A new study says smart devices could protect women from domestic violence, but is it safe to let “Big Sister” into your home?
Researchers from Monash University found the powerful “always on” surveillance technology in smart homes offers an “unprecedented opportunity” to detect and predict events in the home.
The study pointed towards patents lodged by Google and research carried out overseas suggesting that smart speakers could detect screams, shouting and other audio signals associated with intimate partner violence.
This would allow emergency providers to have eyes and ears in the three million Australian homes that have a “smart speaker”, theoretically saving the lives of countless women across the country.
In 2023, partner violence impacted a shocking one in six Aussie women and claimed the life of one woman every nine days.
However, co-author of the research and Professor of Philosophy at Monash University, Robert Sparrow, says that before we embrace Big Sister as a solution to partner violence, we should think carefully about the consequences of doing so.
“Developing smart speakers to detect intimate partner violence could represent a privatisation of policy responses towards intimate partner violence,” said Professor Sparrow.
“The insinuation could be that gendered violence is a problem in relationships between individuals that can be addressed in the home rather than a structural problem that reflects power relationships between the sexes in society more generally.
“Utilising smart speakers in this way would risk rendering women more responsible for their own safety while simultaneously disempowering them.
“Developing smart speakers to detect intimate partner violence could represent a privatisation of policy responses towards intimate partner violence.
“The insinuation could be that gendered violence is a problem in relationships between individuals that can be addressed in the home rather than a structural problem that reflects power relationships between the sexes in society more generally.
“Utilising smart speakers in this way would risk rendering women more responsible for their own safety while simultaneously disempowering them.”
Not a ‘silver bullet’ that will end partner violence
Sparrows’ research also points to the technology offering barriers to protecting women, claiming that smart speakers are already strongly “gendered” in ways that make it less likely for women to be able to exercise authority over a smart speaker system.
The researchers found evidence that smart speakers are often an “extension of the power of the man over the woman”, which makes it unlikely that women will adopt these systems to protect themselves from their abusive and violent partners.
Ultimately, Sparrow concluded that using smart speakers is not a “silver bullet” to tackling intimate partner violence and claimed technology needs to exist alongside initiatives that address the “socio-economic structures that drive violence against women”.
“Intimate partner violence is an urgent social and political problem, and one that existing policy measures have failed to solve,” said Professor Sparrow.
“The widespread presence of smart speakers in homes offers an unprecedented opportunity to combat intimate partner violence but also risks privatising policy responses and reducing the political pressure on governments to tackle this urgent social and political problem.
“If it is judged that the moral urgency of intimate partner violence justifies exploring what might be possible by developing this technology, it will be important that the voices of victim-survivors of intimate partner violence, whose interests are supposed to be served by this technology and who have expert knowledge of relevant considerations, are heard on the matter.”
