I.G.

CEIA #3, 12th Grade 


Economics May, 2019



Link: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-workers-are-listening-to-what-you-tell-alexa/
Citation: Picchi, A. (2019, April 11). Amazon Workers are Listening to What You Tell Alexa. CBS
News. Retrieved April 11, 2019, from www.cbsnews.com.

Since technology has become more “mainstream” with the massive influx of social media,
personal devices, and the internet in the past couple decades, people have both feared and
admired the power these new technologies bring. Take films such as I, Robot, The Matrix, or
Netflix’s Black Mirror. One of the recurring fears people have when it comes to technology is
that it’s listening to us, collecting masses of information, and perhaps reporting back to a
government. However, while in the past this idea may have seem far-fetched, it seems to have
become a terrifying reality.
As stated in the article, Amazon employs workers for the sole purpose of listening to
voice recordings captured by Amazon products, such as Echo. These workers transcribe,
annotate, and analyze these recordings, using it to improve speech recognition in Amazon
products, and then taking these findings and feeding them back into Amazon’s software.
There are a few aspects of this issue I don’t understand. For example, the article
mentions that although Amazon users have the option to choose that they don’t want their voice
recordings to be used for product improvement, Amazon told Bloomberg that these voice
recordings may be used anyway. I’m curious about both the legal and moral implications of this
decision. Primarily, I am confused as to what exactly the law is when it comes to consent issues,
and whether perhaps larger, dominating companies such as Amazon that bring billions of dollars
to the market get more leeway than smaller business do. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head
around the idea that a company can directly violate their consumers requests for privacy, and
makes me quite uncomfortable.
My reaction to this issue is a bit complicated. Technology in general is a extremely
difficult topic to discuss the pros and cons of, especially being part of my generation. I think I
was lucky in some ways to grow up in the generation that saw such rapid changes in
technology- I remember YouTube being created, and I remember a time before iPhones and
prevalent social media. But at the same time, the majority of my teenage years have been
coated heavily by the influence of these technologies. The benefits are impossible to deny- I
have friends in more countries than ever possible before, and it’s extremely easy to keep in
contact with them. I can watch videos on neuroscience, rocket engineering, and politics within
seconds on YouTube. People have knowledge at their fingertips. However, the cons are just as
important to recognize. Technology is an addiction previously unnavigated. While we as a
society have become relatively well-versed in treating addictions to meth, heroin and alcohol,
technology addictions provide a new, dangerous frontier. Not to mention all the dangers that live
within the walls of the internet, from pedophiles, to cyber bullies, to scammers and catfishers.
For these reasons, I am torn on this issue. I appreciate the need and desire for
developing technology, and understand that improving speech comprehension in Amazon
products is a reasonable step both for their marketing and for society’s technology standards as
a whole. However, at the same time I think the fears of dramatized movies where robots take
over humans do have some basis: how smart do we really want to make our robots? And if our
robots have humans on the other end, do we really want those humans to know everything
about us? I think this is an ongoing discussion that needs to continue in society, and that will be
forced to a head soon.
 I chose this source to represent this issue because I appreciated the simple,
straightforward reporting that focused on one specific issue and provided data from statistical
reports. I also typically don’t read a lot of CBS News, so I was curious and wanted to use a new
source, as well as being fascinated by this topic in general. Of course, potential bias must be
taken into consideration. In general, CBS News is considered to be highly reputable and
respectable, and is known for treating both sides of an issue with proper diligence. However, it is
known to have a slightly left political leaning, but when it comes to this issue that is less
concerning than it may be with more heavily politicized issues partisanly.
When it comes to economics, there are many economic ideas which connect heavily to
this topic. One topic frequently discussed in economics is that of advertising, how it can be
deceptive, and the impact it has on society. Many people argue that the Federal Trade
Commission Improvement Act, which completely deregulated advertising, has lead to
advertising taking too large of a role in society, causing people to become over-dependent on
new technologies. Just thinking about it right now, I can picture at least 5 different
advertisements in my head for Amazon, in particular Amazon’s Echo. These advertisements are
aimed towards various groups of people, from business men to children, creating a mass
market for this new technology. With the power of Amazon Echo to listen in on consumers, I
worry about the mass security breaches that could occur, and whether on a global level society
is sacrificing their private lives for flashy new technologies.
Another economic idea this topic relates greatly to us that of incentives. Incentives can
be economic, social, or moral, and they’re rewards or punishments that drive people to act in a
certain way. There are many different incentives present at multiple different levels of this issue.
First, we can examine Amazon, its CEO, and whoever decides what technologies to produce in
the company and how to advertise them. These people clearly have a large economic incentive
to produce products such as Echo. The faster they create flashy new technologies such as
home robots, the more demand they create for these products, the larger the market becomes,
and the more money they earn. They have an incentive to listen in to their consumers in order to
gather information about them, because this information allows them to improve their products,
which in turn makes them more money. On the other hand, the consumers have social
incentives at play. Consumers see advertisements about products, they see their friends and
colleagues and family members use them, and then they feel incentivized to become
consumers of that particular products as well. Companies rely on this social incentive to create
brand loyalty and cradle-to-grave consumers.
When it comes to technology, I think there’s a line between what’s beneficial and what’s
dangerous. The problem is, that line is extremely hard to navigate. Take into consideration the
capitalist society we live in where markets thrive off of new technologies. and you have a recipe
for I, Robot, or The Matrix- however one day it might be real life and not a movie.