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This comment squicks me out so, so much. Not so much that the Echo as a product has been humanized, but because that seems like it was its purpose. You have thi

This comment squicks me out so, so much. Not so much that the Echo as a product has been humanized, but because that seems like it was its purpose. You have this little thing sitting in your house that you bought, nominally to make your life easier. But all that other "make your life easier" stuff is icing on the real cake here, which is Amazon having, quite literally, a voice in your house that will sell you stuff at the slightest opportunity. Was that Amazon's goal? Maybe not intentionally, but it seems to be the end effect. I don't know why that comment made me think that, but it casts the Echo in a much less wholesome light for some reason. I suppose it's because once people start to humanize it, they will start to bond with it, which means they are less likely to get rid of it. That comes off as just a little ethically dubious to me.

asimuvPR 10y ago
They certainly did that on purpose. Humanizing the machine is how they can sell it as an always available "assitant". I don't care about the amazon Alexa. I found the bond beautiful. Thats it. :)
azinman2 10y ago
Sell you stuff? It isn't speaking to you on its own. You're asking it to do this for you and then it does.
squeaky-clean 10y ago
>Amazon having, quite literally, a voice in your house that will sell you stuff at the slightest opportunity I don't see how the second half of this statement follows the first. There's a big difference between "can" and "will". The Echo doesn't do this. You could make this statement about anything. With a forced OTA update, your phone could become nothing but an advertisement tomorrow morning. That new intern your company hired? They could secretly just be a shill for Microsoft who will try to sell you upgraded office software.