I think it's about putting it out there and seeing how people behave around it (when it's on the desk, kitchen etc). The idea isn't novel, you had virtual assis

I think it's about putting it out there and seeing how people behave around it (when it's on the desk, kitchen etc). The idea isn't novel, you had virtual assistants do such "tasks" 5-8 years ago (and Timothy Ferris would write a best seller about it), but Amazon's made a laudable effort to build a humanoid to test it further. You have to remember Jeff Bezos has kept Mechanical Turk going for a reason, I wouldn't be surprised if Echo and MTurk combine into something very powerful. Or maybe I'm wrong and this is just so Amazon can feel special, relevant (next to Google and Apple) and keep its share prices high to motivate human resources so they can continue selling and shipping warehouse inventory.