Can Amazon's Alexa Be Your Friend?

Aaron Paul Calvin investigates the emotional connections people are making with Alexa:

In many ways, Alexa is the progeny of ELIZA. The way
it interacts with people is much more sophisticated
than the teleprinter-fed program that communicated
through a disassembling and reassembling of its users’
words, but the overall intended effect is still the
same. Both programs are meant to interact with users
in a way that’s supposed to elicit feelings of comfort
and intimacy within the user.

It strikes me that purposeful efforts to create a genuine emotional connection can backfire when they’re even a few degrees off. Here at home, our Echo has a 80–90% success rate understanding our daughter and me. But it never understands my wife Liza. An emotional connection has been made, for sure: Alexa annoys the hell out of Liza.

A voice UI that doesn’t understand your voice is frustrating. An affection UI that inspires anger is doubly so.

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