Brand Dubai, AI-Generated Nonsense, Industrial Metaverse, and the Truth About Airplane Safety

Greetings from the trade show floor in Las Vegas here at the Consumer Electronics Show! I’m here speaking and covering non-obvious innovations, holding interviews with founders, and will be posting about those throughout the week on LinkedIn (follow my insights in real time here).

The stories this week, as you might expect, are heavily influenced by all the tech I saw this week. As usual, I try to focus on the human side and applications of these. Along with the tech, there’s an eye-opening story on the truth about airplane safety that should make us all feel better, a look inside the industrial metaverse, what happens when ChatGPT writes your sales copy and the evolution of Brand Dubai. 

Stay curious,

Themes and a Quick Recap of Tech to Watch from CES 2024

One of the most magical things about CES is how quickly the innovation categories change from one hall to another. In the convention center you can see the world’s first transparent 8k TV set steps away from a high-end RV camper concept vehicle. Futuristic kidney dialysis machines are next door to robotic lawnmowers. 

Take a ten-minute cab ride off to the Aria hotel and you’ll see the online advertising industry gathered to talk about the future of ad revenue and media streaming. Thankfully, this also happens to be the one place where the very noticeable gender imbalance from the rest of the show corrects itself. In the media and marketing industries, women are in charge.

This year, I chose to spend more time wandering and less time doing meetings or tours. Instead, I spoke to people on the floor, listened to what people were reacting to, and used that to focus my attention. I’ll be sharing my highlights throughout the day and tomorrow on LinkedIn, along with videos. Some early highlights were the flying car (of course), the world’s first transparent TV, Lenovo’s Magic Pilot, an intelligent home observatory, a sound absorbing silent mask, smell tech to create digital scent, and lots more.

Welcome to the Industrial Metaverse … It Might Actually Change Everything

Most of us know the metaverse as a science-fiction imagined place where might create an avatar and GO to do virtual things. Siemens vision for the metaverse is much different, as CEO Dr. Roland Busch noted in a standing-room only keynote presentation to open CES where he promoted the industrial metaverse as the key to bridging the gap between the virtual world and the real one. The presentation brought examples from racing to factory design in order to bring to life the idea of “digital twins” as a way to create fully immersive and testable 3D models for buildings, products, and even champagne.

The result can lower production time and cost and enable a whole new generation of things. In a place filled with people pitching ideas like how their robotic stir fry machine is going to revolutionize cooking (an actual product), it’s rare to see an idea that actually does live up to the claim that it will change the world. Given that 40% of the world’s factories already run on Siemens technology, this industrial metaverse concept really does have the potential to really change the way everything is made. In many ways, it is already doing so. 

The Truth About Airplane Safety

Airplane micro-disasters have been in the news lately. I call them micro because loss of life was avoided, but collisions and a door blowing out of a plane is enough to worry any regular traveler. So it was heartening to read a piece this week by Princeton professor Zeynep Tufekci about the broader view that every accident and the response to it might be an unheralded example of things going right.

As she goes on to explain, the “no blame” process of investigating accidents encourages people to be forthcoming so that the ultimate goal is to prevent the same thing happening again. Everything from putting tray tables away, to crew training and to fire resistant seat cushions are all examples of a term you might be unfamiliar with: “competent bureaucrats.” Things, in other words, are working the way they are supposed to so that accidents can be minimized.

Doors blowing out of a plane with a force that rips someone’s shirt off are never positive stories to read. Still, this article did make me feel a little better that at least one safety system is working the way it is meant to work. 

What Really Happens When ChatGPT Writes Your Sales Copy …

Introducing Glüxkind Rosa: The Future of Parenting. Rosa is not just a stroller; it’s a revolutionary AI-powered companion designed to make parenting effortless and enjoyable. Rosa is essentially a “Fractional Nanny.” Its lightweight design, premium materials, and affordability make it an essential tool for enhancing family adventures. Experience the next generation of parenting with Glüxkind Rosa.

When you find a piece of hyperbolic nonsense this lazy, it’s hard not to share it. Yes, this is the obviously GPT generated language a new stroller is using to promote itself as nothing less than the future of parenting! What does it actually do? Here’s the irony: some of the features might actually be useful – like the automatic rock-my-baby mode with white noise machine. Unfortunately, you’ll probably never make it that far because of the unnecessarily egotistical lazy writing used across the products materials.

Of course there’s a perfect marketing lesson in this. Sometimes if you just shut up and let your product features speak for themselves, people might decide it’s the future of parenting … or they might just think it’s a pretty cute (but obscenely expensive at $2500) baby stroller. Not every product has to change the world or revolutionize our lives. 

Why “Made in Dubai” Will Be the Next Global Brand

Dubai has an ambitious plan to become a global brand, and it starts with hospitality. The emirate already brings in nearly twice the tourist spending of London, hosts world class events and is home to what many consider the world’s best airline in Emirates. Dubai’s ruling sheikh, Mohammed bin Rashid, also launched his Dubai Economic Agenda which aims to double the size of the economy over the next ten years. All of this in a place that is rapidly running out of space. 

The Dubai brand, therefore, is likely to see a signficant expansion through hospitality as there are plans to take the two biggest luxury brands, Jumeirah and Atlantis, and bring them to some of the most important global markets to grow a foothold, including the US, UK, China and India. 

If brand Dubai can find itself more front and center in these key feeder markets, it can start to grow comfort and open doors to more investments and partnerships. The move may also open even more investment and travel to the entire region.

Even More Non-Obvious Stories …

Every week I always curate more stories than I’m able to explore in detail. Instead of skipping those stories, I started to share them in this section so you can skim the headlines and click on any that spark your interest:

How are these stories curated?

Every week I spend hours going through hundreds of stories in order to curate this email. Looking for a speaker to inspire your team to become non-obvious thinkers through a keynote or workshop?  Watch my new 2023 speaking reel on YouTube >>

This Non-Obvious Insights Newsletter is curated by Rohit Bhargava.

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