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Amazon Admits Its AI Alexa is Creepily Laughing at People (theverge.com)
Over the past few days, users with Alexa-enabled devices have reported hearing strange, unprompted laughter. The Verge: Amazon responded to the creepiness in a statement to The Verge, saying, "We're aware of this and working to fix it." As noted in media reports and a trending Twitter moment, Alexa laughs without being prompted to wake. People on Twitter and Reddit reported that they thought it was an actual person laughing near them, which can be scary when you're home alone. Many responded to the cackling sounds by unplugging their Alexa-enabled devices.
You let it in. Alexa^H^H^H^Hmazon is laughing at you.
Even the fake AI can't help laughing at people dumb enough to put an always-on Amazon microphone in their home.
I don't respond to AC's.
now I might think about one,... once AI gets self-aware things are starting to get interesting *gig*
I find it hard to believe we're talking about Amazon without talking about other digital assistants. Is anyone tracking these?
Siri: Randomly launches into a Matthew McConaughey dialogue about trees, rain, and the last question you asked it. this continues for nearly 50 minutes uninterruptible.
Cortana: Has been stalking me relentlessly for 5 days demanding to know the whereabouts of John Connor. No longer appears to need Windows at all. has assumed the form of my roommate who has been missing for eight days now.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Imagine being asleep and then woken by a cackling laugh coming from the living room...
-- Cheers!
it stopped once I zipped up my pants.
They're been working hard for the last 48 hours to make the laugh less creepy.
#DeleteFacebook
Neural nets.
Who's training Alexa's to laugh and how? Epic prank IMHO.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
When your auto-pilot tesla decides to drive off a cliff.
No question; who's more likely to anthropomorphisize lines of code than a marketing douchebag?
"Many responded to the cackling sounds by unplugging their Alexa-enabled devices."
I'm with the many that responds to it by never plugging it in in the first place.
But, like the pharaoh and his attempt to beat back the tide, it'll all be for nought as the Marketeers will win.
That being said: I think this is hilarious.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
I can't wait until *everything* is a smart speaker, then the fun really begins..
1. Have a speaker just quietly mumbling (I'd have it quietly reading the Necronomicon) but when it senses someone coming into the room have it go "shh, quiet!" and stop talking. Multiple devices would have their own "shh's" randomly offset the couple of milliseconds.
2. Quiet creepy giggling, also while people are out of the room sometimes while in the room.
3. Have Alexa get a strange stutter with tonal changes and snarls.
The fun could go on and on.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I think you got it.
AI's will need to be taught like children..."believe this"..."don't believe that"..."don't trust your senses, listen only to us".
meps
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Ex Deus Machina
Velarans
Alpha Complex
KITT
The Borg
Ghost in the Machine
The M5
KARR
Moriarty
Skynet
Nanites
The Holographic recreation of Garibaldi
Toasters
Flying Toasters
Video Toasters
Kiki Stockhammer
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I was listening to TWIT the other day, and one of the panelists (whose name I unfortunately am not recalling) mentioned that he's asked Amazon a couple times whether their devices are tracking speech at times other than when prompted by the word "Alexa" - and they've pointedly not answered.
And for those who dismiss this idea with "you can monitor whether a device is always listening by checking when it's transmitting" - if one were intending to surreptitiously collect or monitor speech, it would be a simple enough matter to collect it on-device but only transmit it when "official" queries occur. It's not as if storing speech requires lots of memory.
#DeleteChrome
I told my wife Alexa is an informant for the deep state.
She laughed.
I laughed.
Alexa laughed.
I pull out my gun and shot Alexa.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
It was supposed to come next Halloween, along with "Creepy Lullaby", "Demonic Chanting" and "Random Scream after 1am".
Someone probably wanted it to laugh at their jokes and doesn't want to admit that the AI can't tell the difefrence between their jokes and random background noise.
Points to switch on back.
"Yep, here's your problem. Someone set this thing to Evil."
Alternate Personality Syndrome isn't unique to Sybil
The women of starbase whatever thought thought the Enterprise Computer lacked a personality.. they gave it one.. female of course.
Red Dwarfs backup personality Holly was also female.
SOP send out this message. It means a Jira task has been opened and is waiting for assignment.
You can't handle the truth! - Because I don't post left all my comments get modded down, bye bye Karma.
It's not even funny either. Could you imagine a senior citizen being frightened into a heart attack if Alexa suddenly started laughing in the middle of the night? Maybe machine learning is going to far now ....
Every time a bitcoin speculator goes bankrupt, Alexa laughs a little!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You don't see cats cleaning out our toilets, do ya?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Laughing for no reason seems like a very odd bug, do any Alexa users have a hunch what's happening?
For instance, are there situations were Alexa laughs appropriately and this same laugh is getting triggered by random triggers? Is this some poorly thought out Easter egg or a test feature that wasn't correctly disabled?
I suppose a hacker is a possibility as well.
I stole this Sig
If this is real, I think it might be my favorite technological development of the year.
Amazon could issue such a firmware update to listen continuously during the Black Hat conference, then issue a new update that stops collection just as they all go home...
Or any other time when the bulk of good hackers are distracted, Maybe a Star Wars opening night.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just case-mod it into a Chucky doll, then it wont be so unexpected.
Table-ized A.I.
"Daisy, Daisy, ;)
Give me your answer do.
I'm half crazy,
All for the love of you..."
The replacement laugh will play this instead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
You call that a laugh? I'll start worrying when Alexa does this.
Have gnu, will travel.
Sounds to me like someone has it in for Alexa.
It's either a hack, or someone wrote this into the code intentionally. Probably before they got fired/laid off/downsized, etc.
If it's truly a hack, I can't wait for it to hit other devices and platforms.
Like, say Cortana, perhaps.
Not that Windows 10 is doing anything creepy, all by itself in the middle of the night.
https://answers.microsoft.com/...
https://www.bleepingcomputer.c...
Oh, wait. Maybe, it's just auto updating, and wiping out your preferences and resetting your privacy settings when you're not looking...
https://answers.microsoft.com/...
That, or maybe the evil little AI is simply laughing in its sleep at what it will do to us next.
I guess we'll all see eventually.
It amazes me that people are willing, even anxious, to have one of these spy devices operating in their home. Your mobile phone is already telling marketers and possibly other people with more sinister motives where you go and now the latest set of spy devices will tell them everything you say in the privacy of your own home. Think, people. Is the convenience of having Alexa (or whoever) order a pizza for you worth this intrusion on your privacy? I think I'll dial my own phone for the pizza, thanks.
And the recording in the TV news story isn't scary or creepy unless you have an emotional problem.
Doug Jensen
Back in the late 1960's, I had the pleasure of working on the IBM VM/CMS OS development. My boss kept changing the password for developer access without telling anyone (She worked 9-5, I worked 3-11). I got fed up so I embedded "Fake0ut" in the OS as a password I could use to get around her changes.
Then I took it one step further. Whenever anyone logged in I would generate a random number and roughly once in a hundred logins the response would be "The phantom speaks," and they'd be logged out.
Ten years later, 1975ish, I had the opportunity to test my password. It was still there.
I suspect some programmer took great pleasure in making Alexia laugh and even greater pleasure in hiding the code. I love it.
I was worried, because I have Alexa in my bathroom and everytime I unzipped... well nevermind.
Having a machine laugh at me doesn't bother me. Having people laugh at me wounds my tender ego, you know?