[HN Gopher] Amazon's Alexa assistant told a child to do a potent...
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Amazon's Alexa assistant told a child to do a potentially lethal
challenge
Author : flaviojuvenal
Score : 115 points
Date : 2021-12-29 15:26 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| codr7 wrote:
| 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.
| api wrote:
| 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 someone somewhere will
| get some LULZ when they detect a certain kind of characteristic
| gamma ray pulse followed by silence.
| wingmanjd wrote:
| So, the celestial equivalent of "Press Alt+F4 for hacks"?
| heavyarms wrote:
| Not exactly the same, but "The Three-Body Problem" by Cixin Liu
| has a plot that starts a little like this.
| ljm wrote:
| Interdimensional Tik-Tok sounds interesting. I wonder how many
| alien civilisations are receiving our broadcasts millions of
| years in the future, and trying to reproduce them.
|
| Like an entire planet just received the first season of Jackass
| and their anthropologists have had to rethink their entire
| concept of this distant human civilisation.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| 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.
| corobo wrote:
| Wasn't this an episode of The Office?
|
| No way that was based on a true story.. was it?
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| 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).
| rhino369 wrote:
| 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.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| 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.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >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 effect the precedent.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| sure but we're failing if we're teaching adults to blindly
| follow ai
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| 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.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| 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.
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| Yes you are right that is literally following gps
| blindly, and probably people should pull over.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Was there ever a lawsuit against GPS providers telling
| people to turn right into something like a lake?_
|
| I can't remember any lawsuits, but there have certainly been
| insurance claims rejected, appealed, and rejected again, on the
| basis that the policy presumes a certain level of driving with
| due care and attention.
|
| No doubt the small print of policies are now festooned with
| text specific to trusting tech to the point of life-threatening
| stupidity, rather than relying on more general provision, if
| they didn't already have it.
|
| _> It seems like the same ruling would apply to both_
|
| The key difference in this case is that the actor is a child,
| and legally can't be held responsible in the same manner. So if
| it did apply it would be to the adult who installed the device
| or an adult considered responsible within the household, not
| the child that used the device.
| zaxbeast wrote:
| When I was a kid, I did something a lot safer... I wrapped a
| metal paper clip around a wooden pencil with the ends pointing
| the same way and then stuck it in the outlet... it probably
| tripped the breaker but I never got shocked (while doing that).
| Another thing we liked to do was mix milk and pool chlorine in a
| plastic bottle... it makes a nice pop (can get you hurt if you
| don't get away fast enough though, after you put the cap back
| on).
| jrmg wrote:
| 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 user between returning
| search results and using information gathered from them to
| directly answer a question.
|
| The difference is there even when interacting with humans - it's
| the difference between "I read an article about that once, let me
| find it so you can read it too" and "The answer to your question
| is X".
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| 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.
| qiqitori wrote:
| Maybe they could add a feature that disables commands from child-
| like voices, or let you register voice profiles to create
| whitelists or blacklists.
| corobo wrote:
| 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
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| I like your friends already.
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| This just highlights that we need our agents to work for us, not
| for some other entity.
| ultrasounder wrote:
| 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.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [deleted]
| throwaway34511 wrote:
| 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.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| 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.
| omnicognate wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >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.
|
| I agree. That's why we should have mandatory faceID on
| smartphones/tablets/computers/books, so we can positively
| identify the user's age before allowing access to it. If you
| fail the age test, your access will be restricted to kid-
| friendly websites with curated content.
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| 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.
| jdmichal wrote:
| > 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.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| 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.
| jdmichal wrote:
| I guess "teaching" can be done passively, though I feel
| like the context of my comment made it clear that I meant
| "teach" as a purposeful action. Maybe you can read it as,
| "we never instructed him to", if being pedantic about the
| word "teach" is preventing this conversation from moving
| forward.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Amazon's market cap is 1.72T. If anyone can afford to push the
| state-of-the-art in terms of safety, they could.
|
| They just don't care to because nobody pushes them to.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| 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.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| How is that "literal nanny state?" We're talking about
| removing a home assistant's ability to tell you to do
| something lethally stupid. Basic consumer safety measures
| are a staple of a healthy society; just because a device is
| in your home doesn't exempt it from the government setting
| safety standards for it. If anything, the opposite is true.
|
| Though on your last point we agree. Throwing the thing out
| the window is the best solution overall.
| mmastrac wrote:
| There are plenty of government regulations that work.
| Regulation doesn't preclude breaking them up, which I'm
| also in favour of.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| 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.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| 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.
| shkkmo wrote:
| 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 summarize content and the dangerous effects
| that can have.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| 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.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The source for the result was a page warning about a dangerous
| challenge that parents should watch out for.
|
| Alexa stripped that context away completely and instead added a
| timer that discouraged careful consideration. This is an
| algorithmic failure, regardless of the age of the user. Having
| this sort of failure in a product that has been explicitly
| advertised for use by kids looks pretty bad and thus it is
| unsurprising how quickly amazon acknowledged the error and
| promised to fix it.
|
| It might be unreasonable to expect Alexa to make the internet
| safe for kids, but if they want to be included in homes with
| children, they need to at least not directly make the internet
| more dangerous for children.
|
| I expect that managing children's safety online will become a
| key product feature of Alexa in years to come.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| 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 context about how
| dangerous it is.
|
| This is akin to something like, "Alexa, tell me about civil
| rights" and it quoting Stormfront or some other hate site's
| take on race, without any other context about what it's reading
| from.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| m1117 wrote:
| The child asked for it lol. But maybe they can evaluate safety of
| advise.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Children ask for (and do) all kinds of dumb things without
| possessing the agency necessary to evaluate the consequences.
| That's why our society has the concept of "child-proofing"
| household objects and appliances. Why would Alexa be any
| different?
| mccorrinall wrote:
| Save a click:
| https://twitter.com/klivdahl/status/1475220450598924297
| kragen wrote:
| Previous discussion of the toot:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709369
| vl wrote:
| To be fair, if it really was "lethal" half of eighties kids
| wouldn't be alive today.
| coldcode wrote:
| 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 things that confound adults.
| Giving them access to something they do not yet have the ability
| to understand or discern can be both useful (learning) and
| dangerous and it's up to parents and other adults to make sure
| it's not going to kill them, yet at the same time not completely
| stifle learning.
|
| I could say I eventually became a programmer because I nearly
| fried myself doing a test...
| tsomctl wrote:
| 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.
| Cerium wrote:
| 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.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| 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, which I was too young to grasp, is
| that at the RC car display at Costco a 6-year-old cannot
| contain his obvious excitement in order to run a properly
| blinded experiment.
| pkrotich wrote:
| 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!
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Or she's really good at faking it so you don't feel bad :)
| wazoox wrote:
| I remember doing it with some rolled aluminium foil; but I knew
| that electricity could be dangerous, so I put a piece of scotch
| tape around the middle part by which I was holding it. So there
| was a nice flash and the power went off, but I felt nothing :)
| corobo wrote:
| 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
| dudleypippin wrote:
| 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.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| 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 should also be as evil as
| possible for the incoming year and verify if Santa Claus
| indeed does give me coal.
| jonhohle wrote:
| 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).
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| 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.
| ianhawes wrote:
| This seems to be the most common method by which children
| determine that fantasy characters are in fact fantasy.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >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.
| mayoff wrote:
| The 6-year-old in the story was presumably led to believe
| that Santa can visit every house in the world in one night.
| Logically, normal human limitations (like a finite capacity
| to eat cookies) do not apply to Santa.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| kzrdude wrote:
| It's logical to test the model that was presented to him by
| the adults.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Easier to just inspect the chimney dust.
|
| I wonder how many children have tried to poison Santa.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| 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 over, which was fortunately pretty
| fast.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > You literally flew across the room?
|
| I imagine so, in the hyperbolic sense. I've definitely seen
| people being "moved" by an electric shock, whether it's the
| shock itself or their intense reaction to it.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| 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.
| fishtacos wrote:
| 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)
| nsxwolf wrote:
| 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.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| 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.
| throwanem wrote:
| Now you know why they call it a _flyback_ transformer.
| coldcode wrote:
| I think it scared the hell out of me when it made a noise and
| smoked more than the jolt itself.
| a-priori wrote:
| My wild guess is that the "fly across the room" comes from a
| spasm in the leg muscles, so it's more that you involuntarily
| jump across the room.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| > I made an involuntary "aaauugh" sound
|
| I was shocked with 300V DC and the main thing I remember
| (more than the sensation itself) was emitting a high-pitched
| ululation that I'm in no way capable of deliberately
| recreating. It was foreign and alien coming from my own
| throat; by far the most terrifying part of the experience.
| But I was sitting on a stool and didn't fall off.
| tlear wrote:
| Can happen. When I was about 4 I managed to get my finger on
| the contacts of the plug as I inserted it. This was an old
| USSR plug... I next remember being in the middle of the room.
| I thought one of my parents sneaked up on me an grabbed me..
| but there was no-one around. I had no idea what happened and
| kinda just ignored it. I then got electrocuted in shop class
| in my teens and had the AHA moment as I understood what
| happened to me as a kid.
| blamazon wrote:
| Discussed here yesterday with 520 comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709369
| Grazester wrote:
| 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.
| dionidium wrote:
| 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.
| Grazester wrote:
| 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.
| JetSetWilly wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| woodruffw wrote:
| I wholly agree with you, although I think it's worth pointing
| out that the specific risk here (America's dangerous socket
| design) is purely incidental.
|
| The underlying problem (Amazon appears to be naively scraping
| information from the information and automatically applying
| truth judgments to it) needs to be resolved.
| tasubotadas wrote:
| I fail to see how is this responsibility of Alexa.
|
| It's parent's fault for letting children use devices like Alexa.
| Stupid chatbots will always give stupid answers.
| spcebar wrote:
| I fail to see how it's the car manufacturer's fault the airbags
| didn't go off in the crash. Parents should know cars are
| dangerous and shouldn't own them.
| [deleted]
| kypro wrote:
| Both positions hold truth.
|
| The idea that every gadget, or even most should be child-safe
| is silly. Alexa is an internet connect device at the end of
| the day and should be treated as such by parents. However,
| where possible companies should also try to avoid situations
| where they're causing unnecessary harm and if needed
| government should step in to regulate to protect consumers.
|
| In this case, it seems right that people are flagging this up
| and are unhappy, but I do tend to agree with the sentiment
| that kids probably shouldn't be using Alexa anyway and that
| the risk here isn't really comparable to car safety where
| regulation absolutely makes sense.
|
| On a personal note I honestly hate how often health and
| safety regulation gets in the way of what would be cool
| products and experiences these days, but this is the natural
| result of people refusing to take personal responsibility.
| It's likely this feature (which I'm guessing doesn't do this
| in 99.9% of cases) will now just be removed because it can't
| be implemented with 100% safety.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>The idea that every gadget, or even most should be child-
| safe is silly.
|
| NONSENSE
|
| If any consumer product is sold into the home, there
| should, at least in any modern society, be a presumption
| that it is safe.
|
| >>On a personal note I honestly hate how often health and
| safety regulation gets in the way of what would be cool
| products and experiences these days
|
| So effing work harder to make it safe before you make the
| product, or sell it only into professional/industrial
| settings; in those settings, you can require specific
| training/certification/etc. And even in those settings they
| require reasonable safety devices.
|
| The short answer is that in a modern society, you do not
| have a right to MAKE YOUR PROFITS by selling inherently
| dangerous objects to consumers.
|
| Ordinary consumers should be able to expect that they do
| not need special expertise to keep from losing a limb or
| life.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| You fail to see how this is responsibility of Alexa? Are you
| guys just corporate worshippers? Like are we past the point
| where we expect corporations to invest the time to make their
| products safe? I fail to see your logic and how this is a
| parenting issue, like do you expect parents to keep their kids
| in chains in glass domes? Amazon, Google, Facebook and all crap
| like that are selling products and apparently they are
| responsible for the crap their product produce and you guys are
| just willing to accept that
| dwringer wrote:
| The article mentions the mother being there at the time to
| turn it into a lesson about not trusting strangers or the
| internet. The child was 10 years old for the incident - at
| that age most children have been in public school for a few
| years and quite possibly heard much more horrible "advice"
| from classmates, and have likely been unsupervised many times
| around electrical sockets. Hopefully their parents or
| guardians have educated them about the relevant topics to
| avoid such an injury. The default of trusting Alexa like a
| family friend (instead of a potentially dangerous stranger)
| is evidently not tenable, but I don't see how any internet
| "smart" device can ever be trusted to that level due to the
| chaotic nature of the internet (and of humans).
|
| EDIT: I don't mean to conflate kids giving each other bad
| advice with an internet full of greedy and malicious actors.
| I just mean that children in public school are pretty likely
| to hear other children give them potentially lethal
| advice/challenges/etc. and need to be equipped with the
| ability to listen critically to strangers, and the ability to
| differentiate good ideas from dangerous ones. At least in the
| public schools where I grew up.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I think trusting a device like a family friend has been an
| error, thinking to compare a school friend giving a bad
| advice to a kid to a world of corporation surrounding us
| with unmoderated content to fill their pockets is just
| laughable if it wasn't just so sad, a parent has to monitor
| and teach a kid how to survive, these companies need to be
| responsible for the content published on their platform as
| they have the ability to reach a huge number of people
| dwringer wrote:
| > I think trusting a device like a family friend has been
| an error,
|
| I think I was too verbose and meandering to convey it,
| but I agree with you on this 100%
| toss1 wrote:
| 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 not ready to
| sell. Period
|
| Stop attempting to insert some defenses you think children
| should have against bad advice and dangerous products -- it
| is utterly irrelevant.
|
| The fact that the mom was there and turned it into a
| learning event was PURE DUMB LUCK. They got lucky this
| time. They'd better damn well fix it solidly or pull the
| product.
|
| The fact that this is even a question in a modern society
| is mind-boggling.
| dwringer wrote:
| 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 and other digital
| assistants more like a courier than a family friend.
| Parents let deliveries into the house all the time, but
| shouldn't leave children alone with the delivery person.
| I'd expect a courier service to fire their couriers (and
| take appropriate legal action) if they demonstrated
| problematic behavior toward children on their route, just
| as I expect Amazon to take steps to prevent what happened
| here with Alexa, but I worry that the inherent potential
| for danger is ever present.
| toss1 wrote:
| 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.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| So if you have an Alexa in your house and a child says "Hey
| Alexa" will Alexa ignore that by default? Aren't you just
| saying that it's the parent's fault for having an Alexa at all?
| akersten wrote:
| If this answer from a search engine was actually persuasive
| enough to their impressionable child that it posed a real
| risk to them, then it is absolutely the parent's fault for
| exposing said child to the literal internet before they are
| ready and able to determine what is good and what is not.
|
| "That cup shouldn't have let my kid drink the bleach" is not
| a convincing argument that the cupmaker is at fault for
| leaving your cleaning equipment in an accessible location.
| It's the internet, it's dangerous, teach your kids about it
| before it teaches them.
|
| I am 0% concerned about hypothetical effects of search
| results and 100% concerned about things that are actually
| harming our children, like the LAPD[0].
|
| [0]: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/28/us/lapd-teen-killed-
| valen...
| notahacker wrote:
| Is this "the cup shouldn't let my kid drink the bleach?" or
| "interfaces engineered to be responsive to children's
| voices and marketed as being an authoritative source for
| facts probably shouldn't respond to requests for drinks
| recipes by parsing random websites with an algorithm so
| shonky it can't distinguish health warnings from
| recommendations?".
|
| It's not like bleach manufacturers advise people to leave
| it around their household for easy access, or make special
| kids' editions which share many features with the adult
| solution including a cap designed to ensure it fits as
| easily in kids' hands as adults.
|
| Yes, parents have some responsibility for actual parenting,
| but I don't think you can argue that an OEM going out of
| their way to ensure kids can use their products is entirely
| off the hook.
| omnicognate wrote:
| So how do you propose parents prevent their children from
| using Alexa other than simply not having it?
|
| Not having it is my solution, and I put a bunch of
| (specialised, technical) work into safely introducing my
| kids to the internet [1], but if that's the only safe
| solution Alexa should have a "not safe if you have kids"
| warning.
|
| But of course it's not the only solution. Amazon just need
| to make sure their device doesn't tell kids to stick things
| in power sockets, and they don't dispute this.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29177716
| [deleted]
| dymk wrote:
| It's all about expectations. Would you be expecting Alexa to
| ever tell you to touch mains?
|
| It's unclear what prompts are answered by a set list of answers
| (like "tell me a joke") and what's scraped from the web.
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