Mark Zuckerberg is known for taking on personal challenges every year, such as learning Mandarin or meeting a new person every day. However, his current goal for 2016 is rather ambitious, as he posted in Facebook that he is planning to build an artificial intelligence (AI) that will assist in running his home and helping around the office. As Zuckerberg puts it, this would be like Jarvis in Iron Man.
Zuckerberg stated that he wants to start by “exploring what technology is already out there.” He will also start on voice controls around the house, as well as expanding to things such as a smart door that would let his friends in with facial detection technology. Mark also stated that in his workplace, he’d like the AI to “visualise data” in VR to help him understand where Facebook is going.
“At Facebook I spend a lot of time working with engineers to build new things. Some of the most rewarding work involves getting deep into the details of technical projects,” said Mark in his official statement.
“I do this with Internet.org when we discuss the physics of building solar-powered planes and satellites to beam down Internet access. I do this with Oculus when we get into the details of the controllers or the software we’re designing. I do this with Messenger when we discuss our AI to answer any question you have.”
Unsurprisingly, Mark’s idea of building an AI will require a lot of effort. Nevertheless, it will still be interesting in seeing how far one of the most prominent people in the tech industry can go into building an intelligent virtual assistant from scratch. As Mark said in his post: “this should be a fun intellectual challenge to code this for myself.”
