Right I'm sure the NSA has hacked Alexa etc. or if they haven't they're working hard on it.
But that is very different from saying that Amazon and Google created them in order to gather data. Amazon was the first to make a voice assistant and their intent was pretty clearly to make money by getting people to buy it and to buy stuff from Amazon through it. To suggest that their true motivation was data collection is pure conspiracy theory.
Also voice identification is a relatively recent (and not terribly reliable) feature so it can't have motivated their creation.
Hell there's no way it's voice identification is good enough for the fantasy scenario you describe. It's only just about good enough to distinguish between 2-3 people.
Who does Google even need to identify my voice? They already know where I am from my phone.
This is what I mean about HN conspiracy theories. It's not just that people here know more about what is possible. None of the conspiracy theories make any sense.
But that is very different from saying that Amazon and Google created them in order to gather data. Amazon was the first to make a voice assistant and their intent was pretty clearly to make money by getting people to buy it and to buy stuff from Amazon through it. To suggest that their true motivation was data collection is pure conspiracy theory.
Also voice identification is a relatively recent (and not terribly reliable) feature so it can't have motivated their creation.
Hell there's no way it's voice identification is good enough for the fantasy scenario you describe. It's only just about good enough to distinguish between 2-3 people.
Who does Google even need to identify my voice? They already know where I am from my phone.
This is what I mean about HN conspiracy theories. It's not just that people here know more about what is possible. None of the conspiracy theories make any sense.