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Amazon’s Alexa assistant told a child to do a potentially lethal challenge

cnbc.com

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Re: Amazon’s Alexa assistant told a child to do a potentially lethal challenge

#101

Post by jonhohle »

maximus-decimus wrote: post #94
dudleypippin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter checked the existence of the tooth fairy by not telling us when she lost a tooth and putting it under her pillow. The pride on her face when she informed of of the results of her experiment the next morning made my heart sing.

Was your answer "I expect a full scientitic report by tomorrow."? Hypothesis : Parents are fat liars" Methodology : Put teeth under pillow without telling parents. Result : Where's my money? Analysis : The results show that the tooth fairy is fake and my parents are liars." Conclusion : The current results tend to show that parents are liars, but we need more experiments to know the extent. To expend on the results,…

I never had Santa or the tooth fairy growing up, and neither do my children for the same reason. Why deceive children with something so obviously fake and not let them enjoy the story along with you?

We still talk about the tooth fairy, but there’s never been a question that it’s mom or dad (which stinks when we screw up and forget).

Re: Amazon’s Alexa assistant told a child to do a potentially lethal challenge

#103

Post by throwaway34511 »

When I was maybe 8-9 I found a dual plug extension for the Christmas lights. It looked like two of those cheap green plugs with a little socket on the back, wired to each other. I think some people call it a widowmaker, and to this day I can't imagine why something so dangerous would have been manufactured. Anyway, I wanted to know what would happen if I plugged both plugs into the wall at the same time. I got paralyzed right there in front of mom, unable to even talk or shout, for at least 15 seconds, but it seemed like forever. It's weird because I knew to only touch insulator. I somehow fell off it and then unplugged it. I slunk away without her finding out, but my arm had a strange feeling for a while.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa assistant told a child to do a potentially lethal challenge

#104

Post by toss1 »

dwringer wrote: post #97
toss1 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we all want children to be as equipped as possible "to listen critically to strangers, and ... to differentiate good ideas from dangerous ones" THAT IN NO WAY LETS MANUFACTURERS AND SELLERS OF PRODUCTS OFF THE HOOK !! If you want to make money selling or providing products to consumers, and especially to children, IT IS YOUR JOB #1 TO MAKE THEM INHERENTLY SAFE. If you cannot make it inherently safe, it is n…

Perhaps I should have made clear that I agree Amazon has some responsibility here in what kinds of things go onto their platform, but to me it seems like a problem with no obvious solution. Particularly as we move toward more dynamic digital assistants that scrape content directly from the internet, I think we will run into more situations like this. To me it just seems like the safest course would be to treat Alexa…

Nice, but how is anyone to not leave children alone with an always-on device?

The solution is simple.

If the system is not yet designed, built,& tested to a sufficiently high standard that crap like this will not happen, then you pull it from the market. Period.

It is not like this feature is critical, or even a rounding error on any Amazon data sheet. They have no right to run such an inherently dangerous POS into customers' houses.

And, perhaps vendors will decide to stop using the unfiltered cesspool of the Internet as a free data source to productize. It is a stupid short-cut.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa assistant told a child to do a potentially lethal challenge

#106

Post by maximus-decimus »

jonhohle wrote: post #101
maximus-decimus wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was your answer "I expect a full scientitic report by tomorrow."? Hypothesis : Parents are fat liars" Methodology : Put teeth under pillow without telling parents. Result : Where's my money? Analysis : The results show that the tooth fairy is fake and my parents are liars." Conclusion : The current results tend to show that parents are liars, but we need more experiments to know the extent. To expend on the results,…

I never had Santa or the tooth fairy growing up, and neither do my children for the same reason. Why deceive children with something so obviously fake and not let them enjoy the story along with you? We still talk about the tooth fairy, but there’s never been a question that it’s mom or dad (which stinks when we screw up and forget).

For my parents, it's the social pressure caused by the fact you don't want all the other parents to be pissed at you for spoiling it for everyone.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa assistant told a child to do a potentially lethal challenge

#107

Post by CoastalCoder »

pkrotich wrote: post #88
cecilpl2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around that same age I also tested whether Santa was in fact secretly my parents. I decided that Mall Santa would be the only person I told that I really wanted an RC car for Christmas, and I steadfastly refused my parents' attempts to get me to tell them what I'd asked for. Lo and behold, Santa got me the RC car I so desperately wanted, solidifying my belief in him for a couple more years. Turns out the real lesson,…

I initially thought the mall Santa snitched. Last Christmas I got my partner a gift I happened to come across while searching for gift ideas - turned out it’s exactly what she wanted! I was confused - but it turned out I got shown the product (ad) because she had looked at it previously - lesson is shared Wi-Fi can snitch on you!

Or she's really good at faking it so you don't feel bad :)

Re: Amazon’s Alexa assistant told a child to do a potentially lethal challenge

#108

Post by encryptluks2 »

shkkmo wrote: post #19
encryptluks2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the best answer and the media looks for opportunities to push an agenda. I'd rather Alexa sometimes get things wrong because it is just searching the web than to have it constantly updated with "approved" content.

Not only did Alexa retrieve the wrong content (instead of a list of challenges to do, Alexa sourced from a list of dangerous challenges you shouldn't do), Alexa then stripped off the entire context of the warning about not doing the challenge because it was dangerous, and instead added a timer. So the issue here is less about needing to sanitize the internet for kids, and more about how AI struggles to categorize and…

You overestimate what AI means in terms of marketing. If a site owner doesn't markup their site properly, then that could also be the cause of issues like this. Do you really expect Alexa to be "smart" enough to understand human logic like an actual human, or do you not see that AI can basically mean Alexa goes to the web, does a search and parses markup from a website to the best of its ability and they call it AI? Some people care about the technicalities and others just want it to work perfectly, but I think the people that care about the technicalities are more realistic than just wanting something to be the way they think it should be.

Re: Amazon’s Alexa assistant told a child to do a potentially lethal challenge

#109

Post by boomboomsubban »

corobo wrote: post #63
boomboomsubban wrote: post #16

Was there ever a lawsuit against GPS providers telling people to turn right into something like a lake? I couldn't immediately find one except a women who walked in the middle of a highway because that's what Google's route showed. It seems like the same ruling would apply to both, which could effect consumer GPS somewhat.

Wasn't this an episode of The Office? No way that was based on a true story.. was it?

Dunno, this was the event I remembered hearing about and it was clearly post show. https://abcnews.go.com/International/woman-drives-car-canadi...

Re: Amazon’s Alexa assistant told a child to do a potentially lethal challenge

#110

Post by [deleted] »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #107
pkrotich wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I initially thought the mall Santa snitched. Last Christmas I got my partner a gift I happened to come across while searching for gift ideas - turned out it’s exactly what she wanted! I was confused - but it turned out I got shown the product (ad) because she had looked at it previously - lesson is shared Wi-Fi can snitch on you!

Or she's really good at faking it so you don't feel bad :)

[deleted]
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