Mark Zuckerberg is writing his own AI assistant

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is legendary for giving himself personal challenges every year, such as learning Mandarin. However, his goal for 2016 is rather ambitious. He's planning to write his own artificial intelligence to both run his home and help out around the office -- as Zuck puts it, this would be the Jarvis to his Tony Stark. He wants to start on voice control around the house, but he'll expand to things such as a smart door that uses facial detection to let friends in. In the workplace, he'd like the AI to "visualize data" in VR (no doubt on an Oculus Rift headset) and help him understand where Facebook is going.

To put it mildly, this is going to require a lot of effort. There are whole companies dedicated to the sort of home automation Mark wants. He'll be retreading some of their territory, too, as anyone who's used Apple HomeKit or Google Now can attest. Nonetheless, it'll be interesting to see how far one of the tech industry's best-known moguls can go in building a virtual assistant from scratch.

[Thanks, Kristy -- Image credit: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images]