The tech world is excited because they're addicted to "new" and they've grown bored with phones and tablets.

I'm not sure you understand. This "fake" AI is not new, not even to regular people. On a consumer facing level, Apple introduced Siri years ago. Products like the Echo and Google Home are simply refinements on things we already have.

Furthermore, the Echo is not considered a success because technology publications are covering it. Rather, technology publications are covering it (almost 2 years after its initial release) because it is a success. The Amazon Echo has sparked tangible consumer interest. This is not coverage by virtue of this product being new (again, it is almost 2 years old).

Fashion is malleable. How people actually behave is less so.

Semantics. Fashion choices are a direct result of human behavior. I provided an example that did not involve fashion either. If you are going to dismiss fashion, I am not sure why you did not address my other point.

Consider talking on a phone in a restaurant. Cell phones have been common among the general public for ~20 years. In a restaurant setting there are tons of other conversations going on. No-one would blink at a table of two having a conversation. But a single person on a phone? Most of our culture rejects that. Strongly. Similarly with being on the phone in a grocery store, or on transit, an airplane, etc. I have no idea why, but it seems like a bad idea to ignore that it happens, or to assume it will all change tomorrow given absolutely no momentum toward acceptance over the last 20 years.

I disagree with the fact that it is socially gauche to quietly talk on the phone while you are in a public setting. Anecdotally, I commuted from Princeton to New York City every day for months; I saw plenty of people talking on phones in restaurants, bars, and even on the train. Regardless, this is something neither of us can really prove. All I will say is that it is not socially gauche for people to publicly talk on their phones in other countries (Chinese people and Americans are both humans, yet they have developer radically different cultures, ergo culture is malleable) nor is it socially gauche to do plenty of things that were socially gauche in the past (again, I noticed you ignored my computer example). To say that human culture cannot evolve is to misunderstand the very nature of humans.

And speaking to a human is much more natural than writing things down. Yet we've been writing things down for a very long time. Crucially: everything that our culture feels is important is explicitly not left to voice.

This is an illogical comparison. The reasons people engage with other people are different from the reasons people use computers. Also, you seem to fundamentally misunderstand this AI. Part of the development of AI includes written text. Look at Facebook's AI chatbots. Heck, CNN just launched their AI chatbot today. But regardless, I am interested in seeing if you can address the notion that semantic communication with our computers is somehow less natural than using pointers on a GUI. Like I said before, I am not writing about any specific implementation. This is comparing the different ways in which we interact with our computers.

Even dictation for creation is wildly inefficient beyond a rough first draft.

Perhaps that is true for now? I already addressed this specifically in my last post so I am not quite sure why you included this. I am sure you understand that products develop as time progresses.