Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has gone public with his artificial intelligence tool, Jarvis, which has been under development since Zuckerberg announced his plans to create the AI to run his home and help with work.
Jarvis, which Zuckerberg enlisted Morgan Freeman to voice, is his ‘virtual butler’, named after Iron Man’s sidekick, and helps with everything from waking up in the morning and turning the lights off, to entertaining Zuckerberg’s baby and helping him get dressed.
He’s also released an amusing video to showcase his new tech friend.
Jarvis did, however, refuse Zuckerberg’s request to “play us some good Nickleback songs”.
“I’m sorry, Mark. I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Freeman’s voice responded. “There are no good Nickleback songs.”
In October, Zuckerberg posted on Facebook askign for suggestions on who should voice Jarvis, with Robert Downey Jr and Arnold Schwarzenegger making a shortlist of candidates.
Meanwhile, his wife Priscilla Chan posted a video showing her experience with the AI, saying it had been “a little different”.
The “mishaps” she experienced included Jarvis only responding to Zuckerberg, turning lights off of rooms she was in and Schwarzenegger’s voice telling her: “Get to the car!”.
Zuckerberg also released a mammoth post on his use of AI, in which he claimed he would continue developing this technology.
“I spent about 100 hours building Jarvis this year, and now I have a pretty good system that understands me and can do lots of things. But even if I spent 1,000 more hours, I probably wouldn’t be able to build a system that could learn completely new skills on its own — unless I made some fundamental breakthrough in the state of AI along the way,” Zuckerberg wrote.
“In a way, AI is both closer and farther off than we imagine. AI is closer to being able to do more powerful things than most people expect — driving cars, curing diseases, discovering planets, understanding media. Those will each have a great impact on the world, but we’re still figuring out what real intelligence is.
“Overall, this was a great challenge. These challenges have a way of teaching me more than I expected at the beginning. This year I thought I’d learn about AI, and I also learned about home automation and Facebook’s internal technology too. I’m looking forward to sharing next year’s challenge in a few weeks.”
Zuckerberg said next steps could include building an Android app, connecting more appliances and setting up voice terminals in more rooms around his house.
