It is a quite bold assumption and as such a wrong one. I am uncomfortable with a tool (any tool) over what I do not have control and whose main objective is to benefit somebody else at my expense (1). I am (well, would be) perfectly fine with a personal automatic secretary.

> Please don't insult my intelligence by pretending I don't understand the trade-offs I'm consciously making.

I do not think I was insulting you. But you are free to feel insulted.

I was just trying to extend the discussion that was driven in my option into too innocent looking direction and as such my reply was left mostly for a third random reader and not directly for you.

We could probably continue this discussion but I think that an intelligent and critically thinking readers can find counter arguments on their own.

But about conscious trade-off making, I find that you are assuming too much trust in a organism without ethics but with much power. I think that you are also assuming a status quo - that it would stay most profitable to continue to use information about you as it is (to your knowledge) used at the moment.

(1) as a small remark - I see that we are moving from an age of tools that were built to benefit the owner into age where the tools are built to exploit the owner and this raises the question of trust - not only that can I trust my computer or mobile phone but can I trust my thermostat or my fridge? How is the collected data about me used and will it actually benefit me or it would be actually in most of the time used against me (in the longer run).