>>> "A home automatically turns up the heat ahead of cold weather moving in, or streetlights behave differently when traffic gets bad. Or imagine an insurance company instantly resolving who has to pay for what an instant after a fender-bender because it has been automatically fed information about the accident."
Honestly, I read statements like that and don't understand the mindset of some people. It smacks of a solution in desperate need of a problem. Turning the heat up before the cold? I could see preparing for the cold perhaps by storing energy (think smartgrid) but we have thermostats for a reason. They work. Pre-heating seems like a waste, or at least something nobody has ever thought necessary.
Streetlights behaving differently as traffic gets bad? Why? How? Do they get brighter or dimmer? Whenever traffic is gridlocked there seems to be plenty of light. Maybe ahead of bad weather? But why ahead? Cannot each light decide on its own based on local conditions ... as many do already today?
As for resolving traffic accident liability instantly, that cannot be allowed to be a thing. Even if the robots know all the traffic laws, nobody wants to submit to an automated judicial process. That's a nightmare scenario already explored by countless scifi writers. Drivers are mad enough already at red-light and speed cameras. I cannot see how they would be happy with robojudges assigning liability before first responders even arrive. Imagine having been in an accident, bleeding inside your car, and you get a text from your insurance company telling you they think you were at fault.
> It smacks of a solution in desperate need of a problem
That's because you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. This kind of junk makes sense when the problem is "how can we trick people into giving over their personal data".
It doesn't have to actually work (that is, save energy or offer some significant convenience) as long as it lets you generate a database of when people spend time in their home. It's telling that insurance companies are already mentioned - as if that was a good thing.
Aral Balkan's observation[1] that a lot of modern business plans are based on surveillance ("it's about the data"), Al Jazeera recent investigation[2] of this power grab is surprisingly detailed.
> that cannot be allowed to be a thing
I completely agree. I only hope this can be fought before we end up with one of the nastier end-games[3].
> And products that respond to their owner’s tastes — something already seen in smartphone upgrades, connected cars from BMW or Tesla, or entertainment devices like the Amazon Echo — could change product design.
I don't want my computers to try to predict my intentions. Google tries to do it with things like Google Maps on Android, and it doesn't work. It makes user interfaces inconsistent, removes the ability to do things quickly with muscle memory, and adds to cognitive load as I have to find the buttons that are required to override the one bad option that the "AI" has decided to offer me. Changing interfaces based on user behavior goes in my list of "worst trends of 2015".
Honestly, I read statements like that and don't understand the mindset of some people. It smacks of a solution in desperate need of a problem. Turning the heat up before the cold? I could see preparing for the cold perhaps by storing energy (think smartgrid) but we have thermostats for a reason. They work. Pre-heating seems like a waste, or at least something nobody has ever thought necessary.
Streetlights behaving differently as traffic gets bad? Why? How? Do they get brighter or dimmer? Whenever traffic is gridlocked there seems to be plenty of light. Maybe ahead of bad weather? But why ahead? Cannot each light decide on its own based on local conditions ... as many do already today?
As for resolving traffic accident liability instantly, that cannot be allowed to be a thing. Even if the robots know all the traffic laws, nobody wants to submit to an automated judicial process. That's a nightmare scenario already explored by countless scifi writers. Drivers are mad enough already at red-light and speed cameras. I cannot see how they would be happy with robojudges assigning liability before first responders even arrive. Imagine having been in an accident, bleeding inside your car, and you get a text from your insurance company telling you they think you were at fault.