I wonder why people buy these things… it seems to me a very stupid idea.
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For some tech geeks, Alexa is the only female they get to talk to.
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If they also have Google Home and set the voice to female, that’s two females they get to talk to!
But what if they talk to each other and start ignoring you?
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No one ever said having threesomes didn’t have risks.
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I don’t get it either, please spy on everybody in my house ?
I like AI, I don’t see why AI needs to give that data to others.
Not really spying if you don’t have anything to hide though?
Girl on girl action isn’t necessarily a bad thing…even if it’s just disembodied voices.
There’s an app for that! (Sadly, I suspect there is.)
Bollocks, sorry I can’t think of any more appropriate response to that :).
There are billion dollar fines now in the works if companies are not careful with getting permission to receive personal data in the EU. And many lawsuits pending.
A lot of people buy these things because they want to keep abreast of developments in AI and in IoT. Probably just a matter of time before some company markets a truly useful home robot at a mass-market price. Like, a short time. Difficult to know where and how to invest unless you have a good idea of where things are headed, who’s good who’s not, what ideas are likely to work or not, etc.
The data sharing/theft thing is definitely a big drawback, at least in my book.
Google is a good bet I think.
I sincerely don’t see much benefit on having something like that. Maybe I’m too old fashioned, but I prefer to check things on my own, on my computer, or on the phone. I’m not super concerned about being monitored by companies, but I start to be annoyed by that. Things are not evolving in the right direction. People in my country complain about CCTV cameras on the street. I don’t only like them here (if only they were actually used for MY benefit when I need the police to check something… but those times they are “not sure” if they will fnid it, or they happened to be “not working”…), I not only like the cameras, but find contradictory that people who don’t want them, or people who don’t want ID cards then give up all their personal, private information and access to all their life really to companies of dubious morality. I think there’s something really fucked up in modern society, for I always find myself swimming against the tide, like a mad masala salmon.
Stupid society.
In the US, there are millions who will soon have to downsize their lives into something other than a nursing home (because they have too many assets to qualify for a government-funded nursing home, which requires them to turn over all assets as well as all pension benefits - including their Social Security government pension benefit - to the state first).
Maybe they don’t have enough assets to live in a private nursing home. Maybe they simply choose not to. Private nursing homes charge something like US$65,000 per year (or more).
These Americans will therefore age in place, i.e., adapt their home by widening doorways, hallways, lowering counters, changing their bathrooms to include step-in tubs, etc. A useful robot might be an excellent value to these Americans.
Many billions of US$ are in the offing, and a company that can supply such a robot stands to capture a big chunk.
Yeah, I’m not saying that this technology is not going to bring anything positive. But for the most of it is a bit useless, pointless for me. And I don’t like all the implications it comes with.
Soon gone are the days of logic, privacy, independence and human rights. And we always figured it was going to be China…oops.
My father was gifted an Echo Dot and needed me to set it up for him. A friend had previously recommended the technology to me but I wasn’t interested at the time. I was impressed with the Alexa services when setting up, and was in the market for a bluetooth speaker anyways, so I did some reading and ultimately settled on the Echo Studio (which I could mostly pay for with points anyways).
As a speaker, I’m very happy with it. Not surprisingly, Amazon sells things like electrical plugs and lightbulbs that work with the system which is also a smart home hub. Super handy to ask about the weather, the time in other countries, conversions from metric to imperial, math, etc.
Not sure about smart home accessories in Taiwan right now, but with 5G rolling out that is likely to change. I’m looking forward to building on the speaker with an entertainment system and some home controls.