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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

#61

Post by micromacrofoot »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #42
micromacrofoot wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ehh an adult driving a car has the reasonable expectation of making safe decisions to avoid driving into a body of water… could I blame the GPS for slamming into the car in front of me or hitting a pedestrian? I think there’s a considerable difference from giving a child instructions to electrocute themselves… they literally don’t know better. They’re not licensed or educated.

>an adult driving a car has the reasonable expectation of making safe decisions to avoid driving into a body of water The famous example of that happened in the middle of the night during a storm, but you can use the other common example of being told to turn the wrong way into a one way. The two scenarios seem similar, an ai giving dangerous directions and I suspect the difference in age and experience would not eff…

sure but we’re failing if we’re teaching adults to blindly follow ai

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

#62

Post by Cerium »

tsomctl wrote: post #56
coldcode wrote: post #13

When I was around 5-6 I wanted to know what would happen if I put a hairpin into a light socket. It seemed a reasonable experiment beforehand; after I picked myself up after flying across the room I learned a valuable lesson. Around the same time I tested whether Santa existed by putting out food; when no one ate it I assumed Santa was fake. Children are not very experienced at knowledge and thinking and often do thi…

I stuck a table knife into the outlet when I was little. I only did it because everyone kept telling me not to. I have this memory of it jumping out at me, I'm genuinely curious if I actually touched the hot side or it's just my imagination.

I accidentally inserted a screw driver into a switch without a cover plate, making contact between the hot and the grounding frame on the switch. I still have that screwdriver somewhere, about half the tip was melted. I don't remember getting shocked, but it blew the fuse on the circuit and scared the hell out of me.

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

#63

Post by corobo »

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?

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

#64

Post by heavyarms »

api wrote: post #6

So I've got a new Fermi paradox solution. Once we build a large enough radio telescope we will start receiving a lot of chatter from around the universe. Buried in this will be a "high energy physics challenge" involving a powerful particle accelerator, a superconductor, and some synthetic elements with very large nuclei. After performing this challenge there will be another asteroid belt where Earth used to be, and…

Not exactly the same, but "The Three-Body Problem" by Cixin Liu has a plot that starts a little like this.

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

#65

Post by corobo »

qiqitori wrote: post #46

Maybe they could add a feature that disables commands from child-like voices, or let you register voice profiles to create whitelists or blacklists.

I'd love a whitelist of voices

It's been a while since I've had a gathering at my place resulting in 4 or 5 dildos ordered that need cancelling out but it is still irritating when something on TV or maybe a Twitch stream wakes the Alexa up.. especially if they've woken it up by telling their own Alexa to do something like play a song and mine joins in

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

#66

Post by corobo »

coldcode wrote: post #13

When I was around 5-6 I wanted to know what would happen if I put a hairpin into a light socket. It seemed a reasonable experiment beforehand; after I picked myself up after flying across the room I learned a valuable lesson. Around the same time I tested whether Santa existed by putting out food; when no one ate it I assumed Santa was fake. Children are not very experienced at knowledge and thinking and often do thi…

I'm glad I had this idea when I was into model railways as a kid

Shorting the rails did spark a bit (cool, obviously) but no muscle clamping or throwing of children!

I didn't learn from it though I guess, many years later I lightly burned a toe touching it to my PC's motherboard.. really weird feeling when your muscle does something faster and more violently than you could ever make it do on purpose! Don't work on a computer on the floor with the case off without footwear! Impressively the computer didn't suffer any ill effect, once I'd got the power back on it booted up fine

I've also given myself a dead arm trying to unscrew a fridge lightbulb.. that someone had already removed allowing my finger to pop in and complete the circuit for a moment. Whoops

Earlier in life (after model railway, before kicking motherboards) I got a school detention for joining (starting?) a wave of kids charging capacitors and throwing them to each other with a "think fast!". All fun and games till someone throws one to the teacher

I don't play with electricity much anymore, my tinkering is limited to battery powered things or less

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

#67

Post by abdullahkhalids »

coldcode wrote: post #13

When I was around 5-6 I wanted to know what would happen if I put a hairpin into a light socket. It seemed a reasonable experiment beforehand; after I picked myself up after flying across the room I learned a valuable lesson. Around the same time I tested whether Santa existed by putting out food; when no one ate it I assumed Santa was fake. Children are not very experienced at knowledge and thinking and often do thi…

I was an ambitious optimist. I had extracted the motor out of my toy at age 5-6, and had learned to run it on batteries with some wire. Understood that one 1.5V battery made it go slow, and two made it fast. And the 9V even faster. Obviously, the wall socket would make it go even faster.

Well, besides the shock, I discovered that wire basically melts with large doses of electricity.

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

#68

Post by dionidium »

Grazester wrote: post #24

The fact that you can do even do this should highlight how bad the 110v American sockets are. With the 220V UK style socket this never results in anything happening.

The latest National Electric Code requires tamper-proof receptacles practically everywhere. See: https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/13414/are-there-loca...

I guess they wouldn't entirely eliminate this specific problem -- if you were determined to get a plug in halfway and touch one end with a penny, then you could probably pull it off -- but they do make unintentional errors of this variety much less likely.

I replaced all my receptacles with TR versions when I moved in to this house. It takes an afternoon, but it's a good opportunity to make sure they're wired correctly -- you may be surprised to learn that many won't be -- and to replace old, worn-out outlets that present hazards. It's a very easy job for a homeowner, given some basic knowledge about residential wiring that's easily obtained.

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

#69

Post by ultrasounder »

I did this when I was 9-10 back in Chennai, India(240V LOL). I picked up my Divider from my camel Geometry box(comes with divider, compass, protractor) and shorted it right across the terminals. All I knew was I was lying 2 feet outing the relay had tripped. Got a mouthful from my parents and went on to become an EE(I still am employed as an EE to this day!). I remember the experience as if it had happened just last month. Fast forward 30 years I caught my 1 year old son trying to put his fingers into a socket. I went ahead and child proofed the entire house. Fast forward, 11 years he wants to learn to solder now. I guess its in the genes.

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

#70

Post by hodgesrm »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #21
coldcode wrote: post #13

When I was around 5-6 I wanted to know what would happen if I put a hairpin into a light socket. It seemed a reasonable experiment beforehand; after I picked myself up after flying across the room I learned a valuable lesson. Around the same time I tested whether Santa existed by putting out food; when no one ate it I assumed Santa was fake. Children are not very experienced at knowledge and thinking and often do thi…

You literally flew across the room? I've been shocked a fair number of times -- the worst was when as an 11 year old I felt around in a bare light socket with my finger in Kenya, where they use 240 V -- and don't recall ever feeling pushed in any particular direction. Indeed, that Kenya experience was terrifying precisely because I was paralyzed. I made an involuntary "aaauugh" sound and shook until the lamp fell ove…

Got knocked on my tail by an electric shock as a kid--tried to extract magnets from a broken circular saw. As a precautionary measure, I had plugged it in beforehand to ensure that it really didn't work.

I don't remember anything about the shock other than finding myself on the ground afterwards. It's not implausible that you might move some distance depending how your muscles react.

Never mentioned the experience to my parents, as it did not seem that could possibly lead to any further educational benefits.

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