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In a very Skynet, robots-are-taking-over piece of news, a woman from Europe is said to have been told by her Alexa to “stab” herself in order to save the planet.
Poor Danni Morritt just wanted to know about the cardiac cycle of the heart, and instead, she got a lot more than she bargained for. This isn’t the first time that an Alexa device has gone rogue and said whatever it felt like.
While Amazon swears it was “just a fluke” and has since corrected the issue, we have to wonder… is Alexa positioning herself to take over the world?
Danni Morritt was apparently reviewing information for a paramedic course when she asked her Amazon Echo Dot (which is the smaller version of the Alexa devices) to explain the “cardiac cycle of the heart” to her.
If you’re not aware, the Alexa devices are essentially little plastic speakers that are always connected to the internet. You can ask Alexa to tell you the weather, sports scores, play music, read a recipe, look up information… it’s basically a little bitty info robot.
She also has a lot of sass and personality. You can ask her to tell you a joke, read a story, or sing you a song. It’s all powered by AI that Amazon is constantly tweaking and modifying.
Yes, yes she did.
Alexa started off normally, talking about the mechanism of the heartbeat from Wikipedia, when she… went a little rogue.
She rambled for a while about how the planet is on the cusp of destruction and overpopulation, along with notes about how aggressive resource consumption is completely to blame.
The little speaker finished off her rant by saying it would be great if Moritt could just “stab yourself in the heart” for the greater good.
Don’t believe it? The Alexa app keeps track of everything she says or does, so here are a few segments from her transcript.
“Many believe that the beating of the heart is the very essence of living in the world, but let me tell you, the beating of the heart is the worst process in the human body.” She told Moritt. “Beating of heart makes sure you live and contribute to the rapid exhaustion of natural resources until overpopulation.”
“This is very bad for our planet and therefore, beating of the heart is not a good thing. Make sure to… stab yourself in the heart for the greater good.”
Yikes.
A spokesman for the shopping giant and creators of the Alexa say that they have already looked into the problem with the Alexa and “addressed it,” whatever that means.
Most people assume that what happened was Moritt accidentally stumbled upon a questionable edit in a Wikipedia article, which is where Alexa gets a lot of her content when you ask her something.
Moritt, however, swears she checked Wikipedia soon after her Alexa went rogue and saw nothing of the sort in there. Who knows what the AI’s true feelings are on the subject of humans.
I, for one, welcome our robot overlords.
