Smart money’s on Alexa
DO YOU have one of those virtual assistant smart speakers in your home? Specifically, one that answers to the name Alexa? If so, you might want to switch off its microphone before watching this week’s episode of
THE SECRET GENIUS OF MODERN LIFE
(BBC2, 8pm).
That’s because Alexa, as every user will be aware, is awfully sensitive (isn’t everyone these days? It drives you nuts…) and will spark into life whenever she hears someone utter her name.
And presenter Hannah Fry is about to utter it a lot, as she looks into how these devices work and how they came to be. (During one demo, she asks an Alexa device to play sounds of the hubbub you’d hear in a coffee shop.TheAlexa on my office desk duly obliged.)
As with the previous episodes in this series, there’s a fair bit of technical stuff here that I must admit goes way over my head. But it’s really not a problem. Hannah’s breezy, accessible style (accessible but, crucially, not condescending; unlike so many presenters, she doesn’t address us as though we have a mental age of six) means we rarely get bogged down in the boffiny bits.
In a lot of ways, this series feels a little like the Tomorrow’s World programmes that I used to watch on a Thursday as a kid before Top Of The Pops came on. Except tomorrow’s world has now become today’s.
Of course, the one awkward question people ask is whether or not Alexa and her equivalents are constantly eavesdropping on our conversations.A man from Amazon – Alexa’s manufacturers – assures Hannah they’re not. But then a cynic might argue that a man from Amazon would.
He’s unlikely to say: “Yeah, of course they are. Sorry, is that going to be a problem?”
The other thing it’s fair to ask is where we go from here. “Voice assistants,” Hannah says, “are an example of where it’s the technology that leads the way. It’s only later that society asks whether it’s something we really want in our lives.That, I think, is a trend we’re going to have to deal with a lot more in the future.”
Talking of which, another guy she meets is a chap called Ken, Amazon’s head of robotics.
Ken shows Hannah a prototype domestic robot, the size of a small dog.The robot is calledAstro. It’s cute.
“The eyes,” he tells her, proudly, “can convey sadness, happiness, joy and anger.”
Hannah’s not convinced she wants an angry robot in her house. Me neither. But Astro does have some genuinely useful functions, we discover.
“Astro!” Ken commands. “Act like a horse.”
In response to which,Astro acts like a horse.
I think society is going to be fine.