All of which are powered in some way by AWS machine learning and left me thinking about one word: privacy.
Granted, I’ve already accepted a lot of these devices into my life. I have five Alexa-compatible smart speakers positioned in different parts of the house, so I have full coverage to deal with home automation issues. I also have a Google Home in the kitchen, plus multiple Siri-enabled mobile devices (Watch, iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV). And of course, I have webcams for doing Zoom calls and the like on my Mac workstation and on my iPad and iPhone — all of which aren’t on unless I want them to be, presumably.
But so far, I have resisted the notion of having cameras all over the place, peering inside the home’s interior spaces. Sure, I have some Ring devices guarding the front of the house, but there’s nothing recording inside.
Part of this stems from the fact that I have no children, so I do not need to check up on them. I also rarely travel for extended periods away from my home. Besides my wife, my two miniature poodles are the only other residents of Chateau Perleaux. I live in a gated community with only one way in and out, and I’m alerted immediately if someone should be let through if they aren’t on my regular list.
Would I want cameras inside if I had young children? I honestly don’t know. I can tell you that I see very little value from doing it now, and quite frankly, my lifestyle tends to border on the, shall we say, bohemian. I live in a warm-weather state, and if I don’t have guests over, full clothing is optional, especially when using my pool and spa during hot afternoons and humid evenings, which is a big part of living in Florida. So I have no desire for Ring, Blink, or Astro to be capturing my spouse or me in various states of undress. I don’t need something that chases me around my house like an attention-deprived puppy, constantly scanning everything around it. I have no idea where that video is going and if a human will ever review it for improving machine-learning purposes.
This is not to say I might not come around to the idea of having a robot, eventually. But besides being an Echo Show on wheels, Astro doesn’t do anything except act as a constant sentry. Unlike the Tesla Bot, which doesn’t even exist in demos yet, it doesn’t have arms to manipulate things and perform general-purpose tasks.
I can get to my voice command history, detect sounds on Alexa (for its opt-in Guard service), and set expirations for three months, 18 months, or until I delete it. Still, I have no idea what other noises are detected or recorded — and if humans ever review them. I also can’t hear the captured sounds and voices in the UX; I can only view a log that it was recorded and be given the option to delete it. With Ring, I can view the video recordings stored in the cloud. Do users have full control over what Astro or their flying Ring drone uploads to AWS? Besides law enforcement, what humans can view these video recordings, besides customer-chosen third-parties, for its newly announced security service? I have no idea.
