Mark Zuckerberg's AI is already making him toast
Mark Zuckerberg's personal artificial intelligence is already toast...ing his bread.
Since January, the Facebook founder and CEO has been working on an AI to help him at home and with work. "You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man," he wrote on Facebook in January.
Now, in an interview with The Verge on Facebook's next decade, Zuckerberg revealed that's he's made real progress with the AI and that "it can make me toast."
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It's an early, and slightly oddball breakthrough, in Zuckerberg's stated quest to use his voice to control everything in his home.
Getting toasted
To get to that point, Zuckerberg wrote of his plans in January, that, after exploring existing technologies, he would train automation tools to know his voice, identify friends faces and keep an eye on his daughter Max's room.
He never mentioned toast.
However, before you start imaging a humanoid robot taking bread out of a bag, putting it in the toaster and then pushing the lever down, Zuckerberg explained in the interview that the solution is far more mundane.
"You hook up an internet-powered [device] to the power and you trigger it," Zuckerberg told The Verge.
In other words, Zuckerberg leaves some soon-to-be stale bread in the toaster and, here's the cool part, programmed his AI to know where he is and what he's doing so it knows the right time to toast the bread. Zuckerberg also noted that he's using many of the AI tools currently being developed by Facebook for its own projects to program the AI, which can already control the temperature and lighting in his home.
The interview touches on a number of forward-leaning initiatives Facebook currently has underway, including AI, Messenger bots, virtual reality and Internet.org-related projects like the recent, successful test-flight of the giant solar-powered Aquila drone. The massive, slow-flying craft is designed to bring internet access to billions of disconnected people around the world. "[We’re] on the path to breaking the world record for the longest UAV flight in history," Zuckerberg told The Verge.
The most intriguing part of the interview, though, may be that Zuckerberg said he is close to being ready to publicly demo his AI.
Wonder if it will start by making toast.
Topics Artificial Intelligence Facebook
Lance Ulanoff was Chief Correspondent and Editor-at-Large of Mashable. Lance acted as a senior member of the editing team, with a focus on defining internal and curated opinion content. He also helped develop staff-wide alternative story-telling skills and implementation of social media tools during live events. Prior to joining Mashable in September 2011 Lance Ulanoff served as Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for the Ziff Davis, Inc. While there, he guided the brand to a 100% digital existence and oversaw content strategy for all of Ziff Davis’ Web sites. His long-running column on PCMag.com earned him a Bronze award from the ASBPE. Winmag.com, HomePC.com and PCMag.com were all been honored under Lance’s guidance.He makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Fox News, the Today Show, Good Morning America, Kelly and Michael, CNBC, CNN and the BBC.He has also offered commentary on National Public Radio and been interviewed by newspapers and radio stations around the country. Lance has been an invited guest speaker at numerous technology conferences including SXSW, Think Mobile, CEA Line Shows, Digital Life, RoboBusiness, RoboNexus, Business Foresight and Digital Media Wire’s Games and Mobile Forum.
