Samsung At CES 2020: Thinking Bigger And Smarter
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id="article-body" class="row" section="article-body"> Samsung co-CEO H.S. Kim, who spoke at last year's CES, will give a keynote Monday at the Las Vegas trade show.
Getty Images This story is part of CES 2020, complete coverage of the showroom floor for the hottest new tech gadgets around. Samsung made a bold proclamation at CES 2015. Within five years, every Samsung product would be internet-connected, then co-CEO B.K. Yoon declared. Not only would its phones and TVs be smart, but also its washing machines, ovens and a myriad of other electronics.
Fast-forward to CES 2020. Samsung's head of electronics is again hosting a keynote at the world's biggest tech show. This time around, the chief is H.S. Kim. At last year's CES, Kim said that Samsung has a "bold vision to take a half a billion devices we sell every year and make them connected and intelligent."
Kim's likely not going to stand on stage and say Samsung has accomplished this goal, but the company could have something even more innovative to share: a new, secretive artificial intelligence program called Neon.
Now playing: Watch this: Samsung One UI 2 tour with new Galaxy foldable flip phone... 4:13 Five years ago, "we were still on the high of the internet of things and [the belief that] everything was going to have sensors," Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi said. The reality, she said, is that what's more important is "what the things that are connected allow you to do."
Samsung is among the tech giants have been making a big push to make our devices smarter. The so-called internet of things, or IoT, embraces the notion that everything around us should communicate and work together. The aim is to make life easier, letting us do things like close our garage doors while we're away or get an alert from our refrigerators when we're out of milk. But many of our devices still don't talk to each other, and they're often not as smart as promised.
Today, "the majority" of Samsung devices have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth links, but it turns out that some things, like various home appliances, don't need to be connected to the internet at all. And the things that are connected need to go about it in a smarter way. It's not enough that devices have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections. They also have to be able to do things that actually help users.
That's where one of Samsung's possible 2020 CES announcements comes in: a mysterious new artificial intelligence initiative called Neon. Little is known about the program beyond the fact it's run by Pranav Mistry, the Samsung research exec who in October was named CEO of Samsung's Bay Area-based Technology and Advanced Research Labs (STAR Labs).
See also
Samsung co-CEO: In 5 years, all our products will be Internet connected
Samsung goes all in on its Bixby digital assistant
Hey Bixby, control my new Samsung TV, fridge -- and robot from CES 2019
5G in 2019 underwhelmed. click here's how 2020 should be different
Neon has its own social media platforms, where it has tweeted out logos and teasers, and its LinkedIn page say that it's "bringing science fiction to reality" and has "the mission to imagine and create a better future for all."
"Have you ever met an 'Artificial?'" Neon tweeted. It also tweeted that it doesn't have anything to do with Bixby, Samsung's smart digital assistant that launched nearly three years ago.
Samsung will host a keynote at 6:30 p.m. PT on Monday at CES in Las Vegas. While it will show off its upcoming crop of TVs and other electronics at the trade show, Samsung likely will use the keynote to think bigger and lay out its vision for the coming year and beyond.
As part of that, it's expected to unveil Neon, though it's unclear when Neon's aims will become a reality. Neon's website, neon.life, features a countdown clock that's timed for midnight on Jan. 7.
"As we look ahead, we know people want more," Kim wrote in a blog post on Thursday. "Not simply more things, but more experiences that make these new technologies increasingly meaningful in their lives."
The company declined to comment about Neon, and it didn't have further comment about CES or 2020 beyond Kim's blog post.
Smarter devices
As companies like Google, Amazon and, yes, Samsung have discovered, the key to actually making smart devices useful is packing in artificial intelligence, typically in the form of voice assistants. Every tech heavyweight is investing in these assistants because they're heralded as the future of how we'll interact with our gadgets. The ultimate promise for the smart technology is to predict what you want before you even ask -- but in most cases, the digital assistants just aren't smart enough yet.
Two years ago, Samsung said it would spend $22 billion on AI by 2020 and would employ 1,000 AI specialists by the same time frame. It has opened AI centers around the globe to work on solving problems for making technology smarter.
