00:00 Speaker A
For years, the tech industry promised us the smart home, a world where your lights, thermostat, coffee maker, they all talk to each other. But for most people, including me, it never quite worked out. Too many apps, too many devices, and someone in the house always ends up becoming the unofficial tech support. That was me too. But now industry leaders like Amazon and Google are saying that artificial intelligence might finally fix all that. And joining me now for more is Yahoo Finance Tech Editor Dan Howley and senior housing reporter Claire in Boston.
00:43 Speaker A
So thank you guys for joining us here on a Friday afternoon. Dan, let’s go to you first. And uh the smart home, okay, it wasn’t exactly what it was promised to be in the beginning, but now the tech is kind of finally catching up. Tell us about that.
01:03 Dan Howley
Yeah, there’s uh a bunch of different capabilities that are coming out uh from the likes of Google and and Amazon. Uh Amazon had relaunched Alexa. Uh it’s called Alexa Plus now. Uh and they launched some new capabilities alongside of it. The the gist of all of this is that, you know, AI should be a helper when it comes to either setting these things up or making sure they’re, you know, working together, talking to each other, uh more easily. It’s just still not exactly the the easiest thing in the world. And you know, I mean look, like you said, we’ve been talking about the smart home for for some time.
01:41 Speaker A
My entire career here at Yahoo Finance. 10 years, one decade.
01:45 Dan Howley
Yeah, I mean, I’ve I’ve been I tried it. Uh I live in it’s not really great for an apartment in New York. Uh you know, I can’t automate locks here. Uh the landlord would probably get upset. But you know, different things you can do lighting, uh plugs. and I know some people who are power users who, you know, get a lot out of it. My one of my best friends uh tells his computer to turn on and off and his TV to turn on and off and Alexa does it, no problem. But I think for a lot of people it just ended up being too uh difficult to kind of put everything together and get it set up.
02:16 Speaker A
Yes. and Claire, I want to come to you on that. So, how is it is it finally getting to the stage where people are able to take it out of the box and set it up? How is AI kind of uh bringing this forward?
02:30 Claire
Yeah, so I mean at this point, I think we’re still stuck with a lot of those more legacy technologies. Um, you know, like you, I’m someone where I was told I could download an app and it would make my lights turn on and off and I just never bothered because I didn’t want to figure it out. Um, you know, maybe AI in the future will be able to make it a little more seamless, but right now we just have this app ecosystem that is very complex. And what I think is interesting is we’ve seen that home buyers just don’t really seem to care about smart homes when they’re trying to make a purchase decision.
03:01 Speaker A
That’s interesting.
03:01 Claire
Like, it’s not like a value add or subtracting value, it’s just kind of a non-issue at least right now when you look at all the things they care about.
03:10 Speaker A
So, that was actually going to be my next question. So, is there some kind of service industry where people are coming in, maybe Dan and you know, that’s their specialty and people will hire these people uh to come in and outfit their smart homes. Is that going to go away now that it’s becoming easier? Well how does that stand?
03:32 Dan Howley
No, people are still going to need help. And you know, to to Claire’s point, uh it’s interesting because you know, if you look back a few years ago, there were, you know, different electronic panels uh installed in people’s homes and now they’re just kind of obsolete. It’s like, oh, cool, I have this hole in my wall or blank thing in my wall that does nothing. It’s, you know, lived in an apartment a few years back that just had a doorbell in the kitchen. It’s the same idea. I have no idea what it was for, doesn’t serve a purpose now. Now it’s just there.
04:08 Speaker A
Dan, what about, what about interoperability? Uh, a lot of these systems, they don’t talk to each other and it’s like you kind of got to go all in on one to the exclusion of the other and just not it’s something that I never wanted to deal with, honestly.
04:24 Dan Howley
Yeah, there’s there’s uh some standards where, you know, uh different companies will have their things work uh and be able to talk across different operating systems. But it’s still yeah, it’s still this just mess of of too many companies, too many different types of products trying to align. It’s like uh uh getting a box of Legos and no instructions and you’re like, okay, I guess I got to figure this out now. Um, the imagination uh element isn’t exactly something you want to do with your smart home. You want to be able to just put it together really quickly and efficiently.
05:01 Speaker A
And Claire, talk to us about the housing market. We we’ve talked about it being frozen for some time. And I’m wondering if it’s is this a demographic thing? Like if we had more buyers in the housing market, especially younger home buyers, would they be more interested in that value add of smart homes?
05:21 Claire
Yeah, so I mean, hypothetically, I think the the the power user in a smart home is going to be that younger client. Uh, that being said, I think the thing that those younger clients care most about is affordability. And when you think about adding this smart home technology, especially if it’s really, really integrated, it’s not that cheap. And so I think a lot of buyers today are just like, get me in at the lowest price for a home that meets my needs and I will figure out the rest. This is the kind of thing I can upgrade later.
05:52 Speaker A
Do you so is it easy to make those upgrades? Can you just kind of start with a baseline like, here’s an Alexa, here’s a Siri and just kind of build devices off of that? Or do you really have to if you want to, if you want to use it, is a good experience that you kind of got to jump in a little bit more?
06:10 Claire
Yeah, I mean I think it’s a pick your poison. Like a lot of smart homes are as simple as just having Alexa control the lights or something like that or um the one that I’ve heard of is you can get an app to control your oven. So like when you freak out and you leave and you think you left your oven on, that is something you can do.
06:30 Speaker A
That peace of mind, you can’t put a price on that.
06:33 Claire
Um but you know, that being said, some of this stuff is is highly complex and that’s kind of when you need to bring in an expert to kind of sync it all up and and that will not come cheap in the modern era.
06:47 Speaker A
Dan, be honest with us here, are you the designated tech expert in your family? Um and do you resent that at all?
06:58 Dan Howley
Yes, I am uh and it depends on who I’m talking to.
07:03 Speaker A
Yeah, the uncle at the Thanksgiving uh dinner table. But uh so do but I guess my point is, and I was going somewhere with this, um are these tech hurdles, are they insurmountable? Do you see AI really crossing the threshold of being able to realistically help people make this technology easier, or is it just like too many devices and people don’t want to mess with it?
07:31 Dan Howley
I think there’s a a time will come where it does make it actually a lot easier and I think to, you know, navigate and understand. Look, it I mean, you can use AI and ask it how to set things up uh and it will for the most part, help you with it. you know, uh not necessarily doing it for you, but explaining how to do it. And I think, you know, when the the smart home idea originally came out, we had these insane pie in the sky uh products, you know, I don’t need a camera inside of my refrigerator to show me a screen of what’s inside of it from the outside. I I can just open the door. You know, there’s there’s a there were a bunch of products that just didn’t make sense at all. And so I think that’s paired down a lot. I do think that uh AI will eventually make it a little bit easier, but I don’t think that it’s ever going to be as simple as putting a light bulb in. You know, anytime you have to get tech involved for something that’s relatively simple like that, it feels like it’s just an add-on for no reason.
08:52 Speaker A
Claire, I did want to give you the last word in case you have anything else to say to the viewers here.
08:57 Claire
You know, okay, so my thing that I’m curious about, I don’t know the answer to this, but we’re promised this idea of agentic AI, right? Like in the future, AI will know what you want and it will do it for you. So like, in the future, you know, maybe they will know the AI will know that I want my lights turned off at a certain time and they will be able to do that. And maybe that will be the true value add that we’re missing and get us past this moment where we’re just like asking Alexa to, you know, do that.
09:23 Speaker A
I love that. Yeah, because what I’ve heard is in the future, you’re only going to have one app and it does everything and it’s excuse me, and it’s called AI.