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By now, the headlines almost write themselves: humanoid robots everywhere, AI in everything. Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026 didnt disrupt that narrativeit confirmed it. What changed was the subtext. This was the year AI stopped feeling experimental and started feeling infrastructural. Intelligence has shifted from novelty to baseline, forcing harder questions about consequence, control, and agencynot just what technology can do, but how it reshapes systems once opting out is no longer realistic. For years, progress at CES has been measured in speed, scale, and spectacle. In 2026, a different metric quietly surfaced: judgment. The most advanced products werent the most aggressive or attention-seeking. They were the most considered, designed with an understanding that when intelligence becomes unavoidable, restraint becomes a competitive advantage. Beneath the obvious trends, the Seymourpowell team saw that a recalibration was underway. Trend 1: The Body Is the New Platform Computing has long lived in front of us, on desks, in hands, behind glass. At CES 2026, the more consequential shift was where technology is now choosing to settle: on the body, and within the social rules that already govern it. This wasnt about wearables as accessories. It was about gravitydeciding which parts of the body can host intelligence without demanding attention, breaking etiquette, or forcing users into performative behavior. The real innovation wasnt simply where technology sits, but how interaction becomes quieter, more physical, and often subconscious. Take iPolish, which turned fingernails into a programmable surface. Using digital clip-on nails and a magic wand connected to an app, wearers can shift between hundreds of colors instantly. The move is deceptively simple, but strategically sharp: Nails are already expressive, customizable, and socially accepted. No new behavior is required. Intelligence succeeds here precisely because it inhabits a place culture already allows. [Photo: .lumen] Elsewhere, interaction became even less visible. Naqis neural earbuds bypassed voice and touch entirely, using micro-facial signalsjaw tension and subtle muscle movementsto control devices without overt action. ModeX treated clothing itself as infrastructure, embedding power and compute into garments that dont announce themselves as tech. Orphes sensor-enabled insoles brought lab-grade biomechanics into everyday movement, while .lumens assistive glasses reframed accessibility as scalable augmentation rather than specialist accommodation. [Photo: ModeX] Across categories, the pattern was consistent: the next interface war wont be won by screens. It will be won by technologies that understand where theyre allowed to live, and how quietly theyre expected to behave. The takeaway: As intelligence migrates onto the body, social permission becomes as important as technical capability. The future belongs to products that feel natural not because they disappear, but because they respect the physical and cultural spaces they occupy. Trend 2: Agency Becomes a Design Problem As AI becomes infrastructural, the question is no longer whether systems act autonomouslybut how, when, and on whose behalf. CES 2026 revealed a growing recognition that trust isnt built through capability alone. Its built through boundaries. The most compelling products werent those that automated the most, but those that were explicit about where human judgment still sits. [Photo: Littlebird] Littlebird embodied this shift in the family context, offering predictive safety intelligence without screens, feeds, or surveillance theater. RestroomGuard Savvy applied the same thinking to public infrastructure, proving AI-driven safety doesnt require cameras or biometric intrusion to be effective. Sorcerics Lens extended the idea into the home, replacing dashboards and commands with contextual awareness that responds to situations rather than constant instruction. Even the Descent S1 buoy followed this logic, augmenting diver judgment with shared situational awareness instead of replacing it with alerts or automation. [Photo: UNIUNI Corp.] These systems didnt remove humans from the loop. They clarified where the loop should be. The takeaway: As opting out becomes unrealistic, agency becomes a design material. The most trusted systems wont be the fastest or smartest, but the ones that are clearest about when not to act. Trend 3: Care Moves From Apps to Infrastructure For years, wellness technology has asked individuals to self-optimize: track more, manage better, try harder. CES 2026 suggested a different direction. Care is moving out of dashboards and into systems that actively reduce cognitive, physical, and emotional loadwithout requiring constant attention or self-surveillance. Diligent Robotics Moxi captured this shift clearly. Rather than measuring caregiver performance, the hospital robot removes coordination work altogetherfetching supplies, running errands, and freeing nurses to spend time caring. The value isnt insight. Its relief. Elsewhere, neuro-wellness booths reframed focus and recovery as environmental conditions rather than personal failures to manage. By combining physiological sensing with adaptive lighting, sound, and temperature, they treated mental load as something a space can regulate, not something users must willpower their way through. The same logic appeared in everyday rituals. The AI rejuvenation shower treated water itself as a programmable medium, adjusting minerals and compounds in real time to deliver skincare without screens, tracking, or habit formation. Light Straight addressed a quieter hygiene pain pointmaintenance between reset momentsby cleaning and styling hair without water. It didnt promise transformation. It simply removed friction. [Photo: LOréal Groupe] Care also surfaced in less obvious places. Motion sicknesslong dismissed as an unfortunate side effect of travelwas reframed as a fundamental barrier to autonomous mobility. If passengers cant read, work, watch, or rest without nausea, self-driving cars dont create new freedom, they just extend commute time. Bosch addressed this not through wearables or behavioral coaching, but by redesigning vehicle dynamics at the software level. By controlling motion across all six degrees of freedom, the system reduces sensory conflict before it reaches the body, making it possible for passengers to safely disengage from driving altogether. In this context, motion sickness isnt a comfort issue. Its a gatekeeper. Solve it, and autonomous vehicles become environments for work, rest, and interaction. Ignore it, and adoption stalls. [Photo: Bosch] Across healthcare, mobility, beauty, and the home, the pattern was consistent: Care is no longer a niche vertical or a personal optimization project. Its becoming consumer infrastructure, embedded into environments and systems that quietly do the work for us. The takeaway: Care is no longer about empowerment through information. Its about relief through design. The next generation of care technology wont ask users to try harder, it will redesign the conditions around them. Trend 4: The Physical World Gets Its Software Update While much of the AI conversation still centers on digital products, CES 2026 made something else unmistakable: The biggest bottlenecks in technology are now physical. Infrastructure, energy, logistics, manufacturing, and housing are where intelligence is being stress-tested, not in prototypes, but at scale. This was the year the invisible layer of the tech stack stepped into focus. The Cat Ai Assistant interface on display at the Caterpillar booth during the 2026 CES event in Las Vegas on January 7. [Photo: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images] Caterpillars keynote crystallized this shift. By embedding AI, autonomy, and edge intelligence directly into fleets, worksites, and heavy machinery, the company reframed physical infrastructure as something that can sense, learn, and adapt in real time. Not flashy. Mission-critical. The same logic appeared elsewhere. The AI Transformer Home Trailer treated housing as adaptive infrastructure rather than a fixed object, physically reconfiguring space on demand. Alpon X5 made enterprise-grade AI deployable at the edge, without cloud dependence, reframing intelligence as something that lives where work actuall happens. Perovskite color-conversion films pushed display progress not through software, but materials scienceanother reminder that some of the biggest leaps ahead wont come from code alone. CES 2026 wasnt just about smarter products. It was about making the physical world programmable. The takeaway: The next phase of AI growth wont be constrained by models, it will be constrained by matter. The companies that win wont just scale intelligence. Theyll modernize the physical systems it depends on. Trend 5: Restraint Becomes a Feature Perhaps the most telling shift at CES 2026 wasnt technological at all. It was tonal. After years of maximalismmore sensors, more screens, more AIa quieter maturity is setting in. The most confident products no longer feel the need to prove intelligence. They demonstrate judgment. Birdfy Hum Bloom used AI not to capture attention, but to slow it down, turning backyard observation into discovery rather than content. Toniebox 2 doubled down on screen-free interaction, resisting dopamine loops in favor of presence and routine. Even Legos Smart Play experiments pointed toward intelligence that scaffolds creativity rather than directing it. This wasnt visible fatigue so much as visible discernment. Companies are beginning to understand that adding intelligence everywhere isnt innovation. Knowing where not to add it is. The takeaway: In a world where intelligence is cheap and ubiquitous, restraint becomes premium. The most advanced products of the next decade may be the ones that know when to step back. CES 2026 didnt deliver a single, dominant narrative, and that may be its most honest reflection of where we are. AI is no longer a question mark. Its a condition. And once intelligence becomes unavoidable, progress is no longer about acceleration. Its about alignment between systems and people, automation and agency, capability and consequence. The future on display wasnt louder or faster. It was more deliberate. And that, quietly, may be the most meaningful shift of all.
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E-Commerce
Central bankers from around the world said Tuesday they “stand in full solidarity” with U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, after President Donald Trump dramatically escalated his confrontation with the Fed with the Justice Department investigating and threatening criminal charges.Powell “has served with integrity, focused on his mandate and an unwavering commitment to the public interest,” read the statement signed by nine national central bank heads including European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey.They added that “the independence of central banks is a cornerstone of price, financial and economic stability in the interest of the citizens that we serve. It is therefore critical to preserve that independence, with full respect for the rule of law and democratic accountability.”The dispute is ostensibly about Powell’s testimony to Congress in June over the cost of a massive renovation of Fed buildings. But in a statement Sunday, Powell, abandoning his previous attempt to ignore Trump’s relentless criticism, called the administration’s threat of criminal charges “pretexts” in the president’s campaign to seize control of U.S. interest rate policy from the Fed’s technocrats.Trump has repeatedly criticized Powell and the Fed for not moving faster to cut rates. Economists warn that a politicized Fed that caves in to the president’s demands will damage its credibility as an inflation fighter and likely lead investors to demand higher rates before investing in U.S. Treasurys.Other signatories of the statement carried on the ECB’s website were Erik Thedeen, governor of Sweden’s central bank; Christian Kettel Thomsen, chair of Denmark’s central bank; Swiss National Bank Chair Martin Schlegel; Michele Bullock, governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia; Tiff Macklem, governor of the Bank of Canada; Bank of Korea Governor Chang Yong Rhee; Gabriel Galipolo, governor of the Banco Central do Brasil.Also attaching their names were François Villeroy de Galhau, board chair of the Bank for International Settlements, and Pablo Hernández de Cos, BIS general manager. The BIS is an international organization of central banks based in Basel, Switzerland.One prominent central bank not included in the statement was the Bank of Japan. The statement said that more signatures could be added later. David McHugh, AP Business Writer
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E-Commerce
Prediction markets are all the rage right now. Weekly trading volume on prediction platforms just surpassed $2 billion, and apps like Polymarket are being treated as the next big thing in consumer finance and entertainment. These platforms are designed to gamify uncertainty by exploiting the same cognitive biases as gambling and day-trading, quietly pushing users toward overspending, emotional volatility, and compulsive checking. Its easy to see why people are drawn to them. Prediction markets feel smarter than reckless betting, more dynamic than typical investing, and more objective than punditry. For example, users are able to watch the odds move in real time, making it feel like theyre seeing the truth of a situation, whether its a political outcome or whether the CEO of Coinbase will drop the word AI on their next earnings call. Young users are particularly vulnerable, with a 2025 TransUnion study finding that 34% of Gen Z and 42% of millennials are actively participating in betting. Meanwhile, monthly debt payments for millennials and Gen Z have surged 20% and 27% respectively, drastically outpacing inflation (6%) and wage growth (8%), so these small, repeated losses can quickly snowball into real financial strain. Gambling, Cloaked as Investing This isnt a new playbook. First, it started with sports betting, then 0DTE (zero days to expiration) options, and now there are prediction markets. If you were to open any major prediction platform today, the parallels to casinos will become drastically obvious. Both interfaces are fast, have charts that flicker, and use prompts that urge rapid entry and exits. Users are being wired to double down after facing a loss, overrate their intuition, and assume moving prices reflect real information. These are classical behavioral traps that are just being applied in a new environmentand because it has the faux appearance of investing, all the risks feel legitimate. For instance, a user may place small bets on multiple elections simultaneously, checking and adjusting their choices every few minutes. However, even if each bet is only $1 to $5, the constant engagement can cause stress, disrupt focus at work, and eat away at savings, all without the user truly realizing whats happening. Small Bets, Big Consequences One of the most misleading narratives around prediction markets is the idea that the bets are small and, subsequently, inconsequential. The danger isnt the size, its the frequency, repetition, and compulsive checking. Your brain is constantly chasing endless hooks as the market continues to move every few minutes. Users are experiencing a psychological cycle in which they overestimate their ability to predict outcomes, fall into the just one more trade cycle, and experience emotional swings that are spilling into their daily livesaffecting their focus at work, sleep patterns, and interactions with family and friends. Prediction markets are playing on the idea that users are making informed predictions rather than calling it what it isgambling. The rationalization of this behavior is part of what makes it so enticing to users. Theyre convincing themselves that theyre learning about markets, politics, and economic signals, when in reality, theyre being tricked into a loop. And most of the time, theyre not noticing the true cost until it hits their wallets or their well-being. The Overlooked Cost The fun side of prediction markets is often what is highlighted in the mediatheyre showcasing the clever traders, the unexpected outcomes, and the viral probability swings. Whats not highlighted? The stories that actually matter the most, like the real households absorbing small but continuous financial losses, the compulsive checking that mirrors day-trading addiction, and the lack of guardrails in a gray zone between wagering, entertainment, and finance. On their own, these losses may seem insignificant. But as a whole, they add up. When you combine mass adoption, financial stakes, and algorithmic nudges, the risk profile changes dramatically. What initially looked like a fun forecasting tool is now an invisible drain on both your wallet and your well-being. Were setting ourselves up for a generation where financial prudence goes out the window, an influx of personal bankruptcies is inevitable, and the mental health crisis gets even worse than it is today. How to Participate Without Losing Yourself Prediction markets arent going anywhere, nor should they. They can be interesting and even useful, but users need to approach them differently. You should think of them like speculative trading or gambling at a casino. Things like betting only what you can afford to lose, avoiding impulse reactions, tracking the gains, losses, and time spent, all help prevent compulsive cycles and preserve mental health. These practices are especially important for Gen Z and millennials, who are driving the growth of this sector and are on track to spend more per capita on prediction markets than any other generations. At the end of the day, these platforms arent just forecasting future outcomes, theyre also forecasting, and influencing your behavior. Recognize the signs and take control before both your wallet and well-being become the most predictable outcomes of all.
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E-Commerce
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