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Gaaark writes in with some thoughts on a story from The Verge:

I would love to have a house/AI to keep me organized: to tell me when an important date is coming/arrived; remind me of things i have to do (like the laundry) or of really important things like "you have a family.... go pay attention to them".

But at what cost will that come.

Amazon's Alexa AI (as well as all the other personal assistants being developed) is, seemingly, probably moving from a speaker to the room/house you are standing in. This will eventually help you in life, but will also feed the 'machine' of the corporation developing it.

What would it take to create an open source AI to help me/you with daily life? Would you like to have it come from an RMS point of view, or would a less 'commercial', almost open source alternative be acceptable?

Could you really be accepting of something that coordinates your life and helps you out with occasional advertisements and up-stream collection of 'some' data?

From the referenced article:

While some predict mass unemployment or all-out war between humans and artificial intelligence, others foresee a less bleak future. Professor Manuela Veloso, head of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University, envisions a future in which humans and intelligent systems are inseparable, bound together in a continual exchange of information and goals that she calls "symbiotic autonomy." In Veloso's future, it will be hard to distinguish human agency from automated assistance — but neither people nor software will be much use without the other.

[Ed: TFA also includes an interview with Professor Veloso, which provides more detail and discussion]

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