I won’t lie. Smart home technology fascinates me. I am intrigued by the possibilities of controlling lighting and temperature with my voice. I relish the idea of certain devices in my home learning my routine and self-adjusting as needed. But there is a huge tradeoff for this sort of high-tech convenience. Is the tradeoff really worth it?
If you are not quite sure what the tradeoff is, consider this: most of the work done behind the smart home scenes is done in clouds far away from where you and I live. Smart home tech powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and automation requires a tremendous amount of computing power to function. That power resides in the cloud.
Constant Data Transfers
What many smart homeowners do not realize is that there are constant data transfers taking place between their smart devices and cloud environments. Let us say you tell your smart speaker to adjust the thermostat in your home. Data is transferred from the speaker to the cloud for processing. Software in the cloud interprets your command and sends data back to adjust a thermostat.
In and of itself, that’s not a big deal. A simple dated transfer that occurs in seconds gets the job done. But here is the problem: the data does not die once the thermostat has been adjusted. It is stored. Not only that, but it is also constantly analyzed and compared so that your smart home system can artificially learn everything about you.
Data Security Promises Aren’t Enough
The companies that run the smart home world promise us the highest level of data security. A lot of them even claim to not sell or share our data with anyone else. But let’s be honest. Security breaches happen. Companies lie about what they do with our data. The news is filled with all sorts of horror stories to the effect of both scenarios. And yet we blindly believe that our smart home data is somehow immune to sales and breaches.
The truth is that genuine privacy no longer exists. Anyone who uses the internet to any extent, regardless of how much or how little, is also a pawn of that same internet. Our data is out there. Companies are harvesting it, analyzing it, and sharing it with one another for profit. Meanwhile, hackers are collecting data and selling it on the dark web.
We are only adding fuel to the fire with smart home automation. So again, the question is whether or not the convenience smart home tech offers is worth the tradeoff.
More Than One Way to Do It
In fairness, there is more than one way to do smart home tech. The most common model is practiced by companies like Vivint Smart Home. They partner with manufacturers to build smart home and home security equipment bundled together in professionally installed packages. The cloud plays the role of centralized processing center while data flows freely between it and the home.
Another option is to focus only on smart home devices that process data locally. They are not particularly common, at least not yet. But I suspect manufactures of such equipment will continue making inroads to satisfy consumers concerned about privacy.
The third option is to build your own system using locally installed smart home software; it forces all data to remain local. There are a couple of open-source platforms that do just that. They are not as simple to use; they require some technical know-how. But if the tradeoff for mass market smart home tech is too much for you, at least it is an option.
