Join us on ITSPmagazine as we explore CES 2024's cutting-edge tech and societal impacts, featuring industry expert Charlie Fink and his upcoming panel about entertainment industries and The Immersive Experience.
Guest: Charlie Fink, Tech Columnist, Author, Adjunct, Forbes
Website | https://www.charliefink.com
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Hosts:
Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast [@RedefiningCyber]
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/sean-martin
Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Notes
Welcome to the ITSPmagazine Podcast Coverage of CES 2024!
In this episode, we dive into the world of consumer electronics and advanced technologies as we discuss the highlights and insights from this year's CES event.
CES, also known as the Consumer Electronics Show, brings together industry leaders and innovators from around the globe to showcase the latest technological advancements. From cutting-edge gadgets to groundbreaking advancements in AI and extended reality, CES sets the stage for the future of technology.
We are thrilled to have Charlie Fink as our special guest, who not only has a wealth of experience attending CES but is also a prominent figure in the tech industry. Charlie is participating as a speaker and panel leader at CES, sharing his knowledge and expertise on the intersection of advanced technologies and society. This podcast episode is brought to you by ITSPmagazine, the leading online cybersecurity and technology magazine. Our goal is to explore the impact of technology on society and provide insightful conversations with industry experts. Join us as we delve into the world of CES 2024 and uncover the latest trends, discuss the role of AI in Hollywood and advertising, and explore how extended reality is transforming various industries. From healthcare to entertainment, the applications of advanced technologies are reshaping the way we live, work, and play. So grab your most comfortable shoes and join us for an immersive and informative conversation. Welcome to the ITSPmagazine Podcast Coverage of CES 2024!
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Resources
Immersive AI/XR/AR Media Leadership: https://www.ces.tech/sessions-events/dhw/dhw07.aspx
Learn more about CES 2024: https://www.ces.tech/
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Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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[00:00:00] Sean Martin: Marco.
[00:00:01] Marco Ciappelli: Sean.
[00:00:03] Sean Martin: We, uh, we've, uh, partnered on a lot of things. I don't know how many years, over a decade together, we are running.
[00:00:12] Marco Ciappelli: I don't want to date myself .
[00:00:15] Sean Martin: Yeah, we weren't there a few days doing this. And, uh, you've been gracious enough to join me at, uh, some of the big security conferences, many, many years, uh, covering those events like RSA and Black Hat.
ITSP Magazine was born at Black Hat, actually. And We've branched out to cover technology and there's a big technology event that's been going far longer than I've been in security. And, uh, our guest today, uh, I don't want to date him, but he's been, he's been attending that event for a long time as well, and it's, I mean, it's a cool event that continues to grow and expand in topics and reach and, uh, a lot of cool things happening this year.
And Charlie Fink is. Participating as a, as a speaker there, part of the panel there, and leading a panel actually, I should say. And of course, uh, writing about the event as he's done for a number of years. Consumer electronics show, uh, is what it's called. CES people know it as, and I'm excited to chat with.
Charlie, about his session and about the broader, where have we come from and where are we headed as you think in terms of advanced technologies and its connection to society?
[00:01:32] Marco Ciappelli: And Charlie, we don't have an entire day. I know.
[00:01:36] Charlie Fink: I know this is the problem with being a geezer. When you asked me a question, it could go on for quite a while.
I will say this is my. 31st or 32nd CES. I've been every year since the probably 1991. Uh, I took some time off about seven years, sort of right around the time the smartphone took off, but I came back as a writer. And, uh, I'm a college professor and a podcaster. Uh, my weekly podcast, This Week in XR, comes out every Friday.
I co host with, uh, Roni Abovitz, who's the founder of Magic Leap. So he's kind of famous and, uh, it's, it's, you know, become quite popular. We cover tech broadly with sort of a bias toward extended reality, but I would say now we talk about AI. More than anything. And that, of course, is the topic of the panel that I am moderating for Digital Hollywood on Monday.
We have a bunch of terrific entertainment and technology people up there, or people involved with entertainment technology, and everyone has got a perspective, including Google and Paramount Global and. I mean, that's a good panel and we'll see how people are applying AI to their businesses and where they think we're going now in the post strike world.
So, uh, interesting topic, you know, it's one digital Hollywood. They put a lot of great people together, but then they put you together on stage. So I think there's seven or eight people on our panel and we've got. 40 minutes. So I don't know. You do the math. Everybody gets a speed talk for six minutes. But it is an interesting topic and I'm looking forward to what everyone has to say.
[00:03:18] Marco Ciappelli: For a strike that lasted that long, uh, five over six months, almost, I think, uh, concentrated the whole topic in 40 minutes. It's, uh, it's going to be a tough one, but I'm going to, I'm going to throw another challenge at you. If you can, uh, concentrate a history of CES in like, I don't know, five minutes
[00:03:40] Charlie Fink: well, sure, sure. I mean, sean called the CES the Consumer Electronics Show, but it actually is the Consumer Everything Show because everything has got electronics in it. They got refrigerators. They've got cars. They've got, you know, International Harvester is there, John Deere. I mean, you know, and, and so it's all sort of a unified whole in a way.
And what it does for me is it sets the year. I see what's coming in, you know, what's going to be introduced. You know, we're seeing this wave of, for example, a new wave of. Video Smart Glasses that have been positioned as a smartphone accessory. Well, we saw that, you know, from TCL and, uh, Ray Neo and, uh, Xreel and others are, uh, Rokid.
Uh, these are, you know, 300 glasses that plug into your smartphone. So instead of watching a six inch screen, which is like a five. percent of your field of view, unless you hold it really close to your face, uh, you know, it, it throws up a 200 or 300 inch big screen HDTV, HD ish, uh, but, you know, if you want to do some productivity at Starbucks and you unroll your keyboard and look up in the sky, I just think that's so cool.
It's not, uh, Great for that. I don't see people doing that yet, but if you're walking the dog and you want to watch the ball game or something, I just, I have been waiting for this for a long time. I don't know how big it's going to get, but a lot of these products, you know, have gotten great reviews this fall and, uh, hope I'll find out at CES how people are feeling about their performance and where they're going next year with this.
I would never have guessed when I started covering AR, uh, Eight years ago for Forbes that, uh, this would be the way that AR finally made its way into our lives simply as a kind of wearable television set. But there we are.
[00:05:38] Sean Martin: And I want to, cause the other word in the, in the name of the event is consumer.
But I think my experience in advanced technology is that it often hits some business world first. And we can probably look to XR and AR and that is certainly in the healthcare space.
[00:05:58] Charlie Fink: No, no, that is, I think, a good insight. It is as much business to business as it is business to consumer, and much of the technology you see there.
Healthcare is one big example, and XR is another, but you see it all over the place. There's, you know, high end displays that would only be purchased by a professional. You know, there are, um, you know, you see these giant industrial drones or stuff from International Harvester. Those aren't consumer products.
People would only buy those products for their businesses. So there's a tremendous coverage of business to business along with business to consumer and business to prosumer because sometimes it is in You know, really clear. So, also, a lot of products you see there are prototypes. They never actually end up on the market.
Sony was famous for many years for doing that. They would have this pavilion there. I think they've taken that out of CES and they do it at South by Southwest now. Uh, where they have a pavilion showing you all of the research that their different divisions have been doing. Uh, and there was, I saw a lot of extraordinary things that we'll never see in the light of day.
There's no business rationale for them and they'll probably be surpassed by other technologies. Uh, but, uh, you know, just shows you the scope of what people are thinking about at Sony. So I always learn a lot from CES and, and usually never in a way that I expect.
[00:07:27] Marco Ciappelli: And I'm going to add one more element.
Maybe if you agree with me, like we have seen it in cyber security, how. The conversation with the government, the legislators, and all the people that are part now of this ecosystem that is our society pretty much. And I know that CES, because we get all the, the, the pitch from companies and, and tell us who's there.
There is government there, there is regulators. They are talking about AI. So, uh, we see that becoming as an integral part of our society. So it's not just the blinking lights anymore. It's we live with this stuff.
[00:08:08] Charlie Fink: Sure. And if you look at a lot of the keynotes they have, they are not hard technology companies, but these are people from companies like.
I don't, you know, they've had people from drug companies and people from auto makers. And so it is hugely relevant across a lot of different categories. And as you said, it's a lot of marketing of, you know, their current businesses and, you know, trying to, you know, the government is there because they want to understand the business agenda for the coming year.
And businesses are interested in anything that has to do with. potential regulation. So those are all questions that CES has gone from essentially being for computer salesmen to evolving into this, as I said, cultural event. And, and I think you rightly point out that it's not just a cultural event. It's a business to business event.
It's a business and government event. I mean, they, in 2019, they had 180, 000 people there. It was Insane. You could not walk down the hallway at the Venetian, which is, you know, 40 yards wide. So, uh, I, you know, obviously there's been a lot of attrition. Uh, foreign travel has become more difficult and restricted.
Because of health concerns. Uh, I think it's easing up, although a lot of people, a lot of COVID is going around right now. But I wouldn't be surprised if there were 150, 000 people there.
[00:09:37] Sean Martin: Yeah, there'll be a few footsteps and uh, quite, quite a number of miles walked.
[00:09:42] Charlie Fink: Yes. Yes, be prepared to walk 10 miles in your most comfortable shoes.
[00:09:47] Sean Martin: Exactly. Exactly. I want, I want to Go to, uh, this digital Hollywood because it speaks to AI and XR and it says to streaming and advertising and that that last word, uh, catches me. I mean, obviously. Everything is ad driven these days, it seems. But, um, what are your thoughts with respect to advertising there?
What,
[00:10:16] Charlie Fink: well, Hollywood has always been interested in consumer electronics, starting with, uh, technical people. And eventually because it's become a cultural event, uh, most of the technical people at the studios attend CES, at least for a couple of days, because there's cameras and other systems there that are.
Uh, relevant to them. And as you point out, policy makers and, and other businesses that may be, uh, adjacent to or related to their business. So, uh, you know, there are a lot of people there making deals. And of course, the future of advertising is a very, very important topic, uh, as are streaming services. Now, Victor Harwood, who runs Digital Hollywood, has been doing this for 35 years.
This is really his show to the extent, uh, you know, and much more hands on and, and he, uh, does different versions of it all over the country and I believe the world and, you know, this is sort of his CES version. He has close relationship with CES. He's been programming, uh, this sort of side show or complimentary show.
It's a, an additional ticket. Uh, yeah. A day or a couple of days before the actual show begins. So it's really the hardcore people who are here to network and meet each other are always here a couple of days before with the writers and analysts, which is great. You see a lot of old friends, you have a lot of meetings, and then when the floors open, you can start running around and putting on the big miles.
So, um. Yeah, so I don't know if that I hope that answered that question.
[00:11:54] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, it does what I would like to do is to go into I know you've written a lot about the metaverse and I want to pick your brain really quickly because it probably connect with what your panel talks about but
[00:12:09] Charlie Fink: Well, two years ago, two years ago, the metaverse was the only thing we were talking about.
I
[00:12:14] Marco Ciappelli: know that's exactly where I was going is now it's all AI, generative AI. I don't hear as much about the metaverse anymore. We distracted. It's in our hold. What's your point on that?
[00:12:26] Charlie Fink: Well, first of all, the metaverse was not a very useful word. It was a hypey word and everybody knew that that word was going to go away.
So the word going away overall is a good thing because it was a very big, it came from science fiction. It didn't really relate to 3D virtual worlds, uh, and how we access them. So the premise of the metaverse is more of the web is going to be more 3D more of the time. And that people will start to navigate larger portions of their social life and their economic life using 3D worlds like Fortnite and Roblox.
Uh. Is that true? Well, I mean, again, you know, you want to talk about things like advertising and, you know, selling things. I mean, maybe, but you know, the 2G internet is also very good at that. So I don't know how quickly this is going to happen. It could be a question of successive generations. I know my college students don't behave the way we do necessarily.
So that could be in the future, but it's, it's a ways off. Yeah. I do think that Metaverse. I don't think they're calling it that anymore, but they want to build this connection of 3D virtual worlds through which you can move seamless, seamlessly, you know, taking with you your identity and digital assets and, uh, social graph.
Uh, that's what they're trying to build. I don't think they've stopped trying to build that for VR. Uh, and, you know, I would say it's actually getting better. You know, again, a lot of the hypiness, a lot of the people who were there just because of the pandemic have left, that's bad, but the people who remain are more engaged, so it's entering a different phase.
Well, it's entering a different phase and not calling itself the metaverse anymore. I mean, remember what everybody was saying two years ago, which is this is going to unfold over 10 years. And you know what happens when tech people say 10 years, they mean 20 years. Right. 10 years, five years from now, it's still going to be 10 years.
So I don't know. I mean, the metaverse is, it's an interesting idea that we really won't know about for at least five years, whether it's still there and whether it will ever really be that relevant. I mean, it's relevant for people who do 3d collaboration, the people who are using Indidia Omniverse. So it's relevant to them.
If you want to call that the metaverse, people, some people would, some people wouldn't. So, uh, there you go. That was part of that word. The problem with that word was that it was so completely fungible. It applied to everything.
[00:15:17] Sean Martin: Yeah. And it seems very similar to me using the word artificial intelligence, right?
Where it's so encompassing, yet if you, if you bring it down to even just like generative AI, where it's, it's sole purpose at the moment is to generate written word and images and potentially videos in the future, if not already.
Um, and.
If you look at even just like CHAT GPT, within it, you have specialized bots, right, that do special things within that space.
And I think that's probably, if I'm not mistaken, what we're seeing in the world of Metaverse. Where, I'm thinking Digital Twins is an example. Where we can actually see, it's a very focused Thing where we're seeing a particular area in health or in manufacturing or in architecture and engineering.
[00:16:19] Charlie Fink: I mean, again, that's 3d content.
So, and we're viewing it in a 2d context, which I think is really cool. Right. So you bring images up on your computers, you could spin them around, look at them from every angle. Um, you know, obviously in, in medicine, that is huge. They can actually take a. C scan and map it exactly proportionately and anchor it to the patient.
So, you know, doctors now know in a surgery where exactly to cut before they were, um, often inaccurate. Um, so that's just one example of how. You know, the surgical planning, they do surgical planning in VR. I don't know if you followed that story about a year ago, there were co joined twins at the skull and they had neurosurgeons from all over the world collaborating on, uh, how to visualize and how to approach it surgically.
And it was a 24 hour operation with. Two teams of surgeons, and then they saved those kids, which is a great story about how technology, remote collaboration, uh, and medical science could come together, uh, and take the best from each of those technologies to do something that couldn't be done before. So I think that sort of thing is going to get better and better.
And again, as you guys pointed out, that's entirely in the business world. That's not something consumers know about, or nor should they. But yeah, I mean, you have giant companies like GE. They're there with jet engines. I mean, this is the consumer electronics show. I don't think so. It's, it's the tech conference of the universe.
[00:17:54] Marco Ciappelli: And you got space and we just had a conversation about food, food, robotic,
[00:18:01] Charlie Fink: uh, food tech. Right. There are boats there.
Motorcycles. Yeah.
[00:18:10] Marco Ciappelli: It's touching everything. Let's take the last couple of minutes that we have to maybe focus a little bit more on your panel because I think that's that's fascinating to again with Hollywood. Everybody was paying attention to that AI avatar using people images and all of that and now I'd like to see what do you think is going to be this panel mostly focus on?
Are they going to touch on that?
[00:18:38] Charlie Fink: Oh yeah, Hollywood is super data focused, right? We mentioned advertising. I mean, these things are measurable today, right? And what AI loves better than anything. So I can see how those companies streaming services, you know, television networks, uh, movie exhibitors can like an air and even airlines optimize, uh, the price point optimized sales on a fly and maximize.
The value of that data and perhaps infer things from it that they're not even yet thinking about. So that's a tremendous opportunity. Uh, there's obviously, you were talking about text to image and how it might affect the special effects and animation pipelines, it's possible they could streamline them, it's possible they could make them much better.
So people are exploring those opportunities. With great zeal. So I don't think anybody knows anything yet in particular, or, you know, has an application that's sort of broken through because things are still in development and unstable. Anything you establish today is going to get re established and re established.
So it's early going, but I think that's my prediction, the things that we're going to hear from them. Very helpful from a business perspective, from a product per set. Maybe. I mean, it's a very democratizing technology. It's going to allow a lot of people to make fake movies. Um, you know, the problem is they're not storytellers.
They don't have access to the sound, which is so critical to convincing you that images are authentic and real. What it will result in probably is a zillion more videos. on TikTok or a change in the videos we watch on TikTok or, or, you know, reels or, or take your pick, uh, you know, Google, uh, shorts or whatever they call their thing.
[00:20:36] Sean Martin: Yeah. YouTube shorts. Yeah. What I, what I find interesting is the, uh, the makeup of the panel, uh, cause he, I'll start with. The CAA, Creative Arts, right? So the, the story, right? And that story has to live somewhere. So it's going to live on some powerful piece of hardware. There's NVIDIA in the panel that's supported by some infrastructure.
That's Microsoft on the panel that's presented through some interface. That's HTC on the panel. And the final result is the creative piece comes, the actual content that's paramount on that panel. So you get to have that conversation with what I feel is a very broad view of this ecosystem, which is pretty, pretty cool.
[00:21:22] Charlie Fink: Like I said, I'll be interested to hear what they all have to say. They certainly is a, a lot of different viewpoints and interests in the business. Uh, certainly Microsoft and Google have very broad interests, and they have their own AI products, whereas companies like Paramount and, um, you know, people who work with talented CAA are trying to use it for, um, uh, to improve the proc for process improvements, uh, as well as data analysis.
They have data as well, but it's different kind of data than streaming services have. For example, uh, but it applies across multiple, uh, layers of, uh, those businesses for those giant companies, you know, and then there's giant and there's giant, right? I mean, Microsoft is many times bigger than paramount, uh, for example, so, and of course, CAA is not really a company as much as an alliance of representatives of talent.
So, Uh, anyway, it should be great panel. Um, you know, it's, as I said, it's a bit big to have what I would call a conversation, but we did last year have a very, very spirited conversation about AI. If you remember the moment, supposedly everybody at Google was running down the hall with their pants on fire, trying to catch up with Microsoft and CHAT GPT.
And, uh, and Aaron Luber was meekly saying, uh, the corporate party line, which is Google's been an AI company all along.
So, you know, which is what everybody was saying about the metaverse before it, but I, I joke at their at Aaron and Google's expense, but I do think this is a really important inflection point, which makes this conversation so topical, right? We treated the metaverse was a big deal. That was just one year, but now AI is a big deal two years in a row.
So it could be. Could be a big deal. I don't know. Yeah,
[00:23:23] Marco Ciappelli: I think we're, we're getting there and you know, it's like when we have our conversation and our panel, our goal is to make people think about what is coming up and where we're standing now. So I don't expect in 40 minutes to, to exhaust the topic, but it'd be interesting, I think it will be a lot of spinning of other.
Type of conversation from there. So, of course, this is going to be a quick reminder. It's going to be called Immersive AI XRAR Media Leadership, and it's going to be Monday, January 8th, 1 1 40 p. m. at the area level one that can find all this information in the notes under. This podcast, or if you're watching the video and, uh, Charlie, this was a great conversation.
I would love to have you back in a more extensive conversation, if you're ever up for that. And, um, I want to thank everybody for paying attention, follow more conversation we're going to have coming up in the pre event for the CES, uh, Las Vegas, 2024. Sean, Charlie, thank you very much.
[00:24:29] Charlie Fink: Have a great one.
Thank you.