Zuck's 2016 Challenge: Build AI Butler for His Home

Mark Zuckerberg has set himself a tough challenge for 2016: Create an electronic butler to make Mark Zuckerberg's life easier. The Facebook founder says he plans to "build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work," which he likens to Jarvis in Iron Man. "I'm going to start by exploring what technology is already out there," he writes in a Facebook post. "Then I'll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home—music, lights, temperature and so on. I'll teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell. I'll teach it to let me know if anything is going on in Max's room that I need to check on when I'm not with her," he writes, referring to his weeks-old daughter.

Zuckerberg explains that he sets himself a new challenge every year, which has led him to "read two books every month, learn Mandarin and meet a new person every day." Even for somebody with Zuckerberg's resources, the AI assistant is "hardly a small side project by any means," notes Jon Russell at TechCrunch. "It'll be interesting to see how much time and what resources ... Zuckerberg dedicates to this project, and how it turns out," he writes, suggesting that Zuckerberg try building Iron Man's actual metal suit next year. (The Facebook founder has promised that the site will fight for the rights of Muslims.)