Assistant Mission Creep

When I read recently that a virtual assistant had called 911 in the US to report a crime in progress, my immediate reaction was:  No that will not work, for a number of reasons. Technical and regulatory. And that was confirmed soon after, it did not happen.  It was misreported.  But as AI's and their best known consumer examples, virtual assistants, continue to improve. our expectations will expand, leading to unexpected outcomes.  Will have to consider those circumstances and risk.  Nicely posed in Wired: 

“ ... Cyberservants will exhibit mission creep over time. They'll take on more and more functions. And they'll habituate us to become increasingly comfortable with always-on environments listening to our intimate spaces,” says Evan Selinger, a philosopher at the Rochester Institute of Technology, who focuses on how technology invades life.

SAVE's Reidenberg agrees, but thinks it’s inevitable that AIs will be given more power to intrude when necessary.“I don’t think we can avoid this. This is where it is going to go. It is really about us adapting to that,” he says.