Welcome to the world of tech-enabled, AI-equipped, and smartly presented devices or machines. It’s time to change the name from Machines, or Talking Machines, to speaking intelligent devices or talking intelligent devices. Let’s make machines and devices in homes and offices intelligent. Intelligent machines won’t be produced all at once. In the intermediate step, there will be machines that ask you and talk to you to understand your preferences about anything and everything — let’s not limit it.
Not just apps on your phones, but machines in your homes that communicate with you when you enter their vicinity. These machines will also give orders to other machines to accomplish a bigger goal that is beyond the capacity of a single machine. For example, it’s a summer morning, and you enter the kitchen. The kitchen fan starts, wishing you a “Good Morning.” Then the light asks you, “What would you like to have for breakfast?” You say “French Toast.” The Toaster is then ordered to make your kind of French Toast (with the help of a robot), a little bit undercooked, unlike my kind of French Toast, which is fully cooked.
This is a vision of the distant future. These points are futuristic and resemble science fiction, hence I added a #science_fiction tag here. As to be at this stage it may take another 5 years or so. These are futuristic ideas that would be needed as we head towards ultra-modernization and ultra-development.
The talks above show that we have a lot of work to do for everyone; all these things require a significant workforce, a lot of labor, a lot of hard work, and a substantial amount of money to develop ultra-modernization.
Why is it needed? Why do Talking Machines with AI need it? As we move towards new ways of living, such as traveling to the Moon for a day, talking intelligent devices/machines would make life simpler. Even here on Earth, AI-based smart machines would be a great help at home and in offices, especially as the workforce to assist in households and businesses decreases.
These ultra-modernizations would create a lot of jobs in the world as all companies would try to get involved in these initiatives. Initially, it won’t be easy; all machines speaking at once won’t be effective. We need machines to interact in a positive way, leading to productive solutions. A decorum of peaceful resolution would be necessary from intelligent AI.
Now consider the robot at home. You call him/her to help you iron the clothes. She comes in, switches on the iron, and the iron says, “Hello Robot. What clothes for today?” The robot instructs it to iron two pairs of pants and two shirts, and the iron automatically sets its time and heat; with the robot’s assistance, the task is accomplished. The iron establishes its own time limits and moisture accuracy. The advantage of this is that the robot does not need to know how to perform every task in the world.
Now let’s look at the bathroom mop that the robot tries to use. As soon as the robot picks it up, the mop is set to the correct angle. The exhaust fan, which knows that you are done bathing and it’s time to switch on. The robot can do this on its own, but still asks, “Can I switch on the exhaust fan at maximum speed? It’s humid in the bathroom.” When you exit the bathroom, the air conditioner says, “I am switching off for a while as you may feel temperature differences. I’ll switch back on in some time.”
It may take 10 years to create error-proof machines like these. A lot of work and many jobs will be available; by then, poverty should also decrease. Hunger will diminish, and people will welcome these changes. These advancements will not only provide employment and means for work and food but will also lead to the modernizations we need, especially as people are considering traveling to the Moon sooner.
But these things initially would be for only some segments of society who are able to pay for them. Sooner or later, their use would increase, and they would become cheaper to buy, and then they would be embraced by other segments of society, with an aim to improve all segments of society.
These are huge works; for example, adding intelligence to an iron machine would take years to test, implement, and integrate the AI, among other tasks. By then, who knows if real intelligence will be available, not just genAI, LLM, and other areas of intelligence algorithms? Adding intelligence, testing, rigorous testing, and then supplying it, followed by testing once more, all this would take time.
All these needs privacy and ethical considerations even more. People need to understand it may take time to deliver such things worldwide. The data stored by a home AI or office AI needs to be protected by AI security.
These would surely be used for homes on the Moon and Mars, as they would be valued for having intelligent talking devices. Even the first of such machines would be sold for huge amounts; imagine talking washing machines! The washing machines are already intelligent, but what if they could speak in your local languages? Imagine the future in 5–10 years!
Thanks for reading,
Stay well,
Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science & Mathematics 