Re: Sigh
I will tell you what will happen. These devices will reach market saturation at some point. This means that Amazon and Google will not be making much money on these devices, not enough to cover the research and running the servers. So they will have two choices: (1) make the oldest ones obsolete by pushing out an update that is required to use the servers and conveniently is incompatible with the oldest units; or (2) use the microphone for better targeted advertising. My money is on both happening.
And can you imagine the information that can be gleamed by listening: Alexa hears a dog bark but no cat meow, Amazon now knows that somefamily123@yahoo.com has a dog and will start to show dog food on its home page. She also hears a woman's voice late in the evening but not in the middle of the day for a few days but then all day for a few days. Using an algorithm, Amazon determines that the wife of somefamily123@yahoo.com is a nurse and will start to show ladies nursing scrubs. Alexa also hears a man's voice, and he quite often talks about basketball to a younger male's voice. Now Amazon knows that somefamily123@yahoo.com has a child who plays grade school basketball. And I could go on.
If the police offered to put a device in your home for free that would listen all the time for gunshots, you would reject it immediately. Even if you lived in the worse neighborhood in the world and even if it really was for your protection. Yet people gladly pay for a for-profit company to listen to them all the time.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
