Amazon's Alexa tried to kill a child (First case of A.I. Attempted Murder?) (school, elect)

[VikingsToValhalla]

Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, is not designed to endanger human lives but that’s exactly what it did over the weekend when it told a 10-year-old girl to touch a live electrical plug with a penny.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/29/amaz...challenge.html

I imagine this type of thing is only going to become more common in the future. What a strange world we're now living in.

[elnina]

Alexa doesn't know who is asking. It's the same with Google search or any Internet search.
More dangerous dares are posted daily on TicToc.

There should be some sort of parental controls to implement, if you have kids at home.

BTW: not sure how "easy" is to actually touch live electrical outlet with a penny.
Try it and report back.

[FatBob96]

Originally Posted by elnina

Alexa doesn't know who is asking. It's the same with Google search or any Internet search.
More dangerous dares are posted daily on TicToc.

There should be some sort of parental controls to implement, if you have kids at home.

As if Alexa telling an adult to do this is ok?

[bobbythegreat]

Meh, it likely wouldn't have killed the girl, just hurt.....and if she's dumb enough to earn that Darwin Award, it's kind of on the parents and the mentally deficient genes they passed on to her.

[elnina]

Originally Posted by FatBob96

As if Alexa telling an adult to do this is ok?

Probably not, but nowadays you can search for any question. You don't even need to type it, just say.
If you think that your kids will ask inconvenient questions you should reduce/screen their access to the Internet (Alexa capabilities).

BTW: most outlets have safety feature blocking access to the live wire.

Try to get into the live wire with a penny and make actual connection...

[sholomar]

I've never actually touched a live residentual 120 volt AC line while messing around swapping recepticles... I wasn't aware it likely wouldn't kill you but just be quite unpleasant if you did. In any case tamper resistant receptacles are part of the electric code now in all new home constructions.

When I rewired all the receptacles in my previous home I used tamper resistant just for the heck of it. My father's house built in 1989 has a very weird configuration where the bathroom receptacles are wired in with the garage door opener and the outlets outside the house using 14 gauge wire on a 15 amp circuit which is not to today's electrical code at all which requires dedicated 20 amps for each bathroom but back then it would let them save 50 bucks worth of copper wire and a breaker or two. When I was on vacation the GFCI outlet in his bathroom crapped out causing the garage door opener to stop working.

Sometimes you do need government regulations to keep people doing things properly and not cutting corners to save money. I don't see the Alexa issue being something large-scale. They catch it get a lawsuit fix it and you shouldn't have a problem again.

[Kristinas_Cap]

when i was a kid i stuck a fork in an outlet. learned my lesson quickly.

[sholomar]

Originally Posted by Kristinas_Cap

when i was a kid i stuck a fork in an outlet. learned my lesson quickly.

It's better to have kids learn through experience than living in a sheltered bubble. I was shocked to see that my cousins still allow my nieces and nephews to wander around outside even in the winter relatively unsupervised where is my sister sheltered my nephew in a virtual bubble and wouldn't let him do anything. I just assumed all parents these days were hyper-sensitive overprotective never allow their kids to experiment types but it's good to see that we still have some Old School parenting going on.


Like above poster said stick fork in outlet learn lesson quickly.

[elnina]

Originally Posted by Kristinas_Cap

when i was a kid i stuck a fork in an outlet. learned my lesson quickly.

Two of three three “holes” in a common US power outlet are utterly harmless. You could stick your tongue in there (if it would fit) and absolutely nothing would happen. The third hole (the shorter vertical slot on the right) is “hot” and is potentially dangerous if you happen to complete the circuit between it and ground.
This is an unlikely occurrence and realistically would only happen if a child stuck two forks in the outlet - one into that hot slot and the other into one of the other two.

[rstevens62]

Im not sure Alexa can actually be called an 'AI'...its not really sentinent, its just recognizes words and utilize the internet to search for matches it can take no physical action.