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posted by n1 on Saturday December 29 2018, @04:20PM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @10:49PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @10:49PM (#779836)

    That's *exactly* what they said about negroes in the 1850s, but now they are our friends. History repeats itself.

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  • (Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Sunday December 30 2018, @04:27PM

    by cubancigar11 (330) on Sunday December 30 2018, @04:27PM (#779977) Homepage Journal

    You got the context then. I used the word slave exactly to let you know the black people aren't "others", AI is.