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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: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Saturday December 29 2018, @10:21PM (1 child)
LOL. Somebody needs to prank Elon Musk with this hard. I can see him shitting in his panties :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @10:52PM
To see if he's ever seen Colossus, TFP or to give him the idea to start Forbin Inc. and bury supercomputers in Antarctic tunnels?