Usually after a tech show closes down, I provide my takeaways and impressions based on what I witnessed and the sessions and events I attended. With a show of the size and with the huge number of sessions of CES, I could attend only a smidgen of what went on. But there were some consistent themes and trends throughout this year’s show that were hard to miss. And these trends will ultimately impact legal in perhaps in ways yet to be seen.
So, here are my top 10 impressions.
My Top 10
Here’s what impressed me the most this year:
- The major themes this year: AI, AI, and AI. It was everywhere, in every session, in every product, in every discussion. One could wonder whether there was really anything else going on or, for that matter, whether there are any AI challenges. AI was the underlying tool that made almost everything else discussed actually work. So, the real question is what are the top AI trends?
- The top three AI areas emphasized at CES were agentic AI (which I wrote about), wearables (which I also wrote about), and robotics. But again, all of the discussions in these areas were premised on the use of AI and GenAI. Even when the talk was ostensibly about other things, it was still more or less happy AI talk.
- Some of the other things that were mentioned from time to time in the keynotes, the general sessions, and on the exhibit floor were things like digital health, physical AI, autonomous vehicles, and the like. But again, it was clear that the touted advancements in all these areas also hinged on underlying AI. It permeated everything.
- For that matter, even the robotics envisioned by most CES vendors requires AI and more specifically GenAI to do what was being promoted. So, robotics too was really about AI. By the way, would it be possible to have a grown-up robotics discussion that doesn’t include cute little R2D2 type robots like we’ve seen for at least five years? Practical robotics is not lifelike puppies or even two robots fighting (I kid you not). It’s about what robotics can achieve in industry, in cars, and maybe someday in the home. After all, when self-driving cars were first envisioned, a human-like robot was pictured as the driver. But that’s not what happened. The same is true with today’s robots: let’s focus on what they do instead of robots mimicking nice little people.
- Equally important to what was talked about was what wasn’t. What wasn’t mentioned much was the infrastructure challenges that all this AI all the time may pose. (I know, talking about challenges is a real downer when you’re trying to sell your wares, which is all most vendors were doing.) What also was not talked about much was cybersecurity threats. (Another downer when you’re trying to sell products that create data that could be used for nefarious purposes by the bad guys.)
- And when infrastructure was mentioned, it was more or less in passing references to the need to make computing capacity more efficient to thereby reduce the power and water-cooling needs. Even then, the context was little more than a “look what we can do” pep talk.
- There was, however, one telling comment about the coming infrastructure crisis offered by Bill Briggs, the CTO of Deloitte, in a panel discussion of tech trends: “It’s all about how to use the limited resources we have to get the maximum benefits.” That’s a message we don’t hear often: there are real infrastructure limits, and we may have to make some tough choices along the way. It’s something many vendors want to ignore. But as Melissa Rogozinski and I recently discussed, if the infrastructure won’t support all this AI, then the whole AI business model so thoroughly integrated into everything will be threatened.
- On a similar point, it’s clear that the consumer market is pushing the idea of personal AI assistants that can do more and more, that “see what we see and hear what we hear,” as it was frequently put. The conference-long mantra was that these assistants will make life so much easier for us. That they will give us time to be with others and thereby forge deeper and more meaningful relationships. This was accompanied by promotional videos of beautiful homes with bleached wood floors, views of the ocean, two or three blond-headed kids, a successful spouse, and a golden retriever. But the reality is that we are already seeing too much reliance on AI to replace human relationships. But that’s not what selling these products is about.
- As for the show itself, I haven’t seen the numbers, but it sure seemed like there were more attendees than ever. Tremendous energy across multiple subjects, venues, and nationalities. Of course, the logistics were as challenging as ever. But the CES staff and the hotel and convention center workers consistently went out of their way to be cheerfully helpful, to engage with attendees, and make the difficulty in getting around more manageable. Bus and mass transit were top notch.
- But the show was not without a few frustrations. Chief among these was the WiFi. Or the lack thereof. Good Lord, it’s a tech conference but there was no free WiFi that could be consistently used. Or if there was, it wasn’t publicized. That meant you had to find individual WiFi networks offered by vendors or, in my case, one that only worked in the media rooms. And by the way, if you wanted to use the WiFi network in the Convention Center? A meager $179. A day. I shudder to think what it charged for AV tools.
But for all the challenges of putting on a show for over 150,000 people, CES succeeds better than expected and does it consistently. Legal tech could learn a lot from CES about how to put on a major event. As could vendors. And it’s nice to hear other voices.
But what’s in it for legal?
What’s In It for Legal
I have already written several articles about the impact of what I learned at CES on the legal ecosystem. Suffice it to say, it’s nice to get out of our echo chamber and hear what tech in general is doing. Afterall, legal tech is still tech and how consumer tech is developing and where it is headed is going to be impactful. Yes, lots of what you see and hear at CES is marketing wishful thinking that will never happen. But it stems from the kind of thinking that expands horizons and exposes the trends that will drive tech in the future.
And exposure to the rest of the tech world better enables us to ask hard questions. It helps keep us from deluding ourselves and relying too much to those in our echo chamber. To quote Cory Doctorow in his recent book, Enshittification, “it’s very easy to talk yourself into a sincere belief that you are right and everyone else is wrong.”
And it’s clear where tech is going. Agentic AI. Personal assistants. Wearables. Robots that function autonomously. All these things will impact how we work in legal. What the profession looks like. How we practice. What legal issues will we need to confront.
I’ve commented often about the lack of lawyers at legal tech conferences and why that’s not good. The same is true here: want to know where legal tech is going? Look at where consumer tech is going because that’s where we will go too.
So legal, want to prepare for the future? Get out in the real world. And by the way, your clients? They may be the ones driving and using all this new technology.
As long as I can keep up, I’ll be at CES, cursing the difficulties in getting around but all the while marveling at my good fortune to live in today’s world.
See you next year, CES. And thanks for always expanding my horizon.
Stephen Embry is a lawyer, speaker, blogger, and writer. He publishes TechLaw Crossroads, a blog devoted to the examination of the tension between technology, the law, and the practice of law.