The End Of User-Friendly Design

You can find these tales on user forums for many voice assistants: One user reports he and his wife heard Alexa's voice coming from their kitchen in the middle of the night. Another reported hearing a strange man's voice through his Echo. "What the hell?" wrote one user on Reddit who was "freaked" after Echo behaved unusually. "Can Alexa only do things when told, or does she act on her own? These stories--usually just aberrations explained by user error--externalize the unease we feel with our new roommates. They learn from the words we say and the things we do. And it's hard to know where this stream of personal information ends up. Will my chuckle at an off-color joke during a stand-up show exist for eternity in a suburban data center? Do I have any control over this multifaceted algorithmic portrait it's painting of me? A robot talking to itself in the middle of the night is funny. Easing this transition is a new field of design.