MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Every January, everyone who is anyone in the world of technology shows up in Las Vegas for one of the biggest industry expos on the planet - CES, also known as the Consumer Electronics Show. It's the equivalent of 10 or 12 city blocks' worth of companies showcasing their newest gadgets, from smart Lego bricks to tech-enabled diapers. NPR tech correspondent John Ruwitch is there. He's on the line. Hi, John.
JOHN RUWITCH, BYLINE: Hey there.
KELLY: Hey there. So smart Legos and tech diapers. I did not have this on my bingo card to say on air today. Tell me more.
RUWITCH: (Laughter) Yeah, there's so much crazy and interesting stuff like that here, and lots of people. You can hear them in the background. So Lego introduced interactive bricks at the show. They have chips in them. They make sounds and light up. And, yes, there will be "Star Wars" sets. And a Japanese company I came across had a smart diaper on display. It's a health care product for older people. It uses sensors to track how much fluid the diaper has absorbed, and it uses that fluid to power the sensors. Those are just two examples of literally tens of thousands of things that are on display here. I saw gigantic and super-thin new TVs, less than a centimeter thick, a drone with machine guns on it, designed, of course, for the defense industry, wearable exoskeletons to help you walk. And a South Korean company is developing a robot to fix divots on golf courses.
KELLY: Of course it is. As a parent, I will say the smart Legos sound like a nightmare. But anyway, tell me, are you seeing any trends among all these gadgets?
RUWITCH: Yeah, there's a few things that have really stood out to me. First, it really struck me how much AI is being folded into products that are in the consumer pipeline. So artificial intelligence, as consumers know it, really seems poised to be expanding in a big way from chatbots and AI on your laptop to AI in physical objects that you might use. Think AI-enabled wearables, like smart glasses, wristbands, rings. There are also products that are meant to make AI a part of your regular life. The health care company Abbott Laboratories launched a product for diabetics here. Sunny Nagra, director of products at the company, showed it to me. He used their app to take a picture of a fake plate of spaghetti.
SUNNY NAGRA: So it's analyzing that photo. It's breaking it down. It's doing a prediction of the impact it'll have on your glucose. But what's also really cool is the AI will return helpful tips.
RUWITCH: So helpful, AI-enabled tips to help you keep your glucose in check.
KELLY: OK, so that seems in line with the broader trend of all the buzz in tech about AI. Were there big announcements related to AI?
RUWITCH: Yeah. Intel, which the government took a stake in last year, announced that they're now selling a new cutting-edge AI chip for PCs. Analysts I spoke to said this is a milestone in its potential comeback story. AMD and Nvidia, both giants in the world of AI processors, announced new AI chips. And for Nvidia, actually, this timing is interesting. The company usually makes these kind of major, you know, unveiling announcements during its annual developer conference, which is less than three months away. CEO Jensen Huang said the company's production cadence is accelerating. Nvidia is now aiming for annual upgrades, and at a press conference yesterday, he said it has to.
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JENSEN HUANG: Otherwise, you stay static for two years, three years, four years. That's really too long, considering how quickly the technology is moving.
RUWITCH: Nvidia has been one of the hottest companies on Earth. Over the past couple of years, its share price has soared, and it's under a lot of pressure to perform.
KELLY: All right, so what else do you think we might be seeing more of in the near future?
RUWITCH: Well, the robots are coming for us, Mary Louise. The companies that I saw seemed to - that seemed to draw crowds around their robots had the robots doing, like, human tasks, very precise things. A Singapore-based company called Sharpa that I saw had robots with really sensitive, dextrous, human-like hands. So one of these robots was handling a Polaroid camera and snapping pictures of people. One was playing ping-pong. Another was folding paper into pinwheels. And the one that got the most attention, perhaps unsurprisingly here in Las Vegas, was dealing blackjack.
KELLY: Love it. NPR's John Ruwitch with the latest from CES in Las Vegas. Thank you, John.
RUWITCH: You are welcome.
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