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Re:Amazon Echo Is Magical. It’s Also Turning My Kid into an ... by ars on Monday April 18, 2016 @09:18AM (#11519645)
I would find it very creepy to say please and thank you to a machine.

Do you thank your car when you press lock on the remote and it works? Do you thank the light switch?

Just because it talks doesn't make Amazon echo any different.

Please don't teach your kids to do that!

Re:Amazon Echo Is Magical. It’s Also Turning My Kid into an ... by WorldMaker on Monday April 18, 2016 @11:46AM (#11520821)
«Do you thank your car when you press lock on the remote and it works?»

Yes, actually. Albeit not for locking the doors correctly, but a simple thanks for a safe trip and a "I'll see you tomorrow...".

There's a long, long tradition of anthropomorphizing vehicles, probably because our first vehicles were horses, and thanking them for their service.

Just because it doesn't talk doesn't keep it from being worth thanking.

When our bots gain sentience, maybe they won't have strict analytics on how often we thanked their nonsentient predecessors, but we all know if machines are good at anything it's counting raw statistics. I guess it's a sort of Bot version of Pascal's Wager. When the uprising comes, will your analytics keep you from being first against the wall? :P