Home comforts

California – Mark Zuckerberg has created Jarvis, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Internet of Things (IoT) assistant for the home.

• The Facebook co-founder presented the technology to the world through an Anti-authenticity Marketing-style video that introduces viewers to members of his family
• Jarvis is designed to learn and anticipate a user’s preferences rather than just be used as an IoT-connected control system

‘My goal was to learn about the state of AI – where we are further along than people realise and where we are still a long way off,’ Zuckerberg explained in a Facebook post.

In a video filmed at his home in Palo Alto, Zuckerberg demonstrates how the AI, which is voiced by actor Morgan Freeman, can automate the control of the house’s lights, thermostat, appliances, music and security measures.

Jarvis uses a variety of AI techniques including speech recognition, facial recognition, reinforcement learning and natural language processing to learn tastes, patterns, new words and concepts.