saudi arabia, the united arab emirates and iran. that discussion live at 2:30 eastern, a couple minutes away. the french embassy in washington, d.c. hosting a discussion about organizations and their role in peace talks, fair trade, climate change and security. live at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. you can also watch online at www.c-span.org or use the free c-span radio app. host: judith shulevitz joins us now from new york and she is a contribute for "the atlantic. she recently explored the technology behind digital assistant. start by explaining what digital assistants are and how prevalent they are today in society. judith my piece was specifically : about voice activated digital assistants. beital assistants tend to shorthand for that.

i was talking specifically about canisters or hockey pucks or ovoid devices we have in our home to help us cook or make music on or get the weather from. those are the first items that we are bringing into our homes that her voice activated digital assistants. in the piece, i go further and talk about the future of these, and we will be getting more and more and they will move into the internet of things. we will be talking to our refrigerators, our toilets, our cars, and our cars will be talking to us. all these things will be talking to us. the piece is about how we are in the first stages of bringing these things into our homes. and where does going from there. host: who is most likely to be buying these things right now? how are they using them? judith: basically, people who tend to be first adopters of

technology are the first to buy them. quite a few young families are buying them. my own daughter-in-law bought one and it she has a two and a half year old at home. she is pretty strict about technology. i said, why did you do that? she said, it allows me to play music without having to open up my computer, because when i open my computer my son things i'm , going to play a movie. it allows parents to do things without having a screen. people who want to keep screenings out of their houses are the surprisingly wide demographic buying these. host: do you own one? judith: i own two. i like my google assistant, just going to put in a plug. in part, because he has a very chipper male voice that makes me smile. google knows a lot of things and has a slightly better and more

intelligent user interface than alexa. i use it to find out the weather and get answers to questions, but i keep it turned off a lot. researching this piece made me paranoid. host: we already have the internet at our fingertips on our smartphones and we can download any thousands of apps. is this technology that much of a leap forward? judith: right now, no. to add what are called skills to your digital assistant, you have to go to your phone and download things. so, no, but that will change. what i argue in my piece is that the switch from eyes and fingers to ears and voice is a -- is not just swapping out body parts, but a qualitative difference. the reason for that is that the voice is different from the eyes. when you hear a voice, you

attribute to that voice a mind and intelligence beyond what these devices currently have. you cannot help it. you are evolutionarily designed to do that. giving these devices voices gives them an upgrade. it causes us to see them as more than they actually are. one of the theses of my piece is that the robots are here, they do not have bodies, but voices. voices are more insidious and intimate than robots with bodies would be. host: an interesting headline in today's usa today -- consumer robots are dead, long live alexa. talking about the prevalence of these digital devices. we are having a conversation shulevitz this morning, contributor to the atlantic. if you want to join the conversation, easy enough to do. if you are in the eastern or central time zone, (202)

748-8000, mountain or pacific time zones, (202) 748-8001. judith shulevitz, you know that google and amazon are pushing these devices to the point where last holiday season, they lost money with of the sales with some of the discounts on these. why are they doing that and where do they see this technology going? judith: industry observers speculate about that. we do not know. they see them as loss leaders. they want to hook you to their brand so that as these voices move into the internet of things, your cars, your whatever it is, refrigerators, stoves, per sonal appliances, they will be hooked into the google's

ecosystem or the amazon ecosystem or the apple ecosystem. whoever wins that market wins the war. that's where the money is going to be. host: before we get there, there are hurdles they need to overcome. you talk about a few of them. start with the privacy hurdle. we have all heard the horror stories of these devices recording conversations they were not supposed to be recording and sending them out to the contact list. how are they dealing with privacy concerns? judith: they do not actually want that to happen because they do not want you thinking about how much they are listening. the digital assistant has to be listening for an awake word. alexa has to have some here is out there in order to hear, alexa, which turns it on. it is not streaming that what it hearing to the cloud. it is staying on the device. once you start interacting with your device, it is streamed to the cloud.

the big companies, more reputable companies, give you lots of ways to delete what is on the cloud. most people do not bother and it lives on the cloud for a long time. these companies say, we do not againthese companies say, we do not sell that information to third , parties. they do not need to. they are really big and can monetize it themselves. less reputable companies may start selling it to third parties. collecting, they are data about what you are talking about what you , are interested in, and as they collect data on you as you browse. it is the usual privacy invasion. the more it goes into different parts of our home, the more it is going to be listening to us. and collecting data on us. i think we have to be very careful about what we are giving up which we , tend to not be. we just click on that, i agree button. at another level the security on these devices is terrible. especially in the internet of things. we have already had examples of people hacking into baby cams and collecting information on

the movements of your baby, which is scary. the companies are not sending these things out with any kind of reasonable security, so the , badin which malefactors actors could , hack into our homes are terrifying. host: i want to let you chat with our callers. gina in florida, you are on. guest: good morning, c-span, america. i have a question. i do not have a alexa. i have a cell phone. my sister and i, i notice when i call, we talk about issues. the other day and it is happened with other things, but the other day i was telling her it was

really dry in my house and my lips were trapped. no sooner did we get off the phone then an advertisement on my phone came up for lips. i had noticed the irony. i was just talking about this with my sister and then there was an advertisement. i do not know, are our phones listening to us like alexa? judith: gina, that is a really good question. i have asked that of many people and they say no, that is , ridiculous. the possibility certainly exist that it is. as soon as you provide information to a company like that, that information can be sold instantaneously. it all happens algorithmically, no human need be involved so it , is definitely possible that your phone is listening to you, sending information to the cloud, and that is being bought by third parties, advertising sellers who are marketing it.

-- marketing it to companies or pushing ads to your phone. it is possible. i've not been able to confirm that it has happened. when you talk to industry people, they roll their eyes so , i do not know what to tell you. host: go ahead. judith: it is something to think about before you bring all of these things into your home. but, all of these things are coming into your home whether you like it or not. they're going to start being made with voice interactive devices and they are going to become the industry standard and so the question is, how are we as a nation going to ask congress to regulate these things and to regulate the privacy. right now, it is the wild west. host: we want to listen to our viewers this morning in this segment. give us a call, (202) 748-8000 if you are in the eastern or central time zones. (202) 748-8001 if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones. judith shulevitz, another category of youtube videos that we see in regard to these

devices are when they misinterpret something we asked them to do or something we say. can you talk about how hard that is to get that technology right and efforts to overcome that hurdle? judith: it is incredibly hard to program a computer to have a conversation. it is something people have been working on for 50 years. there been great leaps in natural language processing. >> r.i.m jane harman, president, ceo of the wilson center. i am delighted to welcome you to the second major event in this room today at the wilson center. we had a standing room only event this morning on china, the u.s. china relationship and how we are in a new cold war. panelists said no, just so you know. spoiler alert, they said no. is