The Future in Focus: Top Tech Trends From CES 2026

UVA Darden.

The Disruption, a lively discussion between UVA Darden School of Business professors Yael Grushka Cocaine and Mike Lennox on cutting edge technologies and practices that are challenging the status quo.

Hello interim, my interim.

Oh my goodness, hello, uh, vice, vice dean.

I am honored that we have you for a little while to do this, uh, this podcast recording.

Well, you had to clarify, so, so, uh, I was recently named interim dean at Darden.

Gel's been vice dean for a while, so we decided we're just gonna call each other interim and vice.

I love it.

I think it's great.

We should definitely not do that.

I think I think we'll stick to, stick to first.

Names here.

No, it's wonderful and uh uh congratulations, and we're all so proud and you're already doing amazing things.

So I appreciate it.

It's wonderful.

It'll be a good run for, you know, 8 months or so, and then uh I will happily pass it on to someone else.

Well, um, speaking of your time, um, I'm curious now that you're interim dean, do you have time to watch like TV and shows and are you at all interested in some of these like.

Entertainment shows like award shows at all, um, you know, I actually did watch a little bit of the Golden Globes, and there was a very particular reason for it, yes, and I'm curious if you knew this about me.

I am a huge Philadelphia Eagles fan, and right before the Golden Globes started, the Eagles lost and were out of the playoffs, and it was the way in which I Managed the anger, distracted yourself.

So watch like the 1st 15 minutes of that.

So sorry about the Eagles loss.

I'm curious if while you were watching the Golden Globes, you noticed that there was a new category this year which was a Golden Globe for podcasts.

I did, and I also saw that we weren't nominated.

I was very disappointed in that.

So I, uh, wanted to start our show off today, uh, to set, um, you know, aspirations for 2026 and.

Maybe we need to aim to be on that list.

So getting on the smart list guys made the list.

They didn't win.

They were nominated.

I'm like, I've tried to like pick a fight with them, and maybe Amy Poehler is the one now we need to pick a fight with and, you know, get on her, get on her podcast.

Exactly.

Good hang with Amy Poehler.

It's a great show.

Well, uh, speaking of shows, uh, we're not gonna talk about the Golden Globes here today, but, um, there's always an annual show, uh, in Vegas, I think it's always in Vegas.

It's usually in Vegas, yeah.

So, um, let me make sure I get this acronym.

So it's CES, right, the Consumer Electronics Show, um, and it's been going on for a while.

Have you ever attended?

I, I have never attended it in person.

I do try to pay attention to it because it really is the place where a lot of new breaking technologies are, uh, kind of revealed, um, uh, you know, we're saying that the, the title of this point of electronic show is probably.

A little misnamed.

It's just kind of everything's digital these days.

So it's technology broadly and it's a definitely a global, uh, you know, forum for, for all of these cool technologies that are emerging.

Well, I'm always excited.

I'm, I'm, I have never been to it.

I've, uh, I've known of people who go kind of regularly and really find it inspiring and exciting.

It's always a way to stay, you know, ahead of the disruptions and ahead of the innovation.

Um, I don't know if it's, uh, similar in some ways to what you might get from a South by Southwest type of conference, but it has that kind of both, uh, techie vibe to it.

So all, you know, the geeks and the nerds of the world loved it, but also, uh, somewhat of a, of a place to be seen, uh, type of agenda, right, like Comic Con.

Yes, exactly.

I'm getting there's probably quite a bit of overlap in those two audiences too who might might go to see.

And go to Comic-Con.

So yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Well, what's exciting to me that the fact that this conference still exists is that this notion that actually bringing people together in person, even though a lot of the technology is probably stuff that is like online or stuff that is gadgets and in a world that is constantly being individualized to, you know, folks at their home and then on their, on their handheld device, uh, coming together in a place like Vegas seems like a really interesting.

Interesting kind of concept to see and be seen and to interact with folks and to hear from the innovators themselves.

Yeah, and I think look, with technology, as we've talked a lot about these S curves, where there's long development times, I think what you always are on the lookout for are like, what are the things that we've been talking about for a while, but really haven't gained traction?

What are the things that are just like, this is their moment and they're taking off and, and maybe what are some things.

So maybe this seems too far behind, right?

Like, haven't we moved on from this, right?

And I think you get all three of those there.

Um, one of the other things I love to do is, uh, read the technology review out of MIT, um, and, and often they'll predict technologies like 10 years in advance that that come about.

But there are also others they've been talking about for 50 years like nuclear fusion.

I'm sure they have had articles on that going back maybe even 75 years at this point.

Um, so just trying to understand like which of these is, is really hitting that prime disruption moment.

Yeah, interesting, I think, like thinking about Google Glass and all these types of products that we've seen kind of on the cusp of picking up and on the cusp of becoming something very big, and they kind of go back and forth.

So this is the place to, to start things off, right?

This is the show to go to go to.

I can't remember if I ever shared on the podcast my Google Glass anecdote.

No.

I'm, as a doctoral student at MIT in the mid 90s, there were the, these guys, and no offense, they were, they were guys almost universally who were walking down the infinite corridor at MIT, this long famous hallway there with huge CPU strapped to their side, like literally like, you know, 2 ft by 2 ft and a big huge goggles and just kind of like blindly walking down the hallway.

Like this is the stuff you see at MIT.

And uh they were the, they were the people before Google Glass, right?

This was the early stages of thinking about visualization that way.

Obviously, they shrunk the technology amazing when now you look at like the metalasses and the like, um, but yeah, that was, that was like mid-nineties they were working on that.

So, um, I'll be curious to see if that's still something that features in this show and and and uh at the CES, um, but luckily, sadly, neither you nor I could attend this year, even though I think.

That we still next year we're hoping to go, we're we're hoping to go when we're not deaning and we're not busy with our deanship, uh, maybe we can squeeze in a show at the at the sphere as well, um, but luckily one of our, um, incredible, um, and very forward looking faculty, uh, did you know, attended there, um, our men on the ground, um, so Tim Lassiter, one of our colleagues, um, in the operations area, um, Tim has his MBA and PhD from Darden.

Um, he has a background in consulting from Booz Allen and really, uh, hands down one of our more forward looking, uh, faculty, constantly challenging, challenging himself and those around him to kind of stay at the cusp of innovation.

Uh, Tim was there, um, and so I thought we could, you know, chat with him and hear, hear what he saw there, uh, in Vegas.

We, we need our expertise and Tim, you are the man.

So Tim, welcome, welcome.

Well, thank you for the, the setup.

Yes, um, I got to attend this, this year.

Thank you, the Darden funded, um, special research time to go, uh, to the Consumer Electronics Show.

It was also partly an excuse.

That I booked it to try to create a forcing function to get an invite to a humanoid robot factory in Oregon, and I managed to do both.

Oh, fantastic.

So much for us to ask you about.

Um, we're excited.

Let's start with Vegas, and then we'll talk about, um, uh, the humanoid robots, which I know that you've been kind of actually following really, really closely and.

We did an episode on that last year.

Um, tell us about the, the the, the CS.

How was it?

Was it as exciting as it sounds?

I walked the 2.5 million square feet of exhibit space.

Um, incredible.

It's, it's, I think that is the, the thing is, it is, it is a mind-boggling, uh, aggregation of people. 140,000 people, 4500 exhibits.

The big purpose beyond the exhibits is its business development.

Most people are there because other people show up and they have business meetings around this.

And then people like me who had no purpose other than wandering around the hall, uh, just only had to pay $150 to walk through 2.5 million square feet of, uh, exhibit space.

That's incredible.

That's, that's really, that's really, uh, exciting and fascinating.

It makes me want to go even more, um, next year.

Um, what was, what was the biggest thing that, um, that you got excited about?

Like what, what device or exhibit or, uh, exhibitor did you walk away saying, I'm not sleeping at night, or I'm sleeping at night differently thinking about this technology that is emerging?

Well, first is the entrepreneurship aspect of it and the global aspect of it.

One of the halls is dedicated countries set up an area and they have small booths for all their entrepreneurs.

So I stood in one spot where I could see Israel, the Netherlands, Korea, France, all had their own sections with a bunch of small booths.

And most of those were really pre-startups and no demos, much to see because it was, it was really the startup uh hall.

But in the other extreme, I was in a place, another place where John Deere and Corning, giant big known companies, had massive boosts.

They were demoing AI and I had a giant tractor in there, but with AI for running them.

They have autonomous vehicles now, uh, tractors now that they're, they're selling, so, not surprising to me that they're there.

And I guess the other one, I guess the aha was reinforcing something we all know to some extent.

Nvidia is everywhere.

So Nvidia had a whole hallway of everything.

And actually, on Monday, uh, Jensen Wang had a two-hour presentation that was part of the Consumer Electronics Show.

I didn't get there until Monday night.

Uh, but I listened to it on, uh, online while I was traveling, uh, and they're connected with everywhere and they're in everything at this point, uh, which is also just reinforced in how big they are.

This is the time that I just want to add a caveat like they do in a choir that we're not here to give investment invite.

If I could forecast technology, I'd be living on a private island in the.

Caribbean that I owned and, uh, unfortunately, uh, that is a very difficult, difficult task there.

Is it correct, uh, Tim, that, you know, some of the backend infrastructure we've talked about on our podcast, whether it's chips, whether it's data centers and the buildout of those, that's not the focus though, right?

It's more of the downstream piece when the technology kind of gets real to us as consumers.

Consumers.

Is, is that a, a correct, uh, that would be a correct assumption, and in my going in assumption, I'm not sure that's true.

Uh, there were literally storage racks on display of Nvidia's chips and showing you how, I mean, they, they're giant chips at this point.

I had not seen them physically, uh, this, uh, before.

Um.

So yeah, that's there, the infrastructure was there.

There was a quantum computing uh company in the foundry group, uh, next to the humanoid robot, uh, in one of the areas.

So, so really is then like kind of technology broadly defined here.

I, I, I think it is misnamed.

It should be the Global Technology conference or something is because everything was there.

Well, I do, I do think that in today's world what's, what I find fascinating is that I feel like the distance between the consumer, like the products that the consumers are using, and the consumer's knowledge of the infrastructure that is required has, has, has shrunk, meaning more folks are aware of the.

Back end challenges and are following it more closely than I feel ever before.

Like, if you talk to folks about various aspects of AI very quickly people will talk about the data centers and the water necessities and the electricity.

Like it's on top of people's mind, not just the innovation at the consumer level.

What do I have in my house, in my fridge, on, you know, in my living room, but also what, what was required to get there.

I think you're right, and it's interesting because I think that's a change because I think when cloud computing first started.

To emerge, it was like whatever this thing is called the cloud, and I think that realization that there is a real physical infrastructure behind our digital age, it's, it's obvious to those of us who, who study and know the industry, but I don't think the average consumer necessarily internalized that.

But I think you're right, they may be internalizing it now.

Well, but when people invest in, uh, electric vehicles, they're more aware of where they have charging stations along the way.

And so like, and maybe podcasts like ours raise the visibility of.

Some of that, so like I, I, I, I feel like there's more of an appetite for the consumer even to ask, ask questions about that.

Yeah.

So, so Tim, um, let's talk a little bit about the humanoid robots, uh, piece here.

So we've done this on our podcast before, but, but where are we?

Where are we at at this point in your estimation?

I mean, is this, is this the disruption that has been promised?

Is it all upon us, or are we still earlier in the, uh, in the S curve?

It's, it's a mix.

So, the, the.

It's getting real, how fast it's going to actually come to fruition and uh where it will is still highly uncertain.

It's kind of, it's very similar to where we are about uh where Gen AI and where we're gonna have artificial general intelligence.

Even the experts don't know for sure when that's gonna hit, but they can continue to see the progress in the past.

I think the same thing is happening in humanoids.

Um, can I ask a question on that though, real quick, cause, you know, we've talked about AGI as well, and I think it's obviously one of these concepts that is very poorly defined and lots of debates of what it is.

But with humanoid robots, is it fair to say like there is a sense of like, when the humanoid robot can fold laundry really well or do the dishes, like, we've made it.

Is are there more objective uh definitions of like a successful humanoid robot?

The Turing test has been passed, depending on what you think the Turing test is changing it.

Humanoid robots can, uh, fold laundry now.

I saw one doing it at Consumer Electronics Show.

Uh, whether that is a, you know, economic good use case and it's gonna be a business that like Goldman Sachs predicted by 2035, the robot, uh, would be making a million dollars a year and they'd be costing less than $20,000.

Yeah, wow.

Not real confident about that piece.

Uh, the, the, the economic, the, I use it to teach the experience curve and the slope they're predicting is not that crazy, but the, how fast volume will ramp up its production is the big question is, and frankly, that's why I went to go visit the RoboFab factory was trying, I've got, I'm developing a case on how do we think about this.

Is it like building cars?

Is it something where you need economies of scale and a big facility and how will they get the cost down and those kinds of Traditional operation strategy questions, frankly.

What, what would be the big costs here?

I mean, I'll, I'll throw out some ideas and see, you know, uh, your reaction.

Like, obviously the energy source, so the battery obviously is gonna be an important part of these.

Uh, the, the physical hardware of the, you know, the joints and, and the like, uh, fairly complicated, I imagine.

And then, of course, the software side.

In your opinion, what, what, what might be driving the cost at this point?

Depends on which, uh, persons and which designs you're using, how that sorts out.

Um, the, the, the soft software and hardware, you're right to think about both of those independently.

Uh, the software is following a, uh, an AI curve because The early dancing robots, the Boston Dynamics dancing robots were co-programmed.

They were not AI driven, right?

Now they also went, you know, from 20 years ago, things that looked like, uh, actually.

I went with Dean Brunner to a conference in California like 20-15 years ago where they had the region there as well.

We're both there with you, yeah, that's right.

Do you remember, do you remember the, the, the walking, the robot, and it looked like, I mean, it, it looked like.

A go-kart, gasoline engine and hard welding and stuff, right, versus what they have now, the equivalent of that, how much that's changed.

So the hardware side is what they changed dramatically, but they were still coating it in software.

Now we're, we're layering on top of that.

The hard, the hardware side is.

Very, uh, understandable and manageable using a lot of industrial robot parts, but the, the battery is an important part, but not the big cost at this point because it's leveraging EV battery technology, you know, curves.

What is happening on the other pieces, the joints and sensors, well, the joints are really, uh, tightly high machine tool, very complicated part to make.

Not many people can make them.

But some of them are just carryovers for industrial robotics and therefore they're already being made at scale and others, they're having to build custom ones that are smaller for a finger that they didn't have before and therefore it's, you know, still expensive.

But then some people are not choosing to make hands, they're using claws because I don't need to have a full human touch and sense touch.

Yet to have a good use case for production, eventually, I want a humanoid robot that could be everything, and that's, that's actually one of the big parts of our tech node is what path do you follow?

Do you follow, get something deployed that's not quite humanoid that can work in the human workspace, or do you try to perfect it in the lab and eventually have the perfect humanoid robot that will dominate?

That's the, that's the data of the world, right?

The, um, data from Star Trek or, um.

Bishop from Aliens, but I like that you frame it.

I think it's an open question, right?

Like we talk about with disruption, this idea of the emergence of the dominant design, right?

Like Apple coming out with an iPhone and guess what, you don't need to have a tactile keyboard to have a successful.

Although one of the innovations from this year's, uh, show is a tactile, uh, keyboard, but we'll come back to that, back to the future, um, uh, and I, I think this idea of we need to replicate a human like.

That might be fun from an intellectual exercise, but from a financial business model standpoint, is that really what we need here?

Like you said, maybe, you know, the hands that look like human hands is not useful.

It needs to be a claw or whatever, Edward scissor hands, you know, type of, of solution.

Well, and that's part of the framing of how you think about the different companies and then what's.

What's the critical path or what's the bottleneck for them.

So, one level is I'm doing huge task, uh, task complexity.

So anything a human can do, and I can do it in a vast set of environments.

So.

I've, that's the general purpose ultimate goal that people have now.

On the flip side, that's the, that's the Rosie the robot solution.

They all went from the Rosie was on wheels, uh, and so couldn't go up and down steps.

Let's be clear, but, uh, but that's the other, you know, the other extreme is.

I am trying to solve a partic I am trying to, we're defining humanoid robots as something that is designed to be mobile in the human space without redesigning the space around it, right?

And so one of the big applications that uh agility robots is on top.

Of is warehouse workers, right?

So if you're rebuilding your warehouses like Amazon did, they use Kiva robots and they did these moving things around and bringing it to people.

But if you're a 3PL and you've been doing stack at high stuff and you just can't get enough people, having a robot can come move bins, and actually Amazon's doing it as well, just ones that move bins.

That is a human task and they can do it in, you know, in human space.

Um, mobile.

So that doesn't require perfectly touched sensors hands yet, right?

But it's a good use case that, that is actually being deployed, uh, places.

And uh, um, from what I understood from you and from our amazing, uh, research team and, uh, Becky did some work, there were at least 2, probably many more of these humanoid robots on display at the conference in Vegas.

Um, Boston Dynamics had their Atlas robot, um, which was, as you say, for more manufacturing type purposes, uh, and use case, and then is it Switchbot, um, a company that's developing exactly your use case.

Uh, Mike, around, you know, home, home chores, washing, uh, washing machine, laundry, um, and the kind, uh, that sounds pretty exciting to me that this is kind of already being displayed and sold, whether at the cost that I can afford yet, maybe not, but, um, it's headed.

Oh no, you can afford a home robot if microwaves would.

There is, uh, OneX Technologies.

They were not there.

I didn't see it there, but, uh, you, if you follow the Wall Street Journal's been covering them, they have a home robot you can sign up for $20,000 or $499 a month.

It is, uh, AI trained.

It is 65 pounds.

So if it falls and it's really soft, if it falls on you, it won't hurt you, uh, which I think you laugh, but when you say $499 a month, you mean $499 a month a month.

Yeah, yeah, so it's a little expensive, it's a little expensive.

Uh you can afford it.

I it's not, I didn't say everybody could afford it.

I said you could afford it.

Well, they don't have that many, but they're going, they're AI enabled, but they're also like, uh, waymos, there are humans in the loop that are observing it for tasks that they couldn't do, it's not able to do yet, so they're being deployed in, in homes to actually.

Teach them and you can pay 4.99 a month to be teaching a robot how to do stuff at your house.

What's, what's your sense on the, uh, consumer, um, uh, comfort with these robots?

Um, you know, I just was teaching our AV case on Waymo yesterday, and that's obviously a big issue with autonomous vehicles is the worries about accidents and the like.

Is that a worry that you're seeing, or is it more just, is it worth the price for the functionality?

Um, yes, it's a worry.

The bigger insight on that question, I first taught, um, a, a draft version, a live version on humanoid robots with our AARP client and the head of, uh, VP of Future casting, Chris Gardner.

Actually, it's one reason I went to Consumer Electronics Show.

She went to Consumer Electronics Show last year and was on the stage with an emotional support robot company in, uh, Boston Dynamics talking about home healthcare, home robots in the home to help people age in place, which I think is a phenomenal use case eventually, uh, but where, where we are on that, uh, and she has opinions on it, but there's, it's like, yeah, everybody has lots of people have lots of different opinions, but that's what capitalism works.

Lots of people chase different things and we'll see which ones work out.

Yeah, and uh, we're, we're hoping to get um ARP here, uh, for a podcast when we focus especially on, um, on thinking about aging and thinking differently about aging, which I know is a lot of their work.

So thank you.

Well, I, I thought maybe um I could kind of jump in here with a few, um, of uh uh a few other kind of cool gadgets or ideas that we're showcased.

Just to kind of infuse our conversation here.

So, um, uh, they're developing a smart Lego, you know, Lego is always a company that is ahead of itself, um, and yet, you know, the fundamental Lego brick hasn't changed in so many ways since we were kids and even before that and such an amazing kind of toy for kids, and now they're adding.

Um, AI and the ability for the different figurines to talk to each other and to be smart about it, uh, I suspect some people won't love it, but, um, I suspect some other kids might really embrace it.

Uh, it can be a combination of the, the, you know, friend support that you want and the, uh, the Lego kind of building capabilities, and Lego's been doing this for a while.

They, they've had kits going back at least 1015 years that allowed you to kind of build robots and control them.

Uh, with your Lego set, so, um, to me that's kind of a natural evolution for them, uh, to do that, um, a few other products, um, so beauty tech is a big one. beauty tech is picking up.

Maybe we need to do an episode on that too.

So, uh, definitely I've been monitoring the space with all kinds of technology to reduce puffiness and eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes are difficult.

So all types of personalized like LED masks and.

Uh, you know, more sophisticated tools to help us at home, uh, improve the way that we look or just help us feel better about, about our looks.

Put it on the list.

Put it on the list, um, for us teachers and faculty or folks that do a lot with, uh, uh, a thinking about papers and instruction, but also teaching.

Uh, in the classroom so you can have like, uh, little AI chips and, and microphones that you can at any moment in time or little rings or devices that you can record your thoughts you can share it kind of captures your ideas even if you're walking or jogging or driving somewhere.

Um, those seem really exciting and practical to me.

Yeah, those are one thing that's an idea that's been around for a while and there's been a variety of companies.

I remember seeing one in Sweden.

Oh my goodness, it had to be over 10 years ago that was kind of record your life, um, uh, device.

What I think is interesting that's happening with that is AI, right, because what do you do with these volumous photos or volumist video that you're taking.

AI might be able to to do something more useful for you.

Yeah, summarize it, jumpstart some work on it, collect some information, or reference back, like, you know, what, what, what was it like when I was in Rome, and then it automatically pulls it up and the like.

Uh, let me mention a couple more, um, and then, uh, Tim, we'll hear your thoughts on this, but, um, there's a, um, we talked about the Google Glass Glass before, but the smart glasses are not going away.

I think that there, there, there's really some momentum there, um, as I was teaching, uh, this quarter.

For the, you know, new students for the first time, I was thinking, why doesn't, why don't my glasses just tell me their name and, you know, whisper it to my ear so that I, well, I remember that, I know what an interview incredibly useful.

So, um, the, the smart glasses space is, uh, definitely still, uh, about to explode or growing, and there's, there we haven't lost, uh, the hope that there'll be some smarter use cases there.

What was it like the Devil Wears Prada where the assistant had to like whisper in her right.

Now you have glasses that can do that, um, and then maybe the last one I'll mention here that is, um, I think actually really exciting, um, uh, a, a toilet monitoring device.

So like, uh, imagine now your toilet is smarter, um, if you've been to Japan, they're way smarter already in Japan with how they think about their toilet space, but now you can actually monitor, uh, different, um, bowel movements or your urine and, but actually tie it back to like personalized.

Precision health.

Like how can you actually learn about your general health by having devices that help track?

I mean, we have a lot of preventative medicine these days that is actually life saving in many instances.

Now maybe we can tie it into our day to day without having to go through a painful kind of processes.

This is hysterical because I was in a conversation with some friends where we talked exactly about this, that you have so much monitoring of like your sleep and these other biomarkers.

Maybe, uh, bowel movements are the next one.

There you go.

I, this, this is like the future of our, our, our health, uh, monitoring.

I think it could make parenting, uh, you know, in the early years, I mean, Tim, you have some little grandchildren if I'm not mistaken, um, it could make, uh, kind of parenting and, and, and, uh, especially for the first time, maybe it could help, right, diagnose certain fast, um, aspects, um, and it can help with aging as well during the pandemic.

They were doing water monitoring broadly to just check for the virus pieces.

So, the technology, taking it down to the individual level is a whole another step of what you do with all that data will be another AI challenge piece as well.

But yeah, I saw, I did see, I did see that, one of the booths, yes.

One that I thought was just kind of interesting cause it's Seems so basic, but I've been waiting for this for, for years, is this idea that do we have like one computing device that then has peripherals that we connect to, rather than having a laptop and a cell phone or having a, a larger display in our offices that's tied to another CPU.

Um, it feels like we should technologically be able to do this.

Yet I haven't seen an offering.

It seems like some of the smartphone manufacturers are getting there where you just have truly one CPU that does everything for you and just connects in the other, other peripherals.

I see that, yeah, Johnny I was working on it for us, I think, but, um, he wasn't there.

He wasn't there.

Johnny Is wasn't there.

Yeah, AI's got him dividing the next device, right?

That's what he's allegedly doing is gonna build something that's gonna replace the smartphone.

Amazing, amazing.

Well, when I, uh, between my, uh, my bachelor's degree and my engineering bachelor's degree and my, uh, master's degree, I worked out in the Silicon Valley.

And I worked for two companies, one startup that, uh, very quickly went bust in that, uh, kind of bust of, uh, of, of the dot com, um, and it was be my PC.com.

So like we were all about having one desktop that you can log in from wherever.

So that was a little bit of the cloud kind of technology, but the idea was similar that you don't have to worry about, you know, transferring things from one place to the next, um, great.

OK, so, well, Tim, um, we're so, so, um, inspired, um, and we've learned so much about, about your trip.

Uh, so thank you for sharing some of your insights with us.

Um, interim, any last minute thoughts around, uh, humanoid robots or, uh, consumer electronics?

No, I'll just highlight what we were saying at the beginning that I think, you know, for our listeners out there, you know, keeping track of these technologies is so challenging and difficult, um, but it's also fun.

Actually, that might be a good place to kind of end with, with, with Tim because Tim, you're a master at keeping on top of these types of topics, right?

What is the secret to, to that?

How do you do that?

I've seen you do that here at Darden, um, regularly.

How do you stay ahead of some of this technology unless you go to Vegas, right?

There's a William Gibson quote that the, the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed, uh, so part of it is going and seeing and.

One of, back to your AI glasses.

I will say 10 years ago when I went to Consumer Electronics Show, one of the things I saw was translated, uh, hearing devices you can put in, earbuds you could put in that would translate live.

Like, oh, that would be a cool product.

They're here now.

That was 10 years ago, it was at the Consumer Electronics Show, and now that's part of Apple's product offering.

Similarly, on the, the glasses, uh, I actually, uh, I already have the Meta glasses, so I, I buy the stuff and experiment with it and uh.

I compare, they're actually in my local uh eyeglass store.

I bought it just for fun, and then I realized they could change my lenses and put my prescription lenses in it.

And it's, it's got a basic functionality, which is key.

It's like the Palm Pilot.

I really date myself at this stage, but right, you know, it does takes pictures, videos, hands-free.

It will read your text and books to you, and that's really all it does, the current version.

But yeah, I actually went.

To the store in Las Vegas For Meta store and demoed the new display glasses, their version 3 glasses, which will show up on your lens.

One of the use cases is You could get translation happening real time on your glasses as you're looking at someone talking to you and you can translate back, uh, you can show them your device and they can see what you said translated back to them as well.

So amazing, amazing closed captioning, you know, in, in real life. wow.

So staying, so staying timely and current, I heard, uh, buying things and experimenting.

I heard that you do that quite a bit, Tim.

Um, I also know, Jim, that you're really good at, um, initiating like get-togethers and meetups and like just bringing, opening the door to people to join the conversation.

Is that also a way to kind of get on top of kind of themes?

Yes, so, yes, I'm a connector mode.

I just, there's having enjoyed enjoying having conversations with people, talking about what they're thinking about and doing and listening to ideas.

My AI roundtable was last night at um we had to move cause it was shut down.

But, you know, everything from a former student talking about what they're doing at a three-party logistics company with agentic AI to one of the researchers, that's one of our fair scholars from La Crosse, um, that some of their research talking about it, it's just a different mix of people and Lots of ideas you hear and some of them, you go, oh, put that on the shelf, but, and actually that would be my closing comment.

The other thing that drove home at Consumer Electronics, there's a lot of bad ideas in the world too.

And business, business people sorting out is, you know, is this a cool technology versus, is there a business value of this that's actually gonna cause this to be something you could scale up and do.

And the value of what we're teaching our students to think about that, the, the technologies are always gonna be new and different.

But that idea of how do we make money, what do we afford, how does this work out over time is really critical.

I, I always say, having an engineering background, I can say this comment that engineers like to solve problems, but unfortunately, they'll come up with a $20 million.

Solution for a $10 million market, right?

So the business question is often how do you make this market viable so it will actually diffuse and just so, um, as long as I can, I'll wear my lacrosse hat and say, and how do we do so, uh, thinking about all the ethical considerations along the way, the fact that we have good ideas and good innovation.

Uh, how can we put it to good use, not harm people?

How can we make sure that people feel, you know, secured and safe and, and happier, uh, and, you know, dare I say good disruption, good disruption rather than, uh, bad disruption.

Yes, yes, well, yeah, so thank you so much, Tim, for joining us.

Uh, uh, we enjoyed, uh, living through your, your vision of, uh, Vegas and the show.

So thank you for sharing with us what that, what that was like.

I enjoyed it.

Thank you for having me.

All right, well, always a joy, uh, Vice to talk to you.

Thank you, in Durham, and as always, let's thank our, uh, our production team, Gary, our producer, Becky, our lead researcher, and the entire team here at Darden for helping us out with this podcast.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Good Disruption is a podcast from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.

Darden.