I bought an Alexa when it went on sale a few years ago, but for its first few months on a shelf, it was just a talking speaker. After the novelty of having a glorified smart radio wore off, though, I grew curious about what smart home capabilities these machines could offer.
Alexa was released in November of 2014 and quickly became the butt of jokes in a world still struggling to accept that speakers could suddenly control houses. Of course, it had no shortage of hiccups in its first few years. From unwanted interactions with late-night TV hosts and unintended purchases made by unsupervised kids to unprompted laughter bouts and all of the other growing pains of an early household AI, it’s clear Alexa and all of its accompanying smart home devices had their share of issues.
Alexa’s privacy concerns are one of its greatest pitfalls. Its always-listening capabilities have given rise to a host of controversies in the years since its unveiling. Whether it’s a good or a bad thing is still open to debate, but Alexa recordings have even assisted in solving crimes.
As of 2023, Amazon has hardly bothered to address the breaches of privacy innate to its broader ecosystem. But sacrificing security for luxury is a tradeoff I’ve already gotten used to making in my life, so the purchase of an Amazon Echo Dot hardly felt more 1984 than the internet in the palm of my hand. Besides, my iPhone had already been catering ads around my personal conversations for years. How much worse could it be?
Turning my room into a smart room was a weeks-long endeavor. It involved buying a series of smart outlets, smart bulbs, and a smart power strip. Plugging them in was the easy part. Getting my Amazon Echo to recognize them, though, was frustrating to the point of nearly hurling my new AI pal through a window.
The product directions that came with each separate item would have been clearer if they were written in Mandarin Chinese. But after a painstaking couple of weeks, enough syncing and un-syncing to drive me into a short-lived psychosis, enough device naming and un-naming to add dyslexia to injury, and far more time on hold with Amazon customer service than I’d like to admit, I had my smart room.
It was no easy task, but the payoff was pretty impressive. Alexa knows most of the electronics in my room by name and communicates with them seamlessly. It can turn lights on and off, adjust their intensity, change their color, and queue them into regimens. It can communicate with security cameras, speakers, Xboxes, fridges, driers, and virtually any device that can be plugged into an outlet.
The ability to say “Alexa pause TV” as I leave the room to go to the bathroom may seem about as frivolous as it gets. But it’s no small liberty to have been suddenly unburdened from ever having to flip light switches, turn off circuits, or dial knobs simply through an effortless “Alexa good morning” or “good night” command.
In the few years I’ve had these routines in place, I’ve saved hours and hours of time. Before, having to manually turn off lights and devices at the end of the day was never something I minded. But I’d also never fully considered the smart home alternative in the first few years these products were available to the public.
When I thought of smart homes in their earliest years, I envisioned upper-class homes of detached families and comedy skits that practically wrote themselves. To suddenly be that person saying, “Hey Alexa, turn off surround lights,” was a shocking role reversal.
It wasn’t until I injured my spine the following year that I began to appreciate the true utility of smart home technology. In my worst months, nearly every command I could give this futuristic AI was a small pain spared. The value that this could offer to seniors and the disabled is simply enormous. Whether they could easily sift through the challenges of setting up a smart home ecosystem just yet, I still have my doubts.
With such a stigma still lingering around these smart home devices, they haven’t seen the wide adoption that many had projected by now. And it’s true that the world of household artificial intelligence is still far from perfect. In the years since the emergence of the Alexa, Nest, and HomePod, there’s been an influx of hilarious and horrifying smart home malfunction stories.
Sometimes Alexa inexplicably loses connection to the internet or to certain devices that rely on it. Sometimes, it gives me unsolicited advice on new things to buy and dystopian notifications when things I’ve bought have arrived. And sometimes, when I tell it to play “Revolver by the Beatles,” all it can muster is a shameless “Now playing ‘Girlfriend’ by Avril Lavigne.” Overall, though, the issues I’ve experienced with the technology are few and far between.
When I was a kid, I envisioned that we might be giving our homes commands one day in the distant future. That this type of control has now been democratized to the point of simple Amazon purchases is truly difficult to fathom. It’s surreal to know smart home technology may already be legacy.
After I finish writing this piece, I can close out my day with a simple “Alexa, goodnight” command and watch as a room full of electronics flicker off in lightning-quick succession. And the truth is — it all still feels like part of a future I can’t quite believe I’m living in. Yesterday’s dreams are today’s realities.