This plays on the larger trend of erasing the border between machine and a living being. Amazon's Alexa is a pretty dumb machine, but it has a name and a voice

This plays on the larger trend of erasing the border between machine and a living being. Amazon's Alexa is a pretty dumb machine, but it has a name and a voice that makes it appear more human. I've heard about older people who interact with it using polite words non-ironically. I think it's been done deliberately, to make people relate to the product. A different angle: humanoid robots in art are often put in the positions of servants (see Asimov, Ghost in the Shell). Servants were traditionally human (and sometimes treated like tools), erasing that boundary again. While we aren't there yet, we're working on it, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASIMO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASIMO I think it's the reduction of that boundary that causes people to be confused about whether they are talking to a living being or a dumb mechanism. (Tachikoma: "If we acted a little more robotic…")