Apparently, people are really into the idea of letting a giant megacorporation fill their home with surveillance equipment.
But there’s more to worry about when it comes to in-home surveillance robots than just privacy. If you can stomach it, here’s a pandering video of the “Astro” robot that everyone is calling “cute” and “adorable” on social media: The new Astro robot (it rolls) and the new Ring Always Home Cam (it flies) are among the absolute stupidest consumer products I’ve ever seen – and that includes a direct comparison to the spandex-clad human pretending to be a robot that Tesla recently rolled out. Note: I want to believe! I’m not a hater. I want a robot in my house. I want a cool tech buddy, I promise I’m not just crapping on the concept. I just hate the execution. And you don’t need a robot that can respond to glass breaking and alert you if someone is unlawfully entering your home. Because it’s much, much less expensive to hire an alarm service – a company that specializes in such things. You can combine external cameras with entry-point sensors to create a tried-and-true intrusion alert system. No strangers looking at 24/7 video feeds of the inside of your house required. This robot doesn’t solve any problems whatsoever. Its only useful function is as an entertainment device. The first time your parents come over and you get to show off the handful of tricks it can do, everyone will be delighted. And, as anyone who’s owned a smart speaker for more than a month knows, that new-tech-euphoria wears off pretty quickly. That’s the dumbest, most scam-a-licous consumer hardware experience I’ve ever seen. Charles Ponzi’s ghost is frickin’ gobsmacked right now and off somewhere moaning about how he was born way too soon. Who in the hell is this feature for? People who want someone else to get them a drink, but don’t want to actually see that person? “Honey, go grab me a beer. And then call the stupid robot over, put the beer in its holder, and tell the robot to bring it to me. I’ll wait.” But my colleague Napier is absolutely correct when he says robots such as Astro could mainstream the technology. If I’d asked my readers 10 years ago whether they’d be willing to allow a trillion-dollar corporation that’s partnered with the Department of Homeland Security, US Customs and Border Patrol, and local law enforcement to install data-capturing machines throughout their homes, I think I would have been laughed at. People are imagining a robot buddy they can call on and talk to, that’ll help them out in their lives. What they’ll be getting is a machine engineered to be cute and likable so that it can gain total access to your private life and gather as much data as possible. We should not be paying for hardware — let alone a subscription fee — to collect our data. Especially when the robot is little more useful than a Roomba with an Echo Show and a cupholder strapped to it.
