Stevie Surprise’s Rule for AI at CES: ‘Make Life Higher for the Residing’
At CES 2026, Stevie Surprise provided a easy check for tech. And within the sensible glasses growth, probably the most persuasive instruments aren’t about good sight however day-to-day independence.
Stevie Surprise performs onstage on the third day of the Democratic Nationwide Conference on the United Heart in Chicago on August 21, 2024.
Saul Loeb/AFP by way of Getty Photos
Of all of the nonstop discuss synthetic intelligence at CES this yr, probably the most helpful factor I heard got here from Stevie Surprise.
I noticed him transferring by way of the expo ground—handlers tight by his facet, followers threading out and in—and sidled up lengthy sufficient to ask a number of questions. Surprise isn’t new to this world. He’s all the time handled know-how as a part of his craft—as one thing to be formed, examined and tuned. Lengthy earlier than AI turned an unavoidable buzzword, he labored with synth pioneers on the sounds that outlined songs like “Superstition” and “Residing for the Metropolis.” He’s been attending CES for greater than a decade.
Surprise is engaged on his first album in additional than 20 years, so I requested what he manufactured from AI within the artistic course of. He didn’t equivocate. “I cannot let my music be programmed,” he advised me. “I’m not going to make use of it to do me and do the music I’ve executed.” He wasn’t rejecting know-how. He was defending what he considers human territory. “We are able to go on and on speaking about know-how,” he mentioned. However he was involved with a distinct query. “Let’s see the way you make issues higher for individuals of their lives—to not emulate life however to make life higher for the dwelling.”
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Among the many health-tech exhibitors, a standard theme emerged: the always-on AI companion, one that may assist make care choices, find providers and navigate every day life. Dominic King, vice chairman of well being at Microsoft AI, advised me individuals already use Copilot and Bing to ask roughly 50 million health-related questions daily.
But the promise felt realest solely in smaller instruments with clearer stakes—particularly those constructed for people who find themselves blind or have restricted imaginative and prescient. With accessibility tech, each the issue and the upside felt apparent.
After a number of hours on the ground, a sample emerged. Among the most compelling accessibility tech didn’t attempt to repair imaginative and prescient a lot as translate the visible world into one thing usable. EchoVision, a pair of sensible glasses from California-based AGIGA—developed with enter from Surprise—let a wearer level their head towards an indication, a doorway or one other object and listen to an outline about it. In a corridor stuffed with devices that felt like options in quest of issues, narration that eases an individual’s day made good sense.
However description doesn’t all the time clear up the total downside.
“I’m not so certain it does you a lot good to know that on this path is the place the restrooms are,” a consultant from Seattle-based Glidance advised me, “in the event you don’t have already got the navigation expertise to dodge all of the individuals in the best way.” The world isn’t only a image frozen in time. It’s motion. It’s crowds. It’s columns, curbs, chaos.
Glidance’s reply was Glide, a two-wheeled gadget that might roll alongside in entrance of you with a grip connected, type of like a handlebar on wheels. Stereo cameras noticed obstacles and hazards. The gadget then steered and braked to assist hold you transferring within the path you wished to go.
Glidance saved the information in your hand; .lumen put it in your brow. The Romanian start-up’s founder, Cornel Amariei, described his glasses as “a self-driving automobile that sits in your head.” At CES, the corporate received an accessibility award in a pitch competitors for assistive-tech start-ups that got here with an oversize $10,000 examine. (“Now we now have cash for the return tickets,” Amariei mentioned.)
Many CES demos relied on cumbersome sensor rigs. However .lumen saved the {hardware} of its glasses easy and tried to do the remaining with software program. Six cameras create stereoscopic imaginative and prescient—depth notion constructed from barely completely different angles, the best way two eyes triangulate a curb. And the staff made a key design selection: the glasses don’t require an Web connection. All of the compute is within the gadget itself.
Amariei defined that geometry alone isn’t sufficient. A lake is completely flat. A system that solely understands “flat” will steer you proper into it. The tougher half is recognizing secure surfaces from harmful ones—then translating that into one thing your physique can use. When .lumen’s glasses discover a clear route, they don’t announce instructions one step at a time. They information you there with haptics, nudging your head towards the open path.
All of the sensor speak and the demos have been fascinating, however the human payoff is what has stayed with me. These instruments goal to let somebody transfer by way of a foyer, down a sidewalk, by way of a crowded corridor, with out having to cease and reassess each few toes.
The perfect accessibility tech I noticed at CES pushed again towards the present’s most annoying behavior: making sweeping guarantees when what individuals want are dependable, particular instruments. A few of these units will value loads. Some will take longer to mature than their demos advised. Some will stumble in the true world. However they level in a path that Stevie Surprise would acknowledge: instruments that make life higher for the dwelling.
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