"We're by no means AI luddites at Engadget, but it's fair to say that our team is more excited by tangible products that enrich our lives than iterative improvements to large language models. So, away from all of the bombast of NVIDIA's marathon keynote and Lenovo's somehow simultaneously gaudy and dull Sphere show, it's been a pleasure to evaluate the crowd of weird new gadgets, appliances, toys and robots vying for our attention."
"More than one company even decided to forgo announcing things during their conferences to make way for more AI chatter, only to publish press releases later quietly admitting that, yes, actually, they did make some consumer technology. It's appropriate, I guess, that as we're beginning to feel the knock-on cost effects of the AI industry's insatiable appetite for compute resources - higher utility bills and device prices - companies would rather use their flashy conferences to reinforce AI's supposedly must-have attributes rather than actually inform the public about their new products."
"Over the course of several days of exhaustive discussion and impassioned pitching, our CES team has whittled down the hundreds of products we saw to pick our favorites. Starting with an initial shortlist of around 50 candidates across a diverse range of product categories, we eventually landed on 15 winners and our singular best in show."
More than 4,000 exhibitors attended CES in Las Vegas to showcase new consumer technology. Major company press conferences emphasized AI buzzwords and offered few concrete product announcements. Several companies delayed formal product disclosures, later issuing press releases that acknowledged actual consumer devices. Rising compute demand from AI is contributing to higher utility bills and increased device prices. Coverage prioritized tangible gadgets, appliances, toys, and robots over incremental improvements to large language models. After extensive evaluation, an initial shortlist of about fifty candidates was reduced to fifteen winners and a single best-in-show, with more coverage forthcoming.
Read at Engadget
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