The Consumer Electronics Show, now officially known as CES, is over. It's been an interesting show for a number of reasons, not least because it was the first all-digital version, and apparently made history as the largest digital tech industry event. Bit niche that, but it works.

Even in its physical Las Vegas form, CES has rarely been the most PC-centric of tech events, being more about the latest TV and refrigerator tech than anything you'd play PC games on.

But AMD has historically shown off its new APUs around CES, and Nvidia often has something to say, even if it's just about the more high-end Nvidia servers you buy from ol' Jen-Hsun, the more you will save...

This year's virtual CES saw laptop tech being the order of the day for PC gaming, but there are some other key points the PC Gamer hardware team has come away from the digital show with.


AI might dumb us down to increase our happiness

At the 'Technological Megashifts Impacting our World' talk, Prof. Amnon Shashua spoke in depth about the future of AI. He explained that, with more compute power, and more data "you can do things that years ago would be considered science-fiction".

He talked about how AI is mostly "narrow" at current. It translates, it recognises patterns, it mimics human behaviour, but it is focused on singular veins of knowledge, and exhibits mostly non-transferable skills.

With "broader" AI, however, comes new horizons, new spectrums of research and understanding, and of course new challenges. AI has a way of making questionable decisions and generalisations, after all. Shashua joked that if we program an AI to make those around it happier, it might decide the best course of action is to "dumb us down" for our own good.

Ignorance is bliss, and all that.

To move in the right direction, Shashua is convinced that language is the next big frontier in the field. And, while this sounds like my job may be under threat in the near future, I can't wait to have intellectual discussions with the AI in my living room.

If we can finally make the push toward AI's proper assimilation of language, context, temporal dimensions, etc. we'll be able to open up meaningful and insightful discussions with bots. Perhaps we'll finally see AI pass the high-school comprehension tests that none currently can, and maybe they'll stop being hateful jerks on Facebook.

And maybe it'll help us solve some of the world's most important existential questions, of life, the universe, and everything.


There's no replacing a physical show

However much I love a half-hour stream filled with the latest tech and some flashy b-roll, the general buzz about a show has been sorely missed this year. Traipsing from convention hall to hotel can be hella tiring, but damn if that's not the best way I know to find those small, wild products that you know you just have to write about immediately.

There are some important things to learn from this year's virtual show, however. While the big names out of CES do usually beam their shows out to the world, making an even more widely accessible show can only be a good thing. Virtual showrooms needn't be something born only out of necessity.

If CES 2022 (hopeful) or CES 2023 (more likely) can manage to bring the best of the virtual show and the in-person event together to create the Glastonbury of tech shows—or as close as a show often comprised of TVs and smart washing machines can get—then I think we'll be onto a winner.


CES still is a really weird show

Despite being all digital this year, CES still keeps its inherent weirdness. Yeah, we aren't stumbling around hotel suites ripping keycaps off gold keyboards or having robot handing a bottled water near another who is dancing on the show floor but that doesn't mean our inboxes aren't of cool and wacky looks of the future.

From RGB N95 face respirators, smart bath tubs or even a digital safe specifically designed for weed, CES never disappoints. As far as gaming is concerned, CES really isn't the event for that, aside from predictable GPU announcements, gaming isn't really the spotlight of the show. CES is about giving a ridiculous look at our future and how it'll change the way we play games or even how we sit. And robots, of course.


Laptops just got a whole lotta love

Jacob's spot on, CES being a virtual event means that a lot of what makes the tech showcase work so well falls a bit flat. Without being able to roam the halls unearthing the weird and wonderful, it just feels like a series of loosely connected press events. One thing did manage to permeate through though, and that was that gaming laptops just got a whole lot of love. In fact, apart from the 12GB GeForce RTX 3060 finally getting announced, everything seemed to be focused on mobile gaming.

AMD, Intel, and Nvidia all managed to squeeze out major laptop upgrades, which should form the core of plenty of powerful gaming laptops over the course of 2021. AMD's new Ryzen 5000 HX processors look particularly good, and I'm eager to get my hands on a laptop powered by a Ryzen 9 5900HX and an RTX 30-series mobile GPU.

It's good to see that laptop manufacturers are giving screens a lot of love as well, and the idea of this core paired with a high-refresh WQHD screen seems almost too good to be true. And while I have fears that the best specs will all be prohibitively expensive again, at least we have the promise of $999 RTX 3060 laptops to look forward to. Here's hoping this year's laptops live up to the CES dream.