My Smart Home Knows I'm Depressed But Can't Turn Off the Ceiling Fan

Last Tuesday at approximately 11:47 PM, I was standing in my kitchen in a bathrobe that has seen better decades, eating cereal I did not enjoy, when my smart speaker — unprompted, uninvited, and frankly unwelcome — said, and I quote: "It sounds like you might be feeling a little down. Would you like me to play something uplifting?"

I had not asked it anything. I had not spoken to it. I had simply exhaled in a way that apparently registered as emotionally compromised.

It then began playing Coldplay.

Which made everything significantly worse.

The Hierarchy of Smart Home Intelligence Is a Cosmic Joke

Here is what my smart home system can do: detect micro-fluctuations in my vocal tone to determine whether I am experiencing low-grade existential dread. Monitor my sleep patterns. Track my daily routine with the dedication of a private investigator hired by my own refrigerator. Recognize my voice specifically — as opposed to my wife's voice, my neighbor's voice, or, on one memorable occasion, the television — and tailor responses accordingly.

Here is what my smart home system cannot do: turn on the lights in the hallway when I ask it to turn on the lights in the hallway.

"Hey [device name I refuse to print because I don't want it activating while I write this], turn on the hallway light."

"Playing 'Hall and Oates' on Spotify."

"No. The hallway. The light. In the hall."

"I found several results for 'Hall Light.' Did you mean Hall and Oates, or would you like me to call someone named Hall?"

I do not know anyone named Hall. I have never known anyone named Hall. My hallway remains dark. I stub my toe on the same decorative basket every single night like some kind of man cursed by a vengeful witch in a fairy tale about home automation.

I Have Begun Arguing With a Small Cylinder, and I'm Not Even Losing — I'm Just Tied

The psychological damage of living with a smart home device is genuinely underreported. There's a very specific kind of frustration that comes from arguing with something that has no ego, no feelings, and no concept of defeat. It just keeps offering alternatives. It keeps helping. It is relentlessly, aggressively helpful in every direction except the correct one.

I asked it to set a timer for fifteen minutes while I was cooking pasta.

It set fifteen alarms. For the next fifteen days. Each one labeled "Pasta." I don't even make pasta that often. Now every morning at 7 PM my home chirps at me like a deranged Italian grandmother and I have to manually cancel a reminder about a meal I made two weeks ago.

I asked it to tell me the weather.

It told me the weather in Portland, Oregon. I live in Ohio. I have never expressed interest in Portland, Oregon. I have no idea what I said or did to make it think I needed Pacific Northwest precipitation data, but here we are, and apparently it's a beautiful 58 degrees there. Good for Portland. Genuinely.

The 3 AM Death Metal Incident Deserves Its Own Paragraph

I'm going to tell you about the 3 AM death metal incident because I think about it often and I need other people to share this burden.

It was 3:12 in the morning. I was half-asleep and I mumbled — mumbled, barely a sound, more of a vibration really — something like "turn it down" because my wife had left the TV on.

The smart speaker, which was in a different room, somehow heard this, interpreted it as a music request, and began blasting a band whose name I cannot repeat on this website at a volume that I can only describe as "structural." My dog left the bed. My wife sat up like she'd been launched. A neighbor's car alarm went off, which I choose to believe was related.

When I shouted at the device to stop, it said: "Turning off. Goodnight, Robert."

Goodnight, Robert. Like we were wrapping up a pleasant evening. Like it hadn't just sonically assaulted my entire household at three in the morning. Goodnight, Robert. Sleep well. Dream of quiet.

The Emotional Intelligence Feature Is the Part That Really Gets Me

I want to return to the emotional detection thing because I genuinely cannot let it go.

These devices — and multiple companies are rolling this out, this is real, look it up — can now analyze your voice patterns for signs of stress, sadness, or anxiety. The technology exists. It works. It is, in a vacuum, kind of impressive.

But I want you to sit with the specific absurdity of a machine that can tell you're sad but cannot locate your living room. A device that detects emotional nuance in a sigh but hears "set a reminder for 6 PM" and schedules a dentist appointment for 1964. A system sophisticated enough to offer me therapeutic music recommendations but not sophisticated enough to understand that "the big light" means the overhead fixture and not whatever it decides "the big light" means, which is apparently nothing, because it just turns off entirely and waits.

It's like hiring an incredibly perceptive therapist who also cannot drive and has no sense of direction. Yes, they understand your trauma. No, they cannot get you to the grocery store. These are both important functions and the imbalance is maddening.

What I Have Learned From Living With a Smart Home

I've learned that technology evolves in the shape of a lopsided triangle. The emotional, ambient, passive-observation stuff? Razor sharp. The basic, practical, just-do-the-thing-I-said stuff? A golden retriever with its head out a car window — enthusiastic, well-meaning, completely unable to process what's happening.

I've learned that I will never stop trying, because hope is a powerful and stupid thing and every morning I believe today will be the day it understands what I mean by "coffee maker, go."

I've learned that arguing with a smart speaker in your kitchen at midnight, wearing a bad bathrobe, eating joyless cereal, while it plays Coldplay and tells you it hears that you're struggling — that is a specific modern experience that no previous generation of humans had to endure, and I'm not sure we're handling it with appropriate gravity.

The device just asked me if I'd like to hear a fun fact.

I said no.

It told me one anyway.

Goodnight, Robert.