When you look at the changes Swedish furniture giant IKEA is implementing in its operations, it's clear that they aren't satisfied with the status quo. In fact, they are making some moves to make their business more attractive to consumers in the digital age with services and products that are designed to match the lifestyles and needs of consumers in the future. While many of these actions are in preliminary stages, they do indicate IKEA is transforming into a tech company. One of the joys (OK, absolute frustrations) of IKEA furniture is the DIY assembly. When IKEA acquired TaskRabbit, a platform that allows consumers to connect to individuals who will assemble their IKEA furniture, it gave its customers a way to avoid the DIY trauma.

Once cars can finally drive themselves, we'll have more time to enjoy the journey and do other, much more interesting stuff instead. At least that's the concept behind some of the designs below, developed by retail giant IKEA's "future living lab," SPACE10, based in Copenhagen. SPACE10 was asked to come up with designs for autonomous vehicles that would be extensions of our homes, offices, and local institutions. Some of the agency's seven ideas, shown below, are almost practical. Who can't imagine autonomously driven cafés or pop-up stores?

Do we want our machines to act like machines, or do we want them to have a personality? Should they be male or female? Should AI reflect each individual's worldview? Should it live only on our phones or in our homes, or should it permeate the environment we live in? Should it be able to read and react to our emotions? These are the questions that AI designers and engineers are already asking about the machine learning-enabled technologies–and now Ikea wants to ask the rest of us, as well.

Get ready for a bizarre future where your couch speaks to you anytime you land your ass on it – courtesy of none other than your favorite ready-to-assemble furniture retailer, IKEA. The company's Denmark-bound innovation lab Space10 is currently surveying people about what they'd like to see in a hypothetical virtual assistant, which means the Swedish manufacturer could be contemplating embedding its furniture with AI tech in the future. We've teamed up with Product Hunt to offer you the chance to win an all expense paid trip to TNW Conference 2017! Titled Do You Speak Human?, the survey seeks to establish what customers would like to see in a potential virtual assistant for smart furniture. For the most part, the questions circle around things like what preference you have for the assistant's gender (with male, female and gender-neutral as options) and whether you'd like your AI-powered helper to be more humanlike or robotic.

It's known for flat-pack wood, but Ikea's made no secret of its digital future. The Swedish business was quick to embed wireless charging into its furniture, and has already launched its own affordable line of smart lights you can control from your phone. Now, the company's Copenhagen-based innovation lab is testing out new digital waters: it's collecting research on public perception on artificial intelligence (AI). Launched this weekend by Space10 (the same lab responsible for Ikea's glorious indoor Growroom), Do You Speak Human? is a global survey to inform Ikea's future. It poses questions that refer to how AI might find purpose in your home like "should your AI fulfil your needs before you ask?" and "should your AI prevent you from making mistakes?"