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By: Daniel W. Rasmus for Serious Insights
Yes, AI will continue to dominate CES. AI is the new electricity. It will be embedded in most products, eventually becoming as expected and as non-differentiating as our power source of choice. But, like electricity, it will fade into the background as how it enables value comes to the fore.
Because AI was everywhere all at once, it dominated the dialog and distracted from the essence of CES, which, despite the admonition not to say Consumer Electronics Show from the CTA is a consumer electronics show.
People want to see, touch, and experience technology. Virtual reality faced its challenges because only those in the headsets received an experience, meaningful or otherwise. Those without headsets only observed people making what might, in other situations, be considered stupid gestures or acting in a way that might get them interviewed if they behaved in such a disconnected way in, for example, a diner.
AI doesn’t exist as hardware by itself. While there will be AI appliances, and it could be argued that an Amazon Echo is an AI appliance, the AI part of it is a service delivered through a device. The AI doesn’t show up in pictures of an Echo, like new contours or buttons do.
AI can exist in hardware, as some chips incorporate algorithms in silicon. But that experience goes like this: a chip manufacturer produces an image of a chip and says, “Our latest NPU! Look, a lot of neural processors.” That’s it. Until some application leverages the NPU for something interesting, it’s not much of a demo.
Besides robots and various analogs to robots, like intelligent drones, AI doing something is hard to photograph and touch…
To read more about AI and how AI does not need CES, but CES needs AI, check out: AI and CES 2024: Will AI Continue to Dominate CES?
About the author:
Daniel W. Rasmus, the author of Listening to the Future, is a strategist and industry analyst who has helped clients put their future in context. Rasmus uses scenarios to analyze trends in society, technology, economics, the environment, and politics in order to discover implications used to develop and refine products, services, and experiences. He leverages this work and methodology for content development, workshops, and for professional development.
Interested in AI? Daniel W. Rasmus is a member of the Advisory Board for our AI Impact 2024 event! Check out what Daniel, the rest of the Board, and TechTalk Summits have up our sleeves for this groundbreaking AI experience.
