"Can Your Alexa Have You Arrested?"

According to The Wall Street Journal: "A woman was sitting on her bed crying one day after having just quit her job when she said she heard a voice tell her, "It's going to be OK."

Uh-oh freaky...voice outta no where...?

Nope. It was Alexa, the Amazon Echo speaker on her nightstand.

That's right folks--not only is Alexa a virtual personal assistant, apparently it has a mind of its own, able to speak and laugh whenever it feels like it...or not.

"Multiple users have reported that Amazon Echo devices have been emitting creepy laughter and ignoring users' commands," writes Breitbart.

Unfortunately, unsolicited comfort, random laughter and command refusal may be only the tip of the Alexa iceberg.

According to The Daily Mail: "Smart assistants could soon come with 'moral AI' to decide whether to report their owner for breaking the law. That's the suggestion of academics who say that household gadgets like the Amazon Echo and Google Home should be enhanced with ethical smart software. This would let them weigh-up whether to report illegal activity to the police, effectively putting millions of people under constant surveillance."

This begs the question: What happens to all the 'data' (read: personal conversations) overheard by that little black cylinder you forgot was there?

Ronald Arkin, a robot ethicist says, "Amazon and Google have all sorts of data about our preferences. You don't have to use their products. If you do, you're saying OK, I'm willing to allow this potential violation of my privacy. No one is forcing this on anyone. It's not mandated a la '1984'."

And he's right, it isn't--yet.

A wise man once said: "Opinions about artificial intelligence abound, but one thing is clear: It is making ever further advances into our daily lives. It is in our cars, cellphones, schools, banks, hospitals and homes--machines that can think like human beings." --Religion Link.com

"Therefore whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops." (Luke 12:3)

How To Go To Heaven...click here

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"Eerie 1929 Parallels?"

There's something scary circulating on Wall Street these days:

A stock market chart that seems to be tracking almost exactly the same pattern it did in 1929.

"There are eerie parallels between the stock market's recent behavior and how it behaved right before the 1929 crash," says Mark Hulburt, a Wall Street Journal columnist.

The chart shows the performance of the current stock market over the past 20 months superimposed over the one from 1928 and 1929.

See for yourself; The similarity is uncanny.

An object of scorn since late last year, this chart is beginning to freak out even the skeptics.

"I should know," says the WSJ columnist, "because I quoted a number of this chart's skeptics in a column I wrote in early December."

"Yet the market over the last two months has continued to more or less closely follow the 1928-29 pattern outlined in that two-months-ago-chart."

"One of the biggest objections I heard two months ago was that the chart is a shameless exercise in after-the-fact retrofitting of the recent data to some past price pattern," Hulburt notes.

"But that objection has lost much of its force."

Why?

Because the pattern continues.

Tom DeMark, a noted technical analyst and founder of DeMark Analystics, first discovered the eerie parallel charts.

"Originally," DeMark said, " I drew (the chart) for entertainment purposes only--but no longer. Now it's evolved into something more serious."

Let's hope he's wrong.

A wise man once said: "Make money your god and it will plague you like the devil.' -- Henry Fielding, English novelist

"Evil people get rich for the moment, but the reward of the godly will last."  Proverbs 11:18

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