Opinion: our often unquestioning use of products like Alexa and Siri has
created problems around privacy, security and other issues
By <https://twitter.com/EmilyPhelan13> Emily Phelan, <http://ucc.ie/> UCC
and <http://twitter.com/jamescuffe> James Cuffe, <http://ucc.ie/> UCC
Contemporary society is witnessing unprecedented technological change. While
many of these changes might appear to have social development as their goal,
there are other consequences. Automotive systems are transforming our homes
such as grass-cutting robots, smart heating systems and more. Multinational
corporations such as <http://amazon.com/> Amazon, <http://ibm.com/> IBM,
<http://apple.com/> Apple, <http://microsoft.com/> Microsoft and
<http://google.com/> Google are behind this new wave of time-saving domestic
technological services
One of the most popular products on the current market is
<https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Echo-And-Alexa-Devices/b?ie=UTF8&node=9818047
011> Alexa, Amazon's virtual home assistant. Alexa is a female-voiced
assistant that speaks with you in a conversational manner. The use of a
wake-word, usually the name "Alexa", activates the device and Alexa's voice
responds to our natural language requests. These requests correspond to a
number of pre-programmed commands and queries. Alexa also has the ability to
learn new commands and <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3rH4Kh0ECs>
understand various accents. Most people know she carries out simple tasks
like creating shopping lists, providing real time information on weather,
sports or news, setting alarms and playing our favourite songs. But most
people are unaware of the array of other tasks she is capable of performing
and her potential for new tasks to be created through the
<https://developer.amazon.com/en-GB/docs/alexa/ask-overviews/build-skills-wi
th-the-alexa-skills-kit.html> Alexa skills kit. For example, did you know
that Alexa can call people from your contact list on your phone by looking
through your contact list to see who also has Alexa enabled devices? Or that
you can create unique skills to suit your own needs on the Alexa skills kit
app.
But what is Alexa? What processes occur when she tells us about the weather?
Does she really bring great increased efficiency to our lives or are we
introducing unknown risks or threats into our home? We have never seen
technological services like Alexa before so we cannot yet fully know the
social impacts of these devices.
When people think of Alexa, they are usually thinking of physical devices
like the Amazon Echo, but Alexa is a cloud-based service and not a physical
device at all. Like <https://www.apple.com/siri/> Apple's voice assistant
Siri, you can't actually go out and buy an Alexa, but rather the device or
smartphone through which she operates.
This contributes to a misdirection in how we perceive the Amazon product. In
order to use Alexa, you need a device that has access to the cloud-based
service through which the voice assistant operates. Therefore, devices like
the Echo or your smartphone, devices that we buy, are devices that use voice
recognition, natural language processing and speech synthesis to interpret
user commands and feed them to Amazon's cloud-based service. All of this is
done in a manner that is designed to integrate them as seamlessly as
possible into our daily lives.
Tech companies are extremely careful when marketing and designing their
products. Market and user-experience (UX) research provide them some insight
into what customers will respond more favourably to. An example of this is
the female voice for Alexa. Daniel Rausch of Amazon's Smart Home division
<https://www.businessinsider.com/theres-psychological-reason-why-amazon-gave
-alexa-a-female-voice-2018-9?r=US&IR=T> explained that findings show ''a
woman's voice is more sympathetic".
However, such findings show problematic perceptions around gender and
behavioural expectations with users
<https://en.unesco.org/Id-blush-if-I-could> favouring "non-threatening" and
"subservient" personas for their virtual assistants. Presenting such
personas with a female voice raises concerns. It is one thing for societal
perceptions to carry gender stereotypes, but another to have such
stereotypes perpetuated by the gendering of AI services such as Alexa. In
fact, automated devices such as Siri and Alexa play socialisation roles in
the lives of young children. A new feature designed for Alexa to apologise
for not understanding provides early learning that female voices should
apologise when they do not understand regardless of the clarity of
instruction or context.
There are also other problems than perpetuating gender stereotypes. These
include the potential for security and privacy breaches. Contractors hired
through Globetech by Apple in Cork were
<https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2019/1203/1096780-apple-siri-oireachtas-co
mmittee/> discovered to be listening to daily conversations as a routine
part of Apple's effort to improve Siri's natural language intelligence. The
practise was
<https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/apple-contractors-listen
ed-to-1000-siri-recordings-per-shift-says-former-employee-945575.htm>
discontinued due to the negativity around such breaches of domestic privacy
without user knowledge. However, we tend to only know about such privacy
breaches after they are discovered showing a lack of regulation enforcement
or compliance.
But there is one issue that has not yet been addressed and that is Amazon's
ability to get users and customers - us, basically - to work from them for
free. We even pay them for the privilege. By creating our own commands and
interacting with Alexa on a daily basis, users are in fact voluntarily
working for Amazon to improve the Alexa product. It is quite remarkable that
our own labour is being marketed back to us as a product which will make our
lives easier, into which we need to devote our time, effort and pay for the
privilege.
Our consumer focus on the supposed benefits technological innovation brings
us conceal far more than their limited services provide. We will benefit
from remaining aware of the wider societal implications and impacts of each
new product that seeks a place in our homes. While technological innovation
will improve many lives, we need to ensure we are not perpetuating existing
inequalities and stereotypes to a point where their entrenchment becomes too
difficult to rectify. Just think of the ubiquity of social media now, for
instance. The new rise of automated augmented intelligences and their
integration into daily lives urgently needs more independent and publicly
funded research to mediate against such negative consequences as those
mentioned above.
<https://twitter.com/EmilyPhelan13> Emily Phelan is a research assistant an
dCriminology Graduate from the Department of Sociology & Criminology at UCC.
<https://www.rte.ie/author/950425-james-cuffe/> Dr James Cuffe is a lecturer
and anthropologist with a research focus on social control and the social
effects of technology with the Department of Sociology & Criminology at
<http://ucc.ie/> UCC
Website:
www.rte.ie/tech
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