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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

#81

Post by [deleted] »

gruez wrote: post #20
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…

>Around the same time I tested whether Santa existed by putting out food; when no one ate it I assumed Santa was fake. That doesn't seem like sound logic to me. Maybe he's just too busy to eat food that was put out at every house? You'd get pretty full by eating a cookie from every house in your neighborhood.

[deleted]

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

#82

Post by annoyingnoob »

salt-thrower wrote: post #48
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.

I for one wouldn't assume that "Alexa, give me a challenge to do" would be pulling from the open, uncensored internet. I would assume that Amazon had some kind of curation method that would remove the possibility of Alexa telling you to do something lethally stupid. Further, what Alexa did is actually even worse than just reading from the open internet, because it only took the "challenge" part and stripped away the…

When I ask for something really general, I assume that Alexa is just a voice controlled web browser. Since Alexa is really about advertising and selling you things, I would assume that any curation is just to drive you to Amazon products. Once you get outside of products that Amazon can sell you then Alexa breaks down to a basic web search - as evidenced here.

We are calling out Alexa here but I think the same is true for other voice assistants too. Calling these products 'smart' is so wrong - there is nothing 'smart' about them. That 'smart' marketing has you and nearly everyone else assuming that they are a lot more capable and functional than they really are. Its just voice commands to drive things you would otherwise touch in some way - it has no where near human abilities.

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

#83

Post by annoyingnoob »

jdmichal wrote: post #34
omnicognate wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You don't teach children to use Alexa. If Alexa is there they just talk to it. I'll second this. My 5 year old talks to my father's Google device when we're visiting. We never taught him to -- he just learned from grandpa.

Yes, kids learn a lot by observing others. Your 5 year did not talk to a Google device before he saw someone else do it. Kids learn just from watching you, its still teaching and learning. Saying OK Google to electronic devices is not innate in humans.

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

#84

Post by codr7 »

I still don't get why people buy this crap, it's so obviously useless and potientially harmful.

I once tried putting a plug with cut off cables into a socket, must have been around 5-6yo, it threw me quite some distance backwards and was very uncomfortable but nothing more came of it besides completely killing the urge to try again.

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

#85

Post by annoyingnoob »

jrmg wrote: post #29

Man, the number of people here arguing that parents should not let their children use Alexa, or that Amazon bears no responsibility for it presenting factually incorrect answers to questions really makes me worried about the future of our industry… Have the people commenting used a voice assistant? There’s a very clear difference to even (or, given the weirdly unintuitive opinions here, maybe especially) a casual use…

Sure Alexa can be improved but we still need to teach our kids about safety, online, voice assistant, and otherwise. My kids want to do all kinds of things I don't let them do.

My son wanted to run around outside in freezing cold rain, in shorts with no shoes, I didn't let him but Alexa would have. I don't expect Alexa to be a parent or to supplant me as a parent.

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

#87

Post by micromacrofoot »

cpuguy83 wrote: post #77
micromacrofoot wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suppose, though I was thinking of the “dark storm” example… which sounds like almost literally following gps blind. That’s the situation drivers ed teaches you to pull over and wait.

Even one way… maybe you can make the case that the city isn’t labeling roads well, but when in doubt there are other cues like parked cars and the direction other road signs face. These are problems that also predate gps. If a passenger told me that it wasn't a one-way and they were wrong, it’s not the passenger’s fault when it comes to legality, it almost always falls on the operator.

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

#88

Post by pkrotich »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #58
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…

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!

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

#89

Post by JabavuAdams »

corobo wrote: post #65
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

I like your friends already.

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

#90

Post by ianhawes »

dudleypippin wrote: post #60
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…

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.

This seems to be the most common method by which children determine that fantasy characters are in fact fantasy.
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