As USA Today notes in its CES curtain-raiser, “The buzzword of the entire show is going to be AI,” says Creative Strategies president and veteran CES attendee Tim Bajarin, who says the tech industry is going “to apply AI to pretty much everything (it) can.” USA Today‘s tech writer Ed Baig continues:

Amazon and Google are pushing their artificial intelligence (AI) into a range of uses and partner products, widening the potential for the convenience and privacy perils that these always-listening devices promise. That’s not all. To achieve this robot-controlled future, some major upgrades to the plumbing need to happen. The vision for a smart society also hinges on better bandwidth — speedy next generation “5G” wireless — and the placement of sensitive computing sensors all over your daily life.

The preponderance of devices and players will make this CES, which also includes mini-shows on digital health and cryptocurrencies, for example, more dazzling and bewildering—to outsiders, at least—than ever. More than 4,000 exhibitors will be pitching their view of the connected future (and present) to more than 180,000 attendees.

As ever, the visible and flashy features at booths will garner a lot of press, so AI-driven robots (the new booth babes) will be taking over Las Vegas. LG, for example, is bringing a trio of CLOi-branded robots designed to work in airports, hotels and supermarkets, while Honda is putting exhibitor passes on its cute robotic concepts (at top). If only science fiction visionary Isaac Asimov, whose I, Robot pondered the relationship between humans and robots, had lived to see the day.

And there will still be consumer electronics, including massive and dazzling televisions, a fleet of self-driving cars, the buzz of overhead drones, agile and innovative laptops, and enough smart home appliances to power a city. In fact, this year there’s a mini-exhibition area devoted to smart cities.

As Consumer Technology Association senior director of market research Steve Koenig told Deutsche Welle this week about what to expect at CES, “AI will be a constant narrative around the show for brands and services. We’ll be talking about how they’re employing machine learning to improve outcomes and improve the customer experience. I think 2018 is a major inflection point with the application of AI.”

Beyond the army of digital assistants for the home and business, he added, “AI will start to take on a number of tasks that first of all we don’t care to do anymore, like updating compact databases or maybe ordering new inventory. These kind of more routine tasks and processes are going to be automated more and more.”

AI has quietly been part of the consumer experience for a number of years now, such as algorithms recommendation engines, but it’s starting to “take on more and more of the tasks that we simply can’t do,” Koenig added. For example, “write enough code to program a self-driving vehicle to anticipate and handle every ostensible advantage on the roadway, as well as more revolutionary applications where we as humans need all the help we can, like finding a cure for cancer.”

As the CES panel on the future of work in an AI world will no doubt discuss, in the best case scenario AI will work with humans instead of replacing them, automating onerous processes and freeing up people’s time for other, more important matters—or just for having fun and trying new experiences, which the AR/VR/AI-ready vendors at CES will be vying to bring to them.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.brandchannel.com