We had Rory Carroll invite ‘Alexa’ aka the Echo into his home. There was helpful cooking assistance,endless facts and figures, an amusing misunderstanding – and concerns over what precisely Amazon does with all that interaction dataThe experiment with having a robot in my home was going well – useful exchanges, and mutual learning,some bonding – right up until the robot thought I told it to “fuck off”. I hadn’t. But the robot was convinced. It flashed its blue light and scolded me in a tone mixing damage, disappointment and reprimand: “That’s not very kind to say.I could have laughed. Or shrugged. Or bristled, or saying it had erred and should pay more attention before leaping to conclusions. I could have unplugged the thing.
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Source: theguardian.com