Enlarge / For those with a mini-split, a TV, a desire to know the temperature, and a real thing for light-grain wood, the Hub 2 is mighty appealing. (credit: SwitchBot)

There are some people who are eager to automate every aspect of their home with the latest smart home gadgets. Then there are some—many of them regular readers and commenters on this site—who could not only care less about the latest white plastic IoT thingy, but actively avoid such things.

I get it: If it connects to Wi-Fi, it requires signing up for an account, and there's a chance the company selling it could go bust at any time. It's also a no-go for anyone who cares about security or who just wants simplicity. The Matter standard is supposed to solve exactly this problem, but its real implementation and impact have been slow and underwhelming.

This is why I'm writing about just one set of gear while it's on sale for the second Prime Day (even if you're not a Prime subscriber): SwitchBot. I didn't use SwitchBot stuff until recently, but now that I have, it's what I'd recommend to anybody who just wants to make a few things in their home easier to turn on, turn off, or automate. There are no voice controls, no AI, just buttons and switches that do what you tell them.

Enlarge (credit: Thomas Barwick via Getty )

The latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence could lead to the automation of a quarter of the work done in the US and eurozone, according to research by Goldman Sachs.

The investment bank said on Monday that “generative” AI systems such as ChatGPT, which can create content that is indistinguishable from human output, could spark a productivity boom that would eventually raise annual global gross domestic product by 7 percent over a 10-year period.

But if the technology lived up to its promise, it would also bring “significant disruption” to the labor market, exposing the equivalent of 300 million full-time workers across big economies to automation, according to Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani, the paper’s authors. Lawyers and administrative staff would be among those at greatest risk of becoming redundant.