While LLMs such as ChatGPT are still very new and people do seem to forgive them for some of the  ‘hallucinations’ qua fabricated information they may deliver, Amazon’s Echo and Alexa have been around for quite some time now and in case you missed it, Amazon Shuts Down Smart Home for a Week Over Racist Slur Claim.

Which begs the question: where does tech end and what belongs to you begin?

“If you bought a toaster, at the end of the day, you own the toaster. It’s your toaster…Alexa is not a subscription service. You buy the devices, and that’s supposed to be it,” said the Microsoft engineer who was shut out of all things in his connected home connected by Amazon-controlled devices, such as Echo and Alexa.

So, not so, it seems, and what gives Amazon the right to monitor the behavior of the owner of one of its devices? Especially since, in this case, where an Amazon deliveryman reported receiving racist remarks from the homeowner’s connected doorbell? Which proved to be untrue, as no one was even home at the time of the delivery, but it took Amazon a week to get it sorted out – and all the homeowner’s Amazon-connected devices had been shut down in the meantime.

Luckily, his entire home qua the electronics and connected devices, were not Amazon device-driven.

For anyone who shrugs off privacy concerns and feels, ‘what’s the difference if the tech cabal is collecting information on me? They already have all of my information already anyway,’ do read the Medium piece by Brandon Jackson, the wronged Amazon device owner in this case, or at the very least, watch his YouTube video on The Customer’s Perspective in the Amazon Account Lock out. As we mentioned, Jackson is a Microsoft engineer, and dispenses some much-needed advice for anyone with a connected home or is considering installing more connected devices.

More importantly, why is it Amazon’s job to monitor a consumer’s behavior through a device that is the personal property of the consumer, located on the consumer’s property? Or did we all miss something?

Maybe not.

As Wired reported, “The US Is Openly Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens A newly declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reveals that the federal government is buying troves of data about Americans.

““This report reveals what we feared most,” says Sean Vitka, a policy attorney at the nonprofit Demand Progress. “Intelligence agencies are flouting the law and buying information about Americans that Congress and the Supreme Court have made clear the government should not have.”

And could they be buying said information from the companies selling those supposedly privately owned devices in the ‘connected home?’ And a quite appropriate name, all things considered, although we do know that the more widely acknowledged nomenclature is ‘smart home.’ Maybe not so smart on the homeowner’s part after all.

Because his home is so seemingly high tech, Jackson “went on to say that he had multiple security cameras on his house, and claimed the footage he reviewed “confirmed that no such comments had been made,” Newsweek further reported.

Guilty until proven innocent in these United States

Or so it would seem, with tech as judge and jury, aka a kangaroo court.

“In May, a white paper by Parks Associates, a market research firm, compiled with Iris, a cyber protection company, found among 10,000 internet-connected households surveyed, nearly half reported experiencing at least one privacy or security issue in the past year.

“Some 72 percent of respondents were worried about the security of the personal data collected by smart devices—a concern Amazon has recognized, but says it designs all its products “with privacy and security in mind,” even though Cybersecurity Researchers Uncover Serious Privacy Issues when it comes to those devices.

What to speak of the fact that, as Jackson mentioned in his video, there should be more widely available smart home tools and that those tools shouldn’t be concentrated in the hands of a few companies.

And why stop at the front door at this point? This just in: Amazon Alexa To Allow Voice-initiated Electric Vehicle Charging, and Amazon Pushes Harder Into Autos With New Alexa Technology, so, in the latter case, everyone in the car can feel connected/surveilled.

Which brings us back to the Generative AIs and speaking of reporting untrue information: Chatgpt just got sued! According to Quora, “A man named Mark Walters, who is a radio host from Georgia, is suing OpenAI…OpenAI’s AI chatbot, called ChatGPT, told a reporter that he was stealing money from a group called The Second Amendment Foundation. This wasn’t true at all. In the lawsuit, Walters’ lawyer says that OpenAI’s chatbot spread false information about Walters when a journalist asked it to summarize a legal case involving an attorney general and the Second Amendment Foundation. The AI chatbot wrongly said that Walters was part of the case and was an executive at the foundation, which he wasn’t. In reality, Walters had nothing to do with the foundation or the case.”

We do have a feeling that this will be only the first in a succession of generative AI lawsuits to come.

Amazon recently announced they will soon add a ChatGPT-style search to its online store. Think it’ll stop there? As Lao Tzu noted, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and the cabal is in it for the long haul.

So, what’s the difference if you give away even more of your personal information and even your innermost thoughts to a generative AI et al, since, as you tell yourself, they already have all your personal information anyway? We’re sure generative AIs will be entering the smart home before too long and as we already know, they’re not always all that smart. Might think twice about all those connected devices – once you start connecting all the dots. Onward and forward.