Smart speakers: assistant of the future or privacy invader?

Digital transformation introduced a new tool into our world, the smart speakers. Amazon introduced the Smart speaker Alexa in November 2014. This launched the era of smart speakers: wireless and voice commanded devices that realize tasks by voice activation. The speakers can realize different actions such as play music, call, release information or control home features (lights, windows).

Even if we are not talking about Alexa or Google assistant, thanks to the digital transformation we all have access to smart speakers on our smartphones. Whether it’s Siri or Cortana, we already use this tool in our everyday lives for setting alarms, call someone or ask for information.

Are smart speakers replacing human intelligence?

The benefits of these speakers are that they make people lives easier, think about disabled or elderly people, hands-free technologies will increase their autonomy. They also make our lives easier because thank to them we can do many things at the time. The era of digital transformation created new assistants, cheaper than a human assistant and also more qualified. The fact that these speakers are helpful is not questionable, however, we can wonder if they really replace human intelligence?

Smart speakers are also here to make conversation, they have a nice voice meant to create a feeling of trust for the owner. The voice seems human and the exchanges can feel like genuine humans interactions.

The issue that these modern assistant raise is about privacy protection. Indeed, the digital transformation already made our data accessible and hackable because of smartphones and social media. But now, smart speakers also threaten our privacy. Smart speakers can record everything that happens in their environment, including private talks. The problem is that these data are collected and may be sold to companies.

What we can expect from the future is that the speakers become smarter and smarter with more and more options and the privacy protection will, even more, be threatened with videos recordings for example. The fear of technology and artificial intelligence overwhelming humans intelligence is also very present.