Mark Zuckerberg Channels Tony Stark, Plans To Build His Own Personal ‘Jarvis’ AI Assistant
When you're swimming in money like Mark Zuckerberg, you have to invent ways to entertain yourself -- I imagine it eventually gets old simply buying anything and everything you want. To keep himself grounded and in a constant state of growth, the Facebook co-founder tackles a personal challenge every year. Last year it was to read a new book every other week, and the year before that, he set out to learn Mandarin. What's in store for 2016? Zuckerberg's upping the ante by committing to build an AI assistant to help around the home.
You have to give the guy credit -- most people in his situation would probably hire someone to help with any chores around the house while he and his wife focus on their newborn daughter. But again, throwing money at every problem must get mundane (I wouldn't know). Instead of doing that, Zuckerberg will channel his inner Tony Stark and build himself a Jarvis-type assistant, or so that's the goal.
"My personal challenge for 2016 is to build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work. You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man," Zuckerberg explains. "I'm going to start by exploring what technology is already out there. Then I'll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home -- music, lights, temperature and so on."
What the billionaire whiz kid has in store is more complex and awesome than a simple smart home setup. This is about taking the Internet of Things (IoT) concept to a whole new level.
"I'll teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell. I'll teach it to let me know if anything is going on in Max's room that I need to check on when I'm not with her. On the work side, it'll help me visualize data in VR to help me build better services and lead my organizations more effectively," Zuckerberg added.
These are tasks that don't yet exist in the IoT space, or at least aren't fully fleshed out. Yes, there are gadgets that will control and optimize the temperature by learning and adapting to your schedule, but using facial recognition to let family and friends inside is something that you only see in movies.
It all fits in with the theme for this year's personal challenge -- invention.
"At Facebook I spend a lot of time working with engineers to build new things... It's a different kind of rewarding to build things yourself, so this year my personal challenge is to do that," Zuckerberg said.
Cool stuff, and who knows, if he's successful, maybe next year he'll build a real-life Iron Man suit.
You have to give the guy credit -- most people in his situation would probably hire someone to help with any chores around the house while he and his wife focus on their newborn daughter. But again, throwing money at every problem must get mundane (I wouldn't know). Instead of doing that, Zuckerberg will channel his inner Tony Stark and build himself a Jarvis-type assistant, or so that's the goal.
"My personal challenge for 2016 is to build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work. You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man," Zuckerberg explains. "I'm going to start by exploring what technology is already out there. Then I'll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home -- music, lights, temperature and so on."
What the billionaire whiz kid has in store is more complex and awesome than a simple smart home setup. This is about taking the Internet of Things (IoT) concept to a whole new level.
"I'll teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell. I'll teach it to let me know if anything is going on in Max's room that I need to check on when I'm not with her. On the work side, it'll help me visualize data in VR to help me build better services and lead my organizations more effectively," Zuckerberg added.
These are tasks that don't yet exist in the IoT space, or at least aren't fully fleshed out. Yes, there are gadgets that will control and optimize the temperature by learning and adapting to your schedule, but using facial recognition to let family and friends inside is something that you only see in movies.
It all fits in with the theme for this year's personal challenge -- invention.
"At Facebook I spend a lot of time working with engineers to build new things... It's a different kind of rewarding to build things yourself, so this year my personal challenge is to do that," Zuckerberg said.
Cool stuff, and who knows, if he's successful, maybe next year he'll build a real-life Iron Man suit.
