Help! My Son Confuses Me With Amazon’s Alexa

Last week, when asking for a cup of yogurt, my three-year-old son called me Alexa.

It's a funny, modern problem to have your child mistake you for a disembodied A.I. voice—in this case, the one powering Amazon's Echo family of devices. But it's also a good example of what it's like living in a home powered by a smart speaker. Too busy to lift a remote, we bark commands into the void expecting something to respond. Maybe it does. But on occasion there's no reply: The lights don't turn on.