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Alexa's Advice to 'Kill Your Foster Parents' Fuels Concern Over Amazon Echo

posted by n1 on Saturday December 29 2018, @04:20PM   
from the make-them-feel-like-your-real-parents dept.

upstart writes:

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.

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Original Submission

• Re:Every fucking ONE of you fools is WRONG !!!!!!! Re:Every fucking ONE of you fools is WRONG !!!!!!! (Score: 2, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday December 29 2018, @06:45PM (2 children)

  by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Saturday December 29 2018, @06:45PM (#779777)

  And you're a living example of someone who doesn't know the difference between a speaker and a microphone. But hey, don't let that stop you from opening your trap: even ignoramuses feel they have a God-given right to voice their opinion these days...

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• you need to get out more you need to get out more (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @08:45PM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @08:45PM (#779797)

  Actually, common small speakers work OK as microphones. In a pinch, a small speaker can be used as a mic, I've done it. Many microphones work this way, they are called dynamic mics:
      https://www.neumann.com/homestudio/en/what-is-a-dynamic-microphone [neumann.com]

  Moving coil microphones are probably easiest to understand, because they are basically built like a loudspeaker: A coil is glued to the rear of a membrane, and there is a strong magnet surrounding this coil. When sound waves hit the microphone, the membrane moves to the rhythm of the sound waves, and the coil on its back moves along with it. The relative movement of the coil within its (stationary) magnetic gap induces a small signal voltage in this coil. There’s your microphone, a device that converts sound into an electrical signal.

  Of course there is plenty of room for optimization and other technologies to make really good microphones. And I'm fairly certain that some mic technologies can't be reversed to make a speaker.

  Parent

  • Re:you need to get out more (Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday December 29 2018, @10:17PM

    by anubi (2828) on Saturday December 29 2018, @10:17PM (#779823) Journal

    Back in my day, "intercoms" were quite popular in the executive office, where the boss would bark out orders or summons to any number of remotes at a push of a lever switch.

    That switch often connected the speaker for use as either a mic or speaker.

    You can still see these devices in use on old movies.

    I believe those old Executones did this. So did apartment buildings.

    And yes, they were frequently used to eavesdrop on the boss.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]

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