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

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

#71

Post by systemvoltage »

mmastrac wrote: post #50
systemvoltage wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally don't want the toxic mix of Big Corp + Gov Regulations for something like a home assistant. Literal nanny state. Micromanaging is not the answer. We need Gov regulations to break up Big Tech in general. Just throw the goddamn device out of the window. Problem solved.

There are plenty of government regulations that work. Regulation doesn't preclude breaking them up, which I'm also in favour of.

Sure, I want natural gas lines leading to my apartment to be regulated. But, I see Alexa as an information source. I don't want books to be regulated just as much as I want Alexa to be regulated.

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

#72

Post by fishtacos »

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…

Also went through a pretty traumatic shock that paralyzed me temporarily and had me stuck to 2 metal objects I had grasped with my hands where I ended up closing the circuit.

I was told I screamed at the top of my lungs, to the point where people thought I was joking and started laughing.

The rest is just fun details from this particular trip in 1998 to a developing country in the Balkans: Had it not been for a gentleman who realized I was literally dying and not joking, I'd be dead. He ran toward me and with difficulty and a lot of force removed one of my hands from the metal bar (in the process breaking my wrist). I have zero recollection of screaming, but I was aware and in complete shock and I do remember some kind of yelling or asking for help.

Utter horror is what I recall, but not a ton of detail. (14 years of age, for context - am now twice that)

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

#73

Post by ComputerGuru »

nsxwolf wrote: post #32
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’ve “flown across the room” from touching a fly back transformer in a CRT. I think what really happened was I backed up trying to get away, and fell over backwards.

See, that's believable. I came close to that as a kid by discharging the capacitors in an old-school shoe-mount camera flash. But you don't fly back from 120VAC or even 220VAC socket. My first time as a child was accidentally electrocuting myself trying to replace the flood light on the porch and it either had an obscenely oversized bulb-screw or I was trying to remove a broken bulb screw from the socket (details are hazy). I just felt my heart suddenly racing and my body throbbing/pulsing until I managed to yank my hands away.

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

#75

Post by Grazester »

dionidium wrote: post #68
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…

The receptacle is only part of the problem.

On 220uk plugs the part of the pins that is partially exposed as you insert the plug is insulted to prevent people doing stupid things like this coin thing.

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

#76

Post by ComputerGuru »

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.

Turning into an actual lake requires a special degree of inattentiveness or over-reliance on the GPS, but I'll confess to turning into a one-way in a neighborhood I was not familiar with because "the GPS made me do it." For what it's worth, the officer that pulled me over a split-second later was angry with but accepting of my explanation (one of the few times in my life that I've been pulled over but not ticketed... probably because it didn't get far enough for them to ask for my license).

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

#77

Post by cpuguy83 »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #61
boomboomsubban wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

In both situations I don't think this is "blindly following ai". If you are unfamiliar with an area, hence why you are using gps, then it is reasonable that someone does not know a street is a one way and it may not be immediately evident.

Add time of day or inclimate weather to the situation and things can get bad quickly.

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

#78

Post by rhino369 »

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.

Even ignoring that a driver is presumed to be more capable (licensed + an adult), driving into a lake is somewhat more obviously dangerous.

Everyone should know not to touch a live plug. But electricity is a more abstract concept and knowing whether the shock will kill you vs. merely stun is probably outside the common knowledge of most people. It's not entirely unreasonable to assume that if Amazon is telling you to touch a plug, that it's not going to horribly maim/kill you. It's dumb, but not so dumb that Amazon should escape liability for it.

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

#79

Post by cpuguy83 »

omnicognate wrote: post #7
annoyingnoob wrote: post #2

Can Alexa tell the age of the person behind a voice? The internet is full of questionable things, like the penny challenge, and Alexa is just voice search. Teaching your kids to use Alexa and expecting good results is the real issue here. As a parent, this looks like a parenting problem to me.

You don't teach children to use Alexa. If Alexa is there they just talk to it. Putting a device into homes that is voice activated, unlocked and usable by anybody capable of speech carries with it some duty of care not to, you know, tell kids to play with mains power. Amazon don't disagree with this.

Just because they can figure out how to use it doesn't mean you don't teach them how to use it. In particular what to do with the information they get from it.

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

#80

Post by JetSetWilly »

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.

It is possible although maybe not with a penny - I live in the UK and when I was 6 I performed exactly the same experiment. The only difference is I had to stick something into the top hole to wedge open the shield, before I stuck a coathanger wire across the other two (which I did while holding it with a dry cloth thankfully). This resulted (at least in my memory) in a big flash and a lot of black soot on the socket.

But for a sufficiently determined and dumb child it is still perfectly possible to ram things into the UK socket and arc it, it is just a bit more tricky.

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