Dilger: Apple's HomePod is smart enough to dial a phone Philip Elmer‑DeWitt

From Daniel Eran Dilger's More companies need to temper their Artificial Intelligence with authentic ethics: When Apple outlined that its new HomePod didn't initiate phone calls on its own, nobody jumped to the conclusion that this was because having a device in your home that anyone's voice could use to place a telephone call from your personal mobile number might be a bad idea. Instead, the company was generally lambasted for "again" failing to match one of the many features of Amazon's Alexa Echo always-listening appliances. This week, Alexa got famous for recording a private conversation and automatically sending it to a random contact of the owner. That's something HomePod doesn't do, not because Apple doesn't know how, but because Apple chose not to rush to make it possible to do things that might not be a good idea in the long run. My take: Does HomePod really know how to initiate a phone call?