ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Smart houses have taken a huge leap forward in recent times. Not only can we control all our home’s security, lighting, blinds and audiovisual equipment with an app, now we can even cook by phone. The internet of things has well and truly arrived in the kitchen.
Refrigerators that let you know when you are running low on food; dishwashers that can order their own pods, cooking appliances that you can programme remotely – the kitchen is not just the heart of the home, it’s the brains.
Samsung has a refrigerator that comes with a large, built-in wi-fi touchscreen on the outside of the door, and it’s called The Family Hub, for reasons that will soon become clear.
It has built-in cameras so you can check the app on your phone to see what’s missing from inside your refrigerator. And of course you can order food online on the spot, to avoid supermarket rush hours.
It also does away with magnets holding those family snaps in place on the fridge. You simply load the photos digitally and display your own family pix or travel slideshow on the door. And you can forget about looking for a pen to leave a note for someone. Just tap it onto the screen, where everyone will see it.
Then there’s the Mellow, which has been widely touted as a new way to cook sous-vide, and you can do it all from your phone. You just load the food to be cooked into the sous-vide and it will keep it refrigerated till it needs to be cooked. The app lets you control the cooking from anywhere – you can literally be working in the office while you’re cooking in the kitchen.
Crock-Pot has also joined the internet of things, with the Belkin WeMo smart slow cooker. It still cooks slowly, because that is the point, but you can adjust the cooking time and temperature from an app on your phone.
Small items are up with the play as well. The Eggminder will let you know remotely when you are low on eggs; the Neo storage jar monitors its own contents and reminds you when the oats are running out – it will even suggest recipes using the ingredients in the jar. Meanwhile, Whirlpool’s latest dishwasher automatically orders detergent from Amazon.
Benchtops that require just a touch to bring the internet up within the surface, so you can read your recipes and surf the web right there at the bench, have already arrived, says Auckland kitchen designer Mal Corboy. And he says it won’t be long before induction cooktops are simply integrated into the benchtop, completely invisible until you need them. What we are seeing is just the start, however. Artificial intelligence is the next step, but this involves handing over control to the appliances, rather than the other way round.
New Zealand futurist Dave Wild says this area needs further careful study.
With a programmed house, you control the programming, but artificial intelligence means your home starts to learn and “react” accordingly. “For example, if your fridge is learning your habits, it will know you like to go and get chocolate biscuits at 3pm every day.
“But what if, one day you go to the fridge for your usual fix and the door is locked, because the fridge has ‘learned’ that chocolate biscuits aren’t healthy for you? The technology to do this is already here.”
Wild says the best way to gauge what effect these home improvements will have on our lives is to look at past inventions, like television. “The introduction of television may have created some couch potatoes, but gathering to watch TV has also created social occasions, and it has brought learning and news into the home to make us more connected with the world.
“We often say the future has already arrived – it’s just not in the form you were expecting so you don’t realise it is already here.”