\n<\/p>\n
January 9, 2026<\/p>\n
4 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Stevie Wonder\u2019s Rule for AI at CES: \u2018Make Life Better for the Living\u2019<\/p>\n At CES 2026, Stevie Wonder offered a simple test for tech. And in the smart glasses boom, the most persuasive tools aren\u2019t about perfect sight but day-to-day independence.<\/p>\n By Eric Sullivan edited by Seth Fletcher<\/span><\/p>\n Stevie Wonder performs onstage on the third day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois on August 21, 2024.<\/p>\n Saul Loeb\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n Of all the nonstop talk about artificial intelligence at CES this year, the most useful thing I heard came from Stevie Wonder.<\/p>\n I spotted him moving through the expo floor\u2014handlers tight by his side, fans threading in and out\u2014and sidled up long enough to ask a few questions. Wonder isn\u2019t new to this world. He\u2019s always treated technology as part of his craft\u2014as something to be shaped, tested and tuned. Long before AI became an unavoidable buzzword, he worked with synth pioneers on the sounds that defined songs like \u201cSuperstition\u201d and \u201cLiving for the City.\u201d He\u2019s been attending CES for more than a decade.<\/p>\n Wonder is working on his first album in more than 20 years, so I asked what he made of AI in the creative process. He did not equivocate. \u201cI will not let my music be programmed,\u201d he told me. \u201cI\u2019m not going to use it to do me and do the music I\u2019ve done.\u201d He wasn\u2019t rejecting technology. He was protecting what he considers human territory. \u201cWe can go on and on talking about technology,\u201d he said. But he was concerned with a different question. \u201cLet\u2019s see how you make things better for people in their lives\u2014not to emulate life but to make life better for the living.\u201d<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n Among the health-tech exhibitors, a common theme emerged: the always-on AI companion, one that can help make care decisions, locate services and navigate daily life. Dominic King, who leads consumer health AI at Microsoft, told me people already use Copilot and Bing to ask roughly 50 million health-related questions every day.<\/p>\n Yet the promise felt realest only in smaller tools with clearer stakes\u2014especially the ones built for people who are blind. With accessibility tech, both the problem and the upside felt obvious.<\/p>\n After a few hours on the floor, a pattern emerged. Some of the most compelling accessibility tech didn\u2019t try to fix vision so much as translate the visual world into something usable. EchoVision, a pair of smart glasses from California-based Agiga\u2014developed with input from Wonder\u2014let a wearer point their head toward a sign, a doorway or another object and hear a description about it. In a hall full of gadgets that felt like solutions in search of problems, narration that eases a person\u2019s day made good sense.<\/p>\n But description doesn\u2019t always solve the hardest part.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not so sure it does you much good to know that in this direction is where the restrooms are,\u201d a representative from Seattle-based Glidance told me, \u201cif you don\u2019t already have the navigation skills to dodge all the people in the way.\u201d The world isn\u2019t just a picture frozen in time. It\u2019s movement. It\u2019s crowds. It\u2019s columns, curbs, chaos.<\/p>\n Glidance\u2019s answer was Glide, a two-wheeled device you would hold out in front of yourself, an arrangement that was sort of like a compact handlebar with wheels. Stereo cameras spotted obstacles and hazards. The device then steered and braked to help keep you moving in the direction you wanted to go.<\/p>\n Glidance kept the guide in your hand; .lumen put it on your forehead. The Romanian start-up\u2019s founder, Cornel Amariei, described his glasses as \u201ca self-driving car that sits on your head.\u201d At CES, the company won an accessibility award in a pitch competition for assistive-tech start-ups that came with an oversize $10,000 check. (\u201cNow we have money for the return tickets,\u201d Amariei said.)<\/p>\n Many CES demos relied on bulky sensor rigs. But .lumen kept the hardware of its glasses simple and tried to do the rest with software. Six cameras create stereoscopic vision\u2014depth perception built from slightly different angles, the way two eyes triangulate a curb. And the team made a key design choice: the glasses don\u2019t require an Internet connection. All the compute is in the device itself.<\/p>\n Amariei explained that geometry alone isn\u2019t enough. A lake is perfectly flat. A system that only understands \u201cflat\u201d will steer you right into it. The harder part is recognizing safe surfaces from dangerous ones\u2014then translating that into something your body can use. When .lumen\u2019s glasses find a clear route, they don\u2019t announce directions one step at a time. They guide you there with haptics, nudging your head toward the open path.<\/p>\n All the sensor talk and the demos were fascinating, but the human payoff is what has stayed with me. These tools aim to let someone move through a lobby, down a sidewalk, through a crowded hall, without having to stop and ask permission every few feet.<\/p>\n The best accessibility tech I saw at CES pushed back against the show\u2019s most annoying habit: making sweeping promises when what people need are reliable, specific tools. Some of these devices will cost a lot. Some will take longer to mature than their demos suggested. Some will stumble in the real world. But they point in a direction that Stevie Wonder would recognize: tools that make life better for the living.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 9, 2026 4 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Stevie Wonder\u2019s Rule for AI at CES: \u2018Make Life Better for the Living\u2019 At CES 2026, Stevie Wonder offered a simple test for tech. And in the smart glasses boom, the most persuasive tools aren\u2019t about perfect sight but day-to-day independence. By Eric Sullivan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[21983,21764,337,1317,1156,11880,15881],"class_list":{"0":"post-41077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-2026make","9":"tag-ces","10":"tag-life","11":"tag-living","12":"tag-rule","13":"tag-stevie","14":"tag-wonders"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
It\u2019s Time to Stand Up for Science<\/h2>\n