declared an emergency in the area which is around a0 kilometres from iceland's capital, reykjavik. 100 days after hamas attacked israel triggering war in gaza, relatives of the hostages taken on that dayjoin a rally in tel aviv. the head of the un's agency for palestinians has described the death and destruction since 7th october as a stain on our shared humanity. now on bbc news, talking business. hello and welcome to talking business from las vegas with me, michelle fleury. let's take a look at what's coming up on the show. we're at the consumer electronics show, the world's biggest tech convention, to explore how the top trends are affecting the world of business. i'll be taking a look at farming and food security withjohn deere and getting behind the virtual wheel of an autonomous tractor

over 1,000 miles away. we'll check out a range of other gadgets being showcased here in vegas and hear from two major ceos. one is the big boss of siemens, the world's largest engineering company. and i'm alsojoined by the head of nasdaq, the most famous tech index on the planet, to explore what are the big issues affecting the wider industry. wherever you'rejoining us from around the world, a big hello from las vegas and a warm welcome to the show. this week we're on location at ces, the consumer electronics show. it's notjust a top tech event. it's also one of the biggest conventions in the world. 130 attendees are expected and more than 4,000 exhibitors. we'll be hearing from some very long established brands plowing a furrow in technology at the top of their fields. and there's no escaping it, artificial intelligence is everywhere at this year's ces. the past year has been a turning point for al,

especially generative ai. that's the tech that creates human—like text or imagery based on user prompts. chatgpt was launched in november 2022 and is now widely used. but in march of last year elon musk was one of many leading figures who warned that it could pose a profound risk to society and humanity. however, it's now common in consumer products, including in the tesla self—driving cars sold by mr musk, and it's increasingly used by businesses too in their own operations. so here we will explore the impact of al on some of the world's biggest businesses. and i'll be checking out what catches my eye on the convention floor. is it a bird? is it a plane? no, it's xpeng's flying car. and to find out more about it, i'm joined by brian gu, president of xpeng. thanks so much forjoining us. who is this for? well, this is actually for the consumers.

in fact, we actually plan to launch world's first target consumers evtol products. what has been the most challenging part of getting to this stage? well, i think, first of all, you need to design a product that really can fit the regulatory requirements for flying. same time, it will be also used in a daily routine driving scenarios. so having the capability to do both is not easy. so it's got to live up to kind of real world conditions. that's right. we plan to allow our consumers to use it every day. right now, we're very confident that china is encouraging the use of low altitude economy and this will be fit into that grand strategy. and other markets around the world? well, i think if we start flying china, i'm sure there will be plenty of market will welcome us as well. forfarmers, interest in agricultural technology has grown a lot, so i've come tojohn deere to check out their self—driving tractor. josh jensen, chief financial officer ofjohn deere, thank you forjoining us

here at ces. i'm fascinated. tell me more about this self—driving tractor. so, autonomy is really important for our customers because they need to be doing multiple things at the same time. and autonomy allows us to getjobs done when they need to be done. it also allows farmers to be doing other things on their operation and they can be monitored through this remotely. and it also just is a quality of life. it allows them to be with theirfamilies in nights and evenings or during the day, to be where they need to be, when they need to be, as opposed to in the field doing tillage work. so addressing that challenge of labor shortage in farming. any chance i can test it out? yeah, certainly. so we're doing tillage work in austin, texas, over 1000 miles from here. i'll hand it over to you and you can see it's running right now. you can stop it and it'll react very quickly. so ijust press that pause button here. yep. and then we can see. you see a stop. the response time is so fast. i can't believe you've let me take control of a tractor. you've got a future

in farming, michelle. and presumably, unlike autonomous cars, an autonomous tractor is easier because there is less people, buildings, obstacles around. so by far and away we're on private land. we can geofence and tag every field so there's a boundary that it can't go outside of. so it is... safety is critical, but we're able to embed that in the design of the product and how it's used to to ensure that we don't have those sorts of issues. so we hit resume. i have to say, this is a mixture of incredible, but also at the same time underwhelming because literally with the press of a button, you've let me take control of a tractor. it's really exciting for us. and the ability to do this is it's extremely complicated because every decision that someone would be making the machine is having to make itself through sensors and perception systems. and machine learning is driving this. well, this is a first here at ces being able to actually drive this on—camera.

so this is part of our technology platform and this is sea platform and this is see and spray, which does exactly what it sounds like. this goes through the field using machine learning, computer vision and robotics to identify plant versus weed in the field and only spray the weed. and by doing so, what we can see is we can save almost two thirds of herbicide by only spraying the weeds versus spraying across the entire field. so that's much better for the land not to have herbicides. where you don't need it. it's good for a couple of things. 0ne, you're not putting more chemical down than you need and you don't have run off and the like. but also it's very expensive to apply herbicide. so you're dramatically helping the profitability of the farmer as well by not putting down more, more herbicide than necessary. i was fascinated when you said that, you know, if you take a field and you just apply the chemicals where needed, i mean, that really makes a material difference to a farmer's bottom line. how significant, what is the kind of feedback you're getting from your customers? yeah, well, it's significant. so we were seeing as we've had this out with customers who are running it, paying for it,

you know, they're saving around two thirds of their herbicide, so they're only applying a third of their herbicides. so that's significant from a cost perspective. at this year's show, we're focused on the cotton production system. as we go through each of these steps, we've been focused on how is this done in cotton production? and you get to this part of the booth and we're talking about when we harvest cotton and the importance of traceability in cotton overall. so, for example, every bale of cotton that comes out of the field has an rfid tag in it. so think about an apple airtag in each bale of cotton. and that's really important because traceability matters. so it's notjust data in terms of to help farmers grow their crops. it's also data for the whole kind of chain to the finished product, of chain to the finished product. the entire value chain. and that's the unique opportunity we have because of what we can do with data in terms of collecting it and turning that into meaningful insight for our customers, but also to make their lives easier because they're being asked for more and more information on their crops. in this case, cotton that was grown,

but we see this in corn and soybeans and the like as well. i mean, it's been fascinating seeing all of this technology. i guess i was curious, how accessible is it? how do you make it accessible to the sort of family farmer, those farms that don't necessarily have the kind of big budgets, the kind of capital expenditure funds that maybe the big farms do. almost 80% of most crops that are grown in the us come from family farms. so it's still a significant amount of the output. i think importantly we think about a few different things. the ability to retrofit new technologies on older machines is one way we can drive a better access and affordability for machines. but also thinking about how is the what is the business model by which we sell our machines and particularly new technologies, things like see and spray, which we saw, or autonomy, which is on a per use basis, on a per use basis, allows us to charge farmers for what they use and not for acres that they aren't using.

in other words, a big farm will pay a lot more than a smaller farmer. have you yourself had a chance to walk around the floor here? what do you think is the most exciting tech you've seen here? there's certainly a lot of of ai of artificial intelligence all around. i think what makes us excited is everything you see in our booth today, here in our booth is real out in the field operating, customers can use this anywhere they are. but i think that what we're seeing from a technology perspective opens up a tremendous amount of doors. and we think in agriculture, road building, construction, we're just at the beginning of how we can help deliver better outcomes for customers. joshjepson, thank you so much for talking to us here on talking business. yeah, thank you. how good are your football kick—ups? well, this next bit of tech helps you with that. pepper boothman, you are ceo of playfinity. tell us a bit more about your product. yes. so this is a gaming football. so this is full of sensors, connects to an app full of physical games that you can play alone or with other kids around the world. and we have games like 20 kick ups.

so can you do 20 kick ups? you've got three lives and if not, you just keep going. the magic is that you can play with all the other kids around the world who also have the football. ok, so why try and gamify football? because kids are dropping out of sports at a rate that we've never seen before. the screens are the new streets and we need to evolve with the times. we need to give them avatars, leaderboards, gamification. we need to give them what they want. and that means putting awesome sensor technology into existing equipment and gamifying it for them. this next product is a ces innovation award honoree. it is a fitness tracker and a health coach in one small ring that is ai—driven. and tyler, tell us more about this. so this is the ev ring, a ring that is designed for women from the ground up. you'll see it has an open design that accommodates flex and swelling throughout the month. it also comes with a portable charger that charges the ring up to ten times so you can take it on the go. what makes it different from other wearable devices out there right now? the big difference with ev

is the insights that it provides. it takes data off the ring and data that you log and gives you meaningful insights that you can use to make better decisions about your health. like what? like, for example, it might say we notice that when you walk an extra 500 steps, you sleep 10% better. tyler boucherfrom nirvana health, thank you so much forjoining us. this is just one of the products in a growing market aimed at women's health, a market that's estimated to reach $20 billion by the year 2030. now, the first keynote speaker here at ces is the big boss of siemens. the german multinational is the world's biggest engineering firm. and despite a heritage that dates back to over 175 years, it's very much at the forefront of technology. dr roland bausch, president and ceo of siemens, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us here at ces. and welcome to the show. you are a company that's been around a long time. you don't need any introduction. so why was it important for you to come to ces?

yes, we're talking about the industrial metaverse, which is which is the industrial. the word industrial is important. it's basically a digital twin of the real world. and it's a real physical space, digitaltwin. so it behaves like the real thing. and now you bring ai technology it so you can optimize. it's simulated much, much faster and make a lot of improvements in the real world. that's the reason why we're here to present this. and, you know, when i think of a company like apple, then originally as a hardware company, but increasingly services in some ways it's a similar story for you. your roots are in engineering in the physical world, but it's this digital technology and particularly you mentioned industrial metaverse. i mean, tell me a bit more about that. we want to improve the real world those using less resources, using less resources, having shorter cycle times, increasing the value of your assets in the field in predictive maintenance and the like. so how do we do that? and the answer is very simple. we combine the real and the digital world, and the digital world. but what is the advantage like?

why do you want a digital twin? because what you can do now is want to have this physics based digital twin. you can optimize it. take a factory — before we build it, we build its twin. we optimize the building, the workflow, the processes, even the manual work, and we optimize it. we simulate it and once we like it, when we say it's perfect, then we start building it. that saves time. it saves us time more than a year in building it. compared to other factories, productivity is up 200%, 20% higher space productivity 20% lower energy cost. so when you throw into the mix generative ai, i mean, how does that change manufacturing as we know it? we just launched a collaboration with microsoft where we bring creative al to the shop floor. so what we have now, the opportunity because ai allows you to talk to your technology in natural language. so now you can have a shop floor worker and program a robot

on the shop floor with natural, natural language so they can program a robot and optimise it, change it. and that makes the technology accessible to so many more people. many people have fears that theirjobs are going to be replaced by ai. you know, that sort of potential. yes. i mean, also feeds into that fear. have you heard about labour shortage? is there a place where we didn't hear about labour shortage? so we're living in aging societies. so the availability of labour and skilled labor is really a problem and it'sjust about to start. so using technology to really, number one, compensate for that labuor shortage and on the other side get technology accessible more to less trained and educated people. that's the point. and that's the reason why we are saying that al is now transforming industries. certainly here this week at ces, there's a wide recognition of the excitement around the potential of generative ai. what about the risks? is that something that

you think about as you're developing these technologies? when we talk about applications supercharged with generative ai, these are industrial grade applications. so we make sure that whatever outcome is given that it works, in most cases, it's still a co—pilot. you always have the human in the loop, right? so that at the end of the day you'll know that whatever you do it has the high level of integrity and quality. where do you think or what do you think the world looks like with al in a decade from now? certainly in yourfield, in the manufacturing sphere, in the manufacturing sphere? we will have really step changes in the way how we are making things, how we design, how we reduce the amount of resources we need when we build something, or how we leverage the value of any kind of assets like for infrastructures, grids or trains. number two is in a couple of years from now, you even don't recognise

that you're using generative ai because it will be embedded in the applications which you're using. it makes you much, much more powerful, a powerful user. and the last thing is accessibility of technology to so many more, many people. it's so important because you cannot keep up with all the training you need. china, you want to grow your business there. yes. do the tensions that exist between china and the eu and also the us and china, does that complicate that position for you? it does. let me say one thing first. the industrial market is the largest. the chinese market is the largest industrial market in the world. and we are number one in industrial automation. so not being there is not an option. but we hope that this will be on an acceptable level because we have all fight together for the big, big problems of our world, which is climate change, feeding eight billion people. i think we have to collaborate. and let me end with this. what is the tech trend we should all watch for in 202a? i do believe that

really ai technology transforms the industries. we will see more digital twins and the industrial metaverse emerging. they are a couple of building blocks. all of them are available and also they applied. but bring them together with a high level of immersiveness — that makes a big, big change. and i do believe 2024 will be a tipping point where we'll see much, much more of that. dr roland busch from siemens, thank you so much. my pleasure. thank you. in a moment, i'll be hearing from the big boss of the nasdaq. first, a look at one more innovation that's caught my eye. technology can be used to solve major problems. this box makes water out of thin air. i'm joined by david stuckenberg. you are co—founder of genesis systems. how does this work? well, just as you said, michelle, we bring water in from what we call the cube of air around you. we process it inside the box with just a little bit of power. and then we bring it through a four

stage filtration system with a uv that eliminates bacteria. this is truly a step change because it can save lives. around 5000 people a day perish because of water borne illnesses or a lack of water. and this solves that problem. so where does it come out? michelle, this is where the water comes out. it's ready to enter your home as soon as it comes out of the system and ready to go into the drinking glass, we can make around 320 litres a day and it will also function in an arid environment. so it's ready to drink right now. cheers. it's fresh. i'm joined by another ces keynote speaker. this time it's the big boss of the nasdaq, a top tech index, and also one of the world's top two stock markets. adena friedman, ceo of the nasdaq. thank you forjoining us on talking business. now, we catch you on a winning streak. nasdaq just climbed 43% in 2023. that was in a year when we saw high interest rates, geopolitical tensions. how did you do it?

it's great to be here. so thank you so much. well, i think that when we look at the performance of the nasdaq index, i think you have to have focus on this technology, which is, of course, why we're here at consumer electronics show. so the wave of technology, the next generation of technology and its potential to change every industry, i think is really what the investors were getting excited about as they went through the year. there are a lot of challenges in the world and i would say that right now we're dealing with a lot of global complexity, a lot of economic complexity. but there is also this great promise out there with technology. and i think that's really what you're seeing with the index performance. given the economic complexities you just referred to, what is the outlook for 202a? we would describe it as cautiously optimistic and i would say cautiously because of all the complexity. and i think for the last three years, i know myself and many other ceos were saying, when is the world going to return to, quote unquote, normal? but the fact is that the new normal is complexity. we have to get used to this idea that there could be shocks in the system, there could be other things that

kind of impact the businesses. so resilience is becoming the name of the game and companies that have built up their resilience, financial, operational resilience, also technology resilience are really, i think, the ones that are going to be well positioned for 202a. and so i'm also optimistic because the us economy has remained, remained strong and resilient in a very high interest rate environment. now inflation is coming down. it gives the opportunity hopefully to have interest rates come down throughout the year, moderating the cost of capital and hopefully we still have an economic underpinning, then we will see a lot more opportunity for investors to put risk capital to work. the buzz word at this year's ces is around artificial intelligence and especially generative ai. how is that going to change financial markets as we know it? well, generative ai does. what generative ai does is, it structures language in new ways that allows it to be automated so we can create automation around anything that has to do with language.

so that gives us an opportunity to distill down information that we can then use to make investment decisions. but it also allows us to distill that information for better risk management decisions. so nasdaq, we have three key pillars of what we're doing, and all of them have the opportunity to benefit from al. we have our liquidity pillar where we try to drive more liquidity through our technology, our markets and the market technology we serve. then we have our transparency pillar around serving corporates and investors with tools, allow them to navigate the capital markets and they're just a massive data opportunity. and then we also have our integrity pillar and that's our anti financial crime suite, our regtech suite that's helping with risk management. and there we are very advanced in using al to root out criminal behaviours and then make the workflows around the reporting on that much more efficient. on that much more efficient with gen ai. i mean, this is a fascinating thing. i think people hear the word nasdaq, they think of the stock market. but you are investing heavily in tools to combat financial crime, of which ai is a huge part. we provide market technology

to exchanges all over the world. we actually are working with some of the banks in the uk and others is they're looking at how do they leverage the benefit of pooling data the right way and then leveraging al to root out those criminal behaviours. ijust want to give you one example. so a human trafficker, they behave differently in the financial system in terms of how they use the banks to transact their business versus someone who is a terrorist financer or someone who's an elderly abuser, you know, using it to commit fraud. 0ur models essentially are very custom to each of those different topologies, those different behaviors, those different behaviours, so that we can use predictive capabilities to say, is this person likely a criminal actor based on patterns and practices of behavior? and practices of behaviour? i mean, you're leaning heavily on technology to root out financial crime. but isn't the problem that criminals are also using technology? yeah, they sure are. and they are very adaptable. and they're, i don't like to call them smart, but i do call them clever. right. so, i mean, they're really, really sophisticated in how they leverage the financial system to perpetrate their crimes.

so i think it's very important that actors like ours, the banks and those providers for the banks have equal access and ready access to all these advanced tools as well. so that we can stay on top of it and we can stay ahead of the criminals. cryptocurrency has been in the headlines in the last year, not necessarily for the right reasons. we've just had the sec this past week approved spot etfs for cryptocurrency. where do you see that going in the future? yeah, we're very excited to be partnering with blackrock and valkyrie to bring their etfs onto nasdaq. as you know, they're listing their products on nasdaq. i think that what it really reflects is the fact that the the crypto markets, or at least certainly the bitcoin markets, have matured to a state where the sec has gotten to the point where they are approving where the sec has gotten to the point where they are proving the ability for investors to have tools, other tools other than just investing in spot — they can invest in an etf that's very liquid that allows them to invest in the theme of bitcoin without actually owning bitcoin. so i think that that's an important

development for the market. going back to ai, before we leave, where do you see it a decade from now? oh, that's a fun question. i think that we have to think about that. this is the beginning of time for a totally new age of ai capabilities. when you can structure a language and then therefore automate anything that relates to language, you can be better at your client service and managing your customers. you can make it so that you can also code much more efficiently and effectively. so there are so many applications that cross every single industry a decade from now. i think that that's a great question for every single ceo here. but i think what we're seeing at ces is what's possible across electronics, across whether it's your car, whether it's anything that you touch and use in your life. i think it's going to be affected by ai. adena friedman, ceo of the nasdaq, thank you so much forjoining us on the show. thank you.

well, this is one of the cutest things i've seen here at ces. and i'm joined byjerome monzo, who is ceo of enchanted tools. tell us about this robot. yeah. so this is milka. she's a girl and she has twin of miroki on the back. and they are animation movie characters. and they can exist into our world with these robots. and they are here to entertain us and help us on the daily life. so, i mean, you say help in the daily life. how do you see people using this? yeah, actually there's two missions for this robot. the first one is to automatically move objects for you in a restaurant, in an hotel, hospital, and so on. and the second mission is to bring marvel on the daily life, to make people smile. so can you show us? yeah, sure. so here's a robot can detect this on the air and it can grasp it for you. you can ask her every morning, i want this basket or this trolley being somewhere in front of that

door or in front of something. and so you program it from your phone, from a laptop? actually, very small objects like like this that allow you to program it. you don't need to know anything. you don't need to install an application. you just need to use that small object. but if you need it, you can go on a web page to organise all the robot together. well, it's certainly got a lot of smiles brought a lot of smiles to people's faces here at ces. that's all from this special edition of talking business from las vegas. join us next week. and, of course, for all the latest on the global economy, you can find it on the bbc website and our smartphone app and you can follow me on x — i'm @bizfleury. thanks for watching and catch you soon from new york. bye— bye. hello there. it's been a very cold week, pretty much wherever you are, but things are set to turn even colder for this upcoming week, thanks to arctic northerlies, which will feed in plenty of wintry showers around all coastal areas,

particularly ones facing the north, especially northern scotland, and nights will be very cold with severe frost and ice to watch out for. those arctic northerlies are already across northern scotland, feeding in snow showers, they will continue to extend southwards as we move through the rest of sunday to the first part of monday. it's going to be turning colder through the overnight period, the cloud clearing away from england and wales, frost developing pretty widely and wintry showers affecting all coastal areas, frequent snow showers across northern scotland, with a risk of ice, gales affecting the northern isles, bitterly cold. very cold start for monday, but bright — lots of sunshine around, wintry showers will be draped around pretty much all coastal areas, especially those facing the north. frequent snow showers will be falling across northern scotland with significant accumulations totting up here. these are going to be the temperatures, on the face of it,

freezing, up to three orfour degrees, factor in the arctic northerly wind, it's going to feel sub—zero for pretty much all areas, but bitterly cold across northern scotland, with a very strong wind. tuesday, we need to keep an eye on this feature, it will run in from the west to bring an area of more substantial, potentially disruptive snow to larger parts of scotland, maybe northern ireland, and northern england, and it arrives through tuesday morning as well, so the central belt of scotland could see some disruption, higher routes of northern england, then it slowly pushes out into the north sea. frequent snow showers continue across northern scotland, but england and wales after a very cold start should be mostly dry with some sunshine. stay tuned to the forecast, this feature could cause disruption in the north. on wednesday, we are looking to the south, this feature running across france could be a bit further north, and it could therefore give rise to some sleet and snow, affecting southern britain. at the moment it looks like it will say to the south of the channel, with england and wales having plenty of sunshine, much of the country will see sunshine, but frequent snow

showers continue across northern scotland, feeling bitterly cold here, and the snowfall totals are really starting to mount up. snow showers continue thursday and friday across the north, live from london. this is bbc news. a volcano erupts in iceland — the fifth occurrence on the reykjanes peninsula since 2021. this is the scene live in iceland — as molten lava spews from the ground. frederik the tenth is now the king of denmark, following the formal abdication of his mother, queen margrethe. tens of thousands of danes gathered in copenhagen to witness his historic succession. 100 days after hamas attacked israel, triggering war in gaza, relatives of the hostages taken on that dayjoin a rally in tel aviv.

the head of the un's agency for palestinians has described the death and destruction since october the seventh as a stain on our shared humanity. five people die after a boat sank as they tried to cross the channel from france. a volcanic eruption has begun near the fishing town of grindavik in the south—west of iceland. these are the live pictures of the area — it's beginning to get dark there now, but you can still see the smoke rising over the skyline. these pictures from a little earlier today show some houses set on fire by the molten lava. it follows a similar eruption

in the same area last month — but this time it's much closer to the town.