We're all thinking it...Terminator, Matrix, Ex Machina, half of every sci-fi movie made in the last 30 years. But before all that happens (hoping we work out the kinks first), will AI improve our lives and take human kind to the next level?
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Looking at smart home technology today, there are definitely ways for it to improve, and artificial intelligence can slot in to enhance many aspects right away. What could it do in the future and does it have the power to create a shift in culture and modern civilisation?
What can AI do right now for your smart home?
You may have seen AI on smart cameras, doorbells and speakers and Alexa, Siri and Google are all versions of artificial intelligence. Right now, they're fairly basic compared to the most advanced devices, but they can still perform impressive tasks such as recognising the difference between objects and humans in video feeds, improving voice recognition and optimising energy usage for heating and cooling.
The smart home industry is finding new ways to make the most of this technology and the consumer is benefiting in ways we could only have imagined a few years ago. With cameras, you can be notified if they detect people, vehicles or even animals and some can even recognise specific people and let you know they've been detected. For thermostats, radiator valves and sensors, AI is used to learn how to heat and cool your home in the most efficient way to save energy while still keeping you comfortable. Even your home network might already have AI built in to optimise network traffic and performance.
For home entertainment, you'll probably already have experienced music and video recommendations based on your activity and this is all powered by artificial intelligence. The more data we provide, the more accurate the predictions and this is only going to increase as time goes on.
What do we expect to improve?
Right now, a successful smart home is typically gauged by its integration with other devices, automation, personalisation and how effectively it manages tasks without additional input. All of these can be vastly improved with AI and the advancements will probably come at a breakneck speed.
Integration
Matter and Thread are already creating a new landscape for smart home, allowing devices from different manufacturers to integrate more easily together. Artificial intelligence will be able to orchestrate devices more efficiently to create a better experience and a sense of overall cohesion that will help devices blend into the background.
This will be really useful when deciding which devices suit your lifestyle most appropriately, as you won't be tied in with one specific manufacturer. Being able to control everything from one place will also simplify things too. Hopefully, we'll be able to access data from a myriad of places and use it to improve our day too.
Personalisation
AI could potentially utilise data from our various devices to learn about our habits, preferences and routines to create environments perfectly matched to each person. Lights, heating, TV, audio and more, all set specifically for you, without any input or programming of any sort.
Voice assistants will be able to improve vastly as well, to the point they will understand what you mean rather than what you said. You will be able to converse more naturally and the voice assistant will be able to make decisions beyond a simple request. We could even start to get to the point where an AI could not only respond to our voice, but our gestures and even facial expressions too. If you look stressed, a soothing playlist could be recommended, or the lights may automatically dim when you appear tired. You could even nod yes and no to reply to your AI, or swipe to skip tracks on your music playlist.
We’ll probably see the advancement of emotional intelligence as well, so your AI could understand mood and context, allowing deeper engagement and improved user experience. Your smart home could dim lights, play music, open blinds or change the temperature, adjusting to adapt to your emotional state.
Even meal times could be improved, as artificial intelligence might be able to understand your health, and individual requirements to make food recommendations based on your needs. With advancements in sensor technology, your refrigerator may know the contents within and can make meal recommendations based on what you have left. With RFID tags becoming so cheap, even your cupboards will know what you’re hiding (even the Chinese five spice from 5 years ago). This could help us all make better choices for health and further minimise food waste, allowing us to live better, happier lives.
Automation
With appropriate sensors, your home should be able to recognise when you are home and precisely where you are (this is somewhat possible now), allowing it to optimise your surroundings. On top of this, it could understand when you are on holiday and put your home into away-mode as well. Blinds could open and close, lights will turn on and off to simulate occupancy and your heating/cooling and electric appliances will go into energy saving mode automatically.
You might say that you’re planning on having a party and your AI could create a suitable guest list, send out invites, create menus, order food, choose suitable music, create lighting scenes, grant specific security access for guests, recommend party games and even choose appropriate outfits, all tailored for the specific group of people coming.
Make more of your resources
Smart home technology currently aims to improve energy efficiency and simplify your life, but AI has the ability to take this much further. Every light, plug, appliance, radiator thermostat and more could all be constantly adjusted to use the least amount of energy without impacting the user. By understanding your habits, routines and usage, AI will be able to fine tune all of these on a daily basis to help lower your energy bills and reduce your carbon footprint.
By automating your everyday tasks, the smart home of the future could end up saving you hours a day which could be spent in better ways too. When the first washing machines were invented, few people imagined what could be achieved with the extra time they afforded, but today, most of us couldn’t imagine living without them.
With food waste being minimised as mentioned above, energy consumption reduced and free-time being maximised, you could find the future provides more opportunities to improve other aspects of your life. More time and money could allow you to improve your health, spend time with friends and family or take your career to the next level. However you choose to utilise these extra resources will ultimately be down to you, but being able to have more time and money certainly gives you options.
Your health and wellness
There is huge potential for improvement in your health and historically, technology and population health have both increased over time. With personal tracking devices for fitness, sleep and air quality, we have never had access to such personalised data that allows us to make better decisions about our futures.
AI has the potential to take this data to the next level by learning about users and making detailed recommendations about fitness, sleep, food choices and more. Your smart home could suggest rest when you appear tired, change menu recommendations if you are becoming ill, or monitor general health if you have a medical condition. You could receive daily health insights and recommendations based on your vital signs and daily habits, allowing you to improve everything from fitness to sleep patterns and beyond.
Home security
While home security has advanced enormously in the past few years, artificial intelligence has the potential to make your smart home security system a powerful tool that requires little to no intervention. It could protect your home and contact you or the police if a situation calls for it.
With advanced sensors and cameras, AI could recognise family members and typical behaviour, allowing it to distinguish between normal activity and a possible threat. There are motion sensors today that can detect movement as specific as breathing and with intelligence behind this data, your smart home could tell the difference between individual people in your house. Your door could automatically unlock when you get home, your favourite music could start playing and the lighting could change to your preset as your home knows it’s you, based on your unique movement.
If a stranger is detected, it could learn to welcome them simply by understanding your response. A facial expression or gesture may be enough for your smart home to realise you have an unwanted visitor and to be able to contact the police accordingly. Before this even happens, the cameras outside of your home could recognise a threat and lock all of the doors and windows and activate the alarm.
There could be AI powered drones that are dispatched when a threat is detected and video potential intruders, then alert you or the authorities to their presence. Additionally, predictive monitoring could improve as your home will truly understand potential vulnerabilities and make changes accordingly.
Privacy
If the thought of giving over so much information and personal data to an artificial intelligence scares you, you’re not alone. To add to that, the idea that your data could be sent to the cloud might be the nail in the coffin for some. For AI to work effectively, it required vast amounts of personal data. If that data got in the wrong hands, it could lead to identity theft or data abuse, further highlighting the need for robust security.
To address these concerns, there could be more local storage and computing to improve privacy and data security. In this scenario, AI would operate independently without internet connectivity and all of your data would remain in your home. Without the need for cloud storage and computing, your smart home could continue running even if the internet went down and would remain private, inaccessible from the outside world.
Some of the biggest companies in the world are working on this problem now, because whether we want it or not, artificial intelligence is going to become more and more prominent. To build trust with their customers, big brands will need to take security seriously to ensure the risks are minimised.
Robotics (R2-D2 or Terminator?)
While the thought of an AI robot in the home seems very much like sci-fi, there is certainly a possibility that we could start to see rudimentary versions in the next few years. We’ve all dreamt of a robot that does the cleaning, cooking and laundry, etc, but will we be able to strike a balance between functional and intrusive?
We already use AI in robot vacuums and lawnmowers and this is expected to increase over time. A smart assistant that bumbles around your home, taking care of all the mundane tasks is a dream come true for most, but whether it will become the norm is still yet to be seen. If you go back 50 years, we all thought that the future held flying cars and robots by this time already.
If our future does contain robots, expect them to be able to tidy, wash up, cook food, be our personal assistants, take care of us when we are ill and even provide elder care.
Smart home as a service (SHaaS)
With smart home subscriptions so prevalent, we may see the rise of solutions that allow the user to pay a monthly subscription to access a full smart home without any of the associated upfront costs.
This would allow users to simply pay a monthly amount and benefit from AI-driven security monitoring, maintenance, audio, lighting, curtains/blinds, networking, heating/cooling etc, all managed by a third party.
This could lead to more frequent updates and integration of cutting edge technologies, but may require long contracts to allow the equipment to be paid for over time. Alternatively, the equipment may be lent to the user and taken back when the subscription ends. There could be DIY options or installation costs incurred, but that would be it for any upfront expense.
There are security solutions that are starting to work like this already, so we may see subscriptions work their way into other sectors of smart home. Being able to create a whole home solution without significant up-front costs would open up the smart home market to a wider range of customers, potentially allowing for more investment from bigger companies to advance the technology at a faster rate.
Do we have a crystal ball?
Unfortunately, it’s being cleansed right now, so we’re giving the future our best guess. The smart home industry is ever growing and evolving and nobody truly knows the next big innovation. However, based on what we can see today and what it took to get here, we believe that the future should be something like the above.
If you’re reading this and were inspired to create something, then this blog has served its purpose. If you wanted to get a sneak preview of what may come, hopefully this did the trick too. Hardware, software, automations, scheduling and artificial intelligence are all starting to come together and the futuristic smart home that we’ve all been dreaming of seems to be just around the corner…as long as we’re not beaten to it by the machines.
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