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Cleaning up: What would a world with AI-powered home robots look like?

Commercial analysts have said that they expect the number of robots scurrying around our homes to grow. In the age of artificial intelligence (AI), that is both a good thing and a bad thing, writes Jason Walsh

Some 39 per cent of the time spent on housework and caring for loved ones could be automated in less than a decade, according to a recent survey. Picture: Getty Images

When in 1923 architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, declared the home was a machine for living he was making an ideological statement as much as simply describing the fact that a dwelling is, at its heart, a functional thing. How anyone feels about Le Corbusier’s view, and indeed his buildings, is a matter both of taste and of politics, but what if his statement was literally true?

Could our homes not only ...