Would you let your phone make your phone calls?

I would love a trustworthy, capable assistant. Bots are increasingly capable, doing better at more things.

But are they trustworthy? Keeping my secrets, respecting my values, upholding my promises?

The companies, large and small, that have been building the Siris, Alexas, and Cortanas aren’t beholden to me. They are paid by commercial advertisers who want to pitch me, political power brokers who want to sway me, spies and law enforcement who want to profile me, merchants who want to funnel me, and employers who want to leverage me. Not beholden to me.

When the bots and those who operate them have a fiduciary relationship to me, putting my interests ahead of their own, even if it means going to jail or shutting down? Then I’ll trust them with my health, my family’s well-being, my activism, my social activity, my intersectionality, my wealth.

When I am likely made whole for damage they cause when they break faith, I’ll trust them. For an assistant to do their job, they have to know me, my business, my life, my relationships, my habits, my peccadilloes. There is no insurance I can buy that covers bot malfeasance, betrayal, subversion. When they set my life on fire, who covers the damages?

Everything will be getting smarter and more competent. More trustworthy? I can only hope.

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