Are Digital Assistants Getting Too Personal?

Being able to talk to a computer has been a dream of science fiction fans for many decades. It is probably one of the oldest and most characteristically science fiction technologies out there. From droids in Star Wars, the robots in Black Hole, all the way to the computer in Star Trek.

Recently computer technology, both hardware and software, have been able to make a computer that we can talk to and interact with our voice. We are still a ways away from them understanding full natural speech though we are closer than ever.

With this comes the "Digital Voice Assistant". These applications run on various devices, from a microphone and speaker combo sitting on the counter to a simple app running on a smart phone.

Now I am not a psychologist. In fact, I think that was the first time I ever spelled the word correctly without consulting a dictionary. However, it concerns me that people may end up getting too attached to the assistants. The more life-like they get, the more I am concerned.

I mean more on the level of not giving a name to the animal you are going to have to kill in the future. It is a common trope, and possibly a true one though I don't have experience to know for sure, that scientists shouldn't name the mice they are experimenting on because it makes the job harder.

Now, these devices aren't something that we will have to kill off in the future. In fact even if the hardware is destroyed these assistants can be moved to a new device a la Ultron. But at the same time they are not a real person but a tool that we can use to make our lives easier.

As these devices become more lifelike it might be wise to de-humanize them a bit. Starting with the name and triggering phrase we use to wake them up. Siri, Alexa, and Cortana are all real-ish names, and if they weren't when they were created I am sure somebody by now has named their kid after one of these. But they sound like they could be a real name of a real person. This could only make it harder for our brains to identify them as a machine.

While I know that Alexa will let you change the trigger phrase, Siri and Cortana won't as far as I could see. (Google Assistant doesn't use a real person sounding name, so it is not a concern.) Having that feature maybe important in helping people have a healthy relationship with their devices.

Just food for thought.