AI: everywhere but the kitchen sink!

Whenever a term becomes fashionable and everyone starts talking about it, it isn’t long before manufacturers catch on.

In this case, AI, which is trending big time. Adrián Espallargas, a journalist at leading Spanish daily ABC, called me to ask my opinion on the new generation of “smart appliances”, all supposedly fitted with AI. Here’s his Spanish-language article.

My opinion? Any product or service that claims to use AI has to be based on Big Data, and it is doubtful that the appliance industry can generate such data because, in general, fridges, washing machines and toasters are not usually connected to the internet, and so cannot send information about their use to their manufacturers. Nevertheless, companies are jumping on the AI bandwagon and trying to sell us products that may well have some advanced automation features, but are certainly not powered by AI.

In other words, at most, we’re talking simple image recognition and perhaps some sensors. This allows for some relatively novel features, but that have nothing to do with AI. A smart device isn’t simply one that’s able to detect a sensor reading and trigger a process: AI is a little more complicated than that, but that’s not going to stop manufacturers from getting in on the act.