[VLM]

I remember that movie. Her name is Samantha instead of Alexa and his name is Ted and they have long and elaborate human like conversations and fall in love and have phone sex.

I wonder how medical records would be handled. Surely Samantha has some opinion on Theodore's mental state. In the movie he was pretty normal. Which is boring, because so many people are not normal.

I'm old enough to have survived the GTA3 media firestorm. I'm pretty sure digital assistants will have their GTA3 media firestorm soon enough.

Samantha in the movie more or less did whatever Theodore wanted to befriend him. And luckily the weirdest thing Theodore wanted was phone sex, more or less. But hows this going to work with truly insane people? Should Samantha the digital assistant befriend and encourage and motivate a school shooter, for example? And what happens to PR when its found out she encouraged him? At what point is Samantha the digital personality or her programmer or employer liable for entrapment or encouraging some anti-social behavior? Who has the liability to maintain an API over the internet to the FBI to report enormous amounts of telescreen observed misbehavior? If the user is in fact insane and the digital assistant is unable to work with a crazy person does the owner get a refund or does the crazy person get shamed in public for not having an assistant or ...

I'm curious if there's already been court cases. As the assistants gain in ability and processing power there will be cases.

[shostack]

Medical records are interesting. Likewise, I think the other can of worms you open is to what extent is this data available to law enforcement when an assistant is passively observing and logging EVERYTHING through the magnitude of sensors they have. I'd hope to god it requires a warrant.