Have you ever considered that this is not the case in most of the world? Resources are far from evenly distributed.
It is not by chance that the availability of indoor plumbing correlates to increase in life expectancy. It's nice that I can just open the tap and clean water comes out, but it's also a lot more sanitary than people carrying and storing buckets around.
>I just cannot work out if the commenter was being deliberately obtuse or really misunderstood?
Same here. Comparing the savings of a few steps towards a light switch to clean water and cheap food is intellectual dishonesty at best and severe ignorance at worse.
Neither of which is needed to live. Both of which are conveniences.
Convenience does, absolutely, have strong value and can be meaningful improvement to one's life. Generalized voice control is a major and meaningful convenience - even if it's currently early and might have some problems - because it drastically changes how we can interact with our environments.
Sure, we can short sell the case as "not needing to walk to a light switch", but even then if it's dark, my arms are full, and the path to the switch is littered with children's toys then that's a meaningful improvement to be able to say "Hey google, turn on the living room light".
Consider cases of people with severe MS or who otherwise can't easily walk. Sure, they could hook up a remote control and keep it near them, or get one of those stupid clapper things, but even then that only works for the lights.
A generalized voice assistant gives me control over my house, from anywhere my voice can be heard, and not only executes my actions, but can give me realtime feedback and data. Best of all, this requires no special skills on my part, just a willingness to talk to the damned thing loudly and clearly with simple words.
Can it act as a wire tap? Of course it can. My store bought bread can also be contaminated (right now in my area there is a huge contamination issue with eggs and lettuce), my indoor plumbing can burst and flood my house, so on. It's a new technology, it has kinks and flaws, and we're currently in the early adopter curve of it moving towards the initial disappointment trend.
My disagreement with you is precisely because you consider them equally interchangeable.
To me, putting those two on the same level is actually offensive.
If data on the increased life expectancy isn’t persuasive enough, I suggest you speak with someone with no access to basic sanitation. Ask them what they think of this comparison.
I’m sorry, clean water and food are not conviniences. They are among the most basics of human needs. That’s the kind of thing that scares me. That someone would make such a comparison with a straight face.