What do we do when the household appliances start chatting among themselves?

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":8.05,"text":"My Roomba vacuum cleaner talks to me. “Let’s get cleaning,” she chirps and sometimes she’ll do a little pirouette, before setting off to the rooms upstairs. She knows to keep away from the stairs, pausing like it’s the edge of a cliff, and although she sometimes bumps into the furniture, she carries out her duties without complaining. I call her Scout. She is a glimpse into the future. But it’s not the tech that intrigues me, it’s the community. "}],[{"start":33.8,"text":"Very soon, our kitchens and homes will be filled with ever-improving machines that make Scout’s intelligence seem basic. Fridges that routinely do an inventory of everything on their shelves. That know when we’re low on butter and offer, when prompted, recipes tailored to what’s available. They will order groceries; expect eventually to see a delivery drone arrive, maybe politely ringing the front doorbell, before setting a bottle of milk on the doorstep."}],[{"start":61.349999999999994,"text":"New ovens are already able to remember cooking habits and, more importantly, remember what settings are the most effective. The lasagne you slapped together yesterday is to be cooked at 190C it will remind you, not 175C, and for precisely 24 minutes and 34 seconds. "}],[{"start":79.5,"text":"But soon, these machines will talk to each other. The toaster will conveniently forget you burnt the toast but, behind your back, will remind the refrigerator that you’re going to need another loaf of bread. The alarm clock will tell the coffee maker that you have woken up and that it should make the coffee extra strong, because the bed has said that you tossed and turned all night. They won’t judge. They don’t need to. They’ll simply take care of your every whim, whether you like it or not. "}],[{"start":108,"text":"Some of these appliances already exist. Some are yet to come. What’s clear is that even with all the AI chatter, we’re not fully there yet. We can talk to devices such as Alexa and, yes, she’ll politely play the music I request, but no one is really saying she’s sentient. In my novel, The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances, the main character is a little Roomba who thinks and really does talk to her fellow appliances. It’s fiction, but it represents a new community. The question is, will it replace an “old” one? "}],[{"start":140,"text":"The story is set in a future that is not very far off. Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called godfather of AI, and winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize for physics, puts appliance superintelligence at five to 20 years away. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, is more optimistic (or should that be pessimistic?). He thinks artificial general intelligence will be here before 2030."}],[{"start":164.45,"text":"So, what happens then? Already, Scout uses a range of sensors that would have put her in the realm of science fiction only a few short years ago. She sends out infrared light beams. She maps my house with a precision that would impress Nasa. We already have doorbells that show us who’s there long before we get up from the sofa. Our laptops are writing emails for us and our phones already know exactly where we are. Still, none of this really prepares us for what’s to come. What happens when machines connect the dots?"}],[{"start":202.54999999999998,"text":"There’s a famous story that was told by the late American writer Kurt Vonnegut. He tells his wife that he’s going out to get an envelope for a letter he’d like to send. One single envelope and he’s walking to the store. “Whatever for?” his wife asks him. “You can go online and order a hundred envelopes.” His answer is that, on his way, he will meet people. He’ll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. He’ll see a fire truck and give the firefighters a thumbs-up. Maybe, if he’s lucky, he’ll see someone holding a baby. Humans, Vonnegut says, are dancing animals. We love to move around. "}],[{"start":236.64999999999998,"text":"Machines may talk among themselves and they will certainly be talking about us. But they will never understand our inefficient wanderings and the pointless yet poignant connections we make. They will never know the simple pleasure of a friendly conversation or the joy in hearing a good story. But let’s just hope their community will allow us the space to be our beautiful flawed selves, to remember our own communities rather than erasing them."}],[{"start":261.5,"text":"So, Scout, go ahead and clean my floors. I’m OK with that. But, for the most part, I will continue to do things my own way. I might wander down to the shops. Maybe I’ll do a little dance on the way and maybe, just maybe, I’ll buy myself an envelope. "}],[{"start":277,"text":"Glenn Dixon is the author of “The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances” (Faber & Faber)"}],[{"start":282.3,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram"}],[{"start":295.1,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1784903216_6380.mp3"}