Artificial intelligence is currently one of the most exciting emerging technologies out there. New algorithms and incredible increases in data collection efforts worldwide have enabled a lot of advancements in deep learning which consequently made AIs smarter than ever before as they are now able to improve at an impressive pace. There’s hardly a tech giant in the world that isn’t pouring massive resources into artificial intelligence R&D and everyone’s pretty much certain that this technology will soon become an irreplaceable part of our lives. At the moment, AI is mostly entering the market through the Internet of Things (IoT) industry as evidenced by the likes of Amazon Echo which hosts the retailer’s AI Alexa and the upcoming Google Home, another connected speaker infused with Google Assistant. Not that long ago, the idea of coming home and telling your speaker to put on some music, wake you up tomorrow at 7 AM and remind you of that afternoon meeting you have seemed crazy. Today, it’s a reality.
While people’s opinions on AI differ, few can argue that this technology isn’t incredibly impressive. Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg agrees with that sentiment and has actually picked AI as the basis for his personal self-improvement goal for 2016. More specifically, he decided to challenge himself to build a custom AI which would run his home and help him work. He not only followed through with that idea but has actually done so with four months to spare, as he has revealed while speaking in Rome back in August. While we’re still waiting for Facebook’s founder to officially unveil his latest home improvement project dubbed Jarvis, an interesting idea recently popped up on the most popular social network on the planet – someone suggested that Zuckerberg’s AI should be voiced by either Benedict Cumberbatch or Robert Downey Jr.
While that alone isn’t particularly newsworthy, the fact that Robert Downey Jr. agreed with the idea definitely is. More specifically, after Zuckerberg wrote a Facebook post in which he explained that he’s looking for someone to voice Jarvis, the American actor commented he’d “do it in a heartbeat”. He did have one condition, though: the hypothetical fee would go to Paul Bettany, the actor who voiced Tony Stark’s AI—also called Jarvis—in all three Iron Man movies and Bettany would then have to donate it to a charity of Cumberbatch’s choosing. While Zuckerberg’s response to this idea was ambiguous, it suggested that this may actually end up happening. So, yeah, just another day in the tech industry.