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.
