Future of home automation software

Posted on
Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:06 pm
rodb offline
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Future of home automation software

I am curious what the developers and users thoughts are about the future of the home automation client. The internet has decimated brick and mortar retail and I think AI will have an equally disruptive impact on software clients. I can imagine almost everything going to an AI interface. Almost every application I have I can see it replaced with an AI interface, including graphics applications.

I have been yearning for AI since the late 80s and after recently diving in on Alexa I am surprised how far along it is. I think big changes are coming fast. Is there a plan?

Posted on
Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:57 pm
kw123 offline
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Re: Future of home automation software

From my perspective the question is:
do you want to let “sky net” into your home ?

Using ai / Alexa / ... essentially means you have no clue what this thing is doing and why and it can do whatever in your home.




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Posted on
Sat Jan 13, 2018 8:56 pm
Different Computers offline
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Re: Future of home automation software

The first AI offerings will be ones where the homeowners are the product. I won't let one of those into my home, but they'll be very successful among the naive.

I'm looking forward to the Indigo-watson plugin, or something similar.

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Posted on
Sat Jan 13, 2018 9:01 pm
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Re: Future of home automation software

Yep, I agree, No AI for this guy..
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Posted on
Sat Jan 13, 2018 10:31 pm
Different Computers offline
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Re: Future of home automation software

Oh, I will totally go for AI. But only a local instance! But it needs to be well vetted too. That last part is the real trick!

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Posted on
Sun Jan 14, 2018 4:33 am
neilk offline
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Re: Future of home automation software

I came across this quote the other day in the context of AI in business, and it applies here also

"Vendors are pretending to sell what their clients are pretending they want, but the reality is they're just BSing each other..."

AI has many use cases, but the notion that "everything will be replaced by AI and it will be better because it is intelligent" just doesn't yet stack up. All of the meaninfgul use cases of AI relate to large scale data sets (applying decades old machine learning principles but applied with the mass data sets and power to process them that exist today) and improving a capability like speech recognition, improving machine translation, identifying suspicious transactions, identifying targeted adds based on data I intentionally or unintentionally provide. We easily confuse "intelligent" with "intelligent", a Nest thermostat is smart relative to a fixed wheel on the wall but it is in no way artificially intelligent. Anyone who has any form of statistical capability is now relabelling as AI but the the reality is they are almost all intelligent and highly specialised individual use cases based on very specific data sets.

In HA we do now create vast data footprints from which insight can be gathered (when we wake up, what we do, when we leave, how much energy we consume, what we listen too, what we watch, who visits, when the doorbell rings, when motion happens outside the house and much more) but it still needs to be executed and turned into action that I actually want or need. I think the approach the guys are taking with embracing and extending adjacent AI technologies such as Amazon is the correct one, and doing it with a focus on privacy is also correct rather than simply opening us all up to any use of our most private data. It might frustrate at time that we can be early adopters of every flaky new thing but in the long term for me HA is a mission critical home application.

I followed a lorry the other day proudly saying "Our Double Glazing is available with HD Glass", it is not it is just glass and much of what is being touted today as AI is trying the same trick. Almost "AI is here, and if you are not using it you are dumb". Even IBM with all of their investment and awareness are struggling to get corporations to invest outside of chat bot style implementations, Watson is not an AI technology it is really a collection of tools wrapped under a light largely marketing framework.

Posted on
Sun Jan 14, 2018 7:04 am
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Re: Future of home automation software

I spent a long time deciding what this question is really asking. Maybe AI would've helped. :wink:

What users are being offered today is another input device. Amazon, Google and Apple (et. al) are offering input devices that are replacing typing, tapping and reading with voice. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, and it's actually kind of cool. I don't see voice response being the *only* interface.

What these companies are offering themselves are information Hoovering devices. They're in an arms race to build dossiers of information on users that they can monetize. In my opinion, this is inherently bad and I want no part of it. There is very nearly zero percent chance that we will ever use one of these things.

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Posted on
Sun Jan 14, 2018 9:39 am
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Re: Future of home automation software

DaveL17 wrote:
They're in an arms race to build dossiers of information on users that they can monetize


This.

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Posted on
Sun Jan 14, 2018 5:03 pm
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Re: Future of home automation software

DaveL17 wrote:
What these companies are offering themselves are information Hoovering devices. They're in an arms race to build dossiers of information on users that they can monetize. In my opinion, this is inherently bad and I want no part of it. There is very nearly zero percent chance that we will ever use one of these things.


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Posted on
Mon Jan 15, 2018 7:29 pm
Professor Falken offline
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Re: Future of home automation software

I'm not sure I really love the idea of ubiquitous voice control over my house, beyond the initial "gee wiz" factor. I think I'd rather click a setting on a well designed custom control page on my phone.

That said, if I was going to try it, I'd only want a locally running version of one of these things. I wouldn't even mind having to spend time with family members training it for needed phrases. I would think there would be enough of a market for such a thing that someone might work on it, but perhaps not.

I do know I'm not interested in sharing every conversation in my house with Amazon/Google/Apple/etc.

Posted on
Mon Jan 22, 2018 9:29 am
jmdraper offline
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Re: Future of home automation software

Just to bring a different viewpoint to this debate:

Are smart voice assistants useful in automation? Sure, for many tens of millions of people already, they are. And this number is sure to grow. It's not going to be the only interface for most people, but it's sure easier to use a voice interface than a touch screen while doing the washing up / having a shower / etc. And for some people in some circumstances it's also a more natural interface.

Are smart voice assistants sent by evil corporations to hoover up all our conversations and use them against us so that only the naive will have them in their house? Well, while they are certainly not without their risks, I think that view which has been predominant in this thread deserves some challenge. So in the interests of two-sided debate, here goes!

1. Bringing Alexa (for Alexa, read 'or Google or Siri' etc.) into your home does not allow it to 'do whatever in your home'. It plays sounds, listens to sounds (more on that below) and makes API calls from the Internet. If something could not already be controlled by an API call from outside your home then it still won't be able to be controlled that way once you've installed an Echo or similar. For me, I'm much more concerned about having a connected lock on an external door than I am about having a smart speaker.

2. Information hoovering is always bad. Right, so we should stop using facebook, Google, GMail, free bank accounts, twitter,... Yes they are all gathering data and using it according to terms and conditions to monetise, so in that sense the consumer is the product. That's how they're funded. You can stop using those and start using only paid services that don't monetise data if you like, but you'll just be much more limited in your choices since that takes an awful lot of popular services out of the running (it turns out that most people prefer not to pay for this stuff). So you have to make trade-off decisions. How bad is the monetisation of my data vs. how badly do I want to use the free service vs. the alternatives? For me personally, I pay for email service so that my data there is much less monetised than by, say, GMail. But I use facebook and am somewhat careful what data I share with that service. For many many people, the trade-off will fall in favour of getting a smart speaker.

3. You're sharing everything you say with Amazon. No, you're not. If you research how an Echo works, you find that the way it listens for its wake word is using firmware in the microphone electronics while the main CPU is left to sleep. The microphones wake the CPU and the rest of the device only once the wake word is recognised. (Also, of interest, the mute button cuts the power to the mics rather than just stopping listening to them in software.) So everything you're saying which is not immediately after the wake word is not 'being listened to' in any meaningful sense. Sure you have to trust your device on this but (a) you're also trusting that device your lovely touch screen interface is running on which also has a microphone connected to the internet and (b) tear-downs of Echo devices by independent parties suggest that Amazon is not lying about the design of its Echos in this regard

To be clear, I'm not saying everything is right with the world and that there is nothing to worry about. There are clearly lots of things to worry about. But for me the points above run counter to much of what has been said in this thread to date and are relevant to the trade-off decisions users will make. I also wanted to make the point that other users making different trade-off decisions about this to yourself does not make them naive.

Posted on
Mon Jan 22, 2018 9:56 am
Colorado4Wheeler offline
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Re: Future of home automation software

I think you make a lot of valid points and I don't think there are many here who think that installing one of these means that "big brother" is automatically listening to every word you say. Sure, some folks have that idea and some of it is based on recent news about how the Google Assistant was "mic hot" at all times, something Google claimed is a bug, but given Google's horrific privacy policies who is to say.

That aside, it's not the fear of adding a voice assistant and you give up your life, it's that it could be hacked or otherwise compromised. How many home cameras have had this happen as well, where hackers were watching your every move as a result of you putting up a web cam? Could it be avoided? Sure, you could secure your house to prevent a hacker from tapping into your video feed - unless you are piping that feed to a proprietary web service that is then hacked, then everyone is compromised.

The question becomes how much do you trust that the device you got could never be used against you. When does the government step in and say that due to national security there must be a way to tap into your home assistant? Would we even be aware if that was something that the government has already required these people to do. Sure, it starts off innocent "we need this ability to catch this terrorist that is about to blow up 1,000 people" but eventually, like all things government, it turns into big brother. Remember when traffic cameras were put in place to help cut down on accidents at intersections but now, in many cities, are covering every square inch of public space to "keep an eye on the public safety"? Everything good tends to get blown up by someone eventually.

You mention stopping free services online, I can tell you that I'm not a tin-hat paranoid delusional person but that I do not use any of the free services for anything other than anonymous activity. I use Duck Duck Go to search because they do not track your activity, I use Gmail only for my junk email account, I have always left 99% of my information off of Facebook as it's simply a way for my relatives to keep me in the loop (not a single picture of me, not a single detail of who I am other than my name), I use Twitter under my alias and I stick to very strict rules about what goes online.

Everything good has the chance of being bastardized and turned into something awful. Welfare once was a way for the downtrodden of the depression to get on their feet, it was a five year plan, now it is commonplace many decades later. The point being that if you make someone's life easier in any way they often are willing to give up something in return for that. In return for free money or food from the government we allow the government to dictate some portion of our lives. In exchange for being able to add groceries to my shopping list via Alexa I open myself up to the possibility that someone could hack the Echo and listen to me. Am I concerned? Sure. Am I concerned enough to shed myself of all of life's conveniences? Not really, but as I simplify my life I will naturally do so in many cases.

I do believe that the super companies are fairly evil when it comes to information. Google proved that information is power and money, so everyone followed suit. People don't understand that Google gives away almost every consumer service for free because it collects your info and makes money from it, to them it's just free. We all know that "you get what you pay for" but we're slowly being convinced that just because it's free doesn't mean it's bad when in fact it likely is - and worse.

All of that being said, I trust Apple the most with this technology (not to say I trust them, I just trust them more than the others), followed by Amazon and then Google. My trust in Amazon is wafer thin and I intend to ditch Echo just as soon as HomePod is out, but it works for a specific purpose for now.

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Posted on
Mon Jan 22, 2018 10:17 am
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Re: Future of home automation software

And it's a couple of assumptions you are making in numbers 3 that I have issues with;

A) that the wake word cannot be altered either by an "evil corporation" determined to find better way to target ads at you than looking at your browsing history, a sophisticated burglar out to determine when you are home better than looking at the random light pattern you have programmed into the smart home system, or the NSA or FBI under a FISA warrant (big waste of manpower if they tap me, but an irritation nonetheless).

And B), that the soft switch which mutes the microphone cannot also be hacked as the laptop screen cameras have occasionally been.

However, you do have very good points and I very likely will add (strictly limited) voice access to my home as soon as *I* can change the wake word to something obscure so I don't have to worry about the whole "Alexa, tell me all about the Whopper" thing... again, harmless but potentially annoying as heck.

Posted on
Mon Jan 22, 2018 10:23 am
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Re: Future of home automation software

[quote="Colorado4Wheeler"]Google proved that information is power and money, so everyone followed suit. People don't understand that Google gives away almost every consumer service for free because it collects your info and makes money from it, to them it's just free. We all know that "you get what you pay for" but we're slowly being convinced that just because it's free doesn't mean it's bad when in fact it likely is - and worse.[\quote]

Robert Heinlein said (possibly stole) the term TANSTAAFL in his "Moon is ha Harsh Mistress" novel, which our current culture has seemed to have forgotten, but hopefully will eventually come back into style..

Posted on
Mon Jan 22, 2018 10:43 am
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Re: Future of home automation software

johnpolasek wrote:
Robert Heinlein said (possibly stole) the term TANSTAAFL in his "Moon is ha Harsh Mistress" novel, which our current culture has seemed to have forgotten, but hopefully will eventually come back into style..


#1, I've always loved Robert Heinlein, one of my all time favorite authors and I re-read him constantly! #2, amen, "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch".

Facebook = No charge, but most certainly not FREE
Google = No charge, but most certainly not FREE
Yahoo = No charge, but most certainly not FREE
Twitter = No charge, but most certainly not FREE
Instagram = No charge, but most certainly not FREE
Snapchat = No charge, but most certainly not FREE
Pinterest = No charge, but most certainly not FREE
Whatsapp = No charge, but most certainly not FREE
Alexa Service = No charge, but might not be FREE
Google Assistant Service = No charge, but might not be FREE

Interestingly, Apple charges a nominal fee for it's services... and they have the strongest privacy policy of all the "big corporations"... coincidence? One could argue that the Siri service is free, and therefore might just fall under that "be skeptical" category but when you consider that Apple has become a solid brand because of it's unparalleled ecosystem and that this expands the ecosystem and causes you to buy more overpriced Apple products then it's only free up front but you pay for it in real dollars (versus information & privacy) eventually.

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