A recent notable story about the Amazon Alexa program spying and recording children's voices reminded me of my experience with Alexa. This past Thanksgiving I was invited to dinner with close friends and their 18 y.o. daughter, all of them conservative Trump supporters. They were not the dinner hosts, however. The dinner prep and dining would take place at their neighbors, an interesting couple I met at a previous party.
The man in the couple is an aircraft mechanic, who for many years has been servicing the aircraft of one client, the CEO of a national tool and hardware retail brand. He works out of an historic airfield, so I find his stories quite interesting. He is also conservative, but his wife is a prototype 1970's liberal, from her politics to her appearance, and if you squint, she even looks like a younger by 10 years HRC.
What drew them together were their shared interests, which includes distilling home brew alcoholic beverages such as beer, wine and other spirits. Not necessarily big boozers, rather, they often host parties, where they share their harvest. Thanksgiving was one such party, where we would be tasting their latest Tequila. Because of the political differences, everyone who visits them agrees that politics is the one subject that won't be discussed at their dinners. Tough for my friends and I, but free turkey and tequila goes a long way.
During pre-dinner chat, with 70's yacht rock playing on a nearby sound system, at one point the woman host asked someone named Alexa a question. The music interrupted and a woman's voice answered the question. Oh, she has a Siri program (Apple's version of Alexa), I thought. My neighbor (a Trump supporter) has Siri, so I'm used to him randomly asking his phone questions. This was the first time I experienced an in-house version. I was told that it was the Amazon version, and works as a personal home assistant which you can select levels of interaction in a single room, or throughout your house. She didn't expand on what "levels of interaction" meant, but I would soon find out.
From previous experience with this couple, I knew they enjoyed going to concerts, so with music being a mostly safe topic, that's what we talked about. After discussion of a legendary artist, that artist's music began playing on the sound system. I pointed out the coincidence, and was told that was no coincidence. That was Alexa choosing the music based on our conversation, which it could hear over the background music! I was a bit taken aback. I was told that yes, Alexa (AI program connected to Amazon), at least in her house, is listening all the time, and has been "permitted" to interact.
Now, at the time, I was fully involved with all things Q research, so I knew the alarming ramifications of these AI systems, plus social media spying. From that point forward I let others do most of the talking, and I deliberately mislead anyone or anything that might be listening, laying false information about me that might be connected to my voice, now in a digital storage facility. Some of the things I said confused my close friends at the time, which they later understood when I explained afterwards.
One of the things I did so I didn't have to talk while there, was flip through the woman host's record album collection, which was impressive, as well as including a who's who range of artists you would find in an ultra liberal's collection beginning in the late 60's. When I did talk, I prattled on an on about this and that derelict musician…
I'm fairly confident I convinced Alexa, and Alexa's handlers, that I am a non-threatening, non-thinking, pop-culture obsessed, approved music consuming, stinking rotten liberal.