The A.I. Radio Host
Many of the imaginings of smart homes fall short for me. A.I. putting on the lights, heating up the house before you arrive is nice, and the funny Q&A interactions with Siri or Amazon’s Echo, are cute. But both don’t feel right to me. They gain little over the classic remote control (via app or otherwise), or direct interaction through other kinds of interfaces. I myself would feel silly commanding an A.I. around to do such mundane simple things as closing the curtains. How could the medium of voice and format of conversation for an A.I. be reimagined? The other day I stumbled upon another kind of voice format that could perhaps open interesting possibilities for A.I. in our personal sphere. For me it started with the simple question: How could an A.I. fit into my home?
The home: the meeting of utility and sentimentality
I like my home to be a personal space. Rich in objects that are imbued with memories, a piece of furniture with a story, gifts from friends, borrowed books, the rug made by my grandfather etc. Types of object that mankind has surrounded themselves with for ages. Besides its style, a mug, a chair or rug, are not really modern things. Their significance doesn’t merely come from functionality, but much more from the sentimental value they have to me. What makes my home modern is its pluming, heating, lighting, electricity and Wifi. Infrastructures that exist in the background, that make the stay in my house comfortable. Infrastructure I wouldn’t want to give up. I have no Romantic attachment to my internet provider or the water from my tap. It just simply needs to work well.
Imagining an A.I. for the home for me falls somewhere in the middle of a spectrum between utility value and sentimental value. It may be acting in the background like a smart thermostat that makes sure the climate is comfortable, but when it comes to the fore, like conversing with me, it shouldn’t be intrusive, and I should somehow be able to relate to it on a more personal level.
This got me thinking about my homely habits and rituals. My morning ritual is always accompanied by radio, the stream of the BBC World Service. Every morning the familiar voices of the hosts, no commercials, and little music. When settled down for breakfast I go through Flipboard, Facebook and Tumblr often with the BBC still on. Besides this morning ritual I’ve started listening podcasts on the weekends.
A.I. as Radio
What if A.I could be like a radio station? A host that reads you the news, talks you through headlines, your daily agenda, features shows you’re subscribed to, playlist you’ve made, or play new releases based on your musical taste, the local weather, it reads you those articles from your Flipboard or your read-it-later list.
The nice thing about radio is that the human voice has an intimacy about it. But it is also ambient, you don’t have to be focussed or engaged with what the voice is telling you. Like a radio show, it’s A.I. equivalent could consist of individual characters (different A.I.’s, or one with a multiple personality feature) in conversation with each other. The radio show format even offers a familiar convention for the listener to interact with it: you call in.
I imagine you could share your A.I. Radio Station publicly if you wanted to. Just like sharing playlists on Spotify, Flipboard magazines you subscribe to or edit yourself. The way you train and feed your station might be interesting to others. Stations could also be collaborative (like Spotify playlists), a group endeavour. You might hear kindred spirits call into the radio show during breakfast, launching into conversations. Or the A.I. could call an expert in the community to weigh in on something. A.I. as community host and manager.
The great thing about radio is that it allows you to do other stuff by being in the background. Wether making breakfast, commuting to work, or during work itself, one can listen. We listen mostly to music, but perhaps at the end of every half-hourly news segment the A.I. can slip in personal segments, like the last emails you got. The radio format also provides another, more pleasant, rhythm of interaction with information than the ADHD attention seeking of pop-up, pings and badges that feed us information today on our various screens.
Development
I’d say there is also an interesting development roadmap here. Via remote speaker systems or airplay-like solutions there is already a platform in place that connects computing power and the digital networking to the speaker systems of the home, the car and/or the mobile device. For input mobile devices may be used (with voice or otherwise). The big challenge is to simulate human speech and voice recognition better. These are getting improving, and I believe that with the recent strides in A.I. development we will also see some remarkable progress with A.I. speech the coming years.
So stay tuned and thank you for listening.
