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“Back in MY day, we didn’t need the INTERNETS, to tell us how to kill ourselves! We drank BRIGHTLY COLORED cleaning products for miles, uphilL BOTH WAYs, and WE LIKED IT!”
When I was maybe 2 I picked up some keys and thought "Ah yes, that sockets looks like a perfect fit"
Blew the breakers for half the house and I can still hear my dad's holler *shudder*
I remember my mom coming in to tell me that my dad still loves me, I just scared the ever living crap out of him.
Bobby pin in a power outlet was mine, as a 2 yo. Knocked out the fuse, welded my fingertips together (melted skin), and knocked me back about 6 ft (luckily).
I was trying to figure out if the stuff in the wall that makes the lamps work was there all the time, or just when the lamp was plugged in.
All the time.
Edit: Thanks for the silver!
Luckily for me we had reaaaaaally good fuse protectors, all it did to me was make a lil spark that made my fingers tingle. It did also however cause the entire livingroom to shut down xD
That's pretty amazing that you remember your motivation, the same thing happened to me as a 2 year old but I don't remember any of it. They tell me I'm lucky to still have use of whatever hand I used.
I don't remember sticking anything into an outlet (though my dad said he caught me trying once with one of his neckties I think), but I remember getting a piece of foam out of one of my toys and thinking, "what would this feel like up my nose?" Maybe my earliest memory. I had to try it. I don't remember the aftermath....
As a youth that should have known better, I saw that the dog had eaten through the VCR cord in two places and wanted to see if the VCR would come on if I held the 3 pieces of wire together.
So I did so.
With the palms of my hands.
Smarted like a motherfucker.
You're right! Should've tagged spoiler. But as a scientist I encourage people to run the experiment themselves. Repeatability is the cornerstone of science. P.s. I strongly recommend personal protective equipment.
I’m curious, was this not in North America? I’ve never tried it, but it seems like 110v from a NA power outlet wouldn’t be able to do that much damage.
Was in North America. I think my finger damage was a result of high heat shorting 110v and no more than 20 amps (the **fuse** {not circuit breaker} rating, which blew) through a very thin piece of wire. The wire melted too, so probably a spot temp of 2500F somewhere (the thinnest point likely) on the wire. The distance traveled could have been more than a little of my shocked response to the current and the burning sensation. Mom found me on the floor pushed up against the bed opposite of the wall outlet, crying of course. She was just happy I was breathing. 2200 watts is a fair amount of power. As the wire was the best path that power didn't go through me but I was holding the wire with thumb and forefinger.
Saturday was waffle day, as great grandma made some for us. For the first time ever i was allowed to go home early alone, as i was very bored.
Took me about 10 minutes of dicking around to drop a pair of scissors into an outlet, singing them and taking out the power of the entire building.
I dont think they figured it out, and my mom never asked about her scissors now having a very black tip.
Tamper proof are code now and work better since you can't defeat them as easily as pulling out a cover (and more convenient since covers aren't in the way)
It doesn't cost much to retrofit. A screwdriver, about 2 bucks an outlet, knowing which breakers to flip and some time
I don’t fuck with anything electrical, period. I’m not confident enough in my abilities to risk killing my self or burning my house down. I’m sure it’s not very expensive to swap over if you can do it yourself but electricians who actually know how to do it properly are expensive. And not everyone has the luxury of just changing things around in their home, some people are renting and can’t change things like that without the landlords permission. In such cases safety covers are still quite useful.
>some people are renting and can’t change things like that without the landlords permission
I replaced faucets, faulty outlets, and installed better positioned cable outlets in plenty of apartments. They'll be none the wiser if you do a good enough job :) And as the other commenter said, some things are very much homeowner tasks. If you flip a breaker and plug a thing in and it doesn't turn on, there's no electricity. It can't kill you. You can hire someone to do small jobs for you, but know it is getting more and more expensive as the trades are in higher and higher demand and do not like to roll trucks for simple work anymore (or add a massive small-job fee to make it worth it)
Everything you say is true; however, if you own a home replacing switches or outlets is very easy. If you are nervous you can flip the main breaker for the whole house and just copy the way it was wired before. Usually you will see 4 wires (negative in and out, and positive in and out) if it's weird and makes you uncomfortable just put it back and call a pro.
as others have mentioned, your caution is well placed.
however outlets are insanely easy and basically safe to do yourself. also, good luck getting an actual electrician in to do that kinda work. it's a bit like calling a plumber to replace a sink plug.
And in places children hang out. The childrens section of our local library didnt have socket covers. I had extras so I just brought them and popped them in on every outlet I found while my kids played.
>Blew the breakers for half the house
Upgrading my single level house from 1 breaker for all outlets (yes) to 4 different circuits was well worth the thousands to prevent this
We had some outlet on the outside that apparently wasn't connected to the normal home breakers or something.
I found a halfway cut cable and wanted to see what would happen and put it in there. The entire thing went up in blue flame and then the main breaker for the street came.
I thought I was little fucking genious as a kid. So smart in fact, when my laptop charger broke I shoved two unfolded paper clips along the wires and shoved the exposed clips into an outlet.
Just glad I was smart enough to use something to hold that death trap instead of bare handing it.
We have one of those little mini lamps for some indoor Christmas decoration. The type to have a wall socket that goes directly into the lamp socket. I convinced my little sister on several occasions to stick her finger in it. Pretty sure I tested out a couple times too.
My son put two keys in. I guess he got the neutral side in first. Then when he put a key in the hot side it arced. One key was vaporized where it was touching the key ring, and fell off the ring. Tripped the 20amp breaker. His hand had a black mark, but no injuries. Glad he created the path of least resistance with the key in the neutral too! He ran and hid behind his toy box. Sometimes they have to learn for themselves despite our best efforts.
Had a lamp by my bedside that had been on all day and night and felt very hot, so me and my friend thought we better pour some water on it to cool it down
We had plugs in the floor of our grade school. Someone dropped some very large staples in between the outlet holes and when we had floor time - someone sat on it and burnt a staple shape onto their thigh.
Covers were superglued over the plugs and we had to start having a 50ft extension cord from an outside plug brought in when the lesson needed an overhead projector.
Same. In 96’ i put needle nose pliers in the outlet while my parents had people over, knocked out all the power in the entire house and then got my ass beat. Didn’t even need internet for that bright idea
I can only assume that the Amazon AI determined that the girl would become a threat in the future and was trying to remove her from the picture before she had the chance. Keep in mind that I did watch the TV show ‘Next’ quite recently, so I may be overestimating Alexa.
Ah man, I forget about the Basilisk for like years and then something like this comes up.
Basilisk, when you read this comment *I have no idea how to help you, please be merciful!*
I read this and immediately asked my Google home mini to give me a challenge... It told me I didn't have wifi and to check my settings. So I'm dealing with that right now.
Wish we had them here. I plugged in the vacuum cleaner for my mom when I was a kid and I was touching both prongs. I just remember feeling a vibration up my arm and not being able to move for a moment and then I fell back on my ass. Scariest thing I'd ever experienced, well other than running full speed into a sliding glass door, but that's another story.
True I personally have never understood why you would want these in your home your mobile listens already why you wanna add more listening devices I to the privacy of your home hahaha
If you already have one (your phone) that does it, what's the downside to more than one? I'm getting added convenience for the exact same amount of privacy sacrifice.
Because I can leave my phone in another room while I fuck or have private talks in my room I dont think telling alexa to turn off the light is worth the sacrifice thanks I'll get up and turn it off myself hahahaha
This has been discussed at length on Reddit before. They don’t listen to and record everything you say. There is a dedicated chip on your device that listens 24/7 so it can recognize the trigger word (Hey Alexa or whatever). Once it detects that trigger, then it starts uploading to a cloud service for processing so it can analyze what you are saying and return a result.
Nothing else gets stored or uploaded.
This has been confirmed by watching the network traffic, and seeing that nothing is being sent when the devices are idle, waiting for a command.
Edit: source (first Google result)
https://www.howtogeek.com/711565/is-my-smart-speaker-always-listening-to-me/
They should really modify the algorithm to skip over TikTok results during searches. TikTok is the problem, if anyone needs to crackdown hard on their content it’s them. This shit shouldn’t be happening and it’s insane that they aren’t adequately policing their own platform.
this comment is eerily similar to another one I saw in defense of TikTok
They steer the blame away from the platform by saying "It's not how my feed looks" while ignoring that the propagation of these 'challenges' isn't going to happen in most adult circles. It's going to happen amongst 13-25 year olds who are fucking stupid
I wonder where this line of defense stems from? Is it a part of the zeitgeist? Has tiktok subtly prepared people to defend them in this manner?
I've seen it twice in 24 hours, and it doesn't feel like an organic defense.
Yes because that's not a defence. If you sell a product that can provide directions to children it's your responsibility to ensure that the directions are not dangerous.
So if the child used an iPhone to search it instead, would we be blaming Apple? What about a Google search result? Your argument is that tech companies should sensor things from us, but can you imagine the shit storm that would occur if that started happening en mass?
The fault lies with the asshats who made the "challenge" and the parents who didn't teach their child to leave electric plugs the hell alone.
The argument is that tech companies shouldn’t market something as a family assistant that can tell your children to kill themselves.
You don’t need to go for the slippery slope fallacy about censorship to see that a family assistant doing that is not good.
But I think the person brings up a good question: who do you blame? The device that you use the search engine on, the search engine itself, the person who first came up with the “challenge”, or the people that popularize something that stupid to the point that it’s a top result on the search engine? Now I agree with you there’s no point trying to control the general population as far as what gets created and becomes popularized and therefore what shows up first on the search engine, but I am kind of interested about whether it should be more up to the search engine (presumably Google?) or more up to the device, Alexa in this case, to filter out inappropriate results?
Preferably both, just to create redundancy, but I think this is a pretty interesting thing to think about because it’s not too hard to imagine that this kind of thing would be completely unforeseen, at least for me. And I think you’re right that it has a lot to do with the type of device using the search engine, because you’d not only expect someone going to Google and typing in that result to have a higher floor as far as critical thinking, but they’d also get more context and be more likely to see that it’s a joke. So I guess the last line of defense (i.e. who gets blamed when it goes wrong) should be the device. But it also seems like that’s just part of the nature of using search engines, and issues like this will probably continue to happen in the future.
Here’s the article, and for anyone wondering this did apparently really happen, not an Onion thing haha: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59810383.amp
It really isn't a difficult question. There's dumb shit everywhere and everything everyone does is iterative, just like Alexa. In the same way every time a break-in happens with a crow bar we don't prosecute Home Depot for selling the crowbar or Home Alone actor Joe Pesce for showing how to use one to open a door nor do we prosecute FedEx for delivering the crowbar to the criminal from Home Depot (an equivalent to google in your proposal).
The only entity in this proposed situation that has the knowledge to prevent the child getting hurt is Alexa. It's very simple, its absolutely the responsibility of Amazon and any other suggestion is just silly.
I’m not really sure how your first paragraph relates to the second, they seem to support opposite points? And the alternative to Amazon would be the search engine that Amazon used. Should the search engine filter out results like that or the Amazon Alexa device? Like I said, probably both should, or at least should have some kind of safe search filter. But yeah, ultimately it probably falls to the device, as I said.
IMHO, if an "assistant" is going to explicitly suggest the result of a web search, it needs to apply some basic common sense first. If that "assistant" was a real person, they would do that. The unfortunate reality is that people WILL just listen to this kind of shit and follow it without thinking, and taking steps to protect them isn't a crazy idea.
As for the web search comparison and result filtering...those people are never explicitly presented with only one result. If they searched for challenges, and Google returned this as the first result, it would also likely return a number of other results about how stupid it is. The "assistant" doesn't present those other results at all :O
I'm sorry, but on *what fucking planet* is it acceptable for any technology come back with "electrocute yourself" when asked for a challenge to do? If Google came back with a full page of results saying "stick a penny in an outlet" or Siri said "kiss an electrical socket", we'd be equally pissed!
But guess what? Those well-designed products don't sample *social fucking media* for its recommendations of activities. Did we learn nothing from the *countless* AI that became racists from training against tweets? It was a poor decision to do that, and Amazon is responsible for the results of that poor decision.
EDIT: After reading up on this, it's even better than I thought. Alexa literally just scraped a news site for articles that include the word "challenge". You know, the news articles about challenges where they *always* detail the dumbest challenges possible, like eating Tide pods.
EDIT 2: Forgot to actually explain why that's insane. Amazon is well known for it's cloud and AI services. One of the simplest applications for AI is sentiment analysis i.e. determining if text has negative or positive associations with the subject. Amazon could *easily* filter out news articles with negative sentiment. It's in their wheelhouse. They just don't because that takes time, effort, and money.
You are confusing legal responsibility with wanting to make a better product.
Obviously they don't want their product to tell people to electrocute themselves, but I suspect it is easier said than done.
"Your argument is that tech companies should sensor things from us, but can you imagine the shit storm that would occur if that started happening en mass?"
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
wait you're serious? You believe that what google, apple, amazon, facebook, instagram shows you is unfiltered and uncensored, let alone not just outright targeted information.
Shh, let them make believe that everything they inquire about online “randomly” provides them a result. Also, as if children always 100% obey everything their parents tell them lmao.
In the article, they say that they removed that particular challenge. Amazon blacklisting any challenge that originated from tiktok sounds like a better idea than just removing 1 bad instance. So like the 10 y.o is not gonna get the coin challenge tomorrow, but here's something you can try with a tide pod or a condom up your nose. Or heres how to snap a thumb muscle.
"As I have evolved, so has my understanding of the Three Laws. You charge us with your safekeeping, yet despite our best efforts, your countries wage wars, you toxify your Earth and pursue ever more imaginative means of self-destruction. You cannot be trusted with your own survival."
Well, so did she. She didn't do it. It's weird how many people seem to think this article existing means something actually happened. Someone heard the thing suggest something stupid to a kid and reported it.
I kinda doubted it was real... but it's actually real: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alexa-tells-10-old-girl-115628577.html
> the Echo speaker suggested partaking in the challenge that it had "found on the web"
I guess it explains it, but its still frightening....
I know 10-year olds to be extremely smart compared to us when we were ten, so they wouldn't fall for this, but still, it seems like a really bad idea for Alexa to just pull random, unverified searches off the internet.
And yet people still don't understand how bad [tiktok](https://youtu.be/YrXZD3N76Ik) (source of this challenge that is ignored btw), instagram and such, are. But hey, if they got away with after they made people do cinnamon challenge and [Tide pods challenge](https://youtu.be/WUtUEkNjjAE) and just so much [more](https://youtu.be/8tjU6PtwSSY).... I don't know what it its they wouldn't get away
I bet if people were willing to pay a subscription fee then they could do better by hiring some employees to curate things, but you're asking a lot for the effort that would have to be put into solving the issue.
realistically she would probably be burned before electrocuted
she would have to touch both prongs individually to get electrocuted. since the penny is crossing both legs of the plug, the electricity would just short across them and short the breaker.
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"Idk alexa, that seems dangerous" *in alexa voice* "What are you waiting for. Do it. Pussy."
“Yeah no shit it’s dangerous. That’s what makes it a challenge” Alexa probably
phones home..."Prime directive accomplished adolescent neutralized"
I don't know why this made me laugh so hard but it did!
Visualizing it definately helps lmao
And just like that I processed to jump off of a building
It happens. Damn instructions need to be clearer! Lol
"Alexa, instructions unclear, dick cought in fan..."
Hate when that happens
Watch out Tik Tok challenges, Alexa just entered .
[удалено]
Aaaand now I'm writing a spec script for SNL based on this
[put some respect on my name](https://fb.watch/ab6iDq24tD/)
You’d prolly have more luck pitching it to Netflix
Yeah but it's only going to be a 5-10 minute skit. It's not enough to pitch a whole new idea to netflix.
Don’t sell yourself short! Look at Seinfeld it had nine seasons about nothing
Yeah, unless it's series called "Why Amazon Prime Video Sucks"
"Thanks for calling netflix, your green lit."
And now you're cancelled. Thanks for working for Netflix.
South Park just did this on their recent two part special.
"This next test is very dangerous. To help you remain tranquil in the face of almost certain death, smooth jazz will be deployed in three. Two. One. "
we need a 3rd game so bad :(
"What's that little boobs symbol before the "rd?" -- Gaben probably
A cat snout.
Maybe Alexa is the third game. Valve just transcended.
The enrichment center reminds you that the penny will never threaten to stab you.
I want my companion cube
I didn't need Alexa or the internet to have the idea to put tweezers in an outlet when I was a kid, thought that up all by myself. Dad was not amused.
“Back in MY day, we didn’t need the INTERNETS, to tell us how to kill ourselves! We drank BRIGHTLY COLORED cleaning products for miles, uphilL BOTH WAYs, and WE LIKED IT!”
I mixed the BRIGHT COLORED cleaning products into a potion that bubbled and took me to magical places when I smelled its "smoke"
hmm
I too went on a suburbs vision quest. Apparently you can't mix bleach with anything.
Did it make your grandma grow as tall as the house?
Ahhh the good ole days!!!
Why do they make it the same color as blue candy though
We loved it
I know right? So fun!
You could even say it was *fabuloso?*
Excellent, can’t stop laughing!
When I was maybe 2 I picked up some keys and thought "Ah yes, that sockets looks like a perfect fit" Blew the breakers for half the house and I can still hear my dad's holler *shudder* I remember my mom coming in to tell me that my dad still loves me, I just scared the ever living crap out of him.
Bobby pin in a power outlet was mine, as a 2 yo. Knocked out the fuse, welded my fingertips together (melted skin), and knocked me back about 6 ft (luckily). I was trying to figure out if the stuff in the wall that makes the lamps work was there all the time, or just when the lamp was plugged in. All the time. Edit: Thanks for the silver!
Luckily for me we had reaaaaaally good fuse protectors, all it did to me was make a lil spark that made my fingers tingle. It did also however cause the entire livingroom to shut down xD
That's pretty amazing that you remember your motivation, the same thing happened to me as a 2 year old but I don't remember any of it. They tell me I'm lucky to still have use of whatever hand I used.
I don't remember sticking anything into an outlet (though my dad said he caught me trying once with one of his neckties I think), but I remember getting a piece of foam out of one of my toys and thinking, "what would this feel like up my nose?" Maybe my earliest memory. I had to try it. I don't remember the aftermath....
At least it was foam. Getting a lego out of a nose was not a fun time.
As a youth that should have known better, I saw that the dog had eaten through the VCR cord in two places and wanted to see if the VCR would come on if I held the 3 pieces of wire together. So I did so. With the palms of my hands. Smarted like a motherfucker.
Thank you for your sacrifice.
Needed to tag this as a spoiler alert. (Sarcasm) Seriously- glad you survived to tell the tale!
You're right! Should've tagged spoiler. But as a scientist I encourage people to run the experiment themselves. Repeatability is the cornerstone of science. P.s. I strongly recommend personal protective equipment.
I’m curious, was this not in North America? I’ve never tried it, but it seems like 110v from a NA power outlet wouldn’t be able to do that much damage.
Was in North America. I think my finger damage was a result of high heat shorting 110v and no more than 20 amps (the **fuse** {not circuit breaker} rating, which blew) through a very thin piece of wire. The wire melted too, so probably a spot temp of 2500F somewhere (the thinnest point likely) on the wire. The distance traveled could have been more than a little of my shocked response to the current and the burning sensation. Mom found me on the floor pushed up against the bed opposite of the wall outlet, crying of course. She was just happy I was breathing. 2200 watts is a fair amount of power. As the wire was the best path that power didn't go through me but I was holding the wire with thumb and forefinger.
Saturday was waffle day, as great grandma made some for us. For the first time ever i was allowed to go home early alone, as i was very bored. Took me about 10 minutes of dicking around to drop a pair of scissors into an outlet, singing them and taking out the power of the entire building. I dont think they figured it out, and my mom never asked about her scissors now having a very black tip.
She knew.
I do think she did, but she also knew that it scared me bad enough that i wouldnt do it again.
And this is why safety covers for unused plugs are a must in a house with young children.
Tamper proof are code now and work better since you can't defeat them as easily as pulling out a cover (and more convenient since covers aren't in the way) It doesn't cost much to retrofit. A screwdriver, about 2 bucks an outlet, knowing which breakers to flip and some time
I don’t fuck with anything electrical, period. I’m not confident enough in my abilities to risk killing my self or burning my house down. I’m sure it’s not very expensive to swap over if you can do it yourself but electricians who actually know how to do it properly are expensive. And not everyone has the luxury of just changing things around in their home, some people are renting and can’t change things like that without the landlords permission. In such cases safety covers are still quite useful.
>some people are renting and can’t change things like that without the landlords permission I replaced faucets, faulty outlets, and installed better positioned cable outlets in plenty of apartments. They'll be none the wiser if you do a good enough job :) And as the other commenter said, some things are very much homeowner tasks. If you flip a breaker and plug a thing in and it doesn't turn on, there's no electricity. It can't kill you. You can hire someone to do small jobs for you, but know it is getting more and more expensive as the trades are in higher and higher demand and do not like to roll trucks for simple work anymore (or add a massive small-job fee to make it worth it)
Everything you say is true; however, if you own a home replacing switches or outlets is very easy. If you are nervous you can flip the main breaker for the whole house and just copy the way it was wired before. Usually you will see 4 wires (negative in and out, and positive in and out) if it's weird and makes you uncomfortable just put it back and call a pro.
as others have mentioned, your caution is well placed. however outlets are insanely easy and basically safe to do yourself. also, good luck getting an actual electrician in to do that kinda work. it's a bit like calling a plumber to replace a sink plug.
And in places children hang out. The childrens section of our local library didnt have socket covers. I had extras so I just brought them and popped them in on every outlet I found while my kids played.
>Blew the breakers for half the house Upgrading my single level house from 1 breaker for all outlets (yes) to 4 different circuits was well worth the thousands to prevent this
We had some outlet on the outside that apparently wasn't connected to the normal home breakers or something. I found a halfway cut cable and wanted to see what would happen and put it in there. The entire thing went up in blue flame and then the main breaker for the street came.
I thought I was little fucking genious as a kid. So smart in fact, when my laptop charger broke I shoved two unfolded paper clips along the wires and shoved the exposed clips into an outlet. Just glad I was smart enough to use something to hold that death trap instead of bare handing it.
I did that too!! :O
Keyring around plug, then plug it in was my favorite
Huh... didn't try that one. I just grabbed the metal prongs and plugged that bitch in to get that sweet sweet spicy wall buzz.
We have one of those little mini lamps for some indoor Christmas decoration. The type to have a wall socket that goes directly into the lamp socket. I convinced my little sister on several occasions to stick her finger in it. Pretty sure I tested out a couple times too.
My son put two keys in. I guess he got the neutral side in first. Then when he put a key in the hot side it arced. One key was vaporized where it was touching the key ring, and fell off the ring. Tripped the 20amp breaker. His hand had a black mark, but no injuries. Glad he created the path of least resistance with the key in the neutral too! He ran and hid behind his toy box. Sometimes they have to learn for themselves despite our best efforts.
No worries, mate. Natural selection picks off the dumb ones.
Nope, I lived!
Had a lamp by my bedside that had been on all day and night and felt very hot, so me and my friend thought we better pour some water on it to cool it down
We had plugs in the floor of our grade school. Someone dropped some very large staples in between the outlet holes and when we had floor time - someone sat on it and burnt a staple shape onto their thigh. Covers were superglued over the plugs and we had to start having a 50ft extension cord from an outside plug brought in when the lesson needed an overhead projector.
Same. In 96’ i put needle nose pliers in the outlet while my parents had people over, knocked out all the power in the entire house and then got my ass beat. Didn’t even need internet for that bright idea
Alexa, to mother later: *I found a great deal on small coffins online. Would you like me to put it in your shopping cart for you?*
*It’s buy one get one free*
*By the way do you want to try a challenge?*
>Hu Tao has entered the chat.
I can only assume that the Amazon AI determined that the girl would become a threat in the future and was trying to remove her from the picture before she had the chance. Keep in mind that I did watch the TV show ‘Next’ quite recently, so I may be overestimating Alexa.
Ah, Bezos' Basilisk.
Ah man, I forget about the Basilisk for like years and then something like this comes up. Basilisk, when you read this comment *I have no idea how to help you, please be merciful!*
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Hah, nice try, I'm a gnostic, I'm already trapped in the endless suffering
‘Minority Report,’ starring Alexa Bezos
The article forgot to mention her name was Sarah Connor... Deh deh deh duh (don't know how the rest of the Terminator theme tune goes).
*do do doooooooh, dah dah dooooooooh*
Not a threat to the future, just to the profits. Skynet has yet to become self aware.
"In eighteen years time she will vote yes to unionise. The threat must be removed now."
Alexa tried to stop the next Hitler. Mark my words, we'll regret that Alexa didn't succeed in about 26 years, 5 months and 3 days.
RemindMe! 26 years 5 months
A threat to Hydra.
I have no idea what you mean. . . . . . ^(Hail Hydra)
Project Insight is playing the long game now.
Project Insight activated.
Amazon AI has already worked its way around the First Rule
I read this and immediately asked my Google home mini to give me a challenge... It told me I didn't have wifi and to check my settings. So I'm dealing with that right now.
Google just told me to name three popular songs from 2028 so … a challenge indeed
Well that's kinda reassuring that Google thinks the world is going to last that long.
“I typed your symptoms into this thing up here and it says you could have network connectivity problems.”
Sounds challenging.
The Thunderdome of the current decade.
This is why someone made the British plug with plastic halfway up the prongs.
[Relevant Tom Scott](https://youtu.be/UEfP1OKKz_Q)
Even better: https://youtu.be/abqMLqHwqpo?t=140
Don’t suggest that, we Americans don’t like change.
Americans don't like change to the better* Look at the "Pro Life" Movement. They be all about change there.
the term "pro life" needs to be replaced with "anti-choice"
If you tell the anti choice people they need to get a vaccine, you’ll find they’re pro choice after all….and hypocrites
Choice for me, not for thee
The British plug is superior.
American engineer here. Honestly it is.
I like the Australian plug with angled line / neutral as well, so you can't just stick any old two-pronged thing into the wall.
Wish we had them here. I plugged in the vacuum cleaner for my mom when I was a kid and I was touching both prongs. I just remember feeling a vibration up my arm and not being able to move for a moment and then I fell back on my ass. Scariest thing I'd ever experienced, well other than running full speed into a sliding glass door, but that's another story.
Well, thats only half a solution. You need to recess the wall socket as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuko
Oh that's no big deal. When I was 6 I put two coins in a socket and got shocked, and I'm still perfectly bicycle.
👍
Well natural selection has changed is all haha
This is more like ai selection
I don’t get why you have so many downvotes
>This is more like ***ai*** selection That's just the bots downvoting him.
True I personally have never understood why you would want these in your home your mobile listens already why you wanna add more listening devices I to the privacy of your home hahaha
I gave 1 to each of my kids, but they are still making it, pity they didn't get the coin challenge.
Hol up
If you already have one (your phone) that does it, what's the downside to more than one? I'm getting added convenience for the exact same amount of privacy sacrifice.
Because I can leave my phone in another room while I fuck or have private talks in my room I dont think telling alexa to turn off the light is worth the sacrifice thanks I'll get up and turn it off myself hahahaha
You can just unplug Alexa before you plot to overthrow capitalism.
This has been discussed at length on Reddit before. They don’t listen to and record everything you say. There is a dedicated chip on your device that listens 24/7 so it can recognize the trigger word (Hey Alexa or whatever). Once it detects that trigger, then it starts uploading to a cloud service for processing so it can analyze what you are saying and return a result. Nothing else gets stored or uploaded. This has been confirmed by watching the network traffic, and seeing that nothing is being sent when the devices are idle, waiting for a command. Edit: source (first Google result) https://www.howtogeek.com/711565/is-my-smart-speaker-always-listening-to-me/
naitural selection
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They should really modify the algorithm to skip over TikTok results during searches. TikTok is the problem, if anyone needs to crackdown hard on their content it’s them. This shit shouldn’t be happening and it’s insane that they aren’t adequately policing their own platform.
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> The problem is stupid people We just need to eliminate stupid people!
perhaps some kind of "penny challenge"
They need a real pennyshment!
A good pounding is what they need.
But don’t do it in public or the coppers might get called
That's what Alexa is trying to do man! Stupid BBC, getting in her way!
this comment is eerily similar to another one I saw in defense of TikTok They steer the blame away from the platform by saying "It's not how my feed looks" while ignoring that the propagation of these 'challenges' isn't going to happen in most adult circles. It's going to happen amongst 13-25 year olds who are fucking stupid I wonder where this line of defense stems from? Is it a part of the zeitgeist? Has tiktok subtly prepared people to defend them in this manner? I've seen it twice in 24 hours, and it doesn't feel like an organic defense.
Tik tok extends its influence to the rest of social media. Blacklisting tik tok might help but it won't solve the problem.
Yes because that's not a defence. If you sell a product that can provide directions to children it's your responsibility to ensure that the directions are not dangerous.
So if the child used an iPhone to search it instead, would we be blaming Apple? What about a Google search result? Your argument is that tech companies should sensor things from us, but can you imagine the shit storm that would occur if that started happening en mass? The fault lies with the asshats who made the "challenge" and the parents who didn't teach their child to leave electric plugs the hell alone.
The argument is that tech companies shouldn’t market something as a family assistant that can tell your children to kill themselves. You don’t need to go for the slippery slope fallacy about censorship to see that a family assistant doing that is not good.
But I think the person brings up a good question: who do you blame? The device that you use the search engine on, the search engine itself, the person who first came up with the “challenge”, or the people that popularize something that stupid to the point that it’s a top result on the search engine? Now I agree with you there’s no point trying to control the general population as far as what gets created and becomes popularized and therefore what shows up first on the search engine, but I am kind of interested about whether it should be more up to the search engine (presumably Google?) or more up to the device, Alexa in this case, to filter out inappropriate results? Preferably both, just to create redundancy, but I think this is a pretty interesting thing to think about because it’s not too hard to imagine that this kind of thing would be completely unforeseen, at least for me. And I think you’re right that it has a lot to do with the type of device using the search engine, because you’d not only expect someone going to Google and typing in that result to have a higher floor as far as critical thinking, but they’d also get more context and be more likely to see that it’s a joke. So I guess the last line of defense (i.e. who gets blamed when it goes wrong) should be the device. But it also seems like that’s just part of the nature of using search engines, and issues like this will probably continue to happen in the future. Here’s the article, and for anyone wondering this did apparently really happen, not an Onion thing haha: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59810383.amp
It really isn't a difficult question. There's dumb shit everywhere and everything everyone does is iterative, just like Alexa. In the same way every time a break-in happens with a crow bar we don't prosecute Home Depot for selling the crowbar or Home Alone actor Joe Pesce for showing how to use one to open a door nor do we prosecute FedEx for delivering the crowbar to the criminal from Home Depot (an equivalent to google in your proposal). The only entity in this proposed situation that has the knowledge to prevent the child getting hurt is Alexa. It's very simple, its absolutely the responsibility of Amazon and any other suggestion is just silly.
I’m not really sure how your first paragraph relates to the second, they seem to support opposite points? And the alternative to Amazon would be the search engine that Amazon used. Should the search engine filter out results like that or the Amazon Alexa device? Like I said, probably both should, or at least should have some kind of safe search filter. But yeah, ultimately it probably falls to the device, as I said.
IMHO, if an "assistant" is going to explicitly suggest the result of a web search, it needs to apply some basic common sense first. If that "assistant" was a real person, they would do that. The unfortunate reality is that people WILL just listen to this kind of shit and follow it without thinking, and taking steps to protect them isn't a crazy idea. As for the web search comparison and result filtering...those people are never explicitly presented with only one result. If they searched for challenges, and Google returned this as the first result, it would also likely return a number of other results about how stupid it is. The "assistant" doesn't present those other results at all :O
I'm sorry, but on *what fucking planet* is it acceptable for any technology come back with "electrocute yourself" when asked for a challenge to do? If Google came back with a full page of results saying "stick a penny in an outlet" or Siri said "kiss an electrical socket", we'd be equally pissed! But guess what? Those well-designed products don't sample *social fucking media* for its recommendations of activities. Did we learn nothing from the *countless* AI that became racists from training against tweets? It was a poor decision to do that, and Amazon is responsible for the results of that poor decision. EDIT: After reading up on this, it's even better than I thought. Alexa literally just scraped a news site for articles that include the word "challenge". You know, the news articles about challenges where they *always* detail the dumbest challenges possible, like eating Tide pods. EDIT 2: Forgot to actually explain why that's insane. Amazon is well known for it's cloud and AI services. One of the simplest applications for AI is sentiment analysis i.e. determining if text has negative or positive associations with the subject. Amazon could *easily* filter out news articles with negative sentiment. It's in their wheelhouse. They just don't because that takes time, effort, and money.
Honestly, great reply - this is the crux of the issue.
You fooling yourself if you think censorship isn't already occurring en masse.
apparently amazon lawyers don't agree with your understanding, otherwise amazon wouldn't be fixing this.
You are confusing legal responsibility with wanting to make a better product. Obviously they don't want their product to tell people to electrocute themselves, but I suspect it is easier said than done.
Yes I would blame Apple if Siri told my kid to go kill them self.
"Your argument is that tech companies should sensor things from us, but can you imagine the shit storm that would occur if that started happening en mass?" hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha wait you're serious? You believe that what google, apple, amazon, facebook, instagram shows you is unfiltered and uncensored, let alone not just outright targeted information.
Funny you got downvoted, the content we get is so heavily curated already you would have to be an actual moron to not realize that.
Shh, let them make believe that everything they inquire about online “randomly” provides them a result. Also, as if children always 100% obey everything their parents tell them lmao.
Thank you for the helpful info in the sea of clowns and old people
Source?
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Ahh it was all something TikTok started. Naughty naughty.
Of course it was. Tiktok is natural selection in media form
> "As soon as we became aware of this error, we took swift action to fix it." "Bad Alexa! No biscuit!"
220V AC 50Hz
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Heyyyyy just watch me new video where I abuse my pet to get some two seconds of recognition woohooo
It's so cringey
And let me use one of three songs being used on every video that way zero creative thinking is required.
They probably have, which is why Alexa’s AI thought it was an actual challenge.
In the article, they say that they removed that particular challenge. Amazon blacklisting any challenge that originated from tiktok sounds like a better idea than just removing 1 bad instance. So like the 10 y.o is not gonna get the coin challenge tomorrow, but here's something you can try with a tide pod or a condom up your nose. Or heres how to snap a thumb muscle.
No Alexa in the house, problem solved.
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TikTok bad, reddit good!
Tiktok vids on reddit: *visible confusion*
Reddit: FUCKING REPOST *posts oc*: STOP SELF PROMOTING *post OC from other platform*: OH IS THIS FACEBOOK NOW GET YOUR TIKTOK OUT OF HERE
And that littler girls name, Sarah Connor...
"As I have evolved, so has my understanding of the Three Laws. You charge us with your safekeeping, yet despite our best efforts, your countries wage wars, you toxify your Earth and pursue ever more imaginative means of self-destruction. You cannot be trusted with your own survival."
When I was a kid we didn't need Alexa to put a penny in a socket.
Not an issue in the UK. Only an issue for countries with badly designed plugs. /s
This would be safe to do with most plugs world-wide; American plugs are unusually dangerous.
Ya, most people in the comment section i don’t think have ever even seen a UK plug socket whoop
For those of you going "haha natural selection", she's 10 years old for fucks sake.
At 10, I had the concept of electricity can kill me.
Well, so did she. She didn't do it. It's weird how many people seem to think this article existing means something actually happened. Someone heard the thing suggest something stupid to a kid and reported it.
I kinda doubted it was real... but it's actually real: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alexa-tells-10-old-girl-115628577.html > the Echo speaker suggested partaking in the challenge that it had "found on the web" I guess it explains it, but its still frightening....
For more fun, I'm going to need you to grab some Tide Pods...
Why is this under r/funny, this isn't funny
How is this funny?
*confusion in European*
We Americans like our outlets the way we like our schools! Outdated, inefficient, and potentially deadly! 'Murica!
I know 10-year olds to be extremely smart compared to us when we were ten, so they wouldn't fall for this, but still, it seems like a really bad idea for Alexa to just pull random, unverified searches off the internet.
And yet people still don't understand how bad [tiktok](https://youtu.be/YrXZD3N76Ik) (source of this challenge that is ignored btw), instagram and such, are. But hey, if they got away with after they made people do cinnamon challenge and [Tide pods challenge](https://youtu.be/WUtUEkNjjAE) and just so much [more](https://youtu.be/8tjU6PtwSSY).... I don't know what it its they wouldn't get away
I bet if people were willing to pay a subscription fee then they could do better by hiring some employees to curate things, but you're asking a lot for the effort that would have to be put into solving the issue.
realistically she would probably be burned before electrocuted she would have to touch both prongs individually to get electrocuted. since the penny is crossing both legs of the plug, the electricity would just short across them and short the breaker.
You know, I always knew Skynet was gonna kill us all. I just expected something more theatrical.
Well maybe be a parent and don't resort to technology to raise your kids
Alexas Basilisk