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On Monday, I left LA for CES to peek into our collective future. On Tuesday, I returned to find mine irrevocably changed.
The LA wildfires, now the largest in the city’s history, have claimed lives, displaced families, and destroyed communities. It’s a sobering contrast to the optimism of CES, with its promises of boundless innovation and sweeping vistas of the future. This week has been a reminder that the future can also arrive suddenly, uninvited, and beyond our control.
Gratitude, grief, and guilt come in waves. I am grateful that my family and friends are safe, for the incredible friends who opened their doors and hearts, and for the tireless first responders who continue to fight and defend. I grieve for the rhythm of life my partner and I built with care over a decade, now gone. And I feel guilt for this grief when so many have lost even more.
There’s also a loss of agency when you become a natural disaster’s statistic. One way to cope is to focus on where you can be productive. For me, that’s writing. This week, I’m sharing my reflections from my first CES, interrupted. Here are my three observations.
Observation I: AI Is the Future, and AI Will Create the Future
Hype may overpromise, but it makes up for it with abundant optimism and unabashed ambition. At CES, the AI hype was real and in full display. In robotics, in software, and in law, AI is the narrative violator that will force these fields to change into their unrecognizable future. It will redefine what is possible, and that will reshape what we do, how we do it, and who does it. Even NVIDIA, when revealing its latest line of graphics cards, showcased how AI built the next generation of chips—chips that need only 3 million pixels to render ten times as many pixels.
Observation II: CES Is Huge
The event spans the entire Las Vegas Strip, with every major casino hosting events alongside the Las Vegas Convention Center. My first day, also billed as Analyst/Press Day, was centered at the Aria, and it was already packed with attendees. Over the week, an estimated 140,000 people were expected, dwarfing MWC Barcelona’s 101,000 from last year. Of course, sitting in my tiny CPaaS teacup, both numbers feel astronomical.
Observation III: Jensen Huang Is Making Our Future
Jensen Huang is AI’s fearless leader, and his kickoff keynote proved it. For two kinetic hours, he commanded the attention of 12,000 attendees at the Michelob ULTRA Arena. The highlight of the evening was the reveal of a palm-sized AI supercomputer, smaller than a Mac Mini. It was impossible not to feel excited about the future and how NVIDIA will power it.
I hope to return next year and fully immerse myself in CES, uninterrupted.