Will Bringing Artificial Intelligence into Our Homes Change Our Lives?

Amazon unveiled its vision for smart homes at a recent event at its headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Powered by Alexa, its virtual assistant, and with new features for practically every room in the house, the new gadgets bring technology into our homes in an unprecedented way.

To create the future AI-enhanced homes, Amazon is partnering with a prefabrication company, Plant Prefab, a startup that aims to provide modular and sustainable pre-fabricated homes as a cost-effective alternative to traditional homes. Pre-fabricated homes, using Alexa-enabled technology as its standard, consist of giant panels that are assembled at the house construction site.

Amazon’s Alexa is not only able to learn — she’s intuitive. The AI assistant brings voice technology into home design, reminding homeowners what they’ve forgotten with its Alexa Hunches feature. The Alexa Guard feature can detect broken glass, as well as smoke or carbon dioxide, and alert the owners. The basic tasks — locking doors and turning off lights or the television — become automated.

Alexa, its virtual assistant, and with new features for practically every room in the house.

And while a lot of the AI technologies seem new, we do not realise the degree to which artificial intelligence is already present in our lives: from apps that relay live traffic conditions, to ride services such as Uber, to Facebook’s image recognition program. While AI is all around us, the new question is: do we also want it in our home?

Another issue concerning the prevalence of artificial intelligence is the social communication between people. Asking for directions is no longer needed — there’s Google Maps and Waze for that. Spotify and last.fm tell us what kind of music our friends enjoy, eliminating the need for that conversation. Facebook notifies about the events our friends are attending. Netflix is slowly pushing out movie theatres, generally a social pastime. And while we’re extremely connected online, we are increasingly more disconnected in real life.

While the collaboration between Amazon and Plant Prefab does enable the building of sustainable, eco-friendly houses, the question yet unanswered is this: how will letting AI into our homes affect our lives? With the rate of technological innovation, it seems that we will find out sooner rather than later.

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