Siri (HomePod) was getting confused with my “turn everything off” incantation, so I’ve changed the name of the ‘scene’ and now when we leave the house we instruct her to “PUT THAT COFFEE DOWN”.

Because coffee is for closers.

I had to laugh out loud. I suddenly envisioned a future where we slowly developed an arsenal of such workarounds for the flawed automation creeping into every aspect of private and public life, where it reached a point where people just accepted that that's the way things are done. My grandchildren naturally yell "put that coffee down" when leaving the house, because that's just how you turn off everything. Sure there must be some ancient reason why it's exactly that phrase, but who cares? That's how smart people decided AI is supposed to work.

There's already a host of those artifacts in other technologies. Ctrl-Alt-Del, for one.

“The Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy” had a great bit on this in 1979, describing gesture-controlled televisions that randomly changed channel unless you sat perfectly still, etc.

> Worst of all possible worlds.

At least there are no tribbles.