In the not too distant future, all things will be smart. All inanimate objects will have sensors that collect information, and artificial intelligence to analyze and react to the information.
A first generation example is motion sensors that have the sense to turn on lights when people, or your rottweiler, enter the room. Getting a little more sophisticated, there are devices like the Nest that learn from your habits and adjust the heating or a/c to create the most comfort in the most economical way. In the future (like next week), you may have a fridge that records the comings and goings of food over time and after it’s learned enough, places an order to the local food deliverer [probably Amazon] to restock all your staple foods, and suggest a few new offerings that it has calculated you might like based on your love of strawberries, mustard and corn chips. [shudder]
Everything, absolutely everything, will be smart. And helpful, in an artificially intelligent kind of way. In the spirit of embracing the future and getting the most out of it, I have a question for you:
What things do you most want to be smart and which do you least want to be smart?
Sure, I want world peace, cures for all hideous diseases, healthy, cheap food for everyone, but even AI is unlike to make those things something Amazon can deliver. And on the big picture down side, I don’t want my vacuum cleaner to take over ventilators at the hospital, the power grid to decide what temperature it should be in my home, or robots to terminate all human life because there isn’t enough calcium in the compost.
Smart stuff is likely to be more mundane in the near future (like next week and the one after that), so my expectations are lower.
Here are my smart wants:
I most want my electronic devices (which will be all things, including those we don’t consider to be electronic devices right now, like a hairbrush) to be smart enough to recognize me so I don’t have to remember 1,750 different user names and passwords. Of course, I expect perfect accuracy (the hair brush can tell the difference between me and my daughter, who likes to use it on the dog) and that they won’t let someone who has replicated my fingerprints, retinal pattern, voice or heartbeat to have access to my apps (especially my daughter, who is a likely candidate for trying to hack my stuff).
I want smart things to take away some of the pain I now have obtaining secure access to everything.
I least want something interfering in my learning process. I fiddle. I explore. I figure things out by taking a few steps and then pondering how it might work. After several rounds of this, if I complete a task I haven’t done before, I’m proud. This is how life happens for me, whether it’s setting up a website, doing home repairs or starting a company. The last thing I want is an AI chiming in to tell me how to do it at the first sign I’m stumped, or worse, 5 minutes before I realize I’m stumped.
To the average smart thing of the future, my message is: ‘if I want your help, I’ll ask for it’. What I don’t want is a smart-ass thing. A know-it-all thing. Any number of things could provide too much information. A hammer could disapprove of your the choice of nail. A pot could have opinions on the temperature applied or the nutritional content of the food it’s required to cook. Your CRM might remind you to call a particular client or that you’ve called one excessively, ignoring your personal ‘feel’ for how to deal with people.
Overall, I’d like smart things that see the difference between challenges that are annoying because they demand unnecessary attention (like where you put down your phone) but appreciate when a challenge is a good thing so you give it some thought (like understanding how to manage privacy settings).
Of course, what annoys me may be a learning experience you want. Maybe you want instructions the second you pick up something because you’d rather spend your time watching videos. Or you’re a security buff and don’t want an AI to remember your passwords.
We’re all different, so it will take very smart things to please us all.
Orignially posted Aug 3, 2017