How smart (or snoopy) do you want your house to be?

Echo and similar personal assistant gadgets bring more of our lives into the new frontier of the internet of things

In our household, Alexa is somewhat of a slacker.

This is not her fault. If you let an artificial intelligence device just hang out with nothing to do for big chunks of time, eventually she’s going to get a reputation for laziness.

At least she doesn’t leave empty glasses all over the place.

No, Alexa spends most of her days silent, in the background, listening, because we don’t give her that much to do. Her skill sets are great — she can float music into the air, recite a recipe for pierogies, recite NPR flash news briefings, call an Uber, turn on the lights, even tell me a joke.

Given a lifetime of checking the weather by opening a door, it still doesn’t occur to us that Alexa is standing by. (She’s somewhat of a know-it-all, but give her credit: She speaks many languages in the internet of things. Sort of the Lamp Whisperer.)

Technically, “Alexa” is Amazon’s much-heralded hands-free voice assistant, formally known as Echo ($180). She is roughly the size and shape of a can of tennis balls and comes in two colors: black or white. Amazon also has the Dot ($50), a similar but cheaper device that looks like a hockey puck, and Tap ($130), an Alexa-enabled speaker. They require Wi-Fi to connect to the IoT.

Echo’s third-party integrations are called “skills,” and if nurtured, they grow every day. The joy of the internet of things is in learning how quickly machines can communicate with each other and, of course, their human masters.

But there are two big reasons we were reluctant to let her in the front door. First, any “smart” IoT appliance has the potential to be hacked.

“I’m in the industry, but in the back of my mind I always think, ‘This is SO cool,’ until something goes horribly wrong,” said Trevor Hawthorn, chief technology officer for Pittsburgh-based Wombat Security Technologies.

Hacking into IoT devices isn’t just a matter of stealing computer

Just as home computers were a status symbol of the better-off 30 years ago, the idea of adding a smart security camera or an artificial intelligence assistant to turn on the Christmas lights is more affordable to a wide demographic.

And those silly products such as smart toilets actually serve a purpose, Mr. Arnold said.

“In electronics, we kind of have some license to try things. Who would ever have thought a speaker on your countertop you can talk to would be anything more than a novelty? But now it has its own market and consumer electronics industry.”