can put in like cars as a chatbot. Like one thing they said is, yeah, we can put this in a car and we can have the, you know, you can navigate using voice the way you would normally like with a bunch of other apps. But if you navigate with voice using our app, it will only send you to restaurants or businesses that we have a deal with that are giving us a cut. And so. And you too, the car company gets a cut too. And that was the innovation is that we can not give people like tell people where things are. We can tell people where things are that pay us and you get a cut of it.

[Garrison Davis]

So the company can like Make a partnership with like Coca Cola, right? So then when you ask, they were.

[Jordan]

Literally talking to Coca Cola reps when I was there and showing them that like, yeah, we have a like, look, we've replaced the human beings that take your orders at Burger King. And the chatbot can alter on the fly the menu. If you have to get move a lot of Vanilla Coke and you want to sell as many largers as possible, it can tell people that's the only option.

[Garrison Davis]

Whoa.

[Jordan]

And like the fact that they were just like bald faced about it, because when I showed up, they were, they were demoing how this, this like Burger King menu with AI worked. And they were like, there was a full menu that you could see that was like a, like an updated screen menu, but there was a secondary menu where they're like pretending to be a guy who drove up to Burger King. And the way that they started was like, yeah, what burgers are good? What do you think I'd like? And I was like, who?

[Garrison Davis]

No one drives up. No one drives through window and asks what's good.

[Jordan]

Yeah, no, that's not how they. And again, there's a menu in front of you. You look at the menu and decide like, that's how everyone buys food. So at first I was like, is this just a company that doesn't know how life works? Who are like trying to pretend this is like what people want? Where they go, yeah, what's good today in McDonald's? You know, do you have any specials? Which was crazy. But then I realized. Cause they were talking to this small group of people. And I realized after a second, oh. Cause I looked at their badges. Everyone has badges that say all of the people worked for Coca Cola. And so they were talking about how yes, if Burger King wants to move, you know, a specific kind of whopper, then we can put that front and center when people ask what's good? And we can push it and said for Coke, if you guys want to move Vanilla Coke, we can have. Whenever people order anything, we can have it say, do you want to add a Vanilla Coke? A large Vanilla Coke's just like. And so what I realized is that this company whose name is this is Soundhound AI.

[Garrison Davis]

Soundhound AI?

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Pretty good name.

[Jordan]

Their motto was faster and more accurate higher revenue. I came to realize, and this is not entirely a separation from other years because they are always selling to companies like this. But there was absolutely. They were the only thing that they were talking about actual end users, as was a thing that you can pull extra money out of by tricking them, by pushing extra ads to them. And that's who they were actually selling to is these companies that they were like. The other thing they demoed was, you can make an agent on the fly and you can include the capabilities. And they showed us how to select it and then built an AI, an agent to live in your car. And the demo they did was like, hey, my car is making this sound. What do you think it is? They didn't play the sound for the AI by the way they described it. And the AI said, that sounds like it could be. It'll cost about $700 to fix. Great. Book me an appointment with the dealership. So first off, that's not how people work. I've had car. Everyone has car issues. A regular person, There's a problem with your car. You either have a mechanic that's not the dealership that you go to because they didn't rip you off in the past. And you're like, well, I trust them not to fuck me too bad, or you go to a couple. Because most people don't just drop $700 in a repair and not think about it. But the person that this engineer was pretending to be for the purpose of this AI demo said, great, book me a repair at the dealership. And the AI was like, okay, I've called them and I've booked you an appointment. And by the way, would you like to schedule a test drive for this specific kind of car? Oh, my wife loves that car. Book us. And that was. The whole thing is he was like, don't be impressed that we can theoretically book you an appointment. Be impressed that we can have the machine upsell you on trying to buy a new car when you come in to fix your old car that broke because you bought a bad car. And there was no shame. They were so proud of themselves. For this machine can repeatedly upsell you things. And that was the only utility. It was not. This allows you to more easily navigate town. This allows you to more easily, you know, cut out problems in your life. It was. This machine can upsell you every minute of your day, Everything you ask it to do, everything you try to have it do. And we get a cut of that. If we send it to a restaurant and you buy food there, we get a cut of that. And so does whatever company, you know, put the thing in your car. If you buy a new car, we get a cut of that. That was the product. And that we have gone from. Here are machines that do things. And even back in the Glory days of smartphones, at least everyone was showing, like, look, we have a new phone that's thinner than a phone has ever been.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Or like, the camera is like, you know, 4K now or something.

[Jordan]

Whatever. The focus is always. And now people who buy them can do this with it. Right.

[Ben Rose Porter]

I mean, I would guess that so much of the impetus for creating this stuff and developing it is all for producer goods. And the more revenue is honest. And that, like, that's what the. And all the consumer goods are mostly just getting, you know, cast off is like, now we have. I mean, literally, that's what the LM wrappers are, is just like, oh, we have this thing. Let's throw a plastic robot on it and try and sell it. But what drives its development is squeezing just little bits, squeezing labor out of the pores of the production process, which you just get you a little bit more, you know, capital to keep this engine going a little bit further.

[Jordan]

And it's so. Because the way it'll work is, I saw that thing where it's literally all you've invented is a way to try to con people out of more of their money. I hope you're proud of yourselves, because I think redacted is what you should do to yourself. And I went from that to the booth of a company called Gentex, who I'd never heard of before, but they make different automotive products. And an engineer there showed me a thing that he had been the lead on inventing, which was a sun visor. So, like, you know, when you're driving and there's a glare, you put down the visor, and the visor is just like a. Basically a piece of fabric, and it blocks a chunk of your view, but it at least blocks the sun. And this was an intelligent visor that was clear and so you could see through it, but it also blocked UV rays. And you could adjust the level of opacity if you needed it to be more or less, but you could still see through the mirror, and it still blocked the glare. And I was like, oh, that's really neat. And then he pressed a button, and it turned into a mirror. Suddenly, that functioned. It looked great. I saw it. I know it works. And I got, like, an honest.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Wow.

[Jordan]

I didn't know that was a thing that could happen. And that's a real product, and I can imagine using it. That's like a problem where, yeah, if you want to block glare, you're losing a degree of visibility, and now you're not. You've actually done something Right.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, but you could just put Gemini into a toaster and call it a day.

[Jordan]

What if your toaster could talk to you about Proust?

[Garrison Davis]

I guess. Yeah, this is actually. No, that's an idea.

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[Garrison Davis]

If we're going to close this more AI focused episode, I kind of want to circle back to Cloyd and, like, why and why Cloyd exists.

[Jordan]

Just take a second if you're listening to this at home on the drive. If you've got family around, look at each other, look another person in the eye and say the word. LG has a new home assistance robot named Cloyd. Cloyd. Roll it around in your tongue. Do you know, Just think about it for a second.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Okay.

[Jordan]

Can I.

[Garrison Davis]

Why CLOYD exists. Like, why? Why is lg, who's previously had some really impressive booths over the years, and.

[Jordan]

They had cool TV.

[Garrison Davis]

They had TVs where the wallpaper TV was impressive.

[Jordan]

Every time I go to an LG's booth every year, I'm like, yeah, that's a better looking TV than I've seen before.

[Garrison Davis]

Really? Fig tv.

[Jordan]

Yeah, it looks great.

[Rebel.com Announcer]

Why? Why?

[Garrison Davis]

And then the wallpaper TV is. Okay, we. There was wallpaper TV last year. It was. It was slightly worse. This one's a little bit better. But why is Cloyd the big thing at the LG booth this year?

[Jordan]

Right?

[Garrison Davis]

Because none of the technology that Cloyd is doing is new. Remember last year at Showstoppers, me and you, we saw that really janky robot.

[Jordan]

You're gonna have to be more specific, buddy.

[Garrison Davis]

We saw the really janky robot that, like, moves up and down.

[Jordan]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The pusher and shover robot. Yes, Right?

[Garrison Davis]

And Cloyd is like kind of that. It's like the actual physical robotic parts of Cloyd aren't new. And the sort of. The sort of AI that's running also, you picture it.

[Jordan]

If someone needed to make wall E that was legally distinct enough to stop Disney from suing them. And tall and tall and taller. That's how Cloyd looks.

[Garrison Davis]

So why is Cloyd there?

[Jordan]

Why is Cloyd there? I'm always asking myself this.

[Garrison Davis]

This goes into, like, what. This. What like, CES is like doing this year and how it reflects this current state of the tech industry is that these LLMs like ChatGPT are not actually better than they were last year. No, they are.

[Ben Rose Porter]

They.

[Garrison Davis]

They are the same. So how do we make things look. Look cooler?

[Jordan]

This, whatever improvements they are is not enough to notice for an average person.

[Garrison Davis]

Very minimal.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

So instead of actually having anything new or any kind of sizable improvement to display, they're combining two old. And some of their products are kind of archaic. Combining two older products and trying to pass it off as a new thing.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And that's these. These. These, like, older, older, like, robotic systems. Right. That usually kind of humanoid. Maybe they have hands. Maybe the hands can grab things. Can the hands unscrew a milk carton? No, can. Can. Can the. Can the robot grab milk out of the fridge?

[Ben Rose Porter]

Yes. So long as you want milk from a very specific carton. And croissants. And only croissants, you're good as long.

[Jordan]

As the milk has a QR code that the robot can recognize to know that it's milk. And also, when it's emptier than a certain level, it actually will crush the milk thing. Like, it has to be a certain level of full. Otherwise, neither of these things are new.

[Garrison Davis]

And the fact that LG doesn't have anything else to display at their booth, the fact that they had to stoop so low as to regurgitate this old kind of cheap robotics and slap an LLM in there and then call it a day so that they have very little to actually show for us.

[Jordan]

Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

And you see this walking through, like, the central hall set. The Samsung booth isn't there. The Nikon booth isn't there. The Sony booth is mostly a car. Like, there's a lot of these big companies are really absent from actual products. Panasonic has a really big booth, but it's mostly about, like, servers. It's mostly about how. How they're. How they're improving, how they're improving data farming. There's no stuff.

[Jordan]

And a lot of the stuff that does exist you even have to separate further from stuff that exists and actually might be useful to stuff that exists and might be useful because it solves a problem that the thing that it is already created. Like, for example, a bunch. I came to several different companies that had car AI assistants whose job was to yell at you if you fell asleep or got distracted. And they were all built into these giant dashboard Things that were. The whole dashboard is a computer screen. And it's like, yeah, I can see why you need a robot to yell people to get distracted. Because we have data.

[Garrison Davis]

Because you're putting subway surfers on your fucking car. Dash.

[Jordan]

We have ample data that shows that when you have a giant screen in a car and people use that screen, they are actually worse drivers than when they're just drunk in a normal car.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Yeah.

[Jordan]

And so, yes, you have made the car. You can show me how this whole dashboard, you can change it in a second. Look at all these different modes you have. You can smartly change your dashboard, do whatever you want, and it'll yell at you if you get distracted, it's like, well, but the only reason you're getting distracted is because your entire car is a computer screen, which it shouldn't be, and we know it shouldn't be.

[Garrison Davis]

They're either trying to solve problems that they created or inventing solutions to things that aren't really problems. And like with, and this is specifically with Cloyd, and they kept. The guy who was like doing the demo kept reiterating that Cloyd already knows what you want before you have to say anything, right? Whether that's a croissant that's slightly under baked or he knows how to fold laundry just the way you want, you like it badly. Which is what she. Which he said in a kind of self aware, ironic tone. Because this robot spent two minutes trying to fold a single towel and it couldn't do it. These things don't work and they're not meant to. It's meant to drive traffic and attention towards the LG brand because there's gonna be tons of articles being like, look at LG's new butler robot, right? And that, and that's, that's all that they're doing at this demo. Because this is not a real product for sale. Yeah, it is. It is meant to drive attention to the brand and get articles and then those articles are going to get, you know, cited by, by other, by other LLMs. And it's this, it's this cycle that just keeps building.

[Jordan]

There's some really impressive stuff there too. Like I went to Persona AI's booth, which had a bunch of computers that had without that were not connected to the Internet. All the signs told you that. And it has on PC AI image generators where it's all on the machine itself. And you know, one of the representatives said, come on, give it a prompt, it'll generate an image. And I've never used an AI image generator. And so I kind of panicked. I'll be honest. Like, I got freaked out.

[Garrison Davis]

This is gonna be some bullshit.

[Jordan]

I did pull some bullshit here. I would do Tom Sizemore with dead kid. Yeah, I know now that's not Tom Sizemore, but that is a man cuddling a dead child. The kid doesn't. The face is gone. And that's not Tom Sizemore, like, but, you know, the future. The future.

[Garrison Davis]

No, this. This. I can't. I don't want to harp on Cloyd too much, but it's so. It's such a good time.

[Jordan]

Every additional time you say Cloyd, it sounds less like a word.

[Garrison Davis]

Such a good example of what this show is specifically this year, how there's. There's. There's nothing new. So they're reaching into, like. Into, like, the CES of. Of yesteryear.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

And trying to push two things together and pretend that it's a new thing. And when it doesn't work, they're like, oh, this is actually a good thing. It's. He's. He's folding the towel just the way I like. And that's kind of poorly. Look, he spends 90 seconds putting a single shirt into the washing machine. And this is him being very thorough. That was. That was the word. He's being very thorough.

[Jordan]

He really puts in the time.

[Garrison Davis]

And you're like, this thing doesn't work.

[Jordan]

It's bad. It's a bad product. Part of the mistake they made, I think, is that because this is the year of robots, there are robots there that are, like, industrial application robots that are showcasing. We have made a robot with humanoid hands that is capable of more intricate movements than any other human hand robot before. And they showed it, like, intricately folding, like a pinwheel. And I was like, yeah, that. I have not seen a robot with humanoid hands that has had that much dexterity before. I'm sure that has some useful industrial applications. And then you go from that, and there's a bunch of other robots that are industrial, where it's like, we have built a new tip for this robot that allows it to do this kind of automotive work or allows it to do this kind of, like, manufacturing work. Right. Where I'm like, I assume, not being an expert on robotics, but you're saying it's the world's first robot that can handle this task, that that's at least an innovation. They talk about the ethics of replacing, but, like, that's a thing. That is a new capability. And you have those robots next to the robots that human beings are actually meant to buy and put in their homes. None of which work. Well, all of which are exactly as capable as robots 20 years ago. Except there's a chatbot on them. And it makes it all look worse. Where you're showing me what theoretically the best in robotics can do and then I'm looking at the thing I'm supposed to have in my house and it just fell down and it can't fold laundry. And you want me to spend $6,000 or $12,000? 1 of the robot, the. I think it was like Booster X or something like that. The one that was dressed like Michael Jackson you're supposed to have as a companion for your child. It'll help it with its homework using ChatGPT.

[Garrison Davis]

That small dancing robot.

[Jordan]

The small dancing robot, Yeah, I saw it. Yes, yes, the small dancing robot that you can hit in the head with a liquor bottle and it won't break. That was part of the ad video.

[Garrison Davis]

You know how you always want to hit your kid in the head with a liquor bottle? Now this anger with this tiny child sized robot.

[Jordan]

Yeah.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Robot Sin Eater for your child.

[Jordan]

And again, if someone was marketing a robot senator, like, are you angry at your spouse? You can beat the shit out of this robot. Fine. At least that's an idea.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Yeah, with AI technology, the robot will actually learn your spouse's personality and respond accordingly to the beatings.

[Jordan]

Look, look, I've been hitting this robot after I come back from work every day for the last two weeks. And look, as soon as I walk in the door, it starts to shake.

[Ben Rose Porter]

The previous models, it just. It wasn't satisfying.

[Jordan]

Yeah, it took a long time for our team to figure out how to give a robot ptsd. By God, we've crossed the Rubicon.

[Garrison Davis]

As you can see, Vegas is taking its toll on our psyches as we've done a extended intimate partner abuse bit.

[Jordan]

It's not a partner. It's a robot, Garrison.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, you're right, it's not a part of it.

[Jordan]

But also the robot can think and feel and has core memories and can love.

[Garrison Davis]

You don't put those two things together. These only exist as separate thoughts.

[Jordan]

No, this robot basically has a soul. Watches hidd with a liquor bottle.

[Ben Rose Porter]

It would just be so great to like with all of the. How much the. They're focused on the. The AI can develop real human connection, but it's also saccharine. I would love to just do a booth where it's like we're teaching our robots hate. They know how to hate.

[Jordan]

Yeah. And I do want to end by noting one thing that we talked about a little briefly, but is kind of low key. The most upsetting thing about this, which is I saw a bunch of different booths that use the term empathy. And what they meant by empathy was the robot can understand and anticipate what you want. Right. That it's learning you and your patterns in order to offer you and more effectively assist you. And I guess technically, yeah. But reducing the concept of empathy to the robot knows when you might want snacks is kind of evil. Like, it's like a minor evil Fritos, Right? Right. Empathy means the robot knows when to serve you is like a bad way to talk about empathy. I don't think most people. When you think, what is empathy? Well, it means someone knows when I want to be upsold on a Hyundai. That's not what empathy is.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Our robot learns empathy by being instrumental to you and useful. See, we famously, you know, the core of empathy.

[Jordan]

We made our robot watch four hours of videos from Gaza and it immediately said, I bet those kids want a Hyundai Elantra like that. I. Anyway, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

If your version of empathy is trying to sell Coke vanilla because we have all of this, all this stuff, way too much.

[Jordan]

We up, we are in trouble. We're underwater.

[Garrison Davis]

That's what empathy is.

[Jordan]

Yeah. Anyway, welcome to the future, everyone.

[Garrison Davis]

It's a CES miracle.

[Jordan]

It's a CES miracle. Goodbye. It could happen. Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can now find sources for. It could happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.