From mobile work to security and maintenance, perhaps no company has done more for the advancement of technology in todays society than SkyNet, a promising start up out of Austin, Texas that has made great strides during the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, their T-400 model of home assistant swept the country, combining at home personal assistants with a walking talking android that actually helped with chores and tasks around the house.
We had the opportunity to sit down with Barry Snow, the CEO of the skyrocketing company, about SkyNets future and some of the backlash to what some have called unnecessarily violent home assistants.
~~~~
Hard Drive: Hey Barry, thanks for doing this interview.
Barry Snow: Oh hey man, no problem at all. Thanks for having me. Can I have one of those waters?
HD: Yeah, go ahead. So, your company was already gaining steam a few years ago, but it really seems that during the pandemic you pulled ahead of a lot of your peers with your home androids. Do you attribute this to the pandemic, or do you think SkyNet was going to be a major player in artificial intelligence and home securities no matter what?
BS: Man, this is good water. Thats a great question. I look at it this way SkyNet has already made many successful pivots in its short existence, which is the key to longevity in just about any industry.
A lot of people forget, but do you remember in 1992 when our former Director of Special Projects Miles Dyson blew our old building right to hell? A lot of people said we wouldnt recover from that, but we have. We built a new headquarters, and instead of trying to recreate weird robot shit that we found in an explosion one day, we started focusing on our own work with AI, alloy production, and laserbeams.
HD: I did want to ask you about the laser beams. A lot of people have said theres not a very convincing reason why the T-500 models should come equipped with lasers for opening packages and tricky bags of chips. Would you like to respond to that?
BS: Yes, and thank you for allowing me to do so. Look, weve all read the stories and seen the news clips. House fire in Tacoma. Bridge lasered in half in Miami. Just horrible stuff. But, to think that things like houses catching on fire and bridges falling apart like butter werent happening before we entered the corporate world and started putting lasers on Roombas is a little nave now, isnt it? Our work is so vast that it feels really manipulative to focus on the handful of unfortunate incidents when in fact over 10 percent of households now have a Skynet assistant in their homes. Youre gonna have a few house fires!
The future models are going to be even more exciting. The T-800s are a little ways away, but they can do anything you want. Anything. You can say, Hey T-800, go to the store and get me some soda, and let me tell you something, this thing is not coming back to your house without a big ol bottle of soda. Theyll follow any orders you want!
HD: Wow, you seem really excited about these T-800s.
BS: Oh yeah, I really really am. When you see them, youll understand. Were calling them Terminators.
The new Skynet T-800. Terminate housework!
You like that? I came up with that.
HD: Thats really good! Getting back to them doing anything you tell them to, certainly there are limits to that though, right? You wouldnt want to be able to tell your SkyNet Home Assistant to go hurt somebody or something.
BS: Hm. Thats interesting. Hadnt thought of that.
[This was followed by a long and uncomfortable pause.]
This is really good water, by the way.
Were there any more questions?
HD: Um. Whats next for SkyNet?
BS: The world! No, no, Im just joking. Were really excited about getting the Housework Terminators out into homes over the next few years. We just have to iron out a few details. We learned from product testing that we have to make these things turn on their masters if they try to have sex with them. You can warn them, and tell them about the erotic auto-defense programs weve implemented, but until they get slugged in the mouth theyre just not gonna stop trying to fuck these things. So thats not cool. Thats been a bit of a hiccup.
But, were really close to solving that, and then I think were off to the races! Were working on some interesting things for the T-1000 too, like a new liquid metal android that does shit you wouldnt believe. He can make his arm into a can opener, a wine bottle opener, an envelope opener, a lot of little things that we just couldnt quite do with the 800s. Which are still incredible, by the way. But the T-1000s are gonna blow your mind.
So yeah, the liquid metal, and were also looking at ways to disrupt the fabric of time, and we are really trying to get our laser guns a little more promo, to be honest. Do you want one of our laser gun prototypes?
HD: Sure!
BS: Here you go.
HD: Wow, awesome. Thank you. Do I charge this, or?
BS: Yeah, USB. No big whoop.
Im glad youre excited about it. A lot of people have warned us against some of our recent pursuits, saying that the writing on the wall couldnt be more ominous and that these things couldnt possibly benefit humanity. But hey, you know our slogan around here, SkyNet Judgment Day is Coming and It Will Be All Our Fault.
Hmm, actually maybe that doesnt apply here.
HD: No, not really. Its snappy, though. Say, your robot assistant is frightening me. Would you like to say anything to conclude this interview?
BS: Kids, dont forget to ask for a T-800 for Christmas! Thank you for speaking with me. Oh, dont forget your laser gun, Mark.
HD: Oh whoops, thank you.
See more here:
- Classic reasoning systems like Loom and PowerLoom vs. more modern systems based on probalistic networks - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Using Amazon's cloud service for computationally expensive calculations - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Software environments for working on AI projects - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New version of my NLP toolkit - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Semantic Web: through the back door with HTML and CSS - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Java FastTag part of speech tagger is now released under the LGPL - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Defining AI and Knowledge Engineering - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Great Overview of Knowledge Representation - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Something like Google page rank for semantic web URIs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My experiences writing AI software for vehicle control in games and virtual reality systems - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The URL for this blog has changed - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- I have a new page on Knowledge Management - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- N-GRAM analysis using Ruby - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Good video: Knowledge Representation and the Semantic Web - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Using the PowerLoom reasoning system with JRuby - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Machines Like Us - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- RapidMiner machine learning, data mining, and visualization tool - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- texai.org - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- NLTK: The Natural Language Toolkit - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My OpenCalais Ruby client library - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Ruby API for accessing Freebase/Metaweb structured data - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Protégé OWL Ontology Editor - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New version of Numenta software is available - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Very nice: Elsevier IJCAI AI Journal articles now available for free as PDFs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Verison 2.0 of OpenCyc is available - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What’s Your Biggest Question about Artificial Intelligence? [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Minimax Search [Knowledge] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Decision Tree [Knowledge] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- More AI Content & Format Preference Poll [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New Planners Solve Rescue Missions [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neural Network Learns to Bluff at Poker [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Pushing the Limits of Game AI Technology [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Mining Data for the Netflix Prize [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Interview with Peter Denning on the Principles of Computing [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Decision Making for Medical Support [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neural Network Creates Music CD [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- jKilavuz - a guide in the polygon soup [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial General Intelligence: Now Is the Time [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Apply AI 2007 Roundtable Report [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What Would You do With 80 Cores? [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Software Finds Learning Language Child's Play [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial Intelligence in Games [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial Intelligence Resources - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Alan Turing: Mathematical Biologist? - April 25th, 2012 [April 25th, 2012]
- BBC Horizon: The Hunt for AI ( Artificial Intelligence ) - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Can computers have true artificial intelligence" Masonic handshake" 3rd-April-2012 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Kevin B. Korb - Interview - Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity p3 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence - 6 Month Anniversary - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Science Breakthroughs - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Hitman: Blood Money - Part 49 - Stupid Artificial Intelligence! - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Research Members Turned Off By HAARP Artificial Intelligence - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence Lecture No. 5 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 2012 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Charlie Rose - Artificial Intelligence - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Expert on artificial intelligence to speak at EPIIC Nights dinner - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Filipino software engineers complete and best thousands on Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Course - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Vodafone xone™ Hackathon Challenges Developers and Entrepreneurs to Build a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence ... - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Rocket Fuel Packages Up CPG Booster - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- 2 Filipinos finishes among top in Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence course - May 5th, 2012 [May 5th, 2012]
- Why Your Brain Isn't A Computer - May 5th, 2012 [May 5th, 2012]
- 2 Pinoy software engineers complete Stanford's AI course - May 7th, 2012 [May 7th, 2012]
- Percipio Media, LLC Proudly Accepts Partnership With MIT's Prestigious Computer Science And Artificial Intelligence ... - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Google Driverless Car Ok'd by Nevada - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Moving Beyond the Marketing Funnel: Rocket Fuel and Forrester Research Announce Free Webinar - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Rocket Fuel Wins 2012 San Francisco Business Times Tech & Innovation Award - May 13th, 2012 [May 13th, 2012]
- Internet Week 2012: Rocket Fuel to Speak at OMMA RTB - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- How to Get the Most Out of Your Facebook Ads -- Rocket Fuel's VP of Products, Eshwar Belani, to Lead MarketingProfs ... - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- The Digital Disruptor To Banking Has Just Gone International - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- Moving Beyond the Marketing Funnel: Rocket Fuel Announce Free Webinar Featuring an Independent Research Firm - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- MASA Showcases Latest Version of MASA SWORD for Homeland Security Markets - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- Bluesky Launches Drones for Aerial Surveying - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence: What happened to the hunt for thinking machines? - May 25th, 2012 [May 25th, 2012]
- Bubble Robots Move Using Lasers [VIDEO] - May 25th, 2012 [May 25th, 2012]
- UHV assistant professors receive $10,000 summer research grants - May 27th, 2012 [May 27th, 2012]
- Artificial intelligence: science fiction or simply science? - May 28th, 2012 [May 28th, 2012]
- Exetel taps artificial intelligence - May 29th, 2012 [May 29th, 2012]
- Software offers brain on the rain - May 29th, 2012 [May 29th, 2012]
- New Dean of Science has high hopes for his faculty - May 30th, 2012 [May 30th, 2012]
- Cognitive Code Announces "Silvia For Android" App - May 31st, 2012 [May 31st, 2012]
- A Rat is Smarter Than Google - June 5th, 2012 [June 5th, 2012]