The smart-home bug has bitten Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. In a Sunday evening Facebook post, the billionaire entrepreneur announced his intention to build a connected-home system akin to the fictional character Tony Stark’s J.A.R.V.I.S. system, from the Iron Man comic and movie series
Zuckerberg says his design will start out with the basics that most pre-fab systems offer today: lighting controls, a programmable thermostat, and streaming music on demand. While it’s unlikely to ever be as powerful as Tony Stark’s fantasy system, Zuckberg says his will eventually be controlled by voice commands, that it will learn to recognize visitors at the door, and that it will monitor his newborn daughter’s room and alert him and his wife when there’s a problem.
In the future, the Facebook founder expects his AI will help him in his work, visualizing data in virtual reality. “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,” Zuckerberg wrote. “But it’s a different kind of rewarding to build things yourself, so this year my personal challenge is to do that.”