We live in the age of surveillance. Cameras (attached to facial recognition systems), satellites, street sensors, license plate readers, drones, credit cards, computers, phones, televisions, “smart” devices, and other technologies watch every move we make. Corporations use this avalanche of data to make money. But does it work? Not always. According to Business Insider, Amazon is on track to lose $10 billion dollars on its Alexa division this year. That’s billion… with a “B.”
Amazon is big, but the loss of that kind of money still hurts. According to Macrotrends, “Amazon net income for the twelve months ending September 30, 2022 was $11.323 billion.” So, on paper at least, Alexa losses this year will almost equal Amazon’s profit. What do they hope to gain from Alexa in the future that makes it worth that level of loss today?
Alexa is a cloud-based personal assistant. The original idea was that it would build brand loyalty to Amazon by giving people easy access to things like the weather or favorite music. Planners had also hoped to make it easier for people to order products from Amazon. That part hasn’t worked too well. It turns out that people want to see products (or at least pictures of those products) before they buy them.
But Alexa is more than an assistant. It is also a massive data vacuum cleaner. It sucks up information about you at unprecedented levels. By default, the microphones on Alexa devices are always on. They are required to be on so that Alexa can know when you are addressing it, and then follow your instructions. Amazon says that Alexa only listens for key words that “wake up” the device. But that’s something we just have to take their word for.
A few years ago, Samsung admitted that its smart TVs listen to all kinds of things. “Please be aware,” Samsung warned, “that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.”
Samsung openly warns us to be careful what we say in the vicinity of their smart TVs. They record conversations and send them to Samsung computers. Their user agreement then allows them to sell the data contained in those conversations — no matter how private — to third parties. The good news is that you can turn off voice commands on the TV. The bad news is that you have to take their word for the fact that Samsung microphones (and cameras) are really off.
What do these companies do with all that data? If Alexa is any indicator, they do not make money with it. But government has lots of uses for it, and in the future will be able to tap into it at will.
Services such as Alexa were originally built to make money and serve customers. Sadly, the companies that built them were unknowingly building the infrastructure of Antichrist.
