Mark Zuckerberg Wants To Build Himself A Robot Butler In 2016

    So the robot revolution will presumably begin in 2017.

    Mark Zuckerberg is planning to build himself a robot servant in 2016.

    The Facebook founder said in a status update that he had set himself the goal as a challenge for the new year.

    Facebook: zuck

    Previous challenges have included learning Mandarin and reading two books every month.

    His plan is to build a "simple" artificial intelligence (AI) which would help run his house and his work – "kind of like Jarvis out of Iron Man".

    In the films, J.A.R.V.I.S. is an intelligent computer with a posh British voice which controls Tony Stark's house and equipment.

    A lot of the technology Zuckerberg needs to make his robot butler already exists. For instance, voice recognition software is already widely available.

    He said: "I'll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home – music, lights, temperature and so on."

    So is software for recognising faces – and in fact Facebook has been leading the way on that front.

    And in 2014 Facebook bought the virtual reality company Oculus Rift, so making a VR system for visualising data shouldn't be beyond him either.

    Various people, including the US military research company DARPA, are looking into the best ways to use Oculus for exactly this purpose.

    Of course, making an actual "strong" AI – one of human-level intelligence – might be a bit more difficult.

    And also might destroy humanity.

    Of course, Facebook is working on strong AI anyway.