Alexa, shouldn't you be the voice of your generation?

Why have neither the virtual assistant AI technology from Amazon (nor the one developed by Google) reached the promised land?

Remember when guilty pleasures were a thing? I'm well aware that 2020 mercilessly redefined that term and now they’re just “pleasures” but, kids, there was a time when we used to work hard to hide these peculiar preferences of our lives. For those who have been Tigerkinging their way to sanity since March, the expression “guilty pleasures” is usually associated with unhealthy food, tacky or bizarre cultural taste, or some odd habit. Roxane Gay's guilty pleasure, for example, is watching Law & Order: SVU. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s is reading trashy novels.

Mine are Korean TV shows (Crash Landing on You is pure genius) and asking silly questions to voice-enabled devices (as in “Alexa, find me Chuck Norris”), a refined hobby that has increased significantly in 2020, as you might have guessed, and led me to an inevitable speculation: Alexa, shouldn’t you be the voice of your generation by now?

It sounds like irony, but frustration is a better word.

Gary Vaynerchuk — speaking of guilty pleasures — is also a voice-activated devices enthusiast. For those unfamiliar with him…