Family of Mark Zuckerberg has a new homebody: His name is Jarvis. Jarvis is an artificial intelligence associate he created this year that can control appliances, play music, recognize faces and, perhaps most extraordinarily, entertain his toddler.
The Facebook founder and icon spent his 100 hours putting together the virtual sub - named after the artificial intelligence system in "Iron Man" - which comprehends spoken commands as well as text messages, he wrote in a 3,000-word Facebook post-Monday.
Artificial Inteligent Technology Is Fast Approaching
Among Jarvis's skills: Adjusting the home thermostat regulator, turning on and off the lights, and operating the toaster. The virtual assistant texts Zuckerberg images of guests who stop by during the day, and opens the front door for those it identifies. It can also tell when Zuckerberg's 1-year-old daughter, Max, wakes up "so it can start playing music or a Mandarin lesson," he wrote.
In a video, he posted on Facebook Tuesday, Zuckerberg offers an example of Jarvis at work: "Max woke up a few minutes ago. I'm entertaining her," the virtual assistant (voiced by Morgan Freeman) tells Zuckerberg, before turning his care to the toddler. "Good morning Max, let's practice our Mandarin."
The year-long development was part of an effort to learn about the state of artificial intelligence, Zuckerberg wrote, and also an opening to experiment with trailblazing technology at a time when voice-activated assistants like Amazon's Echo and Google Home are in advance widespread approval.
"At this point, I mostly just ask Jarvis to "play me some music" and by looking at my past listening patterns, it mostly nails something I'd want to hear. If it gets the mood wrong, I can just tell it, for example, "that's not light, play something light", and it can both learn the classification for that song and adjust immediately. It also knows whether I'm talking to it or Priscilla is, so it can make recommendations based on what we each listen to. In general, I've found we use these more open-ended requests more frequently than more specific asks. No commercial products I know of doing this today, and this seems like a big opportunity."
Building the robot was the easier - and less time-consuming - of his two goals for the year, he said. The other was to run 365 miles in 2016.
"Now I have a pretty good system that understands me and can do lots of things," Zuckerberg, adding that he's tried to give his robot a sense of humor. "I've taught it fun little games like Priscilla or I can ask it who we should tickle and it will randomly tell our family to all go tickle one of us, Max or Beast. I've also had fun adding classic lines like 'I'm sorry, Priscilla. I'm afraid I can't do that.' "
When asked by Zuckerberg to play some good songs by the much-derided Canadian band, Nickelback, Jarvis replies: "There are no good Nickelback songs."
But there are also some hooks to work out, mostly around voice commands. When Zuckerberg demonstrated the technology for a Fast Company story, he had to ask the robot to turn off the lights four times before it complied. Shutting down the music took another two tries. System glitch.
"In the longer term, I'd like to explore teaching Jarvis how to learn new skills itself rather than me having to teach it how to perform specific tasks," he wrote. "If I spent another year on this challenge, I'd focus more on learning how learning works."
The work might open the gate to more aggressive technology and gearing. Security for me is I wanted to be installed at home. How about you? If a A.I installed in your house, what is the core function would be? Leave your comments below.
