Artificial Intelligence in Smart Home Devices

1.0What is Artificial Intelligence?

When discussing Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short, we're referring to a unique kind of computer program - one that's capable of learning and making autonomous decisions.
It's similar to a digital assistant, capable of recognizing images and speech, making decisions, and translating text or audio. To create such an 'AI model', it's necessary to 'train' it with a large data set.

The part of AI that allows it to learn from patterns in a large set of data is called 'machine learning'.
The more data the AI model is fed, the more accurate its predictions tend to be. But remember, if we feed it poor quality data, it's going to give us poor results – this principle is known as ‘garbage in, garbage out’.

2.0Is AI used in smart home devices?

Not all smart home devices use AI, but there are certainly smart home devices that do use it. When done right, it can significantly enhance the user experience, enabling people to automate or enhance various things in their homes. However, it's not all smooth sailing. AI brings along its own set of privacy concerns. For example, are companies using our data to train their AI models and if so, are they transparent about it, and can we opt out of it? AI is the center of a lot of very active research and the origin & ethics of the training data cannot be underestimated.

Furthermore, AI models are sometimes hosted in a datacenter (a building with a lot of computers), meaning the data collected by the smart home device must be transmitted to a datacenter first, potentially exposing it to greater risk.

Several smart home devices use AI to provide unique functionalities and seamless user experience.