AI-powered future can’t control volatile present
Las Vegas, Nevada – The first thing you notice at CES, the world’s largest technology fair, is how seamlessly everything has to work. Televisions guess what you want to watch. Robot vacuum cleaners know where you left your breakfast cereal. Lego bricks now talk to each other.
The next thing you notice when you check your phone between press conferences is that a 37-year-old woman was shot to death by an immigration agent in Minneapolis, wildfires continue in Victoria, and U.S. federal troops have captured the president of Venezuela.
This year’s CES in Las Vegas was defined as much by what happened outside the conference rooms (tariffs, violence, excessive volatility) as what was on display inside.
The battle for your living room
CES 2026 was a consumer tech trade show dressed in AI suits; Every company is now pushing artificial intelligence, even companies that have no real right to do so.
But the dazzling gadgets have been overshadowed by the economic realities of Trump 2.0. The Consumer Technology Association, the organization running the show, released reports during the show saying the tariffs could increase prices for smartphones by 31 percent, laptops by 34 percent and video game consoles by up to 69 percent.
Every product announcement had an unspoken asterisk about what it might actually cost.
Korean giants fought head-to-head no matter what: Samsung introduced its massive 130-inch Micro RGB display. LG responded with the OLED evo W6 “Wallpaper” TV, which is about the width of a ballpoint pen. Both rely on Micro RGB technology, which is a move from blue-white backlights to red, green and blue micro LEDs that produce much richer colors. If you’re wondering why your television can’t capture what your eyes see in real life, this is the industry-recommended answer.
“Large displays are no longer the exception, they are the expectation,” said Simon Howe of Samsung Australia. Australia remains a top 10 market globally for premium television per capita; Even when budgets are tight, we love our screens.
Hisense has expanded its RGB MiniLED lineup with the UR Series, bringing premium display technology to accessible price points. The company’s partnership with French audio experts Devialet continues, and 180Hz refresh rates promise a competitive advantage for gamers.
Your AI assistant can recommend what to watch next. It can’t explain why the world outside your living room is becoming more volatile.
The new TVs will undoubtedly be popular locally, but it wasn’t the hardware that stood out the most. The insistence that AI should be built into everything.
Samsung, LG, and Hisense have each launched new AI features full of promise. LG’s television lead, Tony Brown, gave this speech I’ve been hearing all week: AI processes your content for the best picture quality, upscaling low-res YouTube clips and navigating the glut of streams. Samsung’s “Visual AI Companion” lets you query sports stats mid-game.
But the relentless AI brand still sits somewhere between true innovation and a marketing arms race. After the pandemic sparked a slew of TV upgrades, many consumers will be ready to upgrade again this year, especially ahead of the FIFA World Cup. Questions about picture quality, size, and price will likely be more important than whether your TV tells you which actor you’re looking at.
Lego’s surprise
The newest announcement was definitely not from a tech company. Lego introduced Smart Play, which the company calls its biggest innovation in 50 years.
The system, which has gone through eight years of development, packs advanced electronics into standard bricks. A chip smaller than a LEGO nail combines sensors, microphones and computing in a 2×4 space. These smart bricks form a “decentralized computing network”; Models created by different children can interact without requiring prior connection.
Futurist Sally Dominguez, observing from the show floor, noted that fully digital AI products give visitors “a really boring time wandering around,” but when digital technologies create hybrid physical experiences, the products can really sing.
Literally, in the case of Lego. The Lego demonstration thrilled the audience in a way that a slightly thinner laptop couldn’t, and even left some gasping.
Julia Goldin, the company’s chief marketing officer, described it as consumer-focused rather than technology-focused. “This innovation came from understanding how children play,” he said in an interview. The platform extends physical play time, encourages storytelling, and most importantly, does not require a screen or power button. Kids can easily start playing.
The first Star Wars sets will be available in March. Futurist Mark Pesce has stated that he hopes the system will allow unstructured play rather than limiting imagination to pre-programmed interactions. We will see.
‘Zero labor’ house
The broader theme was domestic liberation through robotics. LG introduced CLOiD, an AI-powered home robot that represents the company’s vision of bringing intelligence from screens to the physical world.
Timeline for Australian homes? “It’s a few years away,” but the direction is clear. Samsung’s AI smart kitchens and laundry appliances point to a similarly boring future.
Next, Ecovacs showed off robot vacuums with 30,000 pascals of suction power and “sustainable runtime” batteries that charge quickly during pit stops. The company leads the Australian market and integrates an AI taint detection system that identifies, sprays, waits and then cleans dried ketchup. “You should be able to decide you want your floors cleaned, your windows cleaned, and let us handle it,” says Ecovacs Australia president Karen Powell.
Where was Australia?
As you walk on the ground, you come across the national pavilions of South Korea, France and Israel. These are coordinated entities where startups come together under a common banner, making it easier for buyers and investors to find them. Australia obviously had nothing.
Following the show, futurist Dr. Catherine Ball argues that this represents a structural hole with very real costs. CES, he says, is one of the few places where buyers, investors, partners and media come together at scale, and a startup can go from “nice demo” to “let’s try this as a pilot” in a single week. Australian founders strive alone, which makes our intellectual property easier to discover, trust and overlook.
That means less hot promotion, less talk about distribution and less visibility in the rooms where shortlists are written and awards are handed out, he says. He says a coordinated “Team Australia” stand would create a single front door for starters.
It is a reasonable question whether Australia’s innovation ambitions are serious or merely rhetorical. We’re talking about becoming technology exporters, leaving our entrepreneurs to navigate the world’s largest innovation fair without corporate support.
The disturbing truth
As is often the case in the tech industry, CES exists in a bubble. Its 140,000 attendees were isolated from reality in windowless convention centers. The overall theme of the show was making life easier and better through artificial intelligence, smart robots, and bigger and brighter televisions.
But on the same day we watched demonstrations of robot companions designed to eliminate loneliness, an ICE agent shot a woman through her windshield, just days after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a military operation and flew him to New York.
CES promises a world where your TV understands your preferences and smart LEGO bricks create new dimensions of play. The technology is impressive.
But this frictionless, AI-powered future is a shocking one; It is being marketed to Australian consumers alongside a gift that features unarmed citizens being gunned down in residential streets and foreign leaders being eliminated by military force as bushfires return to the country. Your AI assistant can recommend what to watch next. It can’t explain why the world outside your living room is becoming more volatile.
Robots don’t know either. They continue to clean.
David Swan went to Las Vegas with the support of Samsung, LG, Hisense and Lego.
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David Swan is the technology editor of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor of The Australian newspaper.Connect with: excitement or email.
