We’re referring to artificial intelligence-enhanced digital assistants (AI-DAs) here. They seemed to start as quirky little chat bots like Microsoft’s Tay (see CHAT BOTS JOIN THE CONVERSATION). Now they are everywhere.

Apple’s Siri was at the forefront of AI-DAs with consumers way back in 2011, but now there’s Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Now and more from the internationally-based tech companies. You noticed they all use female voices, right? Yes, there are overrides for male voice options, but no one uses them for long. That too is research-based.

Late last year, Jeff Dunn wrote a great review [1] of the AI-DAs mentioned here on businessinsider.com. The summary:

  • AI-DAs, like people, generally inherit their parents’ expertise (Google with directions & traffic, Alexa for music, etc)
  • Google Now excels at the most tasks in the review

The amazing thing is that AI-DAs are free. Alexa might be considered an exception because you need to buy Amazon’s Echo Dot as hardware interface—if you want her to run your house in the IoT sense. All of them run on hardware you already have. So free, in the Internet sense of that word. Surprising really, when you consider the massive human and financial resources that went into making them.

But not really free. Somewhere in the process of installing, setting-up or starting to use any of these AI-DAs, you will be asked to share the entire history of personal info on your digital devices: texts, emails, websites, music, pictures, videos, your family, your friends – everything. Financial and medical history could be included, if that’s on your devices.

I naively assumed that AI-DAs learned about you over time, like people do. Terms like ‘machine learning’ lead you there. But it makes sense that for Alexa to be smart about you right away, you need to share everything with her. Except you aren’t just sharing with the dulcet-toned Alexa, you are sharing with the world’s biggest tech companies behind her. You are sharing a breadth and depth of personal information that would make the entire army of Facebook member data miners blush.

All the details are there in the EULA you will sign with a click along the way without reading, because you are so used to that now—and Alexa is just so sweet.

And that is the cost of your AI-DA.

Notes and references:
  1. Jeff Dunn, “We put Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Cortana through a marathon of tests…”, businessinsider.com, Nov 4, 2016.
  2. Feature image credit: Microsoft appears to be alone in its willingness to give its AI-DA as face. Meet Cortana.