Chamberlain v. Home Assistant

I haven't seen the original story, just the Guardian article posted upthread which doesn't have any references that I can see. That article just describes the standard expected behaviour where the lights revert to their default state (on) after a failure that they're a bit vague about, and the user wasn't able to control them due to physical disability.

Even without knowing any more details, I can safely say that voice was not the only way to control those lights, just the only way accessible to that user in the circumstances. The question is whether that would take the form of resorting to the physical power switch on the wall (ie they failed in such a way as to turn them into normal dumb lights) or whether they were in fact capable of local operation, if only she'd been able to use the remote. That distinction doesn't matter for this particular user, but it does matter in general. We don't have the information to tell whether this particular smart platform is good or bad, but this user actually requires it to be pretty well *perfect*, which is impossible.

In other words, this discussion is actually about two issues. The broader issue is that as a society we should never be forcing anyone into a position where they're entirely dependent upon some piece of technology, or indeed any single point of failure even if that's a trusted person.

On the one hand, voice control that works when you have internet access is better than no voice control at all. On the other, technology that works *almost* perfectly can encourage people to skip backup plans - like alternative technologies with independent failure modes, regularly scheduled checkups from a human being, etc. I don't think the inability to be perfect reflects badly on any particular technology, but unwillingness to accept that, and insistence that we can find cheap technical solutions, does reflect badly on society.