> That's a good rationale for hiring a cleaner or eating at a restaurant. But I honestly haven't seen a smart device actually saving you a significant amount of time. Even a perfectly functioning vacuum robot only relieves you of vacuuming the floor. You still have to do all the other chores that are involved in keeping your place clean and tidy.

I completely agree with this. In practice I've never owned one that did anything to improve my life.

> Indeed it does, but trust includes deciding who you can trust. Why would you specifically trust a tech company not to collect data about you?

> Incentives of toaster and car companies are roughly aligned with yours: The companies have no interest in setting your house on fire or causing a car crash. Meanwhile, incentives of smart device makers are strongly disaligned with yours: They you want to keep privacy, they want as much data about you as they can get.

I don't think it is that black and white. A random fly-by-night company certainly does have the incentive to vacuum up as much data about you as possible. Other companies do, to some degree or another, have a reputation to consider.

For example, I do believe Amazon is interested in learning about my house. However, I do believe they are also incentivized to not sell it to the highest bidder on the open market. I think reasonable people may disagree.

See also AWS. I trust AWS not to use my interactions with them to pry into my data to sell me ads. This trust seems to so far not be violated.