Siri the Slave?

Can you keep a secret? I’ve bought my wife an Amazon Echo for Christmas. Mrs S loves a gadget, so she will be genuinely pleased to receive it.

If you don’t know what one is by now, it’s a speaker with a bullt in microphone, so you can ask it (or should I say, you can ask Alexa) questions and hopefully she will give you the answers (like what is the weather today), or do things for you (like play you a song). If you’ve got an iphone, it’s a bit like Siri.

Assistant or Slave?

However, since buying it I’ve been starting to think more and more about if I’ve done the right thing. Over the past couple of weeks Channel 4 have been showing a variety of programmes about robotics and how its changing society. And it’s really got me thinking.

If we look back in history about slavery, it was not only bad for the slave but it was also seen as bad for the slaveholder. People were then seen more as objects, to enable the master to get what they desired. The natural human interaction was taken away, and communication was generally one way, with instructions then told, in a demanding way.

Real conversations

So all the civil human niceties are then stripped away. To me that feels more like a relationship between two robots. Humans have different minds to robots and will always work in a different way, and they have feelings and inner lives too.

So you can see my dilemma now I’m thinking about Alexa. I’m also feeling less bad that I’m not (and never had) used Siri on my iphone. For me, I want a real conversation.

The Magic Word

So as my child, grows up, how is she going to interact with these new personal assistants? Will she just shout at it, barking instructions, without a please or a thank you? I’m concerned she might not understand why she can boss Alexa around but not a person. I shall be quietly observing over the Christmas period to find out.

And will this spill over into society where we treat our fellow humans in the same, stripping away our P’s and Qs, and just as objects to help us get what we want.

I’ll report back on my findings in the New year.

What are your thoughts on the rise of the robot personal assistants?