Opinion Another Consumer Electronics Show has rolled through Las Vegas, and this year vendors scrawled “AI-enabled” on all the kit they hope will find its way into your home – while airbrushing away its immaturity and downsides.

Attendees could therefore hear vendors spruik AI toothbrushes and AI toilets and promise to turn snapshots of your gums into health-enhancing insights – just don’t ask about privacy – and a plethora of apps that will use machines to better manage your life – and your elderly parents’ affairs, too.

Moments at the conference that in past years would include mentions of AI – such as Jensen Huang's opening day keynote – were completely consumed by it. After a 15-second pre-roll of some eye-popping video game scenes, NVIDIA's CEO spoke for nearly two hours, said nothing about gaming, launched Vera Rubin silicon for AI training and inference, and framed it all as more relevant to financial analysts than the assembled press.

Huang also launched Alpamayo, a “one size fits all” platform for autonomous vehicles, which – as Jensen has claimed for about a decade – are just around the corner. Market leaders Waymo and Zoox have made strides toward autonomy – though both still need copious amounts of human oversight. Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius joined a pre-show panel to tout the new Mercedes CLA - running Alpamayo - but it's got issues. Autonomous vehicles continue to be something that, as the mirror says, looks closer than it appears.

Everyone at CES had a domestic robot ready to terminate the drudgery that is housework. None of them actually work anywhere near well enough to be left to do the cleaning, washing or folding, but that hasn't stopped a range of makers from demonstrating their wares – ready for service as soon as they work out a few lingering issues, such as software, safety, and oh yeah, being able to grip things.

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My favorite innovations didn't involve AI and made far more modest promises about their impact.

Lili Screen, the product of breakthrough French research on the cause of dyslexia, adds a variable flicker to a normal-looking LCD display. Something that would quickly induce a headache in most folks uses that flicker to route around the “dual-eye dominance” that produces dyslexia, resulting in a display that's far easier for dyslexics to read.

My overall favorite CES launch was SeeHaptic. French researchers mapped the output of a depth camera to a backpack-mounted grid of blunt pins. Put the backpack against your back, and the shape of the space around becomes a bodily sensation. Give that to someone with a vision impairment, and – after a period of learning – they can navigate spaces by feel. Outstanding. Honorable mention goes to both Glidance and MakeSense, providing the same capability for folks with vision impairment – but in very different ways.

Those four products show us that tech can be more than just privacy invading, soul destroying, and enshittified experiences. We have amazing capabilities, and when they meet the right motives, beautiful things can happen. That's the reason I keep coming back to CES: amidst all the dross and waste, there are always bright sparks doing remarkable things. ®