About a year ago, Facebook’s co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg set on to create an AI assistant capable of automating his home. After months of extensive work, the well-known entrepreneur finally provided an in-depth update on his progress. In a blog post published yesterday on Facebook, Zuckerberg revealed how the Jarvis AI is already operational, though it’s obviously still capable of improving. In addition to explaining how he built this digital companion, Zuckerberg also went on to explain what he learned from the entire process and what he’s planning to do with Jarvis in the future.
For starters, Facebook’s co-founder revealed how Jarvis was developed using a combination of PHP, Python, and Objective-C programming languages. While building his first smart companion, Zuckerberg heavily relied on Facebook’s existing technologies such as facial recognition and Messenger chat bots, not only because it sped up the development process, but also because he wanted to get a better idea of what the company’s engineers are currently working on. In its present state, Jarvis is capable of interacting with users over a phone or a computer and supports both text and voice commands. The said AI was primarily built as a home automation tool, which is why Zuckerberg initially focused on features allowing it to accomplish tasks like play music, unlock doors, or control lights.
With that said, Facebook’s CEO ran into quite a bit of trouble while trying to get Jarvis to work. As it turns out, contemporary AI solutions are still quite bad at understanding any conversational context and verbal cues from users. Because of that, Jarvis struggles with concepts like “my home” or “wife’s office.” In other words, you need to order it around in the same way you would direct code – in an entirely explicit manner. However, Zuckerberg is adamant at improving Jarvis even further as he revealed plans to create an Android app for interacting with his first AI assistant. In addition to that, Facebook’s co-founder is also considering making his project public provided he can come up with a generic version of Jarvis. Namely, this AI assistant is currently programmed to suit Zuckerberg’s specific habits, so the CEO of Facebook isn’t keen on releasing it in its current state. Last but not least, Zuckerberg also promised to publish a succinct video summary of his current progress on Jarvis later today, so expect another update shortly.
