> Amazon subsidizes the cost of the software side in order to get the hardware in to homes because they believe it drives sales. I think that's not the only re

> Amazon subsidizes the cost of the software side in order to get the hardware in to homes because they believe it drives sales. I think that's not the only reason. It creates acceptability for other ML-based technologies which in my personal view should definitely not exist (except as a best effort assistive technology for handicapped folks) and it gives them real world feedback on how broken their neural models are as well as real-life voice data collected unexpectedly by the device and sent to precarious contract workers to be transcribed (including very personal/sensitive details). Unfortunately i don't think this article has been translated to English, but La Quadrature had a mind blowing interview with Julie who was a cheap-paid transcriber for Microsoft's Cortana, telling us all about the kind of things that get recorded without the owners being aware and that she has to transcribe (without having ever signed a privacy/confidentiality agreement): https://www.laquadrature.net/2018/05/18/temoin_cortana/ https://www.laquadrature.net/2018/05/18/temoin_cortana/