[shostack]

The eye-opener for me was the movie Her. That take on personal assistants was amazing, but it seemed to have with it the assumption of personal privacy between you and the assistant, and unbridled access to ALL of your data.

So a good exercise is to rewatch that movie, and in each scene where the assistant does something useful or cool, take a moment to reflect on what sort of data they would need access to, and how that data might be used.

I think where things get murky is that the movie didn't really touch on the company behind it at all, and if anything it almost gave the impression of being more like Apple than Google. As such, it neatly skirted today's concerns where the clear leader in the space (Google), is an advertising company that monetizes it's users' data and is constantly raising privacy concerns.

It is a fine line to walk, but ultimately everyone will need to weigh the decision in their mind as to the right balance of privacy and convenience.