Zuckerberg's New Year's resolution: Let artificial intelligence control the home environment

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his personal Facebook page over the weekend, announcing one of his major goals for 2016: developing artificial intelligence technology that can control the home environment.

Here is Zuckerberg's full post:

Every year, I take on a personal challenge to learn something new and grow outside of my work at Facebook. In recent years, challenges I’ve set include reading two books a month, learning Chinese, and meeting a new person every day.

My personal challenge for 2016 is to develop simple AI technology that can control my home environment and assist me in my work, similar to Jarvis, the AI ​​assistant in Iron Man.

I will start by learning what technologies are already available in the market. Then I will teach my AI assistant to understand my voice to control everything in my home, including music, lighting, and temperature. I will teach it to recognize friends' faces and let them in when they ring the doorbell. I will teach it to remind me if there is something going on in my daughter Max's room that I need to check when I am not with her. At work, it will visualize data through virtual reality to help me develop better services and lead my organization more effectively.

Each challenge has a theme, and this year's theme is invention.

At Facebook, I spend a lot of time working with engineers on new products. It’s rewarding to get into the details of technical projects. With Internet.org, we talked about building solar-powered planes and satellites to provide internet access. With Oculus, we talked about the details of the controllers or software involved. With Messenger, we talked about using artificial intelligence to answer your questions. But building products on your own is something completely different. So my personal challenge this year is to do just that.

For myself, writing code is a fun intellectual challenge, and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you after a year of learning it.