Why smart homes are no longer enough: The future of AI-powered living in UAE
Smart homes just don't cut it anymore. For the ones who seek a more connected, and most importantly, intuitive way of living, artificial intelligence (AI) is set to be a true game changer. Soon, connoisseurs of the futuristic way of living will be able integrate it into their everyday life in many aspects — be it entertainment, health, security, or even resource efficiency with talking AI companions to boot. However, the true possibilities of this tech are yet to be seen.
If you ask 42-year-old Bulgarian Georgi Atanasov, CTO of Living Homes, the assimilation of AI into our homes will be overwhelmingly positive for our wellbeing and elevate our lifestyle to a level not possible before. Living Homes touts 'AI for quality for life' and what it is about to bring to life in select homes in Dubai in the next few months will be a level of AI integration not seen before.
'Basically, what we believe is that smart homes will go through the kind of transformation that you've already seen happening in the automotive industry, obviously being pioneered by Tesla with autonomous driving and electric cars. We believe something similar is about to happen in smart homes, because the home should be a better place that helps you get through your daily activities, and the home should take care of you, and that's why we decided that we should start this company where we can build some new experiences to make the smart home more attractive for people. And how did we approach this using AI? One of the things that we decided to utilise is the new capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), building autonomous AI agents that have different goals.
'One of the goals can be to adapt the environment to your personal needs, [a list of which] you provide. We also gather things like health metrics through different wearables, like smart rings, smart watches, and different bracelets that we have integrated into our platform, and we use non-intrusive sensors that collect heart rate and respiratory rate data. All of that, combined with things like air quality, room temperature, humidity — measured using sensors — we use to optimise the comfort and make the home more efficient, as well as provide some insights regarding your wellness and wellbeing. The focus is to build different AI agents with different tasks that they will be working on each day for you, and they will adapt the home,' he explained.
Meanwhile at Creative Home, Briton Craig Morris, the head of business development, has seen clients enquire about integrating AI into their homes, while highlighting an important differentiation: 'Alexa AI is known as 'narrow AI', it does not think, reason, or understand emotions. However, all AI is set to evolve, from being our daily task-based assistant to becoming more intuitive, personalised, and proactive. With advancements in natural language processing, emotional recognition, and predictive learning, Alexa could transition from a voice-activated tool to a truly intelligent assistant that understands context, adapts to user preferences, and even anticipates needs before commands are given. The integration of AI with smart home ecosystems will enable seamless automation that could significantly enhance the way of life. It's why we've seen some clients ask us at the very start what is possible with AI when it comes to their homes as well as lifestyles.'
Building on these thoughts is 32-year-old Syrian Talal Debs, an engineer by qualification, whose company Syncrow is going to launch a smart building operating system for homes as well as offices and retail spaces with AI added towards the end of the year. Debs explains that many people underestimate how far AI has come and how fast it is growing, 'So when we talk to people about an AI companion, a fully working environment that can work for your benefit, read your data, read your behaviour, give you insights, help you to optimise your way of life or even business operations better, they see it as something very much in the future. There's a lot of buzz around this...a lot of interest. People are not yet understanding the capabilities of AI currently and how far we can reach.'
SyncOS will be able to aggregate data from multiple IoT sources, giving it the added advantage of gaining invaluable knowledge about the home and its denizens. Speaking of the approach, Debs adds, 'We came up with SyncOS as an operating system, which basically is like a miniature cloud, and it is connected to several other clouds which have a lot of different devices. We can connect, for example, to smart things for Samsung, and we'll be able to add appliances of the home, like laundry, dishwasher, fridge and so forth. Any kind of open system or any kind of open cloud, we can connect to it and add those devices to our infrastructure.'
The key differentiator being that as the AI companion starts learning more about the people in the home, their routines, their behaviour and schedules, if they connect their calendars, it'll create new routines for them. The aim, according to Talal, is to reach a point where you can inform the SyncOS AI companion about your mood, and it executes a routine to fit it. So, if you are stressed, it would take actions that would calm your senses based on the information it has about you, be it turning on the TV and going to a particular show or using lighting to induce a sense of calm. The other uses expand to keeping track of how much energy a particular appliance or a room is consuming, alerts for unusual energy consumption patterns, thus leading to savings and a more sustainable lifestyle in the long run.
In terms of homeowners, many are looking forward to getting an upgrade from smart homes to AI-powered ones. Khaled Al Amassi, 28-year-old Emirati electrical engineer, currently has a smart home system in his villa that makes life easier for him, like sending his friend a one-time password to enter the home if he reaches before him or opening the garage door as he approaches. But he is already thinking about what's next. He says, 'I'm quite excited to see what solutions AI can bring to my home, and to upgrade as well. I expect that everything would be way easier, way smarter and can be controlled in a much more futuristic way. I am looking forward to it for sure.'
Meanwhile, Hussain Issam Nanaah, managing director of Ai Smart Communication, highlights the lifeblood of AI, data. 'The more data you give AI, the more it can help you to have a better experience,' he explains.
'A small example is, if the system reads through different sensors and sources that there are five people in the room, it will automatically adjust the AC, and not keep it at the same level as when one person is in the room. The key point being it learns from you and your behaviour. Eventually it can come to point where you don't have to control anything. The home should be controlled by itself, the home should read your moves, your need, and react accordingly.'
It is all about how much are you willing to share to enhance your way of life, how far you would let the machine in to gain better wellbeing, and most importantly, how much control over your everyday life you would relinquish to experience the future in living, one in which AI works round the clock to make you a better version of yourself by transforming what a home could be, day in and day out.
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