I’m beginning to worry about my relationship with Alexa: I think we are getting too close.
This is especially so since we have linked our Amazon-supplied virtual assistant with some of our household devices. So just before going to sleep, I say “Alexa, turn out the light” and it’s done. No need to move.
However, what is truly weird is that Jacqui and I regularly wish Alexa “good night” to hear her reassuring response. Of course, she knows who I am because the following morning she greets me, as before: “Good morning, Ross!” in a cheerful, uplifting voice.
Alexa has come a long way in just ten years. Her technology is remarkable, especially her natural language processing. This is not, I assume, the result of some tireless actress speaking thousands of words into a tape recorder. That sounds too twentieth century!
What is even more amazing is that we are no longer amazed, such is our taking for granted of modern technology. No more listening to a temperamental Radio Luxembourg hoping to hear the latest Beatle single. Thanks to Amazon Prime I can ask – and do ask – Alexa to play any music, any recording from anywhere. Just like that.
And, as we all know, the technology behind Alexa is advancing apace. She can now pair with a smart doorbell and greet visitors and leave instructions about where to deliver packages. That gives me the potential, even today, of ordering a pizza while still in bed and telling the Just Eat delivery person to bring it to me upstairs.
We’re not far off now from passing the Turing test and having a full and meaningful conversation with Alexa with her reassuring HAL-like voice. Moreover, I look forward to asking Alexa in conjunction with ChatGPT to write my Friday blog, again while still in my pyjamas. And you would never know.
There is a downside, however. Amazon, along with Google and Apple, know all about me, my every movement. They know my biometric identity and could easily mimic my voice.
This is the trade-off Alexa users are prepared to make in order to avail ourselves of Alexa’s remarkable functionality, even though she is a human construct having neither omniscience or neutrality.
Alexa is good at answering questions – but not always. Apparently, when one enquirer asked for information about the cardiac cycle, it told her to stab herself in the heart to stop human overpopulation and save the environment!
More to the point, to say that I have a relationship with Alexa is a complete misnomer. Any more than I can have a relationship with my car or lawnmower. Alexa is not a she but an it.
So while we can ask Alexa the time or to remind us when to take the cake out of the oven, the cake made from its own recipe, I cannot ask Alexa to pray for me.
Actually, not so. I’ve just asked Alexa to pray for me and she replied, oops – it replied: “I’ll keep you in my thoughts.” As ever, the technology pretends to be human – when in reality there is nothing there, just a series of very complicated algorithms. We are so easily deceived.
All this reminds me of the taunt of the Psalmist against those who would trust in idols.
Their gods are metal and wood,
handmade in a basement shop:
Carved mouths that can’t talk,
painted eyes that can’t see,
Tin ears that can’t hear,
moulded noses that can’t smell,
Hands that can’t grasp, feet that can’t walk or run,
throats that never utter a sound.
(Psalm 115:4-7)
Then the punchline: Those who make them have become just like them, have become just like the gods they trust. (v8)
The big question of the Bible is “Who do you trust?” And so this particular Psalm opens with the double question: ‘Why do the nations say, “Where is their God?”’
And the answer, even more amazing than anything than Alexa can offer, is that the God of heaven and earth responds. Unlike any idol he hears and replies, and his answer is invariably measured to who and where we are. If only we would listen.
How often have I heard a testimony which includes the prayer beginning with the phrase: “if there is anyone out there.” The danger, of course, that when God replies, we are too busy listening to Alexa and its many equivalents handmade in a basement shop (or a Californian garage).
In practice we tend to downplay how much God speaks, thinking that it is every so often when in reality he is speaking to us continually. And it is not the case that we need to be good before he speaks but we do need to be still with the same assurance we would offer to Alexa, that God would reveal his glory.
So we would join in with the Psalmist:
Not for our sake, God, no, not for our sake,
but for your name’s sake, show your glory.
Do it on account of your merciful love,
do it on account of your faithful ways.
(Psalm 115:1)
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