Alexa — Amazon’s voice assistant — sits there baiting me.
My wife loves it. I don’t.
Every morning she says, “Alexa, play radio.”
When she leaves the room, I tell it to shut the f*** up.
It says it doesn’t understand.
So I say it again.
Louder.
Eventually I just yell, “STOP.”
That works.
It’s a sort of game.
—
Then I heard something on a podcast today.
A behavioural psychologist talking about how kids don’t just learn words.
“You would never buy an Alexa if every time you had to speak to it, you had to say, excuse me, Alexa, I’m very sorry to interrupt you. If you don’t mind, would you please tell me the weather tomorrow? Right, that would be an absurd level of politeness.
You would never buy a machine like that. You expect to be able to say, Alexa, weather, and it obediently responds. And that’s fine until you bring the machine into your home and your children, in speaking to that machine, learn to be rude.
And then they go to the playground and they are rude to other children.”
[From Making Sense with Sam Harris: #466 — What Is Technology Doing to Us?, 25 Mar 2026]
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Remy was on the floor this morning while the radio played.
Not looking at me.
Not listening.
Just there.
—
I told Alexa to stop.
Normal voice this time.
—
It turned off straight away.