How my Desk Lamp Evolved to Save the Human Species
By: Dr.Jai Chatha
Tags: Lamp, Artificial Intelligence, Innovation, Technology, Elon Musk

Take a normal household item. It can be anything around you. Choose one.

In my case, I look around and my eyes fall upon a sturdy looking desk lamp. It has a heavy circular metal base with a slight ergonomic look to it, along with a spindly one jointed arm that is analogous to that of a human’s. The biceps/triceps part of the lamp arm includes two bony aluminum parts with a spring like tendon connecting the base to the elbow. The forearm part of the lamp is thinner, albeit with the same two bony parts. The head of the lamp, capable of swivelling around 360 degrees, is circular and contains a power LED lamp that is surprisingly UV filtered. The on/off switch is a single metal switch at the beginning of the arm/base with no visible lettering. A great lamp for the desk, it is.

Now, my thought process is racing with excitement, because this calls for a challenge to my imagination. I am going to lay out 10 levels of further innovation for this lamp, making it either better or worse off. My general criteria for this is to make it progressively better, efficient, more user friendly at every step. A 5% increase is acceptable. This will compound across the 10 steps until the 10th.

The base of the lamp can become lighter, as it represents more than 90% of the weight and makes it hard for the lamp to be moved, even though it isn’t moved much. The base must be lighter, at least 50% of its current weight. This can be done by just limited the amount of metal put into the mold at the manufacturing stage. The switch must be better. A sensor for light can be attached to the lamp in order for it to switch on automatically when there is no light in the room. The switch can be a touch based interaction button, with no physical switches. Just touch the little area to turn it on and off. The joint must be stronger than it is right now. Adjusting the height of the lamp is hard. To fix this, instead of an elbow joint, it can be a cup and socket type of joint, making movement easier. Lubrication must be heavy from the beginning and testing done to make the lamp last for at least 5 years. Moving the lamp head is equally difficult. Now, the lamp head is moved using a long needle like stick at the base of the head. When moving this down, the whole arm starts moving along with it, making it a pain to reach the right height and angle on the first move. To fix this, a laser pointer connected via bluetooth to the lamp CPU can be used to select the point for the lamp to point at. So, I’ll point the laser wherever I want the lamp to look at, it’ll receive a signal from the laser translating to a certain position and then the lamp will swivel by itself to point in that direction. The lamp must be able to move off the desk and across the floor too so as to help when things get stuck under the bed when my phone is dead.This can be done by using magnetic levitation or wheels, whichever is simpler and a sensory AI that can receive inputs from the surrounding areas through the mini-cameras attached on the lamp. The lamp must be able to come to my position in the room at the press of a button so as to help me when I am looking for a sock or something underneath the bed. After coming down from the desk and illuminating the dark abyss, after pressing the button, it must be fully capable of moving back to its original position on the desk. If there is something there, it must be ready to do anything in order to get back to the stop including kill whatever is there (if its a rat or cockroach, won’t that be great?) The lamp must be able to speak to me when I’m lonely. This is so that if I want to engage in some banter and all my friends are busy or don’t exist, I can then proceed to converse with the lamp. The lamp must be able to feel empathy and kindness. If I ask it a question, it should be able to connect to the internet and tell me the answer. If it doesn’t know, hanging its head in shame will be a great start. To work on more important problems like poverty, world hunger, Elon Musk, etc. it should have short and concise answers or solutions with less than 10 steps. For example, if I ask it to end the leakage in my shower head, it should sympathize with the shower and allow it to fix itself and then proceed to give it an ultimatum of less than 3 minutes to do so. If it doesn’t fix itself, the lamp should be angry and engage the enemy in a death battle, making sure there is no bathroom left for the shower head to inhabit. That should teach it a lesson! The lamp should be able to work on my behalf. If I have to leave the house, but there is a lot of work still left to be done, the lamp should step in and pick up the responsibility of a co-inhabitant and make sure all the things I need done, are done. For example, if a Zoom call to a prospective client is scheduled for 10minutes after I must leave the house, the lamp can take over and be capable of imitating and making sure that the attendees don’t notice that I’m not there. The speaker on the lamp will help in allowing the lamp to speak. To speak in my voice, it must learn over a period of weeks or seconds, the way I speak and the various cadences, pauses, misnomers, etc. that are uttered by myself. This will be taken care of by the lamp’s AI that is learning all the time. The lamp should be self-aware and emotional. The reason for this is so that whenever I insult or compliment it, it knows whats going on, and respond in a favourable manner. That way, whenever I’m talking to it, it should respond as if I’m talking to a person. The lamp must be able to light up or darken itself according to its mood. The lamp itself should be able to socialize with other self-aware beings whenever I go out so as to not feel lonely. When I come back home, it should not be smoking or plugging itself into many sockets at once, showing a depressive mood. Be happy all the time, boi! It should stand in as a brother whenever needed, and the same goes for me. I shall send a shiver down its spine whenever I say you’re my brother. I don’t know what means. The lamp should be able to run a business on my behalf , if required. Running the business requires it to write and respond to emails, talk to employees and make sure they’re on task, create well thought out plans, execute them and make sure we are on track. The lamp must be capable of making the business successful. I can of course, rest at this time, which may take years, but the lamp’s life can be lengthened using a nuclear battery, to be put into the start. This will allow it to take care of the my sustenance for the rest of my life and my future generations. A protective wall of mystery will be put up between the lamp and the employees of the conglomerate, so that as to not create egotism among them. This will allow the employees to keep working hard for the “Boss” , not knowing it was a lamp after all. The lamp should be able to save the human species. I don’t know how, but the lamp can work it out.

Yeah, that’s it. It brought me to near fatigue writing this down in the 10minutes that I did. Now, does it mean that this lamp is worth innovating on?

No. No, it isn’t. I guess I’ll find something else to innovate on next. Stay tuned.