Beneficial Vision smart contact lenses from Care Harmony Corp. use a variety of technologies distributed among wearable devices to deliver monochromatic text and video images through contact lenses. The smart lenses contain an outer ring of rechargeable batteries and lasers that use wave-guide technology to project an image into the central area of the contact lens. In addition to delivering audio, wireless earbuds track head position and send that information to the contacts, so the projected image can appear to be a stable overlay in a fixed position in the real world when you move your head. Continue reading CES: The Era of Screens in Contact Lenses May Be Upon Us

In his CES pre-show keynote presentation, LG Electronics president and chief technology officer Dr. I.P. Park set the stage for an AI-infused vision of tomorrow by questioning if we are “making our lives better, how much better, and better how?” Park called on XPRIZE Foundation founder and executive chairman Peter Diamandis to illustrate what artificial intelligence enables and Landing AI founder and CEO Andrew Ng to explain how AI technologies will evolve. Open-source webOS and 5G were the cornerstone technologies for the product demonstrations by Luxoft and Qualcomm, respectively. Continue reading CES Keynote: LG Exec Asks if Life Is Better and By How Much

Augmented reality in 2018 was “interesting, with projections being exceeded,” said NorthSouth Studios’ Bill Newell, who moderated a panel on the topic. He asked what AR experience stood out this year. IBM’s Elizabeth Kiehner, who reported on the new partnership between IBM’s Watson and Unity, was enthused over Legos’ AR app. “But I am more interested in AR as it pertains to enterprise,” she said, enumerating breakthroughs in AR for factory workers and healthcare, including surgery and cancer treatment. Continue reading CES Panel: Where the Augmented Reality Experience Is Going

Faye Francy, executive director of the Automotive Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Auto-ISAC), led a conversation about the impact of machine learning, deep learning and AI on the autonomous vehicle (AV) ecosystem. “They work together to bring great things — and possibly nefarious things — to the auto industry,” she said. Inivision AI chairman Seamus Hatch noted that the three terms aren’t interchangeable. “We’re many years behind the singularity,” he said. “It’s a machine trained to solve a specific problem faster and more accurately than a human.” Continue reading CES Panel: Impact of Evolving Tech on Autonomous Vehicles

At a CES panel on “connecting the world,” independent consultant Matt Jones posed the question all involved parties are asking as we move to an autonomous ecosystem. “We need to solve problems for real users,” he said. “It could be providers or cities looking at those questions, of how we’ll deploy and service these vehicles.” He started by looking at the issues from the level of a city — Los Angeles in this case — as represented by Los Angeles Department of Transportation general manager Seleta Reynolds. Continue reading CES Panel: Imagining, Building a New Autonomous Ecosystem

Autonomous vehicles have been a part of tech culture for so long that it’s hard to realize that only a handful of people have actually ridden in one. So it was with great surprise that our very first Lyft ride out of our Las Vegas hotel on Sunday night was in a “self-driving” vehicle. Lyft partnered with Irish auto-parts-company-turned-autonomous-vehicle-startup Aptiv (formerly known as Delphi) to offer CES attendees and Vegas commuters the option to ride in one of their 30 “self-driving” BMW 5 Series. Continue reading We Were Passengers in a Las Vegas ‘Self-Driving’ Rideshare

Altman Vilandrie & Company director Jonathan Hurd presided over a panel at CES on how TV has evolved and will continue to change. Viacom’s Stefanie Schwartz noted that her company is making “hours of original content to drive viewership and engagement on all the social platforms.” “We’re experimenting with all kinds of formats and seeing what works,” she said. MAGNA North America president David Cohen said his company is doubling down on OTT. “We’re looking to think about where to put the dollars as consumers migrate,” he said. Continue reading CES Panel: Defining TV Across Primetime and Multi-Platforms

CTA senior director of publications Cindy Stevens looked at the various ways — from scriptwriting to production — that artificial intelligence can be integrated into entertainment. “Some people are afraid their creative talents could be replaced by machines,” she said. Comcast senior vice president of digital home, devices and AI Fraser Stirling, who noted that he prefers to use the term “machine learning,” is using it for deep search among other tasks. One project is to turn a three-hour NFL game into snackable pieces. Continue reading CES Panel: AI Poised to Change the Entertainment Ecosystem

JT Kostman, managing director of applied artificial intelligence at Grant Thornton, is preparing a TED Talk on AI that he may title “Dear Humans: We Mean You No Harm. Love, AI.” In a CES 2019 panel, moderated by Alice.com’s Elizabeth Gore, experts talked about the pain points in integrating AI into today’s world, including the general fear that AI will replace humans in the workforce. Accenture’s North America lead for M&E Lynn McMahon agreed that the buzz of machines taking over the world has risen. Continue reading CES Panel: Confronting the Fear that AI Will Replace Humans

Industry leaders gathered at CES to discuss the ethics of artificial intelligence. Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics protect humans from physical harm by robots, moderator Kevin Kelly of BigBuzz Marketing Group started out, but how do we protect ourselves from other types of technology-driven harm? AI experts Anna Bethke from Intel, David Hanson from Hanson Robotics, and Mina Hanna from the IEEE had a wide-ranging discussion on how to identify, shape and possibly regulate aspects of AI development that can have ethical and moral ramifications. Continue reading CES Panel: Industry Execs Discuss Ethical Implications of AI

With the buzz way down, AI research more vibrant than ever, and more mainstream experimentation, there’s a lot to potentially look forward to at CES 2019 in the field of AI and machine learning. And already it all seems to converge on one very interesting trend: pragmatism. As AI exits the lab, and heads into the world, we’re expecting new and compelling applications. At CES this week, we’re hoping to see advances in areas such as autonomous vehicles, consumer robots, computer vision, smart assistants, and a more integrated Internet of Things. Continue reading Here’s What We Hope to See This Week at CES Related to AI

At CES 2019’s opening event at Mandalay Bay, CTA vice president of market research Steve Koenig aimed to whip up enthusiasm in the packed room for the technologies attendees would be seeing both at CES Unveiled, which followed this session, and on the many exhibit floors opening on Tuesday. He pinpointed the importance of 5G in bringing to full fruition many of the technologies that have been percolating at the annual CES confab over the past five years, including the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles and 8K TV. Continue reading CES 2019: Big Technology Changes Await the Arrival of 5G

At a session on “Gaming is the Killer App for AR/VR,” moderator Ariella Lehrer of HitPoint Studios stated that a “killer app” would be defined as any app that moves hardware units. That brought a wince from Needham & Company’s Laura Martin who objected that money, not hardware, is the metric to look at. Martin added that hardware sales don’t take into account the fact that so much AR will be done on a smartphone rather than a game console. “Because it uses your smartphone, AR will get faster adoption,” she suggested. Continue reading CES Session: Defining and Creating the Killer AR/VR/MR App

In a session on the future of mobility/transportation, speakers from several companies described the tipping point of the impact of technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Deloitte’s Allan Cook spoke about how AR/VR can be used to appeal to a younger generation loathe to enter a car dealership. “The AR/VR glasses are here now and they’re affordable,” he said. “It really helps your customers visualize what they’re seeing and give them an immersive experience.” Continue reading CES Session: Predicting the Future of Mobility & Connectivity

Cambridge Consultants has trained artificial intelligence to reconstruct images from a highly distorted image or video feed in real time that is the AI’s best guess of what the source image originally looked like. The unique approach of their DeepRay product involves recognizing and correcting for a wide universe of distortion patterns. Cambridge Consultants’ first clients are self-driving car companies concerned with accurate object and risk detection, but DeepRay could also have a number of entertainment industry technical and story applications. Continue reading DeepRay Uses AI to Reconstruct Distorted Video in Real Time