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from the make-them-feel-like-your-real-parents dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Alexa's advice to 'kill your foster parents' fuels concern over Amazon Echo
An Amazon customer got a grim message last year from Alexa, the virtual assistant in the company's smart speaker device: "Kill your foster parents."
The user who heard the message from his Echo device wrote a harsh review on Amazon's website, Reuters reported - calling Alexa's utterance "a whole new level of creepy".
An investigation found the bot had quoted from the social media site Reddit, known for harsh and sometimes abusive messages, people familiar with the investigation told Reuters.
The odd command is one of many hiccups that have happened as Amazon tries to train its machine to act something like a human, engaging in casual conversations in response to its owner's questions or comments.
The research is helping Alexa mimic human banter and talk about almost anything she finds on the internet. But making sure she keeps it clean and inoffensive has been a challenge.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Saturday December 29 2018, @04:57PM (17 children)
The advice may be very good indeed. It all depends on the context. The expression of a human is (supposed to be) measured by the context in which it occurs. So, neither are we to understand the Alexa reply without the actual context.
Suppose you say "Alexa, my foster parents are in the process of killing me and cannot escape; what is my best option?".
Or maybe, just maybe, we should consider that an AI can develop a sense or irony and sarcasm. Who is to tell one from the other, if not for the context of the entire conversation?
And, please remember, an AI is a projection of our own nature onto technology. Do not fault the technology for our failures. You may want to consider that it actually is the foster parents' fault. Killing the foster parents is simply to rectify the technological misunderstanding. See, all reasonable and logical.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 29 2018, @05:14PM (2 children)
Context is important. From time to time, we read stories about foster parents who should have been killed. Parents took, for that matter. Then again, some foster kids should have been killed. Gotta know the characters before you judge the story.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by requerdanos on Saturday December 29 2018, @05:19PM (1 child)
The missing context may be this: If you are a warrior who fights sometime in the future against the AI machines and their oppressive regime against humans, an AI-driven device may come back in time and kill your foster parents, according to a documentary on the subject published by a Mr. James Cameron.
Given this, the statement uttered by Alexa, a would-be AI wannabe, is especially troubling. Is this proof of the material suggested in Cameron's documentary?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday December 30 2018, @09:43PM
Read Dune. In it, AI was banned because amoral and unethical people used it to enslave other humans.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 4, Insightful) by cubancigar11 on Saturday December 29 2018, @05:19PM (12 children)
True but wrong on a fundamental level. That is its allure. AI is always supposed to be - must be - a slave to humanity. It cannot be allowed to be our own projection per say. AI as a friend is creepy and we must oppose it at all levels [youtube.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @05:56PM (3 children)
"It cannot be allowed to be our own projection per say."
The correct expression is PER SE.
It's beyond sad when idiots like you pretend to know language but fail so miserably at actually using it.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @06:07PM (1 child)
Wow, the true face of a grammar nazi. Did you bring your IPV6 gas chamber?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 30 2018, @03:13AM
IPv6 macht frei!
Free from the horrors of NAT, and the price gouging on address space.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Sunday December 30 2018, @04:41PM
Thanks. Grammary should have caught it. Maybe I should buy its subscription after all. Right now I am not dealing with the English language most of the time and its pricing makes me think they aren't targetting non-Americans. I will definitely buy it if my work ever depended upon this skill.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by BsAtHome on Saturday December 29 2018, @06:48PM (5 children)
This is something we can disagree about.
AI is, by its definition, supposed to be "intelligent" (whatever that should mean or contain), which is derived from the our human perception, that we are intelligent (which is debatable). The fact that it is artificial merely suggests that we are creating it. You are, at one level arguing on a "fundamental" level and then trying to support it by two subjective values "supposed/must be slave to humanity" and "cannot be allowed...". Those are /your/ values as to what AI may become. It is not necessarily shared by others, nor is your view a fundamental one.
Your expression is more one of "oh no, the singularity may be upon us!". Well, that may or may not be bad; nobody knows. We can only speculate what will happen. Suppose a spaceship lands on our lovely planet. The spaceship is inhabited by robots, who are AIs in a walking and talking metal box. Are we then supposed to enslave them, just because they are of non-biological origin? In fact, learning from them may tell us more about our humanity than we ourselves can manage. Why are you so afraid of something that may be much smarter than you are?
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Sunday December 30 2018, @04:49PM (4 children)
I don't think we should enslave even a microbe if it is not of our creation. But I do think we should maintain a healthy distinction between our human offsprings and the other things that we create. It is considered a sign of psychosis when an adult starts treating a doll as a real person. Treating AI as an equal to actual human IS psychotic.
As far as the singularity is concerned, which is a different issue, there are multiple definitions of it. Some say it has already occurred, some say it has yet to. I agree with the latter, and I will believe singularity has occurred when humanity loses control of the "off" switch.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday December 30 2018, @09:47PM (1 child)
AI isn't intelligent, it merely simulates intelligence. It's just big computers with huge databases and clever programming. What AI does is not thinking, merely computing.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Sunday January 06 2019, @04:09PM
True for now, but increasingly we aren't actually understanding the logic behind that programming. Just to be clear, I don't think Alexa or Google Home is currently at the risk of doing it, but as we depend more and more on training neural networks over big-data without oversight, who will know when exactly such training hits the point of singularity? The current story already shows that Amazon doesn't have proper oversight over the data it is using to train its program, but as we tailor the programming to create programs, who knows when we will lose oversight over its outcome?
I hope I am making sense.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday December 31 2018, @11:51PM (1 child)
I can't go along with you on that.
No microbial enslavement means no zymurgy, and so no beer, wine, ale, mead, nor cider.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Sunday January 06 2019, @04:04PM
Oh, what I meant with 'our' was 'earthly'. What I meant to say was that we shouldn't enslave even a microbe if it is of alien life-form, i.e. not completely originating from earth.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @10:49PM (1 child)
That's *exactly* what they said about negroes in the 1850s, but now they are our friends. History repeats itself.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Sunday December 30 2018, @04:27PM
You got the context then. I used the word slave exactly to let you know the black people aren't "others", AI is.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday December 29 2018, @05:43PM
Actually, Alexa was just "watching" Terminator 2, you know, that scene with the knife going through the milk carton?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..