Techstrong Gang – January 16, 2025

Hello, everybody. I'm Mike Vard. Today we're talking about, well, the TikTok ban seems to be likely to happen.

We'll find out later, I'm sure, but right now it's a whole big, huge debate. Then we're gonna have a little trip to Carnegie Mellon about robots and ai. And finally, a little CES retrospective.

You're watching Textron Game. All right, everybody, welcome back. We have a small gang today.

We got Lisa Martin is with us from the Futurum Group, where she is the CMO advisor, and we're gonna be talking about a lot of marketing issues today. So great to have you here, Lisa. How are you?

Great, great, Mike. I'm excited to dig into today's topics. All right.

And John Schwartz, who is some sort of regal person in Silicon Valley, and You've been listening to, uh, Alan's, uh, bantering. Yeah, that's, yeah, he's, he's, he's elevated me to a state that I have never been associated with, nor probably ever will. Gee.

Yeah, I, I'll take it. I have to say I missed the ceremony and I was hurt that I didn't get invited, so, you know. No, I'm sorry.

Next time didn't invite either. I invited you to be V IP front row. There you go.

All right. Well, let's jump jump into our first topic here, which is this whole TikTok ban. And this has been a long time incoming, and apparently, uh, some folks are saying it's a good thing.

Some folks are saying it's a bad thing. Other things folks are saying, we need to postpone it a little while, so it can just become an American company. But, uh, Lisa, I know you've been following this.

What's going on here? What's the pace of this and what, what is the concern? So the concern there, it's, it's a very polarizing issue, Mike, as you kind of alluded to, there are, it, it, on one hand, president Biden signed in, uh, about a year ago, um, a ban effective, uh, event or sale mandate effective January 19th, which isn't a couple days from now because of concerns for national security.

Um, you know, the challenge, the, the concern that some legislators have, and the Supreme Court is hearing this now, is that tiktoks proprietary algorithm is really way more advanced than a lot of other apps and how it is targeting you with data collected by you and surfing up ads and things like that. And the US government is saying that is way more dangerous and effective. Um, come this Friday, the Supreme Court will hear from TikTok and its Chinese parent company, byan, who's seeking to, to, to block the law that Biden signed in, as I mentioned, a, a minute ago.

And, um, but TikTok is also saying, so it's a ban or sale issue. TikTok is saying we cannot be sold. It's not technologically possible.

It's not, um, uh, commercially possible either. And even if it was to be sold, say the Elon Musk, there are rumors about that it would only be the US version of the platform, which would not include the algorithm, which is the secret sauce. Then you have other legislators like Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, who is planning to produce legislation to delay the ban or sale by an additional 270 days, which would put it in the administration of President Trump, who in 2020 was against it and got a lot of support on TikTok for the election, and is now on the side of keeping it.

So it's such an interesting, uh, polarizing topic. Then you have the content creator perspective at a really interesting conversation earlier this morning with a very popular TikTok, where he's got about 110,000 followers and said, you know, there's a, there's an economy here that isn't reported in the labor markets. And so if the, the app were to be shut down, uh, if it were, if the band goes into effect on, uh, the 19th, then Apple and Google would have to remove it from the US app stores, and, uh, US internet browsers would not be able to surf up the TikTok website.

So content creators would lose income. There are creators like Charlie d Emilio, Addison Wright, who are getting hundreds of thousands of dollars per video. So this content creator that I was talking to said it's such an engaging algorithm for community development that it would be analogous to mass layoffs, even though we won't see those figures.

So you've got folks that are staunchly on the side of sales on the side of ban, and we have a matter of just hours before this comes to, uh, home plate. Alright. John, what is your take on this?

And I just find the whole bite dance argument here somewhat, uh, duplicitous to be frank. I mean, six months ago they were saying, uh, whoa, it's all in the us so it's all different. So it's not connected to China, so you don't have to worry about it.

And now they're saying, oh, you can't sell the company because our algorithms and actually all these things are intertwined. So it seems to me that that's kind of silly, but what is the take on, at one point, uh, Larry Ellison was supposed to buy it, and now we got Elon Musk car to buy it, and who's gonna step up to buy it, and what would you actually get if you bought it? Okay.

So I understand the motivation for somebody like Musk to buy the company or to have the US version of it as, as Lisa pointed out, which would be about 170 million users, including people like my son who's 24, and I believe your son Mike uses it as well. They really don't care who owns it. But I think Musk, the appeal for Musk would be just think about the instant credibility or benefit to the advertising for X, which has been flagging, it's been miserable the last couple of years, and also think about some of the data that would be generated that could be used for X ai.

So there's that benefit. I also think, uh, Meta's gonna be watching this really closely. So meta really has no traction as far as I'm concerned, among younger users.

They, they, they prefer TikTok, and I'm wondering if they, I mean, they're probably, they're, they're acquiescing to Trump in many ways. We could. We've already probably talked about that.

So I think they're watching, hopefully hoping for a ban. I think what's gonna happen, there's also a rumor, by the way, uh, Politico has written that, uh, Steve Mnuchin, who served in the Trump administration, I believe his treasury secretary was interested in perhaps buying TikTok. I suspect, and I, I'm not a gambler, uh, that they're gonna punt this down the road and leave it to Trump.

I mean, I've seen Trump, um, change his position on this among other things. I think that's, that's probably what may happen rather than this kind of in imminent showdown. But, uh, it has a ripple effect, you know, has a ripple effect here in the Valley and throughout social media.

Um, it's, the absence of it, especially for young users is just, it, it just decentivizes any ch choice of using social media for, for the most part. So, um, again, I think they might go the path of what Mark is suggesting. Mm-hmm.

As it turns out, my 14-year-old is also a big user of Discord. So you go figure, you know, they're, they're, the kids are changing their platforms. Which comes to my next question, Lisa.

So, um, allegedly there's something called Red Book out here that people are being encouraged to move over to, and I'm not quite clear what the relationship between the people who make Red Book is and by dance, but what is that for real? Yeah, It is for real. It's called Red Note, and it actually was, became the most downloaded app in the Apple App store a couple of days ago.

So these TikTok refugees who don't seem, who probably are concerned with making money, aren't concerned with geopolitical considerations, but it's not, red Note, from what I understand, is not a quo of TikTok. It's really a mix of lifestyle content, videos, community building tools, but it's really resonating with tiktoks, what is this displaced audience. And it's gotten the attention of investors.

It's reportedly in 2024, it was valued at 17 billion. And despite being owned by, uh, a company in China, it's Rise suggests that again, those content creators are more concerned with making money on the platform, which I, I mentioned earlier that there's a tremendous amount of money in there. Now what we don't know is from a safety perspective, I hear the algorithm is quote impeccable.

Um, meaning that what it's really doing is fostering that community sense of community, um, that TikTok users have loved and have benefited from. Um, but it's gonna be, but another thing that's really curious here that we don't know yet, Mike and John, is that the T's and cess are in Mandarin. So every US user, and John said there's 170 million American users of TikTok don't really know what they're signing up for.

So it's a bit of a black hole, but because the TikTok users don't seem to be concerned with geopolitical considerations, they want to go where the community is and where the money opportunities are. John, we've talked about this in the past, but I always found this whole quote unquote algorithm approach to things to being somewhat problematic in the sense that people don't know what they're signing up for. That there is this algorithm that is manipulating content and behavior in a way that drives a specific outcome.

And I guess they're entertained, but at the end of the day, um, is by dance any better or worse than what Facebook's trying to do? Or no acts for that matter. It seems like, you know, they're all kind of, this is, you know, they're all the same ones of Kettle.

Yeah. They're all swimming in the same lane. I mean, that was one of the things that Sheryl Sandberg, who used to be the chief operating officer of, of then Facebook and then met her for a while, she'd always talk about the people are the, the, the people are the product.

I mean, the, the people who sign up for these, these services, regardless of where they are, it's free and they are feeding into the system. They are being used as part of the product that is the, um, tangent in, in a sense, tangible agreement or partnership they've signed up for. Even though they don't read the fine print, they never read the fine print.

Most of us don't. I don't. And so, yes, I, I think you're right.

It's hard to distinguish one service from another, from another. And I think in the end, if there is a ban or if there is a, a push to, to go to an alternative, people will find a way to go somewhere else. I mean, we see this even with the extreme version of older users who've left x I've semi left it, I, I rarely use it.

I went to Blue Sky, which is, which is fine. I don't use threads at all. There's a lot of pushback on, in terms of meta, a lot of folks leaving that now for various reasons.

So they will migrate, they will migrate somewhere else. But I think in the end, I mean, maybe we're reaching the age or the, the stage where people are just kind of have fatigue over all these services for multiple reasons. And when they find that they're not using it, they may not miss it as much as they thought they would.

So, um, with TikTok, I'm, and I think we're, I think we're gonna still see some version of it. I just dunno what tangible sense. Well, I mean, I'm on Facebook still otherwise sometimes referred to as Boomer book, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that everybody I know is still on there and that's how we kind of interact with each other and shifting and lifting that whole thing would be a major challenge.

But at the other side of it, I feel like the younger generation maybe is more willing to, uh, use multiple platforms and kind of is more, uh, multi social media channel lingua, I don't know what the word is, but Lisa, is there a difference in the genders and the demographics and the age of who uses what? Yes, there definitely are. Um, I never felt cool enough for TikTok, so maybe that's because I'm Gen X, I'm not, I don't know.

I never got sucked into, um, this constant scrolling. We know that a lot of the younger users have moved, as you both said, off of Facebook onto TikTok, discord, other platforms where they're engaging with more like-minded folks. The interesting thing about Red Note is that it's predominantly female.

I think the number I saw of its 300 million users, and this is before the TikTok refugees whenever was about 79% female. So I think we're gonna see that dynamic potentially shift, um, depending on what happens on January 19th. But we do see gender and aged based decisions and interactions on different social platforms.

Um, I'm a big Instagram fan. Maybe that's 'cause I'm Gen X, I'm not sure, but it'll be interesting to see what happens if, if everything is delayed, um, will Red Note and TikTok become equal at some point? It's gonna be a really interesting showdown, and I'm one that I'm particularly keen to watch.

Mm. John, what's your read on Washington here? Because, um, from what I see so far, Democrats and Republicans are all over the map on this particular issue, and there isn't a lot of agreements.

So, uh, you know, will people not vote for candidates who decided to ban TikTok or, uh, and will that become a political calculation? That's a good question. I, I, it's, it's, it's hard to read through the tea leaves.

That's why I suspect we're gonna, this is gonna be punted down the road because in, in true Washington fashion or their normative behavior is to not make a decision, right? Or, or to, to not address a problem. They will address it in a public hearing, but they won't do anything tangible in terms of a legislation.

And I, that's why I think they might push this down the road to give themselves by themselves some time. And I think in a sense, the influence, and this is gonna a weird thing, is that the influence of TikTok has benefited candidates like Trump, especially among younger mobilized voters, which I never thought would happen, especially male voters. Um, there's this whole nother world of social media, of, of sites and services that people like us in our age, at least, Mike and i's age, I'm not gonna say it's about you, Lisa, um, have kind of, kind of, kind of adhered to, right?

They, they, they follow this, this stuff that, and, and I think there's this strong, strong, um, membership as part of this, these communities. So I think Washington, maybe they don't wanna disrupt it too much, although they do wanna disrupt and have disrupted the way Meta goes about doing its business. Um, and also this is a big boost for x and I, I suspect if there is some sort of partnership between X and TikTok, it is, is a, a political calculation.

I mean, as we talked about before, Musk spent $250 million to be to whisper in the ear of Trump, and he has a lot of influence. And I would not be surprised if we see some sort of steroid version of X in some sort of iteration of a US TikTok company. All right.

We'll see, Lisa, there's been a lot of noise about a lot of things involving China, and this is only one of them. Um, is this gonna become a bigger marketing issue as when we sit back and we start thinking about, well, you know, where did this thing come from? Whether it's network processors from, uh, some manufacturer in China, or, you know, chips that we're not gonna give them access to early enough.

And aren't we on the cusp of some more larger issue here in this, this whole TikTok thing, just a piece of a larger puzzle? It, that's a great point, Mike. It could be the piece of a larger puzzle.

I think, as I was mentioning earlier, if we look at the demographics of TikTok and all those refugees that are now flocking to Red Note, they don't seem to be concerned a a about the geopolitical issues. So I don't know if it would become a marketing issue, if, if social media companies would have to be much clearer with their users and their followers about where data is coming from, where it's being processed, who's owning it. I think we will see, um, I think we'll be informed by what happens over the weekend if there is a ban that goes into effect or if there is a, uh, is a delay.

Um, but I think what we're seeing is the younger users just don't seem to be concerned that this is a ch that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company. That Red Note is owned by a Chinese company. They want to have the opportunities to engage with their community and to make money.

And that seems to be the priority of the followers. The majority of the followers. And we've got 170 million American users of TikTok.

Yeah, Well, John, I was having a chat with my kids about this, and they weren't making much of a distinction between, whether it was by dance and the Chinese that had their data, or Elon Musk or Zuckerberg, they don't Care. They don't care. They don't, they care.

They All, they all they want to do is discover, scroll and watch videos. I mean, that's how they consume news. They don't, they don't read newspapers or, or go to conventional news websites.

You know, you mentioned that, um, this, this whole idea of China and, and, uh, we, the, the, the chips export the security lists involving Chinese companies that might have ties to the military. Um, we're gonna see more of this and it's can only accelerate with the tariffs up to 60% against, uh, up against China. Um, I think in, in, in a sense this is, this is a moving target that every tech company's gonna have to contend with, especially companies like Nvidia and Apple that have these huge presences in, in Mainland Chi China.

Um, this, this, this is kind of an interesting sidelight. This is getting a lot of attention because of the popularity of TikTok, but I think it's part of an undercurrents of constant conflict and, and it's only gonna accelerate with AI development in this fear that the US is gonna fall behind China. And, and again, everything's about ai, everything is reflected through the lens, the prism of ai, whether it's politics, economics, culture, thought leadership.

So TikTok is just a little bit, a little part of it, and, but I, I think we're gonna see some form of it so our younger users will be happy. Alright, well, Lisa, lemme ask you this. Do the marketers care about this anymore than the kids care about it?

Or are they just gonna go follow wherever the audience is and away we go? Or are they gonna be, you know, more subject to a conversation with, I don't know, the FTC or somebody? That's a great question, Mike.

I think right now is that it's, they're gonna go where the followers go. They're gonna follow the money trail, they're gonna follow what the followers are asking them to do. Um, I think that that's probably what we're gonna see because ultimately every marketer wants to show customer value.

And if the customers are demanding a TikTok or a Red note or both, marketers are gonna follow that because that's where the money is. All right. Well, I think I'm gonna end this here, but I find it ironic that the thing that we're asking people to move to is called Red Note, because you know, that is the favorite color of the Chinese Communist Party.

But there you go. Alright folks, we'll be back in a minute. Modernize your business to fuel innovation and elevate customer experiences with the builder community.

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All right, folks, we're back. And if you visit Techstrong AI or maybe some of our other sites, you'll see a lot of content there from our good friend John here. But he recently paid a visit to Carnegie Mellon University and, um, checked out their robots and ai and, and as I understand it, you actually got a ride from something, but I'll let you explain for that.

Yeah, It was, it was pretty interesting. So I have gone back to Pittsburgh three or four times over the last decade because I'm interested in Carnegie Mellon. I got invited there for this reporting fellowship around robotics 10 years ago.

So for me, this is a really interesting contrast to what I last saw there and kind of the state of things back then. It was kind of an anomaly. It was, it was a kind of a niche, cute market.

I mean, uh, based on the opinions of people out here in the West Coast, you know, something that was gonna happen eventually it will happen. Well, it is happening now and it is accelerating and I think, think we're gonna talk about CES later and like the physical AI element of it and the idea that we're moving from generative AI to agent to physical AI in physical AI or robots. So I went to Carnegie Mellon and I had a couple of things, hands-on experience, including one thing that was really interesting.

It was a robot doesn't have a name yet, but it's being, uh, conceptualized for healthcare use. Basically, one of the things, and I'm going through this personally, is having a family member being transported from their bed to their wheelchair or from their wheelchair to the bed, which is incredibly hard to do. It usually takes two medical personnel, especially if it involves like a back or hip injury.

So there's this device, basically you're in a wheelchair, you are backed up to a bed, and this device slowly and easily moves you from the wheelchair into the bed and then props you up in the bed within two minutes. And I'm telling you that this transformation of the transition of doing that, watching somebody do it, the human do, it was kind of lurching and kind of alarming going through this process. It just felt like I was being eased or sl sliding on a conveyor belt into a bed.

And the bed basically had almost a personality underneath me. And this was all done within two minutes. So there was that, wait, quick question.

Did it tuck you in and read you a bedtime stirring or plucked the pillow? I seriously, they said, what degree of comfort would you like? Mm-hmm.

And it moved me to the exact PO point that I, that I preferred. So there was that, and then there was something called Halo, which is a, uh, PhD project. It's a, it's a, it's a humanoid basically there, it's a student with Apple Vision Pro goggles who's using hand motions to teach this humanoid how to act and avoid collision with humans.

And the idea is you put this into an industrial task. So the robot works side by side with the human, or for security reasons, you use the, the bot, whatever it is. It's basically something that moves and it moves in human type gestures.

It was doing tai chi, it was boxing and, um, it, it's, it's, it's, if you went near the robot or try to touch it, it would move away from mutual void contacts. Um, they're also teaching this robot how to work in a kind of a sense, uh, kind of an assembly line where if it's moving cans or items, if the human comes by, it avoids contact with the human and avoids knocking over the, the items. So that was pretty cool.

Uh, there was also a, a fruit picking bot, and it's apples and grapes are hard to pick. You have to do it by hand in some cases, or in the, in the case of apples, you have to reach up under trees. This technology, you sound as much as anything else because it's really hard to see an apple in a tree sometimes or reach it in a certain manner.

So this, this is another product. So what's interesting to me too was these are these products now, like 10 years ago, literally at Carnegie Mellon, they would build a raw robots from scratch. Now they have basically these starter kits.

So they'll buy, uh, from a, a third party, the basis of a robot for 20 $50,000. And then they'll build the intelligent of the learning into it for the specific tasks. And in, in a sense, what they're doing is they're showing you the physical manifestation of what we've been told will happen.

Now, the, the difference between Pittsburgh and I think the approach there, especially Carnegie Mellon and pits, is that they know hardware is hard, expensive, and it requires something that's in short supply in Silicon Valley patients, right? They also understand this stuff is expensive and it's gonna take time. So in a sense, they're kind of doing the grunt work to take us into these new era of using of robotics in terms of, uh, these tasks.

And the other thing that's interesting to me is that Pittsburgh has multiple universities. They've got like seven or eight in the city or in the area, and they've got a lot of warehouse space that has been unused after the steel industry didn't leave, but didn't kind of deserted the area. So in a sense, the warehouse space is ideal to safely test the robots.

So you've got a lot of these factors all kind of coming together. You've got the intellectual power, got the space, and you've got the infrastructure. The one thing that actually seems to be missing, and they're working on it, and there seems to be an obsession, is the use of a hand or a claw to do the manipulation.

So, um, last example, I'll mention, uh, uh, PhD student who's about to graduate, let me manipulate a robot, uh, and use of fingers. And, and one of the tasks it's gonna do is it's going to, um, apply, uh, drugs to, um, an IV like through the use of a syringe. It's not into the human, but into the iv.

So there are all these things going on, they are a couple years away. Um, but it puts a practical face for me on something that we're hearing a lot about, which is kind of, you know, kind of proof of concept that we're hearing from places like Nvidia and Tesla and others. Mm-hmm.

So let me ask you, what is your sense of how long it will take these technologies to get from the lab into you? In the case of the, uh, robotic hospital aid? How long, you know, what, what's the timeline?

Yeah, so that's something that I kept pressing, and I would get variations from three years to five years. And the thought there was, you know, they're gonna have a lot of examples or a lot of attempts that are just gonna fail or they're gonna fall short. Um, and you're gonna learn from the first version, like any type of technology, the first wave has its flaws, and eventually we get it right and we perfect it, or as close to perfection as we can.

And I think that's kind of the mindset here. Um, especially in uses of agricultural, um, tech. It's also, you know, the, the, uh, reception or the, uh, reaction of the workers.

You know, we, we can, we can test something as much as we like in a lab, but the real test comes when you actually put it in a real life circumstance. So we're gonna see this play out, and it's gonna take a lot, take a lot longer than this kind of brings me back to like this digital workforce we keep hearing about from Salesforce or Nvidia. I think they're referring to more like these kind of tasks that are involve things like email or transcripts or kinda low level thinking, not, but when it comes to robots, this is just a totally different ball game to me.

Mm-hmm. Lisa, I can see robots on the backside of making manufacturing a car, or to John's point, yes, working in the field and agriculture. But once we start integrating robots in with people, um, will there be kind of a marketing challenge that goes with that?

'cause if people are gonna have to have some level of confidence in these things, and are we gonna personalize these robots and call 'em by their, uh, name, or are they just gonna be, you know, machines or things that, and objects that we consider to be, you know, disposable? That's a great question. I can see it going both ways because as consumers, we all expect, and marketers have to do hyper personalization to reach their target audiences with highly contextual, relevant content.

And so we as humans kind of crave that personalization. Um, I think that we're going to see when humans and robots come together, I think a dynamic there that will probably favor some level of personalization, customization with, um, appearance to the way that it interacts, the way that it communicates, whatever LLMs it's using to have this conversation with a human. Uh, I think we're a ways away from that, but I can see, um, that personalization coming from the marketing side and into the relationship side as this relationship AI really takes off.

Hmm. I can see that. You know, you know, Mike, go Ahead.

You know, Mike, you know, you know something really weird. It just, that question sparked something that made me think about Halo, which is this three and a half foot tall humanoid that when I first saw it, I was kind of a little taken aback and a little bit somewhat intimidated by it, but the more the people who worked with it talked about it, they were talking about developing its face, its hands, like little things that were not technical. And, and by the time we were finished with this hour long demo, you kind of got the impression from them that they were, they were, had built this in a, I don't know how to put this, like a weird re like, um, relationship with it.

Like they've, they've also like a, a kinship to it, that it was like a, a child, it was like their child, like their offspring, and they were creating, it was like Dr. Frankenstein a little bit, but, um, it was, it was, it was like, uh, they had a sense of empathy and, and they wanted it to learn and they were so proud when it learned something. I don't think, I've never thought of it that way until I saw it up close.

Oh, No. Do any of these people have families of their own? 'cause that's how you feel about your kids, you know?

I hope so. I don't think they did. No, these are all young Polish.

These are like college students. But in a, in a, in a weird sense though, I actually pull a little bit of a kinship or a little bit of like, oh yeah, hey, I, I, I was kind of rooting for alo to, to, to make some strides. All right.

Uh, I love dogs, don't get me wrong, and I'm probably gonna love robots, but they're not quite the same thing as having a baby, you know? Yeah, I know. Exactly.

I know. I mean, I, we've got kids, but it's, um, there was also behind humanoid, there was the robo dog. So one of the things that Carnegie Mellon, oh, you walk on the, you walk around the campus and it was freezing, but if you walk on campus, you'll see like these little robo dogs being tested on the, on the sidewalk.

So fun. Too funny. Yeah, it Was cool.

Yeah. Um, Lisa, this is more psychological than marketing per se, but aren't we also in danger of going the other way? And I will take no responsibility for anything.

'cause if it goes wrong and the robot did it. Mm-hmm. Well, to John's point, and this is something that I saw at CES that we'll talk about on the next blog, there is a sense of pride with the creators of these robots.

And what one of the companies that I saw that we'll cover in the next segment and talked about is relationship ai. These are, they're, they're becoming companions. There's a market for this, which I couldn't believe.

So I think that from a psychological perspective, um, I don't know, I think we're gonna see more of that partnership come into play, because I think that's the nature of, of human psychology. Even though we'd be interacting with robots, I think we're a little ways away from that, but I can see a sense of, um, kinship developing there. And John, you said you kind of saw the same thing with these folks that are developing these humanoid robots and they're proud of their accomplishments, they're proud of what the robots can do, but I to your point, Mike, I don't know, I, I would hope that humans would take some responsibility if something untoward happens because of a robot's actions, um, that they would then want to correct whatever anomaly occurred and, and take that responsibility.

You know, there's, there was something I I, I, um, I wish Alan were here just for this one little thing I was gonna mention, but there's a section of Pittsburgh car called Lawrenceville, which used to be a hotbed for steelworkers. It's a series of row houses, and I think it's in like, like the northwestern part of the city, and it was kind of deserted. It was kind of left for dead after the steel industry.

That's because we're gonna use robots to make steel, but that's another issue. Yeah. So that's the other thing.

That's the weird thing is now it's become, because there's so many warehouses there, now, it's the young place to be in terms of robotics. So it's kind of come full circle, right? Somebody mentioned the 1905 Detroit moment for Pittsburgh, which is a, you know, it's hyperbole, but given the focus, and here's another thing, Nvidia has announced its first, and to this point, only a partnership with the city is with Pittsburgh.

And they wanna go pull, pull force into not only robotics on the ground, but under, under the ground in terms of water treatment. I saw a lot of robots that were being designed to do water treatment for safety reasons, and also because these are small gaps that they're working under. But also the Pittsburgh is opening a new airport at the end of the year, which will be having, um, its share of robotics in terms of robotics, cleaning.

And um, you know, we always see the, at SFO, we have the Cafe XI remember writing about that years ago, like basically a robot that makes you coffee. Um, those are starting to pop up at airports, but it's, it, it is, is a real thing. It is something that is happening.

But again, I always want to caution that this stuff doesn't happen overnight. And the one word that kept coming up was patience, because this involves a lot of testing, a lot of money, a lot of, um, a lot of, uh, serendipity probably in the ends. Um, but it is happening, it's happening much at, at a much real level.

And we see it with autonomous vehicles. And I think that is, we, we've become used to that, accustomed to that. So when you start seeing, um, robotic, um, apparatus doing certain things, it won't be as shocking as it used to be, or thought it would've been.

Well, I think, and Lisa, maybe you have something to say this, but these things have to get to the point where this, they're disposable because now they cost millions of dollars to build. And when are you gonna do, you're gonna, like in New York, they had a robot running around the subway, but by the time everybody got done kicking the thing, they were like, oh, this thing isn't really gonna stand up to that kind of wear and tear. So, um, so Lisa, I mean, you know, part of the issue of taking these things to market is they're gonna have to get to some level of cost that is affordable.

And so when something goes wrong with one, it's not that big a deal to replace it. Exactly. It, it's, it's a scale perspective.

And I think, John, you brought up a great point about patients, and I think think that's something that we're gonna have to take into strong consideration to your, to your point, Mike, they need to be cost effective. They need to be, uh, be able to be produced and put into market at scale. So companies are gonna have to be not just considering that, but making sure it's a reality.

And, but there's also the patience and the sort of, um, acclimatization, I guess I, I would think between the humans and the robots to be, um, really copacetic and, and, and coexisting together and understanding on the human side what the robots there to do from an assistance perspective. But I think that, I think we're a ways away, but I, I like the patience factor. I think that it's definitely something that every company that's working in robotics is gonna have to take into effect.

And then it becomes a marketing opportunity to condition, if you will. And that sounds, maybe that's the wrong word. Um, and, and you customers are, or pe people to be able to coexist and understand the benefits that they'll get from coexisting with robots.

It's gonna be a really interesting space to watch, and I'm sure you'll be not short of lots of exciting developments in the future. I'm, I'm, I'm pretty sure that the people side of that equation is gonna be the harder one, but we'll see. It will absolutely be the hardest part.

You bring up a great point. All right, folks, we'll be back in a minute. We're gonna talk about CES in a retrospective because, well, it's one thing to be at a show, it's another thing to have a look at it in the rear view mirror 'cause things have a little more perspective back in a minute.

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All right, folks, we're back. And Lisa Martin was at CES and had a moment now to kind of take a look back and say, here's all the things we did look at and maybe add a little more context and, um, perception around what matters. Because I think when you're there, you're overwhelmed by all the toys.

And then, you know, when you get home, you can take a minute and you go, wow, well, which of those is actually gonna change the world? So in retrospect, and now that you're home and you're looking back at CES, what stood out the most to you? There were really five things that I went there to see.

I mean, now we have some numbers. 1 million square feet of exhibit space, thousands of product launches. You hit the nail on the head, Mike, it's overwhelming.

You, you have to plan it. And this was the first CES where it actually went specifically to look at the show floors, product launches, meet with companies versus doing shows. And the best way to approach it, I think, um, is to really narrow it down to maybe four or five categories of products that you want to see.

I wanted to see digital health. I went to see voice recognition specifically, um, aiding the driving experience. I also wanted to see the humanoid robots, and I wanted to see the flying cart or the e VTOLs to see do they really fold up to a briefcase like they do in the Jetsons hint, they don't.

But it was, what surprised me was the age check, the emphasis on age check. I talked about this last, um, last week's show where we talked with a company called Skip With Joy, who's making, uh, exoskeletons integrated into arcs, um, uh, uh, active wear. And, and this whole, uh, uh, area is called move wear and what they're doing with not just to assist people with hiking or with knee issues, but how they're getting into helping patients with Parkinson's disease.

So really wonderful applications, uh, for people who will really need it down the line. I saw a smart cane from a company called WalkMe that actually has GPS and voice integrated. So for people that are visually impaired.

So I thought that's, that's a, a great use cases there of helping people who need it. On the digital health front, I was excited about a product called Omnia, which is prototype from a company called Withings. And it's basically, it reminds me of those fitness mirrors.

It's a full length mirror that is aiming to do a full body scan. They have other products from smart watches to blood pressure machines, um, to urinalysis machines, et cetera, that will be able to track certain parts of your, of your health. But this prototype could be used, say, in, in hospitals and doctor's offices, in gyms, to help people be able to understand more and take more ownership of their health and share that with their providers in real time.

Um, what I also saw was the voice recognition really being able to be, um, more advanced and more integrated into automobiles so that drivers and people, passengers within the vehicle can have a conversation with the vehicle and ask it to do certain things and it will respond accordingly, um, in a way that allows you to actually have a dialogue as they're built on LLMs. Then I saw the flying cards, which we'll talk about, and, and the humanoid robots, which blew my mind. Well, I'll tell you, the cane thing resonates with me.

'cause my father-in-law lives with us and he has a cane and I, I can tell as he gets older, he is less reluctant to go places on his own, not because he is afraid of falling down, it's just that he doesn't want to get lost and he doesn't want to call somebody to say, I'm lost. So he kind of starts to narrow in his Yeah. Geography of places he's willing to go.

So I think, you know, that GPS thing, I'm not quite sure how the visual thing works on that, but um, I kind of like that idea. It might be on his Christmas list next year. I like it too.

Yeah, I thought it was an outstanding way to really, from an assistance perspective that was in the age tech area. Um, but then I went to see, I wanted to see the flying car. The, a company called Xang was featured there, and like I said, it, it, it does fold up into a support vehicle.

It doesn't fold up into a briefcase, but this is an ev, EV, E-V-T-O-L, which is an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Right now, the use cases are more for search and rescue, and then for those people, like maybe like the Elon Musk types that have $300,000 to spend on a vehicle that they can drive into a beautiful part of the country and then take their, their flying taxi out to explore national parks and things like that. But what was really interesting to me is that this is being produced out of China.

It is being mass produced, it is piloted currently. Um, you have to have a pilot's license and only a driver's license. I first saw driver standard driver's license, but that was when they were talking about the support vehicle.

And I'm like, okay, wait a minute. Um, it's, it's controllable via like a joystick. So for a lot of gamers, they're probably gonna be fairly adept at learning how to manipulate this aircraft.

And while it's piloted currently they are there, there are autonomous tests in beta. But I think from a first responders perspective, that use case I think is quite strong. There are other use cases down the line, but I think that I can see it being able to go into, especially with what's happening right now in southern California, going into remote areas and be able to assist, um, people, natural disasters and things like that.

So that was a great one to see. And also the fact that it's being mass produced right now was a surprise to me. Yeah, there was one thing I saw that made me scratch my head in, that's not hard to accomplish that, but, um, there's a Maserati that was driverless or self-driving or whatever it was.

Yeah. And I looked at it and I was like, well, that's kind of an interesting idea, but if it's gonna drive itself, why would I spend so much money on a car, car that I don't get the drive? Yes, exactly.

There, the autonomous vehicle section was at the Las Vegas Convention Center was huge. Every manufacturer from Volkswagen to BMW is involved and a lot of autonomy there that's making the, that their objective is to make the driver experience more seamless, easier. But I agree with you, Mike.

I wanna interact with my vehicle. I I don't have a Tesla, so I've never tried the self-driving that autonomy that it can deliver, but it is everywhere from Hyundai to Toyota, you name it. Every manufacturer, auto manufacturer was there showing the different types of states of development that they are in the autonomous experience.

So I, I wonder how far we are from that being a reality and from people actually embracing it. Um, that was something that, like, it was like we talked about in B block in terms of like the, the robots and people being so proud of what they've developed, same type of mentality with these auto manufacturers and the autonomy that they're, they're aiming to deliver over time. Right.

So if I'm not driving the car, John, do I care what it looks like? Or is everything gonna wanna be In a cyber truck from e No, just a functional, just want, yeah, a functional shell to get you from point A to point B. You know, that's interesting with CES.

So I, uh, Lisa, I'm, it sounds like you had a great experience and I know you did because we were talking, um, we were texting, you were texting me about your discoveries occasionally. And I have to say, um, from not attending this show, and I, I have for God, like 10 or 15 years in a row, I lost track. I actually found this a very, very interesting, more so interesting than the previous shows, um, in terms of substance and in terms of practicality, especially in areas like life expectancy technology.

We're seeing a lot of that. And it, it starts early, by the way. So for Christmas, our 24-year-old son wanted his smart ring to monitor his, his vitals.

And, um, it's, that's not unusual. And I, and I, I learned that there are people who are, who have they look at technology to extend their life by decades or if not forever, like the, the documentary with the, was it Brian Johnson who wants to live forever, the tech executive? But this is like real, I mean, people are embracing this stuff.

They're using it, they're finding ways of using it. And to me it is like so refreshing that we are seeing technology that has profound influence on people's lives rather than the stuff I was seeing the last several years, which was, here's an app that you can, you can use to drop your car off while you go to a play, and while you're up to play, they'll wash your car and fill your tank. That that's the app.

You know, it's like the, it, it's, you know, it's like we seem like we're taking like a quantum leap, so to speak, or we're doing things of much more substance than these kind of silly knockoff apps that we were seeing so many, so many companies doing, including some of the big ones. So I I I, I came away very impressed by this. Uh, yeah, the practicality aspect was definitely there.

Like Mike, you talked about when I mentioned the, the cane from WalkMe, how that really resonated with you, the practical applications, I saw a lot more of that and I gravitated towards it. So it's great to hear your perspective, John. 'cause I don't, this is only my second CES but before I'd been there as, as a broadcaster.

And so I actually had the time and I was captivated into things that I thought this could really change the human experience. I mean, everything from, I talked about to like likes, sorry, John, like bulletproof, smart, secure pet doors, for example. I mean, you name it, it was there.

Yeah. The reason why I bring this up is that I, I used to every year go to an app, the Apple events, and in my, the previous jobs, I would go every year and you'd get caught up in the reality distortion field, right? And you get caught up in the hype, all the reporters did it.

Then you'd step back a couple of days later and say, okay, a marginally better battery camera, bigger form factor, oh, a different color. And you'd always feel as if you'd been cheated or, or in a sense kind of hood winged. And I think now, I mean, I think there's like a real push for technology that does good because we hear so many bad things about the tech culture and the bro culture and the oligarchs, and I think it's, we, we also have a huge number of people who do really interesting vital work that helps people.

And I, I'm glad this is coming to the fore And I always think back, and for all these great positive use cases, it's always worthwhile to take a minute and go, well, what could be the, the negative side of that? And you were talking about a ring that would measure your vital, imagine if you would, there's five people sitting in a bar trying to drive their vitals up through the roof by seeing how much they can drink, and then they can measure who's messing each other up, right? That's gonna happen.

I never thought about that. That you're right. There's also, there were also things, and I do wanna talk about this company called Robotics, because both of you turned me onto it, the humanoid robots.

And I expected it to be a huge display. It wasn't, but the first word, first of all, it took my breath away when I saw it. These are humanoid, very realistic.

But the first word that came to mind literally out of my mouth, and I was there by myself, was creepy. But it's, it's a customizable human robot. It looks like something out of a plastic surgeon's office.

I'm not even kidding. But what they're doing is, and these guys were like, like John, what you saw at Carnegie Mellon that we talked about in the last block, so proud of what they've built. This is, this is a robot called Aria that I inter interacted with.

She gave me some recommendations, um, to have sushi specifically at the Mandalay Bay, which is not where we were. So she knew her way around Las Vegas. She's been on Fox Business, she's had a conversation with Fox Business, but it's built on an open source platform.

So it allows integration with not only real bio's, proprietary companionship, ai. And that was a new term for me, the companionship, AI or relationship ai, but also integration with third party platforms like chat GPT. It's customizable.

You can take the face off, you can change the hair. It was manicured. The only thing it doesn't have right now, uh, is a plausible thumb.

So I thought, oh, just like my dogs. Um, but you could actually have a conversation with this. And they say it's from an application perspective, people are buying it from a companionship standpoint, and it's got application to real world applications.

And Bill Healthcare on the education sector, um, it surprised me and, and it still, I, I think why do we really need this? But they seemed very proud of what they've developed. Although I will tell you in the photos, if you know the photos I sent you guys last night, I'm wanted you to see what this looked like.

Before we talked about it. The females were very young. Um, beautiful skin, very like, like came outta the plastic surgeon's office or something like that.

The male that they had, there was just a bust and he had gray hair, really bushy eyebrows that came out like this, wrinkles. Um, but what it has, and, but I wanted to talk about was this eye tracking and object recognition. So there was a, there was a stand of, of two or three busts and there was a, a screen there and you could actually see what the robot sees, um, the micro cameras and embedded into their eyes, for example, that can track movement.

You could see who in a, a little audience it was looking at, um, interchangeable modular body parts for companionship and apparently healthcare and education. So there's still some things there that are like, what do we really need this? But it was interesting to see because I haven't seen anything like that in, in person ever.

All right, folks, it's gonna be a strange new world. In fact, I'm trying to figure out right now how I'm gonna manage my multiple robots that are likely to get jealous of each other, but who knows What's true. They're like children and like dogs.

Yeah. There you go. Anyway, hey Lisa.

John, thanks for being on the show today. It's always great fun. Likewise, this was a blast.

Like it Was all Thanks folks, and thank you all for watching the latest episode of The Techstrong Gang. We have a whole lineup of tech strong TV content coming up right behind that. By all means, stay engaged.

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