Amazon recently introduced a new product, the Echo. What
I gathered from the video introducing it, (that can be found at the source link
below,) is it’s like a standalone Siri, that you plug in and leave somewhere in
your home. Personally, I found the introduction video to be very off-putting. Almost
every feature they showed off made me want to have the device in my home even
less.
The device is basically just a microphone that’s always
listening, and is attached to the cloud. I feel I don’t need to go into detail
as to why I might be made uneasy by that. In the video, which features a family
who’ve recently purchased the new Amazon Echo, the youngest daughter asks “is
it always listening?” to which her father replies that it only listens when you
refer to it by the name you’ve given it. Although, how would it know you’ve
called the name if it wasn’t always listening for it? Perhaps all the noise it
hears waiting for its name doesn’t go anywhere, but again, it would make me
uneasy.
Another feature they showed off that I particularly didn’t
like was its ability to make shopping lists for you. Granted, you could do this
with Siri, but all Siri would really do is make a note that you could pull up
when you were at the grocery store to remind yourself what needs to be bought.
However, being Amazon, I gather it’s likely actually adding things to your
virtual shopping cart. Making money easier to spend is something I (or anyone, especially
America) really doesn’t need. The fact of the matter is, anyone in the
household could easily talk to Echo and have it add something to shopping list.
What’s to stop my kids from adding whatever they want to my shopping cart
without me noticing?
The idea that just anyone could talk to it at any time,
and have it do what they want, is probably the biggest turn off for me. I have
no idea what kind of information it’s gather on me, or my family, and what it’s
doing with that information. What’s to stop a guest from asking it questions
and having it blurt out information it’s gathered from listening to a couple’s
private conversation? What’s to stop it from letting just anyone know what I
just bought? You could make the argument that you shouldn’t use it for private
questions or purchases and instead just use a PC, but the whole point is it’s
connected to the cloud. What kind of information might it decide to grab from the
cloud and put out there for anyone to hear?
In the end, I may just be being rather paranoid about it.
But not a single one of their selling points in the introduction video made me
want to buy one. In fact each point pushed me away. From it constantly
listening and being connected to the cloud, to it being a great way
for my kids to have passive aggressive arguments using it as the middle man. Seriously, that's what happens in the video...
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