To NOT let Alexa come and live with us?

[Blessingsatbedtime]

DB thinks she would be amazing and be a wonderful addition to the family, I think she would make our lives a misery. She comes from Amazon and I don't feel I need another woman running my home!

If you ask it a question, where does it get its answer from and how can you be sure that it's an accurate answer?
Of course it feels as if Alexa is your personal robotic servant but if it's in your home it doesnt work for you, it works for amazon
it's job is to maximise profit for amazon

I notice that those who have one refer to it as 'she'.... as if it were sentient

IHaveACuntingPlan When you ask for the news you get the latest BBC news headlines.

Of course it feels as if Alexa is your personal robotic servant but if it's in your home it doesnt work for you, it works for amazon
it's job is to maximise profit for amazon

That's one of the things I find so uncomfortable about it.
All this data about you, from what you eat to what you read, from all the appointments in your diary to the inane ramblings of your children, from your interests to your worries, all sent to a just few huge companies at the other side of the world. When you delete the data at your end, do they still keep it at theirs? There are real concerns about what this data is going to be used for and the consequences of it being hacked.
I would also be concerned about it potentially being used against me, for example if the police head a recorded snippet of a bigger conversation, took it out of context and then used it to prove my 'guilt'. It might not be happening yet but it doesn't stop it being a possibility in the future.
I feel like I ought to go make myself a tinfoil hat but I do find this stuff quite worrying!

My DH works in cyber security, there will be no Alexa, no activated Siri, Bixby, Nest etc in our house for all the reasons mentioned by motoko. But also because, we are lazily sleepwalking towards big brother style existence. Our eyes are wide shut. It’s scary.

Purely linking this from a google but it was reassuring (obviously google may have made sure that this search would be positive!)www.techworld.com/security/does-amazon-alexa-listen-to-my-conversations-3661967/ Alexa only records snippets - you can also disable the microphone if working from home etc. the comment that it is not worth the potential fines or loss of consumer confidence to store lots of data makes sense.

I am reading this and switching from wanting one to being scared of it.
I am very rubbish with tech - don't use apps or anything so probably wouldn't work for us. Whilst I think it's nice to have my shopping list done, the kettle turned on etc I think it would make me even more lazy than I am already. My heating is on a timer so it's on when I get home from work, my kettle takes less than a second to switch on. I still have to be in the kitchen to get the mug and the milk so I just flicked a switch. I love books and looking things up rather than having the answer to a question just handed to me. My car is old and again only takes a second to switch the ignition on. I have a lamp by my sofa that I can switch on myself. As I approach my house I have motion sensor security lights that come on for me. When I want to listen to the news as I make breakfast or get dressed I just switch radio 4 on. I have a fairly full on job as does my dh. We also have children - it's a fairly typical busy house yet I feel I have plenty of time to do most tasks. Now if then can find a machine that actually mops my floors properly and scrubs the bathroom for me then I would be interested but switching stuff on and off doesn't really seem worth it for me. I understand that for those with SN it is useful - I can only comment on my own family.

Oh and the stuff about spying etc - sounds like the stuff of far fetched sci -fi but I actually think we are walking into a future where we are so dependent on tech that the consequences could be disastrous. I am thinking of Winston in 1984 and Big Brother and the screen .....

I'm not really worried about spying my main objection is that Amazon is harvesting data to make itself more valuable and profitable as a company
so when you have an Alexa you are working for Amazon for free
they get all the profit by monetizing your life..... your life which belongs to you
This is why I dont write reviews or rate any products that I buy from Amazon, why should I spend my time and effort making Jeff bezos even richer

When you use Google Search when you use Alexa what you are doing is training the AI which is owned by Google and Amazon
So you are working for free to make their AI better and better so that they can become more and more successful and profitable

With Alexa you quickly come to think of it as a sentient being and you interact with it as if it's another human, this gives Amazon a big advantage over Google because you interact with Alexa in a much more intimate way than you would with the Google search engine
Amazon's AI is receiving a kind of tuition which isn't available to Google's AI

I used to write reviews for amazon but have stopped as most of the reviews seem to be fake 5 star ones.

As mentioned earlier though for disabilities like vision impairment alexa is amazing, life changing.

I'm not saying that Alexa is inherently bad, it's just that the wealth created by the new tech is going to the tech giants even though most of the work and the content which makes the product so great to use was donated for free by the users.

We are being farmed and sold back to ourselves

The idea of the potential hacking risk really interests me. It's not just the data that can be sold/stolen to learn your patterns etc. I wonder if people can hack in and listen/record and use those recordings to blackmail people. How much would people pay to avoid having their private conversations etc made public or sent to their friends, family, and colleagues.

The risk that Alexa will send MIL a tape of me telling DH what a PITA his DM is, is a risk I'm not willing to take