This is unsettling. The help is getting surly.
We were in Brooklyn heading to a favorite Mexican dive when a pal, Demetri, asked about a movie we’d seen recently. My wife, Wink, happened to be using the voice recognition system on her phone at the moment, and suddenly came a stern rebuke along these lines: “There’s no need to talk to me like that.”
Demetri, startled, mumbled a good-natured apology, but the voice evidently was too miffed to reply.
Why an inquiry about “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” prompted disapproval, we’ll never know. A modern mystery, one of many, and another reminder of how easy it is to get in trouble.
A short while later, news stories appeared regarding Alexa, the voice inside Amazon’s Echo personal assistant. Users claimed Alexa had been laughing at them for no reason.
“It was really creepy,” tweeted one.
“We unplugged her,” reported another.
The tech geniuses at Amazon said a fix was in the works and that, most likely, Alexa had simply misinterpreted remarks uttered in her presence and decided to lighten the mood. Nothing personal, you see.
Consumers of modern media, beware. Equipping your home with what amounts to an eavesdropping device invites mischief. When we had a dog, I felt I had to be careful what I said around him. Who knows what an animal understands? I’d be whispering nonstop if Alexa were on the end table.
Where are we with Artificial Intelligence, anyway?
A recent poll by Northeastern University and the Gallup organization found that 85 percent of Americans use one AI application or another — navigation, streaming, personal assistance, “smart” home devices like “self-learning” thermostats, that sort of thing. Of those surveyed, 79 percent said AI had a “very or mostly positive impact on their lives so far,” pollsters reported.
It’s the “so far” that interests me.
Oh, I know how familiar this sounds.
My parents were suspicious of television at first. We had a friend who lamented the arrival of pocket calculators for fear children would stop learning how to add.
