A Tale of Two SmartHomes

The idea of a smarthome has been with us for a long time. With the development of automation in factories and assembly lines came the image of the automated home. By the 1930’s The “House of Tomorrow” was a staple at World’s Fairs, and featured numerous devices intended to replace or augment the declining use of servants in the home.

But there were numerous barriers to entry in the 30’s and 40’s – a big one was the fact that many homes were dealing with the economic fallout from the great depression. Also, the capabilities of the new labor saving devices were extremely limited. Yes, you could get an electric pop-up toaster (introduced in 1919, but until 1933 you still had to have a person slice the bread, put the toast in, wait for it to pop up, and get it to the table. The same was true for the most of the devices that were coming onto the market – they required extensive operations by members of the household. Hardly ‘home automation!’
There was another resurgence of the home automation concept in the 50’s and 60’s – but the controls were primarily limited to turning something on, or turning something off. Yes, you could turn on the reading light without getting out of the recliner – unless you had to get up to find the remote, a task that was so common it spurred the invention of “the Clapper” in 1985. This sound activated on/off switch solved the problem of having to get up to find the remote light switch. What a difference there is between “clap on; clap off” and the power of today’s Internet enabled devices!
Today, with the growing number of home and lifestyle devices with internet connectivity the problem has changed. It is no longer about finding a smart thermostat or an internet enabled doorbell: it is about integrating all of these devices into a seamless system – without having to hire a full time IoT manager for you house.

IoT and the smart home

Mary lives alone, she prefers it that way. Her daughter drops in to visit several times a week, but is busy with her new job and lives across town. Today Mary has a bit of a headache, and hopes that it is not a cold coming on. Last year she got bronchitis. It is a little before noon, but she decides to go upstairs and lie down to take a nap. Living alone she has gotten in the habit of thinking out loud, so she says to herself “I think I’ll go take a nap for an hour.”

The bedroom is a little cold; the new thermostat is supposed to reduce her heating bill, but it is also supposed to learn her habits so that she is not uncomfortable. Mary thinks that it has a lot of learning to do. Her daughter tried to explain how to override the programs, but at 68 she figures she’ll probably never learn. As she tries to fall asleep in the chilly room, she realizes that she left the radio on, and the muted voices from her favorite talk show are keeping her awake. That was another of those Internet things that her daughter got to make her life better, but it is a lot more complex than her old radio.

At the front door, a scruffy looking man presses the button on the video doorbell. Inside the house Mary’s cell phone rings, but she left it in the kitchen so she doesn’t hear it.

After checking to see if anyone is home, the burglar heads around back to break in.

When there is no answer at the door, the man waves to his friend in the pickup truck who joins him. As they walk around the house and into the backyard, the man slides the crowbar out of his jacket, and hefts it.

As you can see, there are lots of smart devices in Mary’s home – but they are all independent devices which take individual setup and management. As if a large household in the 1880’s had maids and cooks and cleaners but they never spoke with each other. What the ‘intelligent’ household of the 1880’s had was a housekeeper / major domo / senior butler who arranged and orchestrated the staff.

IoT and the integrated home

Mary lives alone, she prefers it that way. Her daughter drops in to visit several times a week, but is busy with her new job and lives across town. Today Mary has a bit of a headache, and hopes that it is not a cold coming on. Last year she got bronchitis. It is a little after noon, but she decides to go upstairs and lie down to take a nap. Living alone she has gotten in the habit of thinking out loud, so she says to herself “I think I’ll go take a nap for an hour.”

The house AI hears her and checks the temperature in the bedroom. Sensing that it is a little too cool, a command is sent to the Internet enabled thermostat and the room begins warming up before Mary starts up the stairs.

The bedroom is a pleasantly warm, the new thermostat her daughter bought her is doing its job. As she starts to fall asleep, she realizes that she left the radio on. “Turn the radio off,” she says to the house.

The house AI sends a command to the new IoT radio, and the volume is muted.

That was another of those Internet things that her daughter got to make her life better, and Mary is glad that she didn’t have to go downstairs and turn it off by hand. She drifts off to sleep.

At the front door, a scruffy looking man presses the button on the video doorbell. Inside Mary’s cell phone rings, but she left it in the kitchen so she doesn’t hear it.

The house AI sends a command sequence to the video doorbell, and the man hears a masculine voice ask “Yes, what is it?”

When the man hears the voice over the intercom he answers that he is in the neighborhood cleaning gutters, and wants to know if they want the gutters cleaned.

The house AI processes the voice input and says, “No thank you, we are not interested.” and directs the video doorbell to capture a high resolution image of the person.

The man waves to his friend in the pickup truck and walks back to the sidewalk. They have a quick conversation and decide to pick a different block for their next attempt.

The house AI posts a description of the conversation along with the photograph to the neighborhood information website. It follows up with an email to Mary’s daughter and a suggestion that she drop by tonight on her way home from work.

Mary wakes up an hour later feeling refreshed and with her headache gone. She goes downstairs to get a cup of tea and get ready for her book club meeting at 3pm. This month they are reading a mystery novel about a home burglary that went fatally wrong.

 

What the household of the 2020’s needs is that intelligent major-domo to manage and orchestrate the estimated 500 IoT devices projected to be in the average home by 2020.

Artificial General Intelligence -power and flexibility

In all the furor over the impacts of artificial intelligence and robotics, the term “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) gets tossed around a lot.

Who is really controlling your access – is there a person behind the decisions?

Hidden within those three words is a  very powerful and potentially threatening concept. According to many experts it will soon be controlling what you do, what you know, and how you live your life. So what does it mean?

AI versus AGI?

Most of us are familiar with the concept of Artificial Intelligence or AI. We have seen it in the news ever since the IBM computer Deep Blue beat the reigning world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997. AI was going to revolutionize the world and allow people to live better lives. All it would take is a few more tweaks to the software and AIs would become our powerful servants.

But what we discovered was that the AI programs were very specialized. Sure a Deep Blue was a whiz at chess, but it depended on highly customized hardware and software to do its job. So it was really not very good at doing anything else. It was an Artificial Intelligence – but it was not very general.

What followed over the course of the 1990s and the 2000s was a collection of these very specialized systems – each one could do something that we thought required human intelligence, but each one could only do one thing. Not one thing at a time – but only one thing. A far cry from what we think of as intelligence. They were more like an idiot savant, we needed something more like a generally smart person. Something that could help us with our taxes, then help Sally with her homework. Something that could help plan the meals for next week, and then remind us about the presentation due at work on Tuesday.  Something that was both intelligent and flexible – an Artificial General Intelligence.

Risk and Control

On the surface this sounds ideal. A generally intelligent servant that we can rely on to make our lives better. But there are risks. The biggest risk with an AGI comes from the very thing we want – flexibility. Think about it. Let’s say that after defeating Gary Kasparov, the Deep Blue computer wanted to do something else, play the stock market, or open a convenience store. It is stuck. All it can do is evaluate chess positions and propose a great move. Not only does it not ‘know’ anything about the stock market – it doesn’t even have the ability to learn anything about the stock market.

With an AGI that limit goes away. An AGI has to be able to adapt to new things, it has to be able to learn on its own, and it really needs to have the ability to set its own goals if it is going to make your life better.  When the new tax code comes out it has to learn about the changes if it is going to help with the taxes.  When Sally moves on to 4th grade, the AGI will have to learn new subjects to be able to help with her homework.  If a competitor just announced a breakthrough, it needs to know about it and assess the impact on your big presentation on Tuesday, so that you don’t get caught flat footed in the meeting.

All of those capabilities are powerful, flexible, and risky. Artificial General Intelligence could become a servant that ends up running the household, controlling your life “to make you happy,” but controlling your life none the less. When we look back at history we see many examples of situations where what started out as a beneficial, helpful system soon became a controlling system. Some were governments some were simply households where the servants became the masters.

Big data provides the input to increasingly powerful algorithms which control what we see, what we know, and the decisions we make. Are people in charge or are AGIs going to increase these trends? (image from Forbes Magazine)

And you have to ask yourself – is that what you want your life to look like?

Next up – “Building our own worst nightmare”