7 ms·

Hey Zuck We Built Your Office AI

99 points by madrafi 10y ago

vessenes 10y ago
This is so awesome. I want you guys to package it up and sell it for $5.99. Or $1.99/month. I would buy if it were zero config; we've got lots of tablets lying around and would hack it into plenty of different use cases if it were up and running. At any rate, nice work!
cbsmith 10y ago
I don't think Zuck or anyone else thought that the AI demoed was particularly hard to build...
Chronic2h 10y ago
> we've got lots of tablets lying around and would hack it into plenty of different use cases if it were up and running. Please stop using the word hack The word you are looking for is incorporate. It does not make you appear cool and cutting edge. In fact, it indicates the opposite.
- TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
  looks up at banner to realize parent is fine
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    Incorporater News
- jbpetersen 10y ago
  Incorporate is so wordy though, why don't we just start saying "inc" for short instead of "hack" and call it a day? That way we can ironically signal to fellow incers on IN that we're part of the IN-group and feel good about ourselves as we imagine being subtly given recognition by various internet strangers with similar interests who may someday be sitting across from us in an interview where having the "correct" signals of exactly what we see as cool vs. ironic may be paramount to determining "cultural fit". P.S. Thanks for giving me the inspiration to inc up a witty response.
- vessenes 10y ago
  I'm not cool or cutting edge. I'm old. I don't have any use cases in mind that would justify a four-syllable word, unfortunately. I think hack works just fine.
- dang 10y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13280425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13280425 and marked it off-topic.
  - jraedisch 10y ago
    Flagging really makes comments much more interesting. I had to look up the cached copy and did not find it to be that flag-worthy. Sarcastic maybe, but nonetheless insightful.
Splendor 10y ago
> "We have some cleanup to do on the code before we’re ready to share the sample app" Has this been shared now?
sfblah 10y ago
This isn't a good idea. Productize it.
throwaway2016a 10y ago
I wrote a similar system for my own home quite a while ago. It didn't have all the features of Zuckerberg's but it had a lot of things it doesn't too. The real mystery is why do all the existing home automation systems kind of stink. Although it's not much of a mystery, it's because every company wants to be proprietary and no one wants to work together because if the system is closed they can get you to buy their hardware exclusively.
- jbpetersen 10y ago
  I'm waiting for pay-as-you-go automation services with good federation between them. That's the only model I see being practical long-term.
  - bryanrasmussen 10y ago
    Yes - then the single home automation service can be free, and all the functionalities of the system aside from the basic play music one will be unlockable as you pay. Then whenever you walk into a room that is dark you can get a message on your smart phone - 'access automatic light control for only $.99 a month!' hmm, maybe I'm cynical.
    - jbpetersen 10y ago
      I imagine it being more like I say "computer, set the lights to forest green", that speech gets crunched by a well trained neural net (or sequence of them) to determine an appropriate reaction, then the fraction of a cent compute costs get added to my monthly bill.
      - bryanrasmussen 10y ago
        The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please." He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you." "I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt." ...he found the contract. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. "You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug. From Ubik, by Philip K. Dick. Published by Doubleday in 1969
vogt 10y ago
Phenomenal, very cool. Publicly announcing the arrival of everyone in Slack seems a little gross if for instance someone has special circumstances which require them to come in later that may not need to be public information. Or could potentially brood that weird competitive mindset of "I'm the best because I show up at 7:30 when everyone else comes in at 9-9:15, even though I may not be the most skilled". It is definitely fair to say that this stuff being a problem is indicative of something deeper in the office culture anyway, though. Other than that I love this and 10/10 would pay for it on a monthly basis.
- Waterluvian 10y ago
  That's always my fear about one day working for a big company. I'm not a good drone. I'm probably the most firable person if you look at me on metrics alone.
  - vogt 10y ago
    I work for a company of ~120 people who are owned by a fairly giant company (I think ~5000 but could be way off, I forget) and we don't treat people that way. You really have to work hard to vet the environment you're going into as an employee, but it pays unlimited dividends when you get it right. It has taken me several times now.
usgroup 10y ago
Expounding the benefits of humans living like machines so that machines might be more useful to humans. I think the carrot is very much that we are subduing time to our control. Maybe this is the way it should all go ... but the depths of me resonate much more with finding the simple ways to be in harmony with the world. Akin to a closed form formula where an algorithm may have been.
frik 10y ago
Zuck is right (and before Gates in 1995 "The Road Ahead" book). We need a common API, so that AI agents can interact with various types of hardware (home automation, IoT) as well as other AI agents over the internet. I propose we should use JSON rest based simple API with simple english words. To agree on things, AI agents should be able to bid against each other, like in auctions. In Bill 1995 vision, every interaction costs (micro payment). We all learned how the free internet with WWW sponsored by advertisement et al won over his pay-as-you-go The Microsoft Network as found in Win95. But how will advertisement work with agents? How will big search engine providers get payed in an mainly AI environment. This has to be solved. Also Zuck and Bill wanted to have their own locally installed agent on their own hardware, something that has charm but is contrary to 2010s trend of software-as-service/cloud. But I can imagine that in a few years, our personslized AI agents surf the internet and interact with other agents, and we less and less visit websites or apps ourself, but directly interact with our agent.

99 points by madrafi 10y ago

This is so awesome. I want you guys to package it up and sell it for $5.99. Or $1.99/month. I would buy if it were zero config; we've got lots of tablets lying around and would hack it into plenty of different use cases if it were up and running. At any rate, nice work!

cbsmith 10y ago

I don't think Zuck or anyone else thought that the AI demoed was particularly hard to build...

Chronic2h 10y ago

> we've got lots of tablets lying around and would hack it into plenty of different use cases if it were up and running. Please stop using the word hack The word you are looking for is incorporate. It does not make you appear cool and cutting edge. In fact, it indicates the opposite.

TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
looks up at banner to realize parent is fine
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Incorporater News
jbpetersen 10y ago
Incorporate is so wordy though, why don't we just start saying "inc" for short instead of "hack" and call it a day? That way we can ironically signal to fellow incers on IN that we're part of the IN-group and feel good about ourselves as we imagine being subtly given recognition by various internet strangers with similar interests who may someday be sitting across from us in an interview where having the "correct" signals of exactly what we see as cool vs. ironic may be paramount to determining "cultural fit". P.S. Thanks for giving me the inspiration to inc up a witty response.
vessenes 10y ago
I'm not cool or cutting edge. I'm old. I don't have any use cases in mind that would justify a four-syllable word, unfortunately. I think hack works just fine.
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13280425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13280425 and marked it off-topic.
- jraedisch 10y ago
  Flagging really makes comments much more interesting. I had to look up the cached copy and did not find it to be that flag-worthy. Sarcastic maybe, but nonetheless insightful.

Splendor 10y ago

> "We have some cleanup to do on the code before we’re ready to share the sample app" Has this been shared now?

sfblah 10y ago

This isn't a good idea. Productize it.

throwaway2016a 10y ago

I wrote a similar system for my own home quite a while ago. It didn't have all the features of Zuckerberg's but it had a lot of things it doesn't too. The real mystery is why do all the existing home automation systems kind of stink. Although it's not much of a mystery, it's because every company wants to be proprietary and no one wants to work together because if the system is closed they can get you to buy their hardware exclusively.

jbpetersen 10y ago
I'm waiting for pay-as-you-go automation services with good federation between them. That's the only model I see being practical long-term.
- bryanrasmussen 10y ago
  Yes - then the single home automation service can be free, and all the functionalities of the system aside from the basic play music one will be unlockable as you pay. Then whenever you walk into a room that is dark you can get a message on your smart phone - 'access automatic light control for only $.99 a month!' hmm, maybe I'm cynical.
  - jbpetersen 10y ago
    I imagine it being more like I say "computer, set the lights to forest green", that speech gets crunched by a well trained neural net (or sequence of them) to determine an appropriate reaction, then the fraction of a cent compute costs get added to my monthly bill.
    - bryanrasmussen 10y ago
      The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please." He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you." "I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt." ...he found the contract. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. "You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug. From Ubik, by Philip K. Dick. Published by Doubleday in 1969

vogt 10y ago

Phenomenal, very cool. Publicly announcing the arrival of everyone in Slack seems a little gross if for instance someone has special circumstances which require them to come in later that may not need to be public information. Or could potentially brood that weird competitive mindset of "I'm the best because I show up at 7:30 when everyone else comes in at 9-9:15, even though I may not be the most skilled". It is definitely fair to say that this stuff being a problem is indicative of something deeper in the office culture anyway, though. Other than that I love this and 10/10 would pay for it on a monthly basis.

Waterluvian 10y ago
That's always my fear about one day working for a big company. I'm not a good drone. I'm probably the most firable person if you look at me on metrics alone.
- vogt 10y ago
  I work for a company of ~120 people who are owned by a fairly giant company (I think ~5000 but could be way off, I forget) and we don't treat people that way. You really have to work hard to vet the environment you're going into as an employee, but it pays unlimited dividends when you get it right. It has taken me several times now.

usgroup 10y ago

Expounding the benefits of humans living like machines so that machines might be more useful to humans. I think the carrot is very much that we are subduing time to our control. Maybe this is the way it should all go ... but the depths of me resonate much more with finding the simple ways to be in harmony with the world. Akin to a closed form formula where an algorithm may have been.

frik 10y ago

Zuck is right (and before Gates in 1995 "The Road Ahead" book). We need a common API, so that AI agents can interact with various types of hardware (home automation, IoT) as well as other AI agents over the internet. I propose we should use JSON rest based simple API with simple english words. To agree on things, AI agents should be able to bid against each other, like in auctions. In Bill 1995 vision, every interaction costs (micro payment). We all learned how the free internet with WWW sponsored by advertisement et al won over his pay-as-you-go The Microsoft Network as found in Win95. But how will advertisement work with agents? How will big search engine providers get payed in an mainly AI environment. This has to be solved. Also Zuck and Bill wanted to have their own locally installed agent on their own hardware, something that has charm but is contrary to 2010s trend of software-as-service/cloud. But I can imagine that in a few years, our personslized AI agents surf the internet and interact with other agents, and we less and less visit websites or apps ourself, but directly interact with our agent.