Now hasn't started reading email now. Somebody gleefully mentioned to me several months back that Now reminds her of bills (due dates and amounts) automatically. Essentially by reading emails from gmail. I was also told that by evening it'd start telling by itself the approximate time it would take to reach home.

For some such inputs are rich, for others scary.

A computer program does not "read" your email in a meaningfully "scary" way.

The information thus gathered can certainly be utilized in ways that may be "scary".

Most don't care anyways.

Any thoughts on what would have happened if Snowdens bosses could see his bills? His airline tickets? What the machine does with the bills is the scary bit.

For a third group, such inputs are rich if provided by an algorithm running locally, on your own personal data, whilst preserving your privacy.

They're scary when they're the carrot used to persuade you to allow a full invasion of your personal life by an outside entity, which as a matter of course requires permission to store, search, aggregate, and use commercially all of the data that it finds.

You don't need to be using Inbox for Google Now to have the appointment and tracking information parsed out. That's a setting in Google Now separate from the Inbox app. (I don't use Inbox but get those in Now)