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From Wi-Fi 7 and semiconductors to AI automation, workforce training and responsible adoption, a Las Vegas technology forum offered a local look at many of the same questions that will define CES 2027.
By Golden Medina Services | Las Vegas, Nevada
On September 23, business leaders, technology executives, entrepreneurs and community stakeholders gathered at The Venetian Resort Las Vegas for the Innovation Forum: AI, Connectivity & the Future of Innovation, presented by Boingo Wireless and the Latin Chamber of Commerce Nevada.
The event was designed around a broad question: what happens when artificial intelligence, connectivity and emerging technology move beyond the novelty phase and begin changing how companies actually operate?
Boingo described the forum ahead of the event as a conversation about the effect of AI and connectivity on business and economic growth in Southern Nevada. Featured participants included Boingo Wireless CEO Mike Finley and Brian Modoff, founder of MC3 Ventures and an Advisory Partner at Summit Partners who previously served as Executive Vice President of Strategy, M&A and Venture Investments at Qualcomm.
The discussion also expanded beyond large technology companies. Small-business adoption, workforce development, AI security, education, automation and access to emerging technology became recurring themes. U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford later joined the conversation for a segment focused on AI adoption and workforce access.
Taken together, the forum offered something particularly relevant as Las Vegas prepares to host CES 2027 from January 6–9: a look at what happens after new technology leaves the convention floor and enters the businesses, institutions and communities expected to use it. CES itself is positioning AI, enterprise innovation, health, manufacturing, robotics, retail, advanced mobility and related fields among the major areas of its 2027 program.
AI Is Becoming Bigger Than the Software Layer
One of Brian Modoff’s more important observations was that the impact of AI looks very different depending on where a company sits in the technology stack.
There has been considerable discussion about AI absorbing functions that previously required individual software products. For some software businesses, particularly those built around relatively narrow consumer functions, generative AI and increasingly capable AI agents could introduce significant competitive pressure.
But Modoff drew a distinction between those businesses and the physical infrastructure behind the AI economy.
Semiconductors, networking equipment, communications infrastructure and other hardware do not necessarily become less valuable as artificial intelligence improves. In many cases, AI creates additional demand for them.
That distinction matters.
Every increasingly capable AI model still requires computing power. Every connected device still depends on networks. Every autonomous or intelligent system generates, processes or exchanges information somewhere.
Modoff’s background makes that perspective particularly relevant. Before his current work with Summit Partners, he led strategy, M&A and venture investments at Qualcomm across areas including mobile technologies, automotive, IoT, AI, AR/VR and networking. Summit Partners
There is also a direct CES 2027 connection. Qualcomm is already confirmed as an exhibitor in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s West Hall, with its CES listing spanning Artificial Intelligence, IoT/Sensors, Next G & Wireless, Vehicle Tech & Advanced Mobility and XR & Spatial Computing.
In other words, one of the central ideas discussed at the Las Vegas forum will be physically visible across CES: AI is not one product category anymore. It is increasingly a layer running through nearly every other technology category.
Connectivity Is Part of the AI Story
That makes Boingo’s role in the forum particularly appropriate.
Mike Finley, CEO of Boingo Wireless, leads a company whose business centers on the infrastructure that allows connected technology to function across large and complicated environments. Boingo operates across distributed antenna systems, Wi-Fi and private networks, with deployments serving transportation, large venues, hospitality, government and other enterprise environments.
Las Vegas has already served as one of Boingo’s testing grounds.
During CES 2024, the company announced what it described as the first live Wi-Fi 7 network deployed at a public venue, located at the Las Vegas Monorail’s Boingo Station by the Las Vegas Convention Center. The technology was demonstrated during CES through the nearby Boingo Innovation Center.
Wi-Fi 7 is designed to provide substantially greater capacity, lower latency and improved performance in dense environments where large numbers of devices are simultaneously competing for connectivity. Those characteristics become increasingly important as AI applications, sensors, spatial computing, connected vehicles and real-time enterprise systems generate more data.
CES 2027 has an entire Next G and Wireless technology category examining how advanced connectivity is changing user experiences, enterprises and connected environments.
So while much of the current AI conversation begins with models such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, the Innovation Forum repeatedly pointed toward a larger technology ecosystem.
The intelligence may get the attention. The infrastructure still has to make it work.
AI Is a Capability Multiplier, Not a Strategy by Itself
Another theme throughout the discussion was the tendency to talk about AI as though it were one industry.
It is not.
AI is increasingly a capability that can be inserted into other industries.
Modoff pointed toward communications, medicine, drug discovery and other technically complex fields as examples of areas where AI can accelerate existing work rather than simply replace it.
That is also consistent with what CES is emphasizing for 2027. CTA describes AI as already affecting productivity, customer experience and medical advancement, while its digital-health programming now explicitly spans AI, IoT, telehealth and connected healthcare.
This distinction is important because it changes the question businesses should be asking.
The question is no longer simply:
“Should we use AI?”
The more useful question is:
“Where inside this organization can AI create a measurable improvement?”
That could mean helping an employee research faster.
It could mean improving customer service.
It could mean automating a repetitive administrative process.
Or it could mean adding intelligence to an existing physical product.
The implementation matters more than the label.
AI Literacy Is Becoming a Basic Professional Skill
Several moments during the forum returned to workforce readiness.
The comparison made during the conversation was straightforward: learning to work with AI may eventually feel less like learning a specialized technical discipline and more like learning to use a computer, search engine or keyboard.
Not everyone needs to become an AI engineer.
But increasingly, professionals need to understand what AI systems can do, when they are appropriate, where they fail and how to supervise their output.
The discussion also acknowledged how quickly the underlying tools change. A model that performs best at a particular task today may be surpassed several months later. That makes AI literacy less about memorizing one platform and more about developing the ability to experiment, compare systems and understand their strengths.
Education was discussed in similar terms. AI can be misused to avoid doing work, but it can also help students research, analyze, practice, brainstorm and develop stronger work when used appropriately.
That local emphasis is already turning into programming.
The Latin Chamber's LCC LEADers AI & Automation Accelerator begins September 29 and is being promoted as bilingual training for Nevada entrepreneurs, professionals and business leaders. Its curriculum includes practical use of major AI platforms, workflow optimization, content creation and automation.
That is a significant shift from simply telling businesses that AI is important.
It begins teaching them what to do with it.
The Less Exciting AI Conversation May Be the More Important One: Security
The forum did not present AI adoption as risk-free.
Security, privacy and organizational controls surfaced repeatedly.
One of the challenges discussed was how much more complicated AI becomes when it moves from an individual employee experimenting with a chatbot to an enterprise connecting AI systems with proprietary information, customer data or operational infrastructure.
At that point, convenience is no longer the only consideration.
Organizations have to think about what information is being shared, what systems an AI agent can access, what actions it is authorized to perform and where a human remains responsible for reviewing decisions.
The speakers also acknowledged a basic reality of technology: useful tools can be used by bad actors as well.
That does not necessarily make restricting the technology altogether practical. Instead, the forum's discussion leaned toward controlled adoption, using the technology while building security, governance and human oversight around it.
That balance is likely to become increasingly visible at CES as artificial intelligence expands into healthcare, vehicles, homes, enterprise infrastructure and physical devices. Cybersecurity is itself among CES's established technology categories.
The more AI can do, the more consequential its permissions become.
For Small Businesses, the Opportunity May Be Less Glamorous and More Valuable
Some of the forum's most practical discussion had little to do with humanoid robots or futuristic hardware.
It was about the back office.
The Latin Chamber shared an example involving a local tire business that had struggled with inventory management. After adopting new software and technology to better track operations, the business gained clearer visibility into where products were located and reduced problems created by an inefficient manual process.
That kind of use case may not generate a CES keynote.
It may matter considerably more to the average small-business owner.
A large corporation can maintain separate teams for marketing, analytics, customer service, operations, finance and technology.
A small company may have one person performing several of those functions.
AI and automation can begin giving smaller organizations access to capabilities that previously required more employees, larger technology budgets or outside vendors.
That does not mean replacing an entire workforce.
It can mean giving that workforce leverage.
Steven Horsford: AI Access as a Workforce and Small-Business Question
Rep. Steven Horsford joined the program later in the event after the moderator introduced the segment as a nonpolitical conversation about artificial intelligence.
His remarks largely centered on access to technology, training and the potential effect of AI on smaller businesses and workers.
Horsford argued that emerging technology can either widen existing economic gaps or give smaller organizations new tools to compete, depending partly on who receives access to training and infrastructure.
He discussed AI as a potential back-office resource for small companies and described workforce training as an important part of adoption. He also raised the need for safeguards in areas such as healthcare, education and government services where automated systems can have direct consequences for individuals.
That emphasis is consistent with other technology initiatives his office has participated in this year. In April 2026, Horsford joined an OpenAI Academy workforce-training event at the College of Southern Nevada in North Las Vegas focused on providing students, workers and small businesses with AI education and tools.
His remarks at the Innovation Forum also reflected a broader tension running through the entire event: expanding access to AI while still establishing boundaries for how it should be used.
That tension is not uniquely political. It is increasingly an operational issue for virtually every organization adopting the technology.
AI Also Has a Physical Footprint
Another issue raised during the discussion was infrastructure.
Artificial intelligence can feel almost weightless from the user side. A prompt goes into a browser and an answer appears seconds later.
Behind that interaction are data centers, semiconductor systems, networking infrastructure, electrical demand and, depending on facility design and location, water and cooling requirements.
The forum briefly touched on the importance of including communities in conversations around large technology infrastructure projects rather than treating AI purely as a software issue.
That debate is likely to grow alongside the technology.
CES 2027's conference agenda already includes both AI and the Energy Future, illustrating how increasingly interconnected these conversations have become.
Building the AI economy requires more than models.
It requires infrastructure capable of supporting them.
What This Means for Las Vegas Businesses
For Golden Medina Services, this is where the broader technology conversation becomes particularly relevant.
Our work sits much closer to the applied layer.
Most local businesses are not developing foundation models, manufacturing semiconductors or building wireless networks.
They are asking much more immediate questions.
How can we create content more efficiently without making it generic?
How can repetitive parts of client communication be automated without losing the human relationship?
How can customer data move between systems more intelligently?
How can reputation management, reporting, lead capture and marketing workflows operate with less manual intervention?
How do we use AI without unnecessarily exposing client information?
And perhaps most importantly: which processes should not be automated at all?
That is increasingly how we approach AI at GMS.
The objective is not to attach “AI-powered” to every service.
The objective is to identify where technology produces a better outcome, place appropriate controls around it and keep humans responsible for the areas where judgment, context and creative direction still matter.
It is the same principle that emerged repeatedly during the Innovation Forum: AI works best when treated as infrastructure and capability rather than magic.
Las Vegas Is Becoming the Place Where the Global Technology Conversation Meets the Local One
CES will return to Las Vegas January 6–9, 2027, bringing global technology companies, startups, investors, media and policymakers into the city. The 2027 show is already organizing conversations around artificial intelligence, enterprise technology, wireless connectivity, digital health, robotics, advanced mobility and other sectors.
Some of the companies connected to the Innovation Forum already intersect directly with that ecosystem.
Qualcomm, where Brian Modoff previously led strategy, M&A and venture investing, is confirmed for CES 2027.
Boingo has previously used CES in Las Vegas to demonstrate next-generation wireless technology, including its Wi-Fi 7 deployment near the Las Vegas Convention Center.
And the larger subjects discussed at the forum (AI, next-generation connectivity, intelligent automation, cybersecurity, digital health and technology access) closely mirror the categories that will again occupy convention halls across Las Vegas in January.
The Innovation Forum also highlighted something CES coverage can sometimes overlook.
Technology does not end when the demonstration ends.
Eventually, someone has to implement it.
A small business has to decide whether it saves time. An employee has to learn how to use it. A community has to decide how new infrastructure fits into its future.
That may be the more useful way to think about the next stage of artificial intelligence.
The technological breakthroughs will continue. The harder work now is turning them into something people can actually use.
