There was a time, not too long ago, when the idea of home appliances that could think for themselves, and for you, felt like science fiction. Sci-fi movies showed refrigerators that knew the households’ grocery lists, and TVs that spoke back, and listened to the owners. For most of us, it was fantasyland, sometime in the future. A few days ago, standing inside Samsung’s flagship store in Mumbai’s famed Bandra-Kurla Complex, the distance between sci-fi imagination and reality suddenly felt constricted, abridged, and narrow.
At an event, “AI Home: Future Living, Now,” the Korean phone and home appliances giant demonstrated how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can now allow control of several devices, both personal, and home-related, from a single location, generally the mobile. The so-called future tomorrow was in the grasp of the present, everyday life. Samsung calls it the convergence of Galaxy AI, Vision AI, and Bespoke AI, which are tied together through its SmartThings platform. On the surface it sounds like tech jargon. But one cannot deny that this is the new smart age of AI.
Do not get too excited. AI still has not reached the innovation stage, when it can receive and act on flashy commands, though we do have Alexa, Siri, Assistant, and Bixby. The multi-gadget software is more about subtle observations. It studies households’ routines, learns the rhythms and ways of how the members spend their days and nights, and translates the patterns, trends, and knowledge into action. In a sense, it is a giant extension of the Internet of Things.
For example, an AC, is still considered by many as a cold box with a remote. One turns it off and on, swings it up and down, left to right, and controls the temperature. Samsung shows how AI can help the owner to determine how long the AC runs, and switch it off via the mobile, even if the operator is thousands of miles away. The data that the AI collects over time constitute the first few steps towards slashing electricity bills, and pushing households, without their knowledge, toward less power usages, and energy efficiencies.
The refrigerator is a case of more and intense intimacy. AI can obviously control the temperatures, and convertibles. It can also now focus on behaviours. How often does a household use it? How many times is the door, or doors, opened and shut? What is the ‘normal’ usage of the appliance? What happens if the refrigerator’s behaviour changes suddenly? What if it is being opened more often at night? No need to turn on the lights, late at night, to find out, like in that lamp advertisement, with the tagline, ‘Roshni deta Bajaj.’
In a world where families are often scattered across nations and cities, where sons and daughters are forced to live separately from elderly parents, or parents from theirs, the behaviour patterns can relate to emergencies, and inculcate a new era of care. A son or daughter can figure out if elderly parents are maintaining their daily routines. No need to call or check, because sometimes people lie or speak the half-truth. Just look at the refrigerator patterns.
A simple door sensor becomes an early warning system. Through the mobiles, the children are alerted if something is amiss. For example, what if the fridge has not been opened for hours, especially during lunchtime and dinnertime? What if the AC was not switched on during the night, or switched on for 18 hours continuously?
Of course, once you open such doors, philosophically and metaphorically, the possibilities are endless. AI’s flagging of unusual behaviours can lead to light-hearted scenarios. Imagine a future, as we sketched out earlier, when late-night fridge raids are no longer secret. A wife, who is checking on how many times the husband or the teenage child opens the fridge during the night, may not be Samsung’s punchline, but it is hard to ignore the comic potential.
The technology is designed for efficiency and care, yet in its quiet way it holds up a mirror to our habits, both the mundane and mischievous. At the centre of this AI ecosystem is the smartphone. Once a device for calls, texts, data, and entertainment, it is the nervous system of a modern lifestyle, and the modern home. It is the screen through which data turns into insights. The remote control is always within reach for instant action or reaction. The hub that binds home appliances into singular, interconnected intelligence.
The fridge quietly gathers data, AC coldly optimises usage, and the phone, in its own inimitable manner interprets, alerts, and acts. So, we stand at a curious corner at a monumental moment. AI is no longer a concept reserved for workplaces, labs, and distant tech conferences. It is not just about productivity in factories, loss of jobs, and reskilling needs. It is not confined to GDP growth. It is not just related to professions that may vanish in the future.
AI is slipping right into the centre of your life. Without much ado, and fanfare, it is becoming a part of you, like breathing, heartbeat, pulse rate, flow of blood, and walking and sleeping. As the body tracks such data on a second-by-second basis, analyses it, interprets it, and initiates action, so does AI with your lifestyles. Your body cannot function without monitoring and interpretation. Your life will cease without the AI in your mobile in the future.
Today, AI may track the number of times you open the fridge, or the number of hours the AC is on. Tomorrow, it may map water usage, anticipate health problems, and suggest lifestyle changes without a prompt, or as proactive elements. Each step feels like a small step, almost invisible, but may turn out to be a giant leap. Unless one steps back, and realises that the home has become a living organism that listens, remembers, thinks, and occasionally advises.
Samsung’s event in Mumbai, therefore, is not really about a brand’s growing AI ecosystem. It is not about AI’s growing influence. Think of it as a transformation when the fantastical becomes real and routine. We become Marvel superheroes in unique ways. We sense others, even as the latter’s homes understand them. Like in particle physics, we can act even if we are light years away. Like biology, there is an interconnected life, where one influences the other.
Sci-fi imagined homes and workplaces that knew us better than we knew ourselves. These homes are slowly taking concrete shape, brick by brick, gadget by gadget, appliance by appliance. They are being built in our neighbourhoods, waiting for the moment when we notice, or fail to do so, just how alive are our walls. They once said that walls can hear. With AI, they can see, speak, and walk.