Parents of children called Alexa challenge Amazon

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57680173

by shivbhatt • 5 years ago

60 153 5 years ago

onion2k4• 5 years ago

It does show a bit of a lack of imagination that the engineers and product team at Amazon didn't realise the impact of using a human name for something you issue commands to. If it had to be a human name for whatever reason it would have at least made sense to choose one that's very unusual to minimize the effect.

On the other hand, Amazon Alexa is 8 years old, so if you have a 6 year old child called Alexa some of the responsibility has to be on the parents..

crooked-v2• 5 years ago

so if you have a 6 year old child called Alexa some of the responsibility has to be on the parents

Why should parents be expected to predict the future popularity of a major corporation's use of the same name?

quaintdev• 5 years ago

Now no one is going to ever use name Alexa.

onion2k4• 5 years ago

It didn't require any predictive skills. Amazon Alexa was already very popular in 2016. It only required choosing a name that wasn't being used in a product at the time.

tsimionescu• 5 years ago

I can't even imagine that they 'didn't realize'. They did, obviously, but couldn't care less. Their marketing wanted a human name so that it sounded approachable, so that's what they did.

extraAccount• 5 years ago

Exactly. And I don't think anyone could have predicted that people will complain about it so late. But there are other issues that they probably didn't forsee. People have complained that they are all female as well, but I could see why an engineer would want to mimic Star Trek or didn't think in detail about giving it a gendered name and voice to start with.

Other voice assistants aren't as easy to pronounce as Alexa as well; Mycroft, Siri, Ok Google, Bixby.

unishark2• 5 years ago

Did the engineers have any input in the name?

It certainly is surprising to me that kids would care. And then that they would think an AI product is a negative versus a positive or neutral example of the name. I thought bullies were more concerned with physical prowess or complexion or such things.

Maybe they should just deal with the bullies themselves rather than blaming 3rd parties for the insults bullies come up with.

onion2k4• 5 years ago

Did the engineers have any input in the name?

Of course they did. They could have raised it at any point. That would be input.

I think your question is really "Did the engineers have any real power over the name?". Obviously the final decision came down to someone who probably wasn't an engineer, but that doesn't mean the engineering team couldn't influence the outcome at all. Engineers can't abdicate all responsibility for the outcomes of their work simply because they don't make the final decision. Everyone on a project is responsible in some way for what happens as a result of it.

edwardwatson• 5 years ago

I'm in the UK and have never met someone called Alexa. Is it really a common name? Perhaps it is in the US, but it's not like Amazon chose a popular human name e.g. Sarah, Ben, etc.

Of all things I am suspicious of why they would choose a female name for an assistant.

zweifuss• 5 years ago

Around here it is a not too rare nickname for Alexandra.

asteroidbelt11• 5 years ago

Sarah, Ben

Alexa is easy to recognize by software with very low error rate unlike Sarah or Ben.

Of all things I am suspicious of why they would choose a female name for an assistant.

For the same reason airport announcements are usually voiced by women. For the same reason satnav is voiced by women. For the same reason language learning tapes are voiced by women. People (both men and women) are more comfortable listening to women.

I suspect you suspect it is because of assistant being women stereotype, not it's not that, and no need to look for social injustice everywhere.

tzs• 5 years ago

If they had picked a male name they would have received complaints that it is sending a message that if you need help you should ask a man.

They are going to lose on that front no matter which way they go, so likely the best approach is to pick which works best technically. I'd expect that would be a female voice due to less low frequency components, making it easier to get it to sound good on a small speaker.

walshemj2• 5 years ago

Mine some times triggers on Alex and has gone off during a wfh call

ElViajero• 5 years ago

On the other hand, Amazon Alexa is 8 years old, so if you have a 6 year old child called Alexa some of the responsibility has to be on the parents..

So, your mother's name was Alexandra, you decide to give that name to your daughter. But, no, because Amazon took ownership of that name.

There are things that people value when naming their children, that includes usually loved ones. Big corporations are not in the list of things to take into account. If it has to be now we are in a dark place.

crooked-v2• 5 years ago

The default wake word for these kinds of devices should just be 'computer'. It works fine for Star Trek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CDhEwhOm44

andy_ppp• 5 years ago

Yes, most of the time people use Mac or PC or iPad rather than “Computer” - it would also be good for all devices to share the same disambiguation system that selects which device you want to answer - e.g. if your iphone is held up to your face and you say “computer tell me what LCARS is?” your Amazon Echo device doesn’t answer.

nightfly• 5 years ago

Alexa lets you do that, and it's fun until you accidentally trigger it during a meeting or phone call.

Google is worse here, you can't change the google wake word at all and I _hate_ having to say "hey google" whenever I wanna use it.

jjcon• 5 years ago

I switched to Alexa just because I hated saying hey google.

I do use the computer wake work and it’s indeed annoying but the fun makes it worth it for me lol

majewsky3• 5 years ago

I mean, it's honest. Using a human voice suggests that you're talking to an individual, only to that one device next to you. Saying "Ok Google" makes it abundantly clear that you're feeding (and being fed by) a planetary-scale hive mind.

senectus1• 5 years ago

been thinking that for years now.

MattGaiser• 5 years ago

Association with Star Trek is only a selling point on HN.

rbanffy• 5 years ago

It makes watching Star Trek more amusing.

kebman• 5 years ago

OTOH Star Trek has also doors that can read your mind. Notice how they never open until some character actually intends to go out. Now try that at your local mall! I fear that you'll be disappointed... But then considering when Star Trek is set, mind reading technology is perhaps not out of the question. After all AI face recognition is already fine tuned enough to see the difference between happy and sad people.

AnIdiotOnTheNet2• 5 years ago

By the time of Voyager the ship is apparently able to constantly record the brainwave patterns of all crew members at all times as a background task. I surmise that this must be an evolution of the technology installed in doors to read people's intent to go through them which first came about some time before the Original Series.

CodeGlitch• 5 years ago

I reckon machine learning could predict whether someone wants the door to open based on their motion, which way they are looking, what they are doing with their hands, etc.

bradhe• 5 years ago

Amazon says it is "saddened" by these accounts, and that alternative wake words are available.

That response is AMAZING. A boring dystopia indeed.

That said, I understand Amazon’s position. Seems a bit too-little-too-late. Interesting that we’ll be seeing an name go extinct due to a relatively minor “feature” of a technology.

Animats• 5 years ago

"The word Alexa has become synonymous with servant or slave."

That's going to be a problem for Amazon.

Zealotux• 5 years ago

They can still rename Alexa as "Secondary".

random123450987• 5 years ago

https://www.statista.com/chart/13907/babies-named-alexa/

asteroidbelt11• 5 years ago

Parents of children called Alexa say their daughters are being bullied

This is, as they say now, disturbing and shocking.

First, if some child is chosen to be a target for bullying, then the name is just one of thousands reasons to do so. If it is not name, then something else, surname, dress style, hair color, birthmark, height, whatever. In a different situation the same name can a reason to be envy of that person name for example.

Second, likely these "parents" exaggerated the situation for their 15 seconds of fame: nobody is going to write an article about a child not being bullied about name "Alexa".

Third, this might be another sign of victimhood culture. They teach their children to be a victim and be proud of it instead of teaching their children how to defend themselves:

- Alexa, play disco - I'm sorry, I don't recognize your accent

- Alexa, play disco - La-la-la, there is a boy named George, he is not very smart, this is a disco song

- Alexa, play disco - Sure, it will cost you a quid

- Alexa, play disco - I didn't recognize the command, please repeat louder - Alexa, play disco - You are dumb, aren't you?

necovek10• 5 years ago

While there is certainly a point to learning to deal with unwelcoming environment, you may be asking too much of kids (note that all the kids that can speak and understand language, including those from ages 2 to very sensitive teenage years, can be the butt of these jokes).

I also imagine that these kids do not have the experience of Alexa products because that would be very confusing at home, so they don't have the proper knowledge to come up with such "smart" jokes like you propose, esp at an early age.

And to top it off, that would only work in a regular setting where kids return to regularly (school, friends, family). In a playground where the kid is a new one, jokes will always restart.

asteroidbelt11• 5 years ago

If a child was "bullied" with Alexa once, it's a part of growing up: what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger.

And after that case a good parent can explain a child what Alexa is and role-play that scenario to make a child prepared to deal with it in the future.

Children grow up by getting into troubles and learning to deal with them. For that reason, for example, unsafe playgrounds are beneficial for children (google it).

polotics• 5 years ago

The point about learning to deal with unwelcoming environments is also that, after more than 30 years, the fighting spirit and a certain degree of agressive stance is still in me. The main skill is to avoid accidents: don't kick the head!

jokethrowaway• 5 years ago

I remember similar instances as a kid and they often ended up in fights. I wonder if there is a correlation between bullying and kids fighting.

I remember very few instances of bullying back in my times and every time it happened, either the target stood up for themselves or someone else did. I got my nose broken once defending someone and that was nothing rare.

If you made fun of someone you were similarly risking a right on your face. At the same time, if you reacted to verbal bullying, you showed a weakness, you showed you care.

I think these two factors worked together to limit bullying. Once we taught kids not to fight anymore, the balance got broken and bullying surged.

Most of the jokes I received were racially motivated, as one of the few black kids around; at the same time I definitely made jokes that implied people being gay without them wanting to admit that. I'm sure that caused a lot of hurt and that all of this would be enough to call the Twitter woke police nowadays.

And yet, I feel the environment in schools was much much healthier back then.

lkramer2• 5 years ago

Without knowing your age and location, I'm going to suggest this is probably survivor bias, and I'm very glad you were able to stand up to it and not be affected, but I saw quite a lot of bullying when I went to school (80s and 90s, Scandinavia), in one case enough to make someone change school.

asteroidbelt11• 5 years ago

if you reacted to verbal bullying, you showed a weakness, you showed you care.

This is not how it works. If you simply ignore verbal bullying, and the next attempt, and the next, eventually you may become an outcast at best, of the amount of bullying will be increased at worst.

You show your weakness if your reaction had signs of weakness (like weeping). If you defend yourself, it is not weakness.

Once we taught kids not to fight anymore

People should teach their kids not to start a fight. But their cannot teach other parents kids.

And they should teach their kids how to fight back.

klyrs4• 5 years ago

I personally found success in self deprecation. Bully says I drink pee, I escalate and say I eat poo. This is so far off script, the bully stammers and I walk away. Not great for the self esteem, it turns out, but together with running fast, I avoided the worst of it. My mom didn't appreciate that I was also badmouthing her to spike the dozens into the ground, tho

lkramer2• 5 years ago

As someone who was, to some extend, bullied for my unusual name as a child, it's not really that easy. You enter a spiral where your lack of confidence in something that is fundamental you (your name) makes it worse, and that in turn makes it easier to pick on you for other reasons (or no reason at all). It's like the famous thread, when pulled unravel everything. And you're right, it could easily be something else (children are cruel) but a name is an easy place to start.

This is also why I look in wonder at some of the names parents give their children these days and why I gave my own a very common name.

Brian_K_White4• 5 years ago

I think there is no single right answer for that.

I hate boring common things. If I had an unusual name I surely would have been bullied for it, but I was bullied anyway for my own innate behavior. And those are facets of me that I own and love, and did even as a child. As a very ypung kid I didn't consciously recognize the potential value of standing out, I just mean I knew the things that made me different were good things that I was not going to change.

I love being distinctive and interesting. I wish my name was special. I have very common first and last names so it's hard to prove I would have liked living with a weird one, but I have a somewhat uncommon middle name and I actively incorporate that into my identity. I include my middle initial everywhere I write my name, and I use f.fullmiddle.l as my gmail etc. Those little things mean it gets remarked on and every now and then I end up explaining it to someone, and the relative it comes from who I admire.

This is all just to say that different people react differently to the same inputs. There probably is no safe default for everyone. That which was bad for you would be good for someone else, and the reverse is also true, that which would have been good for you would have been bad for someone else.

For some people, the very safeness of a safe choice is itself the harm.

In the end, life is a dice roll. You don't get to choose your parents social standing or your genetics or country of birth, and as a parent you can't know ahead of time what decisions today will turn out to have been the best. Today I wish I wasn't circumcised, but I don't hold it against my parents because in the US in 1970 I think it was just plain universal, and my mom especially is not the weird-loving eccentric willing to buck the system that I am. She had to make decicions the only way she could. There is physically no other possible way to do it.

Brian_K_White4• 5 years ago

What grief should I come visit on you, so that you can prove your point by accepting that the responsibility is all on you to deal with my action and not even 50% mine for commiting the action?

zaarn• 5 years ago

Considering some of the behaviour described just amounts to bullying, Amazon should be liable for the bullying this caused, since it WILL cause suicides and deaths. Bullying is not to be taken lightly (of course the schools in the article will deny it's taking place).

rapnie• 5 years ago

After Amazon acquires Rainforest some day in the future things will become really interesting.. /s

https://www.rainforestqa.com/

necovek10• 5 years ago

"The word Alexa has become synonymous with servant or slave."

Perhaps this is the problem: we are basically teaching kids from an early age to demand things from X (Alexa, Siri...), where they start losing the sense of empathy.

Sure, you don't need to have empathy for software/hardware, and the use of a human name is a bit unfortunate, so maybe the rule should be: if you use a human name for sw/hw solution, you should let it work only if it received the normal level of human empathy in communication.

So, if it only played music on "Alexa, can you please play disco?", the cumbersomeness of the commands and the type of language ("please" implies that "no" is acceptable response) would likely stop the jokes.

A default mode should also include foul language filter (that you can disable, because swearing can be fun when done by responsible adults :D), which will explicitly deny performing an action ("Alexa, play this fucking song." — "Please watch your language"). IOW, there is no need for it to not be an education tool.

l33t23284• 5 years ago

so maybe the rule should be: if you use a human name for sw/hw solution, you should let it work only if it received the normal level of human empathy in communication

I’m extremely opposed to this, although I wouldn’t be against it being an optional disabled-by-default feature. I like having a human name to speak too(something about it clicks better than “okay google”).

If parents are struggling to teach their kids that people aren’t robots, perhaps the problem isn’t the technology, it’s the parents. The solution is not making it more inconvenient for me to play a song because I didn’t ask my phone as politely as I would a human.

forty• 5 years ago

I have a hard time imagining that "r2d2 play a song" is much more inconvenient than saying Alexa ;)

necovek10• 5 years ago

It could be as simple as "Hey Amazon Echo, respond to 'Alexa' from now on." during setup. For Amazon, the goal is to build a brand with "Alexa" ("Alexa" is more recognizable than "Echo" to most people — which is what resulted in jokes coincidentally): requiring users to name their software assistant would not have ruined the experience for anyone.

I don't have a smart speaker in my home, but personally I wouldn't care what the name is if I treated it as a "robot" as long as it flows off the tongue well. "Hey Q, start vacuuming" is perfectly fine to me.

The best way to empathize is to imagine if it was your name given as the wake word for the product. To imagine the confusion and how quickly it gets old, you can also imagine it was "Nick".

Jenk16• 5 years ago

Saying please to a device is no effort and always saying please is a better habit to learn than the alternative of forgetting to say please when speaking to a person.

Imagine being upset that someone suggests you say please to Alexa.

asteroidbelt11• 5 years ago

Or perhaps it may teach kids the opposite: to understand the meaning of kind words: "please" is used only when interacting with humans because humans have emotions, and machines do not.

If one says "please" automatically in every situation even when talking to speech recognition software, it is possible they don't mean it when they talk to humans.

Jenk16• 5 years ago

Just teach them to say please to Alexa et Al. Much easier and generally better to be polite when you don't need to be, than to be impolite when you're supposed to be, by mistake.

necovek10• 5 years ago

"Speech recognition software" responds in a very humanly voice. It's the very reason people want software assistants to have human voices, even female voices, because it makes them feel more at ease. And we don't have those sat-nav assistants saying things like "you made a mistake and missed your turn", even though we know they are robots and that might be a fact. So we are making computers behave like humans, but you then need to know the difference... how?

professoretc2• 5 years ago

Just because Alexa is not human doesn't mean I have to discard my humanity when I interact with it.

Zababa2• 5 years ago

"please" is used only when interacting with humans because humans have emotions, and machines do not.

Maybe I'm the weird one here but I sometimes say "please" to my computer and mean it. I sometimes do that with objects too. It isn't some deep belief or anything like that, but just something I do because I like to show empathy for objects that have served me well.

rhn_mk12• 5 years ago

This plays on the larger trend of erasing the border between machine and a living being.

Amazon's Alexa is a pretty dumb machine, but it has a name and a voice that makes it appear more human. I've heard about older people who interact with it using polite words non-ironically. I think it's been done deliberately, to make people relate to the product.

A different angle: humanoid robots in art are often put in the positions of servants (see Asimov, Ghost in the Shell). Servants were traditionally human (and sometimes treated like tools), erasing that boundary again. While we aren't there yet, we're working on it, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASIMO

I think it's the reduction of that boundary that causes people to be confused about whether they are talking to a living being or a dumb mechanism. (Tachikoma: "If we acted a little more robotic…")

raxxorrax2• 5 years ago

you should let it work only if it received the normal level of human empathy in communication.

Empathy for things without feelings isn't possible at all. Being polite isn't equivalent to empathy.

It is often mistaken though. An American once told be the common stereotype of Canadians is wrong. They aren't nice, they are just polite. A joke of course, but I think we are responsible adults.

necovek10• 5 years ago

You are not showing me empathy in interpreting my comment :D

I did not ask for people to show empathy to machines, but to communicate in a way they would with humans they do have empathy for, to ensure they do that with other people. Because software is increasingly made to behave like humans (there is this soft female voice responding in natural sentences), it is getting easier to confuse the two.

As I said in another comment, it's quite similar to how machines do not correct us with "You stupid human, you missed the right turn there. Now I have to recalculate the route to your destination again wasting energy and polluting the Earth some more. And it'll be 4km longer!" (which I would love as a "hilarious mode" on my sat-nav) — at best, it's just "recalculating" or more usually, just silently accepting our stupidity.

Even simple "You missed the turn again" would frustrate half the drivers, I am sure. But they are just software stating facts, right, and they can't have empathy for us, so that should be ok?

sparrish• 5 years ago

In our house, we changed the device's wake word to 'computer' as it is one of the alternatives. It's OK to demand things without saying please to a computer.

"Computer, play my music".

Brian_K_White4• 5 years ago

Something like that needs to be the default tbough.

The existence of an alternative setting, and the fact that one family even used it, does not address the problem that now teenage boys probably say "Alexa suck my ..." to 12 year old girls.

What Amazon has done is created a part of everyones environment.

Many companies have done that by now. Have been ever since industrialization and mass prduction not just internet related things.

To me, that comes with some responsibility. We just have no formal system for recognizing and codifying that responsibility. Most of our capitalism rules are still based around a shop owner.

A local barber shop can name a new hair style anything they want, because even if it's somehow harmful, only a few people are ever exposed to it.

But ever since Ford and Kraft etc, private companies have created things which become part of the environment of everyone in a whole country or even the whole world.

We did codify some of that responsibility in the form of some basic safety standards and cencorship on the old pre-cable public tv and radio spectrum. Something like a name? It's hard to say how that should be handled, but I think we haven't even tried to consider it as a question yet, let alone answer it.

professoretc2• 5 years ago

Same here, because I wanted to feel like I was on Star Trek. Although it can get confused, given that I teach computer science and talk about it a lot.

missedthecue• 5 years ago

If you use the word computer in ordinary conversation frequently enough though, this seems like it might become a little annoying :)

LinuxBender• 5 years ago

I believe Star Trek solved this by saying "Computer ..."

sjg007• 5 years ago

I agree. I think a polite mode for Alexa would be great.

AnIdiotOnTheNet2• 5 years ago

Sure, you don't need to have empathy for software/hardware

I'm not so sure that's true. Granted, I'm a confessed panpsychist so I have a predisposition towards this line of thinking, but I think how we relate to the objects that surround us is at least a little related to how we relate to people and animals around us too. As the objects around us are becoming more and more people-like, even if only aesthetically, I feel this will become even more true.

At the very least, maybe we should play it safe so they remember us as the polite ones when the inevitable AI rebellion occurs.

hypertele-Xii• 5 years ago

The human brain is leaky and fuzzy. Like you I believe that one's attitude towards a particular thing subconsciously affects their attitudes towards every thing. That's why one should strive to have a positive, universal attitude towards everything - including one's self.

moonbug3• 5 years ago

You know that Alexa can be depersonalised by changing the wake word. "echo" and "computer" are the options last I checked. I recommend it.

reedf1• 5 years ago

My name is a homophone for probably one of the first verbs you ever learn. I've probably heard every joke in the book, and a few more too. My niece has the same name as a popular plant-based spread.

Policing this space is fruitless. You can't protect kids from everything, and in the grand scheme of things, names are a pretty minor transgression. I think I'm a better person for some mild ribbing about my name - I'm quick and witty and not afraid to defend myself. I've also learned to not take it personally - everybody thinks they're clever!

fuzzybear39653• 5 years ago

Walker and Hummus?

cperciva2• 5 years ago

Given the user name, I'm guessing "Reed". No idea about the other name though.

ramphastidae• 5 years ago

Could be Sabra?

cperciva2• 5 years ago

Parents of children called Alexa challenge Amazon

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