My Alexa is guessing things about me — and it's getting weird
Source: Business Insider ·
After Amazon Alexa correctly guessed my dog's name, I set out on a journey to figure out everything she'd inferred about my life.
From the source
Corrie Aune for BIMy relationship with Amazon Alexa is at a breaking point.I want to keep things professional: "Alexa, set a 5-minute timer," I tell her. "Turn off the living room lights."She, an AI assistant in which Amazon has invested tens of billions of dollars, wants to connect on a deeper level, uncovering my personal interests, shopping habits, and getting to know the real Dan.As a relatively private and paranoid journalist, I've tried to keep Alexa — and all tech companies — at arm's length. She's sussed out private details like my favorite movies and underwear preferences anyway. She's clearly wormed her way into my routine enough that I refer to her as "she" instead of "it."Large language models and advertising and e-commerce companies like Amazon are masters at inference, or compiling profiles about us from scraps of data picked up here and there throughout our interactions. Often, when their depth of knowledge is revealed to us, it's creepy.Things got uncomfortable…