Editor’s note: We’re proud to bring NextDraft—the most righteous, most essential newsletter on the web—to WIRED.com. Every Friday you’ll get a roundup of the week’s most popular must-read stories from around the internet, courtesy of mastermind Dave Pell. So dig in and geek out. That’s What She Said Millions of homes now have guests who never leave. With names like Cortana, Siri, and Alexa, these always-listening, all-knowing, just about always female-voiced assistants have become like members of the family. They’re selling like crazy, they’re interacting with your children (maybe more than you are), and a new suite of artificially intelligent assistant bots are being built into baby monitors so they can have an influence on your kids right from the start. WaPo’s Michael S. Rosenwald wonders if anyone is focused on how millions of kids are being shaped by know-it-all voice assistants. I’m pretty sure my kids hacked our Echo because last time I asked Alexa a question, she just rolled her eyes.
- Gizmodo: Alexa now offers medical advice, because your hypochondria wasn’t bad enough.
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The NextDraft newsletter is now on WIRED.com. Every Friday, mastermind Dave Pell visits the far reaches of the web to bring the news you missed. Politics, tech, science—you name it, and it’s here. (Original story reprinted with permission from NextDraft.)
Editor’s note: We’re proud to bring NextDraft—the most righteous, most essential newsletter on the web—to WIRED.com. Every Friday you’ll get a roundup of the week’s most popular must-read stories from around the internet, courtesy of mastermind Dave Pell. So dig in and geek out.
Millions of homes now have guests who never leave. With names like Cortana, Siri, and Alexa, these always-listening, all-knowing, just about always female-voiced assistants have become like members of the family. They’re selling like crazy, they’re interacting with your children (maybe more than you are), and a new suite of artificially intelligent assistant bots are being built into baby monitors so they can have an influence on your kids right from the start. WaPo’s Michael S. Rosenwald wonders if anyone is focused on how millions of kids are being shaped by know-it-all voice assistants. I’m pretty sure my kids hacked our Echo because last time I asked Alexa a question, she just rolled her eyes.
- Gizmodo: Alexa now offers medical advice, because your hypochondria wasn’t bad enough.
The NextDraft newsletter is now on WIRED.com. Every Friday, mastermind Dave Pell visits the far reaches of the web to bring the news you missed. Politics, tech, science—you name it, and it’s here.
(Original story reprinted with permission from NextDraft.)