Long before it was even remotely possible, people have dreamed of a world where your house just takes care of you.Once it became clear that computers would be more than just a fad, the home automation fantasies really started to take hold.So I wondered how close some of the classic depictions came to our present day, or perhaps our very immediate future.
4 2001: A Space Odyssey—the fantasy of a unified home AI HAL 9000 was one of the first times we saw a movie depicting an AI that controlled the living environment of humans, could speak with and understand people naturally, and seemed capable of anything.Looking at the state of AI and home automation today, it's actually pretty remarkable how much Kubrick's film got right.We can talk to our home assistants, they can understand us, and the latest AI technology is highly capable.
It's not quite as murderous as HAL, thankfully, but it's still early days.What it got wrong is mainly two things.First, HAL is a complete, independent local computer that doesn't require a connection to any outside resources to think or do its job.
As I've lamented before, typical smart home technologies of our time almost always rely on a computer in some faraway data center to work, and in my opinion, a real smart home should work offline.The second thing it gets wrong is that there's just one AI assistant.We have dozens of different agents, assistants, and other smart software in our real-world smart homes and not a unified system.
The closest thing we have is probably Home Assistant, which is an open-source locally-hosted home automation platform which can be integrated with a local LLM.It's HAL without the ethical baggage.2001: A Space Odyssey G Science Fiction Mystery Adventure Release Date April 10, 1968 Where to watch Close WHERE TO WATCH Streaming RENT BUY Cast Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Douglas Rain, Daniel Richter, Leonard Rossiter, Margaret Tyzack, Robert Beatty, Sean Sullivan, Bill Weston, Ed Bishop, Glenn Beck, Alan Gifford, Ann Gillis, Edwina Carroll, Penny Brahms, Heather Downham, Mike Lovell, John Ashley, Jimmy Bell, David Charkham, Keith Denny, Jonathan Daw, Péter Delmár, Terry Duggan Runtime 149 minutes Director Stanley Kubrick Writers Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C.
Clarke Producers Stanley Kubrick Main Genre Science Fiction Budget $12 million Studio(s) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Distributor(s) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Powered by Expand Collapse
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