My husband Harry works in tech, and every January he makes his yearly pilgrimage to Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where some 4,100 exhibitors are spread across 2.6 million square feet. The dominant concept at this year’s edition was that, very soon, anything you put in your house will be compatible with voice-activated AI services like Siri, Alexa, or HomePod. Your newest home automation systems will come equipped with sensors and jazzy master controls on an iPad.
The problem for me is that a tiny photoelectric cell you frantically wave to—rather than a switch to flick or press—rarely acknowledges me, because somehow I’m not human temperature. The same way my X-Men superpower is being completely invisible to bartenders at a party, I’m also not a good candidate to live in the alleged future home. From being locked out of my iPad for 10 years to routinely spacing on my passwords—including for my password manager—I am riding the tech wave so poorly that my email is still @aol.com.
I want a dumb house.
Designer Thomas Yang, for one, is with me. “There is an honesty and an agency that comes with a light switch … a tactile action and interaction with the world of materials that is not dependent on a server,” he tells me. Personally, I also feel virtuous getting up from the couch to adjust the dimmer.
Harry got us a smart scale. That might seem innocuous enough—though I’m not thrilled by the idea of a hacker group blackmailing me every time I decide to indulge in an extra scoop of rocky road. A more rational fear: If your Wi-Fi happens to be down, sorry, you can’t find out how much you weigh that morning. Or open your front door. I miss keys. I like landlines that don’t heat up, potentially giving me an iPhone-shaped brain tumor. But that’s just the tip of the next gen’s digital iceberg.
Shelly Palmer, a futurist who consults for Microsoft and other companies, spends his days explaining the trends in AI to corporate leadership. His much-circulated newsletter says there’s a quality gap between demo AI robotics and products that are available to ship, but the goal is what LG calls the “Zero Labor Home.” The South Korean government, meanwhile, has invested $770 million in humanoid robot development, predicting huge year-over-year growth. Unitree, a Chinese company, is marketing one for light industrial tasks. As far as I can tell, though, there is not yet a model that can load and unload the dishwasher, correctly sorting the flatware and neatly nesting the spoons. Besides, if I were home minding my own business and a fleet of robots were cleaning around me, I might have a panic attack—it sounds like being left vehicle-less in a bumper-cars rink. I’m just too old for a Jetsons’ world.
On the other hand, you must have seen that viral video of a robot waiter having a meltdown in a restaurant in Cupertino, California—home of Apple, of all places—or a reel of that Russian contraption face-plant during its much-hyped debut. When we see humanoids falter, fail, or freak out, we all laugh. Because it’s funny, of course, but also because we feel superior and they look stupid. For now. I’m not sure if we will keep cackling when our friends have robots who iron all the laundry—without complaint.
But at the moment it seems like more of a headache than a blessing to deal with nascent technology breaking, getting hacked—or worse, somehow going haywire and murdering your entire family. As a Gen X’er who often fears change (I never got a CD player and clung to my mixtapes till the bitter end), I know the future is coming, but I sure won’t be an early adopter.
Designer Rafe Churchill of AD PRO Directory firm Hendricks Churchill agrees wholeheartedly. Over the past 30 years he has outfitted several houses with so-called smart systems, but today he has regrets. “Ultimately they create little more than frustrated clients and even more frustrated second owners who realize the equipment is becoming obsolete,” he says. “At the risk of offending prospective clients, I firmly believe there is nothing comforting about illuminated touch screens.”
For me, it’s the concept of a smart kitchen that’s really the stuff of nightmares.
Within the next year, Samsung will begin embedding Google Gemini directly into Bespoke AI refrigerators, microwaves, and ranges. Do I want my fridge cameras scanning my groceries (the images are called “shelfies”) and ordering more? LG’s Signature Oven Range has introduced Gourmet AI, which recognizes your dishes and automatically applies what it deems to be optimal settings. AI Browning monitors bread and sends notifications when it’s ready. But, like, I have eyes. A fridge that informs me if my milk is spoiling? I have a nose. Do I really need AI to tell me when fresh food is good or bad? What if I suddenly can’t turn off this allegedly smart oven and burn my house down?
Aesthetically, I also don’t want a BlueOrigin command station in my kitchen. The room is supposed to be a charming gathering nook where my family can hang out, not a control room outfitted with complex launchpads.
Even some showers are now supposedly “smart,” operated by an app, a control, or your voice. AD100 Hall of Fame designer Alexa Hampton describes one bathroom contraption gone hilariously awry: “I was recently in a house where I could not figure out a complicated shower. I had to ask a fellow houseguest to help me. We ended up sprayed and steamed—while dressed—in a tense variation of a Silkwood shower. I was not pleased.”
While AI is seemingly invading every corner of our lives, designers, paradoxically, are increasingly being asked to strip away the complexities of buggy, overly automated systems, opting for manual control (hello, faucets!) as the ultimate luxury. High-end, custom-designed smart systems are often over-engineered, frustrating, and difficult to manage, not to mention possibly not great for security. I don’t know much about hackers, but I did see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and I’ll take an old-school deadbolt over a computer guarding me any day. I want to turn a lock, feel a click. I want my house to look like a nice cozy place to play mah-jongg, not produce a podcast. I even read about a sensor system that tracks your steps, with the floor illuminating under your feet like in the “Billie Jean” video. No, thanks. Automation is not my lover.
This article originally appeared on Architectural Digest.
