Mark Zuckerberg. (Photo by Robert Scoble via Flickr.)
Mark Zuckerberg. (Photo by Robert Scoble via Flickr.)

Beyond his immense success at forcing you to reconnect with people from high school, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says he likes to “take on a personal challenge” every year so that he can “learn new things and grow outside” his work at the social media empire.

In a personal Facebook post on Sunday, Zuckerberg laid out how the challenge for 2016 will go beyond just “reading two books” a month or just “learning Mandarin.” (And you thought you won the goals game when you blocked everyone playing FarmVille). This year, Zuckerberg wants to create a simple artificial intelligence to run his home and help with his work.

Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan and their daughter Max. (Facebook photo)
Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan and their daughter Max. (Facebook photo)

Leave it to the new dad to already be looking for help running the family home. In fact, Zuckerberg points out that his dream AI will even let him know if anything is going on in daughter Max’s room that demands his attention. (Get off Facebook, Mark, the baby is crying!)

Beyond handling his home’s music and temperature settings, Zuckerberg also envisions an AI that he can teach to recognize friends “by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell.” Zuckerberg has 47 million followers, according to his Facebook profile. His challenge in 2017 will be to get the sound of the doorbell out of his head.

The comments on Zuckerberg’s post drew numerous replies from the man himself. Moira McCarthy Stanford said she just wanted to get her walk-in closet organized, to which Zuckerberg told her, “In a few years, maybe you’ll have a robot to do it for you.”

Shane O’Neill told the would-be inventor to be careful not to create Skynet, the system in the Terminator films which becomes self-aware and, well, does more than just check on baby Max or dial up a Selena Gomez mix. “I’ll be careful,” Zuckerberg replied.

Impressed by the boy billionaire’s creative spirit, Darlene Hackemer Loretto said she encourages her granddaughters to “date the nerd” in school, in hopes that he may be the next Mark Zuckerberg.

“Even better would be to encourage them to be the nerd in their school, so they can be the next successful inventor!” Zuckerberg replied — to the tune of 21,000 “likes.”

Note: Reference to Zuckerberg’s number of followers corrected since original post.

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