AI toothbrush. AI sleep masks. AI child monitor. AI espresso maker. AI cat feeder. AI pen. AI pin. AI therapeutic massage chair. An AI mirror that “reads your face.” An AI refrigerator that should know me higher than I do know myself. AI smart ring, AI smart necklace, AI headphones, AI OH MY GOD WHATEVER.
On day one in every of my first CES, I began holding an inventory in my notes app. Not an inventory of corporations to comply with up with, however of merchandise that had been given the AI remedy for no discernable motive.
Among the merchandise have been nice. Some have been foolish. Just a few have been genuinely spectacular (taking a look at you, therapeutic massage chair). However all of them undergo from the identical downside: Too typically, AI is not fixing an actual downside. It is merely a advertising and marketing technique.
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It being my first time on the massive tech commerce present in Las Vegas, I anticipated to be overwhelmed. Tons of of 1000’s of individuals from all around the world packed into two venues in one of the crucial extravagant cities ever? Yeah, I used to be ready for the sensory overload. However what I did not anticipate was how shortly “AI” would begin to develop into mind-numbingly meaningless. By the third day, each pitch blurred: AI-powered, AI-driven, AI-enabled.
Most of them? AI nonsense.
I discovered myself oscillating between fascination and fatigue. Fascination by the sheer ambition and grandeur of the shows promising the important thing to the long run. Fatigue at how typically that future appeared like a nonsense resolution in quest of a nonexistent downside, all wrapped up in an LLM.
The issue at CES 2026 wasn’t the AI itself. However how liberally and casually it was being utilized.
AI fatigue doesn’t suggest we must always reject the know-how as a complete. It is about watching one thing that may very well be genuinely highly effective develop into flattened right into a buzzword and bolted onto any and each product and system that does not want it. When every thing is AI, nothing feels modern. It is a checkbox. A mandate. An expectation. And that is when the fatigue units in.
As a CES first-timer, I saved ready for the second when the hype would lastly resolve into readability. Give me evolution! A catalyst! An epiphany! A paradigm shift! One thing!
After which, unexpectedly, I discovered it. And it was shockingly grounded. Sorry to a lot of the exhibitors, however I did not discover readability in life-style devices or merchandise promising to reinvent how I drink espresso or take notes or sit in a chair. It was within the area of well being and medical analysis, and I believe the foremost distinction was that AI wasn’t the headline — it was the infrastructure.
In conversations about neurological research, diagnostics and coverings, AI is getting used to floor patterns too advanced for human cognition alone to resolve in a well timed method. I felt real optimism about AI getting used to research mind indicators, help in non-invasive therapies and surgical procedures, and push medicine forward each incrementally and responsibly. That is one place the place AI appears to have a real-world constructive affect. And the superb half is that in a room stuffed with merchandise insisting they will change our lives, these are the breakthroughs that truly concentrate on serving to us dwell higher ones.
Humanity, human consequence and human lives are on the forefront of those improvements. Is not that one thing?
And as soon as that clicked, it reframed my week at CES.
As a result of, for all of the speak of AI, robots, and clones, essentially the most outstanding facet of CES is the deep, cussed, wonderful humanness at its middle. I beloved the excitement of the CNET workroom, the mob of our bodies packed shoulder-to-shoulder in resort ballrooms, casinos and hallways, and the joy of 1000’s of journalists and business professionals coming collectively in a single second in time to get a glimpse of the way forward for tech. There’s one thing so particular about how frenetic but impactful these moments of connection are.
It was assembly my coworkers in particular person for the primary time and realizing how a lot chemistry does not translate over Slack messages. It is shedding at pool (sorry, Lai and David), taking chaotic cab rides throughout Vegas (we made it, David and Jon), and laughing over nice meals, shared exhaustion and the sheer absurdity of seeing AI clones try to approximate humanity whereas the true factor stands proper subsequent to me. That appears like the long run price being attentive to.
CES did not make me extra cynical about AI — I’ve fairly persistently thought a majority of it’s nonsense — however I assume I’m clearer-eyed about how impatient I’m for it to lose its pointless ubiquity. The pointless AI now crowds out the needs that matter. Probably the most compelling know-how I noticed at CES was, because it seems, the know-how that will enable us to attach extra simply, dwell a bit higher and focus on humanity. I will be ready for extra of that.
