[Answer] What Are the Similarities and Differences Between Smart Homes and Artificial Intelligence?

[Answer] What Are the Similarities and Differences Between Smart Homes and Artificial Intelligence?

These two concepts do overlap to a certain extent. AI stands for artificial intelligence, while a smart home, as the name suggests, is essentially the application of artificial intelligence in a home environment. By relying on technologies such as cloud computing and big data, artificial intelligence can greatly improve the level of intelligence in the home compared with traditional approaches.

If we were to use a single computer to perform all calculations and analysis and to control every household appliance, the cost would be extremely high while the efficiency would be very low. This is one reason why smart homes were not able to develop rapidly in the past. The current approach is different: large-scale computation is handled by servers in the cloud, supported by data science and machine learning, while the control center in the smart home acts mainly as a network gateway, or in other words, a router. Our voice commands are analyzed in the cloud, and then the resulting instructions are sent back to control each appliance.

With this model, both the user-side controller and the appliances being controlled only need low-cost embedded controllers. However, this direction of development will inevitably place greater demands on networks. Just think about how many devices—computers and smartphones alone—are already connected to a typical household local network. If every home appliance also needs a network interface, that will create a much heavier burden on the network. This is exactly why we need to vigorously develop 5G, which can provide a promising foundation for the future growth of smart homes.