3 Things I Learned About the Future of Technology at This Year's CES

In a dimly lit ballroom inside the MGM casino in Las Vegas earlier this month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was discussing a strange topic in front of a very eager crowd: Different species of flowers.

That may seem out of place to anyone familiar with Nvidia, a company best known for graphics processors that power everything from gaming computers to driverless cars. But Huang was illustrating how his company’s technology could use machine learning to identify and label more than 900 images of flowers in just a second.

It was a fitting way to kick off this year’s CES, the biggest tech show of the year. Many of the show’s announcements and exhibitions centered on artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in smart homes, smart cars, and smart everything. If previous CES events introduced “smart” gadgets to the world, this year’s show proved they’re here to stay.

Here’s a look at three ways AI will keep changing your life in 2018, if the gadgets and gizmos on display at this year’s CES is any indication.

Screens will be everywhere around you
The Lenovo Smart Display includes support for the Google Assistant
The Lenovo Smart Display includes support for the Google Assistant Lenovo
We already spend a large chunk of our day staring at screens, whether it be on a smartphone, laptop, or TV. But tech firms are increasingly trying to integrate them into nearly every facet of life, from our home appliances to our cars.

Both Samsung and LG flaunted new refrigerators with built-in screens for showing information like shopping lists and the weather. Samsung’s new Family Hub fridge also works with the company’s voice-activated Bixby personal assistant, while LG’s InstaView ThinQ model integrates with Amazon’s Alexa. Refrigerators with touchscreens aren’t new: Samsung debuted an earlier version of the Family Hub in 2016. But their recurring presence at CES indicates that Samsung and LG — two of the world’s biggest home appliance makers — intend to continue with this approach.

Meanwhile, companies like Google, Lenovo, and Chinese search giant Baidu used CES to showcase new voice-centric computers with screens resembling tablets meant to be home appliances. Lenovo and Google jointly announced their new Smart Display, a voice-activated speaker powered by the Google Assistant. It’s like the Google Home, but the Smart Display includes a touchscreen. The hardware is also made by Lenovo rather than Google. Like the Amazon Echo Show and Echo Spot, the Lenovo Smart Display pulls up supplementary information on-screen while answering voice commands. When asking for restaurant recommendations, for example, the Smart Display will show nearby eateries on its screen, which users can tap into to learn more.

The home isn’t the only place you can expect to see more screens in the near future — they’ll become more prominent in your car and the office as well. Smart car startup Byton’s futuristic car concept, for example, not only includes facial recognition cameras but also a massive screen that wraps around nearly the entire front of the car’s interior. Mercedes also showcased its new infotainment interface, which it says uses AI to surface pertinent information (like directions to a favorite restaurant at dinner time) on a digital cockpit made of touchscreens. In the office, Samsung wants to replace traditional flipboards and whiteboards with a giant touchscreen computer, which it appropriately calls the Samsung Flip.