[rudiv]

IMO the GP is being downvoted because irrespective of one's personal feelings regarding 'smart home' devices, it's difficult to see how someone could genuinely have never encountered any users of those devices (assuming you're living in the US). I can understand how someone extremely tech-savvy and cognizant of the privacy and other downsides of those devices may have friends who similarly would not use or purchase the same; but to have genuinely never seen one, whether it be in the home of a relative, an acquaintance, in popular television or movies - and having never read any reporting about their popularity - seems beyond the realm of possibility. Given that, the GP's question seems conceited. I can see how they might have intended to direct the question towards HN users in the assumption that most HN users would be wary of the aforementioned devices, in which case it'd be interesting to read the perspectives of those individuals who use them despite their downsides. But that isn't immediately evident.

[l33tman]

Well the GP might not live in the US. I don't, and I have never seen anybody use one of those and I don't know anybody who does either, and I haven't seen them in series or movies either (except sci-fi AI movies). For all I know, an Alexa is just a device to order toilet paper from Amazon when it's out or maybe use it to turn on and off the light in the room if you're too lazy to do it yourself.

Is the demographic that uses these preferentially si-valley people or is it widely spread in the US?

BTW I'm not particularly against home AI assistants myself. But I'm fairly against streaming my audio to a third party that can transcribe and give everything to any snooping fourth party though :) I did read about Google doing this with their assistant's audio, it ended up at contractors doing manual transcribing.

[rudiv]

I don't live in the US either. But this website is primarily US-focused, and most people on it readily assume the context for everything is the US, so I conform to the same habit.

My anecdotal examples would be mostly middle-class families and college students in the US, not particularly valley-related. In my country these type of devices are on the market but not popular (only seen a couple), but they're priced out of the range of the majority of the population anyway.