CTA interview: This year’s CES is all about sustainability

We had a short interview with Rick Kowalski, who is the Director of Industry Analysis and Business Intelligence at CTA, the organization behind the CES trade show. We talked about the main theme of this year’s CES, the products he thinks stand out, and the companies behind them.

Mr. Kowalski also gave examples of how AI can help solve many issues related to sustainability and a lot more. You can read an overview of the interview below or check out the whole thing in the video above.

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Q: Can you talk briefly about the main themes of this year’s CES?

A: This year, we were able to partner with the World Academy of Art and Science to cover technologies that help human security. These include things like the right to political freedom, environmental protection, and even food.

We’ve always been looking to tell the story of how technology is helping humanity and society grow and how it’s able to conquer major issues across the world. So we’re seeing a lot more tech geared towards sustainability and food security at CES 2023.

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For example, John Deere is here at CES, which is a company focused on the agricultural side of things. So sustainability is a really good overarching theme this year, and it’s one of the first times we decided to theme CES as a whole.

Q: Are there any specific brands here at CES that you think are particularly focused on sustainability?

A: Yes, these include the already mentioned John Deere, among others, which are looking for solutions that help food growth become more sustainable.

We also have a few companies here that are looking at alternative proteins. So they are manufacturing proteins and taking animals and everything else that could be harmful to the environment out of the picture.

I really like food technology related to sustainability that is focused on things like how water is being used and how to grow crops without over-pesticiding them.

Q: What about products? Have you seen any particular products that stand out to you here at CES?

A: Picking just one is tough, but one that I can mention is called Nuvilab. It lets you take a photo of your meal and then uses AI to analyze what’s on your plate and tell you how many calories and nutrients it has. So if you’re on a diet, you can rely on the app for calorie counting instead of doing it yourself.

This technology has already been applied to restaurants and can help with sustainability as well. For example, you can use it to look at the plates after customers have eaten to see how much food was wasted. So then we can analyze these things and come to various conclusions, like perhaps serving smaller portions to waste less food. This is an example of how to use AI to solve some of these big problems.

Q: We also saw an interesting FDA-approved hearable product called Eargo. What are your thoughts on hearing tech in general?

A: This has been a really huge breakthrough for hearing tech. Just this past year, the FDA passed regulations to allow over-the-counter hearing aids. The old process was that you had to get a prescription and then pay a hefty amount for that hearing aid, but now the market is open to all these new technologies.

The Eargo got through the FDA process, which is a big hurdle usually. The ability to just go out and purchase a product like this can help millions of people in this country who are suffering from hearing loss and have previously decided not to treat it because it’s too expensive.

This is just a quick overview of the conversation we had with Rick Kowalski here at CES in Las Vegas. If you want to learn more, you can watch the entire interview at the top of the page.