Mark Zuckerberg is building his own robotic butler (just like the one in Iron Man)

Mark Zuckerberg loves a New Year resolution. Bloody loves it.

Previous worthy aims have seen him attempt to read two books a month, learn Mandarin and meet a new person every day. For 2016, he's managed to outdo even himself - setting out to build his own robotic AI butler.

The social network CEO posted on Facebook that he was planning to create a simple AI to run his home and help with his work; "kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man."

"I'm going to start by exploring what technology is already out there," he continued. "Then I'll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home - music, lights, temperature and so on. I'll teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell. I'll teach it to let me know if anything is going on in Max's room that I need to check on when I'm not with her. On the work side, it'll help me visualize data in VR to help me build better services and lead my organizations more effectively."

Several aspects of the technology Zuckerberg discusses are already in development at Facebook: engineers are currently developing an AI assistant for Messenger called 'M' that aims to help users complete tasks such as buying goods or making bookings online, not unlike Apple's Siri or Microsoft's Cortana. Meanwhile, the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift, set to launch in the next few months, will surely tie into Zuckerberg's plans for visualising data in new ways. 

As for opening doors to familiar faces and watching over his own children - we've seen enough sci-fi films to know those functions couldn't possibly end well.

Here's hoping it's a New Year's resolution that ends in the same manner as most; in a wave of momentary guilt and acceptance around February, when we realise we totally forgot about it.

(Images: Rex)