Once upon a time, “smart homes” meant clapping your hands to turn off the lights. Today, they mean something entirely different: a fridge that knows when you’re likely to raid it, an oven that suggests what you might want for dinner, or even a vacuum cleaner that cleans itself — while watching you with an in-built camera.

Speaking on HOT Business with Jeremy Maggs, powered by Standard Bank, Arthur Goldstuck, managing director of research consultancy Worldwide Worx spoke about how fast this evolution has happened. “We’ve gone from devices that respond to us, to devices that predict what we’ll do next. That’s efficient, but it’s also a little creepy.”

Globally, this predictive technology is no longer experimental. LG, for instance, is building appliances that reduce energy use by learning household routines. Robot vacuums refill their own water tanks and wash their mop pads — but they also roam private spaces with cameras, doubling up as makeshift security systems. As Goldstuck notes, “they don’t just collect dust, they collect data.”

Smart Homes in South Africa: Convenience at the Cost of Privacy

For South Africans, the smart home revolution is still a luxury, rather than a standard. Imported devices are available, but uptake remains small — mostly among high-income households and early adopters. Phones have become de facto smart home hubs, able to control lighting, temperature and entertainment. But the real leap is when these systems no longer wait for instructions; they make assumptions based on your past behavior.

That’s where the trade-off becomes clear. We gain convenience, but we give away privacy. Goldstuck argues the bigger divide in South Africa isn’t about who owns a predictive fridge, but who has access to data and AI at all. Still, the question lingers: are we comfortable letting our homes think for us — and perhaps, about us?

Listen to the full interview from HOT Business with Jeremy Maggs, below: