It’s funny how these “smart” appliances are all addressing things radically important for households, but in a poisoned way from the beginning. As if those making them were just trying to get there first and win the bank.
There’s a problem of scale in industrial innovations, where bigger scale makes cost of production of something and cost for the consumer and network effect power better, meaning that there’s no market feedback to help those who came first get old and die to make space for those who come next.
I think this tendency is actually the solution - there is a feedback, it’s that lacking feedbacks on one level prohibits those undying monsters from being competitive on the next one. The niche of non-poisoned smart appliances won’t be filled by anything big, for example.
That’s also another funny moment - instead of dedicated appliances it makes it useful to have one universal one (basically a butler robot) that can be programmed. It’s an incentive in the direction of universal machines programmed by customers.
BTW, imagine a frame with various manipulators and sensors attached to an RPi via GPIO, where every manipulator/sensor can be whatever thing at all, just needs to have a manipulator/sensor description template. The OS of the RPi itself runs tasks of the “move those items of fragility categories such and such to such and such locations, remove dust and dirt from that surface, wash that window”, for which the existing set of manipulators/sensors and task sequence are optimized without user’s involvement (other than attaching them and providing the right description templates, though I suppose manipulator controllers can provide them too, and confirming the resulting jobs). That’s also where those LLMs etc are good enough, to interpret instructions and display the sequence of actions they are going to perform to get user’s confirmation. This way you won’t have to fear that you tell it something harmless and it starts a fire in the room.
Such a system needs a set of standard protocols for the sensors\manipulators, their description templates, and the representation of commands deciphered from human speech to a set of tasks, and the spaces and traits of objects. The programs visualizing the resulting offered set of tasks, deciphering the order, optimizing one set of tasks into a better one, and so on, should be pluggable. Suppose everything’s already made, just nobody really needs a thing that they can’t just buy and turn on.
OK, I like imagining, should work better instead and start my toy the weekends after the next ones (I suspect I won’t start it even by then, at least not in the initial ideologically good form ; nothing about robotics or home appliances). Spent these weekends on making a POV-Ray scene instead.
ahh actions which would be considered “hackers stealing your personal info” twenty years ago is now something people (including me) pay money to be subjected to.
these “smart” appliances are all addressing things radically important for households
Are they, though?
Most of these “smart” functions are at best a slight convenience. And a lot of the “smart” functions in most of them don’t really add anything useful to the user experience.
Yes, they are, it’s very convenient to have the same thing boil the water and make tea for you, or do the laundry and dry it, or do the floor and the windows when you can be busy with something else, same with cooking. Especially remote-controlled when you are an hour away. And it’s not a slight convenience, it’s life-changing like remote work.
So what are you cooking an hour away. Only thing I can think of is you have something in a device and you turn it on. Don’t think we are at the remote cooking phase yet.
It’s funny how these “smart” appliances are all addressing things radically important for households, but in a poisoned way from the beginning. As if those making them were just trying to get there first and win the bank.
There’s a problem of scale in industrial innovations, where bigger scale makes cost of production of something and cost for the consumer and network effect power better, meaning that there’s no market feedback to help those who came first get old and die to make space for those who come next.
I think this tendency is actually the solution - there is a feedback, it’s that lacking feedbacks on one level prohibits those undying monsters from being competitive on the next one. The niche of non-poisoned smart appliances won’t be filled by anything big, for example.
That’s also another funny moment - instead of dedicated appliances it makes it useful to have one universal one (basically a butler robot) that can be programmed. It’s an incentive in the direction of universal machines programmed by customers.
BTW, imagine a frame with various manipulators and sensors attached to an RPi via GPIO, where every manipulator/sensor can be whatever thing at all, just needs to have a manipulator/sensor description template. The OS of the RPi itself runs tasks of the “move those items of fragility categories such and such to such and such locations, remove dust and dirt from that surface, wash that window”, for which the existing set of manipulators/sensors and task sequence are optimized without user’s involvement (other than attaching them and providing the right description templates, though I suppose manipulator controllers can provide them too, and confirming the resulting jobs). That’s also where those LLMs etc are good enough, to interpret instructions and display the sequence of actions they are going to perform to get user’s confirmation. This way you won’t have to fear that you tell it something harmless and it starts a fire in the room.
Such a system needs a set of standard protocols for the sensors\manipulators, their description templates, and the representation of commands deciphered from human speech to a set of tasks, and the spaces and traits of objects. The programs visualizing the resulting offered set of tasks, deciphering the order, optimizing one set of tasks into a better one, and so on, should be pluggable. Suppose everything’s already made, just nobody really needs a thing that they can’t just buy and turn on.
OK, I like imagining, should work better instead and start my toy the weekends after the next ones (I suspect I won’t start it even by then, at least not in the initial ideologically good form ; nothing about robotics or home appliances). Spent these weekends on making a POV-Ray scene instead.
Why did I even write this.
ahh actions which would be considered “hackers stealing your personal info” twenty years ago is now something people (including me) pay money to be subjected to.
BDSM is a thing
Are they, though?
Most of these “smart” functions are at best a slight convenience. And a lot of the “smart” functions in most of them don’t really add anything useful to the user experience.
Sure, if your physically able to do it all that is.
Things like these are important to disabled folks.
Yes, they are, it’s very convenient to have the same thing boil the water and make tea for you, or do the laundry and dry it, or do the floor and the windows when you can be busy with something else, same with cooking. Especially remote-controlled when you are an hour away. And it’s not a slight convenience, it’s life-changing like remote work.
So what are you cooking an hour away. Only thing I can think of is you have something in a device and you turn it on. Don’t think we are at the remote cooking phase yet.