Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer an optional feature of modern life. It is all around us, and it’s being thrust on us whether we like it or not. So for me, the goal is to find out how I can use it in ways that make my life better without allowing it to intrude where I don’t want its help. Thinking about this led me to wonder about AI’s role in home automation.
I am 100% into home automation. I started dabbling in it several years ago; I am now fully hooked and enjoying every minute of it. I have recently begun to notice different brands within the space adding AI features to their devices. To be honest, I haven’t thought much about it. But that recently changed when I read an article from The Hill’s Gleb Tsipursky.
The thrust of Tsipursky’s piece was how AI is likely to change how people go about their jobs, particularly those who work in offices. He contends that the future of AI in the workplace will be less about how builders can make their AI devices smarter and more about giving workers the ability to customize AI bots to do specific tasks in specific ways.
Everyone Controls His Own AI
In Tsipursky’s view, employers are wasting time worrying about whether employees are working remotely or coming to the office. He believes they ought to be investing in customized AI solutions that allow employees to figure out how to be most efficient.
He contends that letting workers determine the course of their individual AI usage will allow them to maximize their own efficiency and productivity without having to be a slave to the office. What does this have to do with home automation? A lot.
The very same thing Tsipursky says should be the future of AI in the workplace also applies to home automation. For AI to reach its full potential in the home automation space, the industry needs to unleash consumers and let them decide how to use it.
Everyone Is a Programmer
The next question is how to make it possible. Easy. Use AI to control AI bots. Tsipursky points out in his piece that modern AI tools make coding very easy. A person no longer needs to be an expert computer programmer to write scripts. He can tell an AI bot what he wants to do and let the bot write the script for him.
That very feature was recently introduced into the open-source home automation platform I use. I have yet to try it, but I have plans to do so very soon. Why? Because there are some automations I would like to take advantage of but simply don’t know how to program.
I can easily explain to an AI about what I want to accomplish. That is the easy part. The bot can then write the code for me. I plug it into my platform and, just like that, I have a working automation tailored to my specific needs.
Out-of-the-Box Works Okay
You might not understand why any of this matters if you are not into home automation. I can appreciate that. Before I jumped into home automation, I did not appreciate all the enthusiasm I picked up from the people who were writing about it. But things are different now.
Working with my home automation system over the last several years has taught me a very important lesson: out-of-the-box automations work okay, but they are limited in what they can do. That is by design. In addition, the limitations apply equally to big-name brands like Vivint and lesser known brands you have probably never heard of.
Like any other mass-produced product, out-of-the-box home automation is designed to be as generic as possible in order to appeal to the widest variety of customers. So just about every system can do basic things like turn lights on and off and make a thermostat programmable. But that’s not enough for me. I want to go deeper – much, much deeper.
Keeping Track of Energy Usage
My wife and I plan to do a lot more traveling in the future. When we finally get underway, I am going to want my system to keep track of energy usage and send me daily reports. There are reasons for this that I will not get into here. Needless to say, I don’t want to be surprised by unexpectedly high utility bills after being on the road for a month.
I ultimately want my system to monitor both electric and water usage. I want the meter numbers recorded, the daily usage calculated, and the resulting numbers sent to me via email. I don’t know how to write that code. More importantly, my system doesn’t have a built-in routine for it.
I need to write the code myself. But I am not going to. Instead, I’m going to have the AI feature write it for me. I plan to implement the routine before we head out on a 13-night cruise in a few weeks. That cruise will be the testing ground for my new routine. If everything works out, the routine will run whenever we are traveling.
Putting the Automation in Home Automation
As I see it, AI’s role in the home automation space is to more or less ‘put the automation in home automation’ as it were. By leveraging AI tools, I can automate the process of developing new routines and scripts without having to know any code myself.
Like giving workers the opportunity to determine the course of their own AI usage, I would be able to push my home automation system to the ultimate level of customization by letting AI write routines and scripts nobody else is working with.
I suddenly have a new appreciation for AI and its ability to make my life better. Now I just need to break out the AI feature recently adopted by my platform. I’m looking forward to the code it can write for me.