[Banthum]

One thing that worries me about computers working with all that contextual information is that they then need to know all that information.

And since computing is so centralized these days, this means that whatever company made the software needs to know that context about you too.

There's something to be said for computers staying dumb. I'm okay with my co-workers knowing my social graph well enough to recognize my spouse's first name by context. I'm not okay with faceless corporations or governments having that same information.

[ballenf]

Very good point. Can't disagree with you. I am ok, however, with a contacts system letting me specify a single name nickname that it prioritizes in matching / searches.

And I'm probably also ok with the computer knowing as much about me as my cellular provider does, since all that is probably hoovered up already. Why should Siri be dumber than the feds?

To take this further afield, it would be interesting to interact with a "smart" assistant that only learned from info likely to be accessible to third party law enforcement and/or aggregator, as a demonstration of the risk & power.