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Parents of children called Alexa challenge Amazon
- onion2k 5y agoIt 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-v 5y 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 5y agoNow no one is going to ever use name Alexa.
- sam_lowry_ 5y agoPretty much like Adolf.
- Tempest1981 5y agoor Karen, unfortunately
- onion2k 5y agoIt 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 5y agoI 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 5y agoExactly. 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.
- onion2k 5y agoOther voice assistants aren't as easy to pronounce as Alexa as well; Mycroft, Siri, Ok Google, Bixby. Those examples tell us that teams making these products do think about the impact of the name they choose if they're willing to accept something less "name like" will still work well, and maybe the Alexa team could have done better.
- thomasahle 5y agoSiri is a common name in Norway and Sweden. Much more common than Alexa.
- Brian_K_White 5y agoSo far in this whole thread I still haven't seen anyone mention Cortana, even in a list like yours that included Mycroft! I don't know I just like the image of MS's product being that irrelevant.
- moonbug 5y agowait, Windows has a voice agent?
- unishark 5y agoDid 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.
- onion2k 5y agoDid 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.
- unishark 5y agoWe aren't talking about engineers making advertising algorithms then washing their hands of them. It's quite common for engineers to develop a product using some code name, then hand it off to other groups such as marketing who decide what to call it after the fact. The engineers would have no idea whether it will be called "Alexa" or "XJ47B" and may even be long gone by the time it is decided anyway. I think the question as I posed it works just fine. One simply needs a reasonable standard of what it means to have input. By your standard, everyone on earth had input since we all could have personally hounded Jeff Bezos with tweets or thrown ourselves in front of Amazon trucks as they tried to leave the warehouses. But certain employees were responsible for making these specific decisions on behalf of the company and those people may or may not have accepted input from employees. I suspect you already know what process is most likely to be in place at a large company like Amazon.
- edwardwatson 5y agoI'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 5y agoAround here it is a not too rare nickname for Alexandra.
- asteroidbelt 5y 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 5y agoIf 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.
- walshemj 5y agoMine some times triggers on Alex and has gone off during a wfh call
- ElViajero 5y 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-v 5y agoThe 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CDhEwhOm44
- andy_ppp 5y agoYes, 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 5y agoAlexa 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 5y agoI 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
- majewsky 5y agoI 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 5y agobeen thinking that for years now.
- MattGaiser 5y agoAssociation with Star Trek is only a selling point on HN.
- bradhe 5y 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 5y ago"The word Alexa has become synonymous with servant or slave." That's going to be a problem for Amazon.
- Zealotux 5y agoThey can still rename Alexa as "Secondary".
- random123450987 5y agohttps://www.statista.com/chart/13907/babies-named-alexa/ https://www.statista.com/chart/13907/babies-named-alexa/
- asteroidbelt 5y 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?
- necovek 5y agoWhile 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.
- polotics 5y agoThe 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!
- deleted 5y ago
- zaarn 5y agoConsidering 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 5y agoAfter Amazon acquires Rainforest some day in the future things will become really interesting.. /s https://www.rainforestqa.com/ https://www.rainforestqa.com/
- necovek 5y 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.
- l33t2328 5y 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 5y agoI have a hard time imagining that "r2d2 play a song" is much more inconvenient than saying Alexa ;)
- necovek 5y agoIt 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".
- reedf1 5y agoMy 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!
- fuzzybear3965 5y agoWalker and Hummus?
- cperciva 5y agoGiven the user name, I'm guessing "Reed". No idea about the other name though.
- mannerheim 5y ago... margarine?
- fakedang 5y agoHis niece is Vegemite.
- AndrewDucker 5y agoFlora would be my guess
- fuzzybear3965 5y agoReed is a verb? And one of the first ones you learned?
- romanhn 5y ago
- underseacables 5y agoThis is really unfortunate but there’s nothing really to do about it. I do hope parents think very carefully about their children’s names. It might seem edgy, cool, or have some deep unknown cultural roots, but the wrong name could sentence a child to many years of bullying.
- spuz 5y agoI wonder how many people named Alexa now go by Alex. It should be enough to stop the teasing and both are fine names but it must still be a little onerous to change one's name for this reason.
- jmiskovic 5y agoFunny that article author needed to use fake names for parents, when article is about fake person with real name and actual children that change their names. Generally I don't find this worth anyone's attention. A better investment would be to fight bullying in general and to improve school's response, than to throw fits over each namespace collision.
- insickness 5y agoGotta be worse if your name is Karen. I have a friend named Karen who is pretty much the opposite of 'a Karen' so it makes me a bit sad that her name got destroyed.
- bigdict 5y agoImagine how good of a PR move it would be for Amazon to go ahead and rename Alexa to a non human name, despite all the inertia and recognition of the old name?
- Havoc 5y agoIs this why Apple picked Siri maybe? Something slightly more unusual
- nerd_light 5y agoApple purchased Siri from a startup of the same name. The startup founder chose the name because he liked it, having first heard of it because it was the name of a former coworker. So, while perhaps less usual, it was chosen with the knowledge that it was very definitely a name used by people.
- walshemj 5y agoThey do know you can change the wake word
- crtasm 5y agoThat does nothing to change the behaviour of people discussed in the article.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoChange it to CIA