Mark Zuckerberg’s New Year’s resolution: Build an AI butler

Last year I set myself five New Year’s resolutions, and kept two perfectly and two imperfectly. The other was jettisoned, but not a bad return, I thought. Mark Zuckerberg is, on balance, probably busier than me, so he’s only going for one this year, although it is a touch more challenging than my aims: he wants to “build a simple AI” to run his home and assist with his work. “You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

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I’m going to start by exploring what technology is already out there. Then I’ll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home – music, lights, temperature and so on,” he continued. “I’ll teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell,” he added, in a move that he may swiftly regret as his life starts to feel like a 1990s sitcom.

“This should be a fun intellectual challenge to code this for myself. I’m looking forward to sharing what I learn over the course of the year,” he concluded, confirming what I already knew: me and Mark Zuckerberg have very different ideas of the concept of fun.

A challenge it certainly is, though, and the Facebook founder is no stranger to setting himself tough goals for the year ahead: learning Mandarin and meeting a new person every day being two highlights.

Some people are never satisfied, eh?

Much of the functionality Zuckerberg talks about sounds a little similar to Internet of Things plans already afoot, and, of course, with his wealth, he could just hire a team of butlers to do his bidding for him, but there’s something quite impressive about his thirst for self-improvement despite his success… provided things don’t go too far:

That’s okay then.

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Images: Paul Williams and Robert Scoble used under Creative Commons