The best CES products pierce through the haze of marketing hype at the Las Vegas gadget show to reveal innovations that could improve lives
The best CES products pierce through the haze of marketing hype at the Las Vegas gadget show to reveal innovations that could improve lives.
The worst could harm us or our society and planet in such “innovatively bad” ways that a panel of self-described dystopia experts has judged them “Worst in Show.”
The third annual contest that no tech company wants to win announced its decisions Thursday.
“From easily hackable lawn mowers to $300 earbuds that will fail in two years, these are products that jeopardize our safety, encourage wasteful overconsumption, and normalize privacy violations,” says the group of consumer and privacy advocates judging the awards. The contest has no affiliation with CES or the trade group that runs the expo.
They made the choices based on how uniquely bad a product is, what impact it could have if widely adopted and if it was significantly worse than previous versions of similar technology. The judges represent groups including Consumer Reports, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and right-to-repair advocates iFixit.
Automotive technology is annually a big focus at CES. And two brickbats were awarded to carmaker BMW, one of those involving a partnership with Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa.
Powered by a large language model — the type of AI system behind chatbots like ChatGPT — Amazon says an Alexa “car expert” will be able to provide “quick instructions and answers about vehicle functions in a much more human, conversation-like manner, and even act on your behalf.”
Being able to ask Alexa to unlock the front door or turn off the porch light sounds convenient.
