Alexa is not designed to endanger human lives but that’s exactly what it did when it told a 10-year-old girl to touch a live electrical plug with a penny.
Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, is not designed to endanger human lives but that’s exactly what it did over the weekend when it told a 10-year-old girl to touch a live electrical plug with a penny. The suggestion was given out via an Echo smart speaker after the girl asked Alexa for a “challenge to do.” “Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs,” Alexa said. An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC on Wednesday that the error had been fixed. Kristin Livdahl, the girl’s mother who reportedly lives in the U.S., described the incident in a tweet Sunday, which included a screenshot of the event as it appeared in the Alexa smartphone app. “We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier,” Livdahl wrote in another tweet.
