Artificial Intelligence Fun: The Amazon Speech Recognition Function
March 18, 2016
I read “Amazon’s Alexa Went Bonkers, Reset User’s Thermostat.” Alexa is an Amazon smart product. The idea is that one talks to it in order to perform certain home automation tasks. Hey, it is tough to punch the button on a stereo system. Folks are really busy these days.
According to the write up:
one of the things Alexa apparently cannot do quite so well is determine who her master is. During a recent NPR broadcast about Alexa and the Echo, listeners at home noticed strange activity on their own Echo devices. Any time the radio reporter gave an example of an Alexa command, several Alexas across the country pricked up their ears and leapt into action — with surprising results.
There you go. A smart device which is unable to figure out which human voice to obey.
Here is one of the examples cited in the write up:
“Listener Roy Hagar wrote in to say our story prompted his Alexa to reset his thermostat to 70 degrees,”wrote NPR on a blog recounting the tale.
Smart devices with intelligence do not—I repeat—run into objects nor do they change thermostat settings. Humans are at fault. When one uses a next generation search system to identify the location of a bad actor, nothing will go wrong.
Stephen E Arnold, March 18, 2016
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