Is Alexa Dangerous?
We’re all falling for Alexa, unless we’re falling for Google Assistant, or Siri, or some other genie in a smart speaker. Privacy concerns have not stopped the march of these devices into our homes, however. Amazon, Google, and other tech corporations have grand ambitions. They want to colonize everyday space. The company that succeeds in cornering the smart-speaker market will lock appliance manufacturers, app designers, and consumers into its ecosystem of devices and services, just as Microsoft tethered the personal-computer industry to its operating system in the 1990s.