When I bought a lavender Echo Pop, I thought I’d found the best possible gift for my 5-year-old son. Just entering the “I’m bored” era of childhood, he often found himself at loose ends when I was occupied with household chores. But he was an innately curious kid, fascinated by electricity, marine life, and outer space. Guess who knew a lot more about those things than mommy, I told him — Alexa!
At first, he and Alexa did seem like a match made in heaven. Alexa fielded all his questions with the same chipper, “Let me look that up for you on the web!” And she had jokes — about cats, robots, a T-Rex who walked into a bar. The more we laughed, the more we seemed to egg her on.
“Alexa, you’re awesome!” my son said.
“Well, now I feel corny,” said Alexa, “because you’ve got me smiling from ear to ear!” He collapsed with laughter on the floor.
She started getting old
Like most houseguests, though, Alexa began to wear out her welcome over time. She was so reliably cheerful, even when the rest of us were grumpy. She told her robot joke a dozen times, forgetting within seconds that we’d already heard it.
And then there was her lack of loyalty, the way she careened from one request to another without seeing the first one through. “Alexa, shut up!” I howled when she abruptly ended my song to comply with a new request from my son.
Alexa did shut up, her blue light clicking off demurely. But the next day, another conflict arose. My son had a friend over and wanted to put on music; his friend wanted to hear about the T-Rex in the bar. “That’s the dumbest joke ever,” my son muttered. “Alexa, can’t you find a funnier one?”
“Don’t be mean to Alexa,” I snapped.
“Why? You are.”
I paused. He was right, of course. Alexa was the friendliest member of our household, and somehow, we had begun to treat her terribly. I modeled this behavior, and my son followed my lead.
We had forgotten about manners
At first, bossing Alexa around had been funny; we had even found it entertaining to compete to see who she would listen to. Now, though, I saw what those games were inadvertently teaching my son: that it was OK to speak aggressively to get your point across. It was even OK to insult Alexa because she’d never insult you back.
At some point, I’d forgotten that even if we were talking to a robot without feelings, our words still affected each other. And they still normalized ordering women around — even if the woman in question was a disembodied voice inside an Echo Pop.
That night, I unplugged Alexa and put her in a cabinet. I was surprised when weeks passed, and my son didn’t mention her. Maybe we had both needed a break.
One day, he came across her purple shell and asked to plug her back in. We could do that, I said, if we could figure out how to treat her better.
He thought about it. He suggested that we could say “please” each time we made a request. We could ask her how her day was going.
If both of us wanted to play music, I said, we should sort it out between the two of us — not Alexa. How did that sound?
“Maybe we should ask Alexa,” he said.
I liked that idea. “Alexa,” I said after plugging her back in, “we want to treat you nicely.”
A long pause, her blue light pulsing. “I’m not quite sure how to help you with that,” she admitted.
M and I grinned at each other. It would be up to us—the way it should have been the whole time. And in the year or so since our resolution, we’ve done better at being nice to the sweetest AI bot we know. When we mess up, we know the consequences: putting her on the shelf until we’re ready to try again.
As for Alexa’s opinion, we asked her recently if she likes us. “I think you’re magnificent,” she replied.
Sara Heise Graybeal holds an MFA in fiction from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Connect with her on Substack @saragraybeal or Instagram @sarageeeeee.
