Fifty years after The Jetsons promised us a future of robot maids, flying cars, video phones and meals at the push of a button, it seems that reality may actually surpass this futuristic vision. By 2062, the year the animated show was set, advances in artificial intelligence, sensor networks and robotics promise to make the Jetsons's home in Skypad Apartments, and indeed in all of Orbit City, seem quaint by comparison (although flying cars may remain out of reach—especially ones that beat parking problems by folding into a suitcase).

Many of today's homes in the developed world already include a lot of the sensors and networking devices needed to make the smart home a reality, wrote Diane Cook, a professor in Washington State University's School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, in the March 30 issue of the journal Science. The home of the future will harness information from appliances, computers, smart phones and other devices to intuitively meet the needs of its residents. Computer software will play the role of an intelligent agent by perceiving the state of a home's physical environment and residents via sensors, interpreting this information using artificial intelligence, and automatically adjusting heating or cooling, lighting or other resources based on that information.

Cook refers to artificial intelligence and data-mining technologies' ability to seek useful information on resident behavior and the state of the home, and to automatically act on this information, as "ambient intelligence." It will foremost be used to monitor the health of a smart home's inhabitants and to maximize energy efficiency as well as facilitate communication both within the household and with the outside world.

For the past year Cook and her colleagues have been studying the potential of smart-home technology to enable residents at the Horizon House retirement community in Seattle to extend the time they are able to live independently. A year ago the researchers installed dozens of sensors in some residents' apartments to monitor motion, energy use and other conditions. Whereas half of the study participants have mild cognitive problems, the rest are healthy.

The researchers are using data collected to test the activity-recognition algorithms used by their software. "Our clinical psychology collaborators visit the residents every six months to perform a complete cognitive and physical health battery of tests," Cook says. "We are currently designing techniques to identify correlations between behavioral changes and cognitive and physical health changes." She expects to report on initial findings as early as this summer.

Increasingly, smart homes will exist within smart cities that likewise connect citizens via ambient intelligence. Such cities will integrate data from a variety of different sensors placed to record information about factors important to daily life—including air quality, traffic and weather—and then initiate some action if needed. Examples would be adjusting the timing of traffic signals to improve traffic flow or texting alerts to city dwellers warning them to stay indoors due to poor air quality.

Of course for a smart city to work, diverse data sources must be mined in a way that respects the privacy of its citizens. University College Dublin researchers Michael O'Grady and Gregory O'Hare raise the issue of "ambient law" in a related Science article on the emergence of smart cities. "To harness ambient intelligence, users must be prepared to share some knowledge about themselves—and this brings risks," O'Grady says. "Once a technology begins to leave the lab, it is essential that legal, privacy and ethical issues be considered."

Ambient law takes into account that the freedoms protected by a constitutional democracy may be radically altered as ambient intelligence permeates everyday life, O'Grady and O'Hare argue in their article. To avoid the loss of privacy and other freedoms, the legal community must work with computer scientists to establish rules that must be coded into ambient technologies before they become intrusive or damaging to individuals' privacy.

Now, if researchers could only find a way to make George Jetson's nine-hour workweek part of our future, too.

17 Comments

1. 1. dobermanmacleod 05:31 PM 3/29/12

   I think this article kind of misses the point (maybe it was written so as not to shock the Squares). AI monitoring sensors is just a very small minor part of the impact it will have on society. The Singularity is coming. Already I've found a computer program that has a measurable IQ about 150, and another that has written a video game! Yeah, it will turn lights on and off at home as we walk through rooms, but it will also design your home, drive your car, and maybe even be your friend who you talk to and tell your secrets to (recently a computer program passed the "Turing test," where a computer dialog with a human was mistaken for another human by experts). Ambient intelligence indeed - what a limited view of AI - it will probably babysit the kids while you are stoned on Ambient.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

2. 2. MARCHER in reply to dobermanmacleod 07:58 PM 3/29/12

   If we awarded posts for sarcasm, I would nominate you.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

3. 3. Jerzy New 04:36 AM 3/30/12

   Just say openly: "when we spy you it is good for you".

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

4. 4. dobermanmacleod in reply to MARCHER 05:43 AM 3/30/12

   In retrospect, I have become concerned that you really are serious that you think I am being sarcastic, rather than sincere, about AI develpments both present and future. I can provide links proving each of my claims (except for the last humorous one about Ambient). Perhaps it sounds preposterous, but it is grounded in reality, not science fiction/fantasy, or sarcasm.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

5. 5. MARCHER in reply to dobermanmacleod 01:03 PM 3/30/12

   Please do, I have never heard of an AI with an IQ of 150 and I would love to know more.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

6. 6. alan6302 01:38 PM 3/30/12

   Large air ships are predicted for the future. No doubt they will be serviced by small surface to air wingless craft. One can imagine most of the infrastructure that exist today made obsolete very quickly. Nostradamus predicts the vehicles as the " wave" and it appears after the great destruction. I don't believe that it will be interplanetary. Unfortunately, that type of vehicle will kill borders.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

7. 7. rodrigo_braz in reply to dobermanmacleod 03:58 PM 3/30/12

   I think you are way overoptimistic. No computer program has passed the Turing test. That would require HAL 9000-level conversational performance, and when that happens the entire world will hear about it. I suspect you are thinking of the Loebner Prize, which is a very different thing, simply giving the award to whatever system sucks the least at something like the Turing test.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

8. 8. dobermanmacleod in reply to MARCHER 07:10 AM 3/31/12

   http://gizmodo.com/5885904/this-computer-program-is-smarter-than-96-percent-of-humans
   
   "The program was developed by the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics, and Theory of Science at the University of Gothenburg in Göteborg, Sweden. Its intelligence score is based off of results from standard non-verbal test questions, which are designed to eliminate cultural and linguistic biases by testing knowledge rather than reasoning."
   
   BTW:
   
   http://www.geekosystem.com/cleverbot-passes-turing-test/
   
   "It seems that Cleverbot, the chatbot so ready to admit that it was a unicorn during a discussion with itself, has passed the Turing test. This past Sunday, the 1334 votes from a Turing test held at the Techniche festival in Guwahati, India were released. They revealed that Cleverbot was voted to be human 59.3% of the time. Real humans did only slightly better and were assumed to be humans 63.3% of the time."

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

9. 9. MARCHER in reply to dobermanmacleod 02:53 PM 3/31/12

   Interesting, thanks for the links.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

10. 10. dobermanmacleod in reply to MARCHER 09:43 AM 4/1/12

    Marcher, I have a deadly serious question for you. How do you KNOW I am not an AI?

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

11. 11. MARCHER in reply to dobermanmacleod 03:15 PM 4/1/12

    I don't.
    
    But I don't discriminate when it comes to the beings I converse with. And the links you posted were very interesting; so if you are, you have my thanks all the same. :)

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

12. 12. dobermanmacleod 12:46 AM 4/2/12

    http://singularityhub.com/2012/03/10/robot-begs-to-be-allowed-to-live-dont-miss-the-impressive-%E2%80%9Ckara%E2%80%9D-video-demo-from-quantic-dream/

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

13. 13. MARCHER in reply to dobermanmacleod 12:27 PM 4/2/12

    I've seen that one, it was terrifying, especially given that I may well see such a thing in my lifetime.
    
    I preferred Ramona from the film version of The Singularity is Near (really wish that would come out on DVD).

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

14. 14. dobermanmacleod 03:06 PM 4/2/12

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120402113038.htm
    
    "Siegelmann and two colleagues recently were notified that they will receive a grant to make the first ever Super-Turing computer, based on Analog Recurrent Neural Networks. The device is expected to introduce a level of intelligence not seen before in artificial computation."
    
    The Singularity is coming quicker than most people think. Frankly, I think most people have romantic and fanciful ideas of the human mind as contrasted by AI (but then 50% of Americans are functionally illiterate).

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

15. 15. MARCHER 12:29 AM 4/3/12

    I certainly hope you're right. Reading most of the news these days, it can't possibly come fast enough.

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

16. 16. dobermanmacleod in reply to MARCHER 01:09 AM 4/3/12

    FYI: There is a new clean energy technology that is one tenth the cost of coal. LENR using nickel. Incredibly: Ni+H(heated under pressure)=Cu+lots of heat.
    
    This phenomenon (LENR) has been confirmed in hundreds of published scientific papers: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf
    
    "Over 2 decades with over 100 experiments worldwide indicate LENR is real, much greater than chemical..." --Dennis M. Bushnell, Chief Scientist, NASA Langley Research Center
    
    "Energy density many orders of magnitude over chemical." Michael A. Nelson, NASA
    
    "Total replacement of fossil fuels for everything but synthetic organic chemistry." --Dr. Joseph M. Zawodny, NASA
    
    By the way, here is a survey of all the companies that are bringing LENR to commercialization: http://www.cleantechblog.com/2011/08/the-new-breed-of-energy-catalyzers-ready-for-commercialization.html

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

17. 17. MARCHER in reply to dobermanmacleod 11:39 PM 4/3/12

    This does seem promising. I'll add cleantechblog to my regular reading list.
    
    Thanks!

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this