The Killer App of Consumer Electronics

Mid, meh, bleh, mediocre, or average…These are the kinds of words that will soon describe electronics products that don’t have general intelligence.

Much in the same way that consumers quickly migrated to using software apps on their smartphones – versus transacting in real life (IRL) – consumers will flock to products and services that are intelligent.

Except… it’ll happen at a pace of adoption that is a magnitude faster.

The Demise of Stack Exchange

A simple, visual, and predictive example of this powerful trend can be seen in the utilization of Stack Exchange for finding answers to questions.

Stack Exchange used to be an extremely popular destination for the programming community.

It’s comprised of 173 Q&A communities organized around specific topics.

It was massive, with more than 400 million monthly visits by those searching for information.

But let’s have a look at what happened over the last few years…

In the charts above, we can see that the number of questions asked per month has absolutely collapsed.

Just imagine what these charts will look like a year from now. Flatlines…

Of course, the catalyst for this precipitous collapse was the release of large language models in 2022.

And as these models advanced and became multi-modal – i.e., capable of ingesting real-world video, audio, and images for interpretation and complex reasoning – in early 2023, the decline accelerated.

By the end of 2026, I doubt anyone will be using Stack Exchange at all.

The Killer App of Consumer Devices

Stack Overflow was the parent company of Stack Exchange, which sold itself to Dutch Investment Group Prosus in 2021 for $1.7 billion.

Very smart move in terms of timing, as it would be worth a tiny fraction of that amount today.

Soon, it will be worth almost nothing.

Intelligence on computing systems has been the demise of Stack Exchange…

General intelligence, however, will be the killer application on consumer electronics devices that we interact with daily.

Those that don’t adopt it will suffer a similar fate as Stack Exchange.

To use another simple example, over the holiday break, I took a three-hour round trip in cold, snowy, and heavy traffic conditions.

Normally, this is a trip I wouldn’t be looking forward to. But general intelligence made it painless, pleasant, and stress-free.

My son and I simply jumped into our Tesla – which is a battery-powered intelligent consumer electronics product, not a car – in the garage.

I then spoke with Grok, which is now integrated with Tesla’s navigation system and full self-driving software. I had a conversation. That’s all it took.

I told Grok where we needed to go, and all I had to do was press a single button on the screen: “Start Self Driving.”

The Tesla teleported us to our destination and parked itself.

I didn’t touch the steering wheel once.

It’s not the design of the car or the fact that it’s an electric vehicle that makes me a passionate user.

General intelligence is the killer app. It’s the intelligence that has removed all the friction of driving in bad conditions.

I will never go back – it’s simply too good, confers too much value, and reduces so much friction.

And that’s why products that adopt general intelligence will take the market by storm.

And the reason this is possible is that general intelligence is software.

It’s easy to deploy at scale. As long as you have the semiconductors to run the software and the electricity to power the device, adoption can scale at an exponential pace.

And it will.

Products that don’t have intelligence will be “mid,” uninteresting, banal, and will fall quickly by the wayside.

Because what would you rather have? An intelligent robotic cleaning device that is vision-based and can “see” and understand objects and messes and knows how to clean them up best?

Or a “dumb” cleaning robot without intelligence… that inefficiently bounces between one hard object and another, cleaning over the same spot again and again – whether dirty or not – and keeps running over your dog’s potty accident on the living room floor? (Note: iRobot filed for bankruptcy in mid-December.)

Here’s what the stock chart of a company that fails to incorporate intelligence looks like – down 99.91% in the last five years…

5-Year Chart of iRobot

How many moments of disappointment before you upgrade?

Below is a product from a rapidly up-and-coming intelligent robotics company, Matic Robotics. Like Tesla, Matic uses vision-based technology and contextual intelligence to pick up where iRobot failed.

Matic’s Intelligent Vision-Based Cleaning Robot | Source: Matic Robots

Or for those with more money to spend and who need even more general-purpose convenience and time savings, humanoid robots will be the ultimate disruptor.

And this year, they go on sale with both 1X Technologies and Figure AI aggressively trying to target the home market… both in the hopes of beating Tesla to the punch.

NEO | Source: 1X Technologies

General-purpose humanoid robots will fill the void for many who need or would like help around the house but can’t afford or justify having a full-time housekeeper.

There are no buttons to push, no programming to be done.

Just talk with the NEO, Figure 03, or Optimus. Tell it what you need, and it will get to it.

And general intelligence doesn’t end there.

Gobsmacked by the Future

In the last few weeks, I’ve seen more examples than I can count of tech-literate consumers using intelligent programming tools like Anthropic’s Claude to figure out how to control consumer appliances.

Even people who you’d think wouldn’t be surprised by what the technology can do are gobsmacked.

Take Andrej Karpathy, for example.

He was the former Director of AI for Tesla and also a co-founder of OpenAI. He is a well-educated computer scientist, and even he was caught off guard.

Over the holidays, Karpathy was blown away by Claude Code. It was able to connect to the electronic devices on his home network… find, read, and understand the user manuals for those devices… and program a new control system app for his lighting system… in no time at all.

And remember, while Karpathy might be one of the best software developers in the world, the tools used here require no coding whatsoever.

Very soon, general intelligence – and the resulting outcomes that can come from it – will simply be voice commanded. By any of us.

Our near future is about to become futuristic, thanks to general intelligence.

A home with an active Wi-Fi network and consumer electronic devices connected to it will become magnitudes more manageable and controllable, thanks to general intelligence.

No programming will be required. Only voice commands.

And if you’d prefer to have a personalized app on your phone or PC, “it” will be able to whip one up for you, as well.

Unintelligent devices – or devices that don’t have application programming interfaces (APIs) to hook into intelligent software – will quickly become irrelevant, have no brand loyalty, and rapidly lose market share.

Apple (AAPL) is a laggard when it comes to AI and intelligence.

Even after years and billions of dollars of investment in trying to develop autonomous technology, it gave up and shut the program down.

It continues to struggle to recruit talent to turn its future around.

It will be forced to either acquire a general intelligence company or sign a major licensing deal with a leader to stay relevant and retain brand loyalty.

I predict that will happen this year, which is why I remain bullish on the company.

The hardware – the device itself – is not what results in brand loyalty or stickiness.

It’s the utility it provides.

And general intelligence is the killer app for consumers that will begin to transform our lives and workplaces in 2026.

2026 is the future – best wishes to all,

Jeff