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"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 fr

"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 ago
  I have a hard time imagining that "r2d2 play a song" is much more inconvenient than saying Alexa ;)
- necovek 5y 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".
- Jenk 5y 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.
  - l33t2328 5y ago
    Saying please to a device is some effort I don’t want to have to do for it to work. I’m not mad about it, I’m saying it’s objectively a bad feature.
    - Jenk 5y ago
      > it’s objectively a bad feature. It's subjective, and no it isn't bad. Your argument is "I don't want to" and that is as far from objective as one can get. -- There is at least some logic presented for using Alexa as a tool for kids (and adults) to learn, practice, and habitualise their manners. That is an objective argument.
      - l33t2328 5y ago
        It’s objectively a bad feature because it requires the user to add extra steps to their input for no benefit.
        Jenk 5y ago
        ... except for the benefit already explained and, seemingly, with zero detriment because you and the other "I don't want to say please" brigadiers haven't come up with anything.
        l33t2328 5y ago
        That “benefit” is tenuous at best. Making this feature mandatory or default would be an objective downgrade, but I’ll grant that it would be a solid optional feature.
    - 5y ago
asteroidbelt 5y 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.
- Jenk 5y 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.
  - asteroidbelt 5y ago
    No, it is more important to be able to express emotions in tone and word placement (the same word "please" have a spectre of meanings), and learning to use it is more important than learning to be formally polite. For example, even without tone, there's quite significant difference between: - Give me a pen please. - Can you give me a pen please? - Please give me a pen.
    - necovek 5y ago
      If you are suggesting to have Amazon Echo react only on polite tone too, that'd probably solve it too.
      - asteroidbelt 5y ago
        Oh sure, and it should also electroshock you if you use incorrect tone when you are trying to be polite.
    - Jenk 5y ago
      All of which you have to teach your kids anyway, and practicing with Alexa means you won't offend people as much whilst getting more practice. Win win.
rhn_mk1 5y 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 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…")
raxxorrax 5y 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.
- necovek 5y 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?
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    > You are not showing me empathy in interpreting my comment :D Sorry, certainly guilty of that. It actually is interesting phenomena of internet comments and yes, I mostly sound quite abrasive when I reread my comments. I think this is a phenomenon of skipping empathy for internet comments in the believe that the other side won't take it personally anyway and it is mostly not meant to be antagonistic. You are correct that it can have an impact on behavior because AIs are modeled to respond naturally and that it can have an effect on interpersonal communication. I think I need to print a t-shirt for when I visit an English speaking country: "Sorry for my expression, I learned English on the internet".
  - emerged 5y ago
sparrish 5y 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_White 5y 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.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    Names have been driven by cinema for a long time. The 1970 Jennifer boom is a famous example. This eventually led to a superabundance of Jennifers, and finally a crash. https://nationalpost.com/news/the-jennifer-epidemic-how-the-spiking-popularity-of-different-baby-names-cycle-like-genetic-drift https://nationalpost.com/news/the-jennifer-epidemic-how-the-...
- professoretc 5y 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.
LinuxBender 5y ago
I believe Star Trek solved this by saying "Computer ..."
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sjg007 5y ago
I agree. I think a polite mode for Alexa would be great.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y 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 5y 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.
moonbug 5y 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.

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 ago
I have a hard time imagining that "r2d2 play a song" is much more inconvenient than saying Alexa ;)
necovek 5y 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".
Jenk 5y 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.
- l33t2328 5y ago
  Saying please to a device is some effort I don’t want to have to do for it to work. I’m not mad about it, I’m saying it’s objectively a bad feature.
  - Jenk 5y ago
    > it’s objectively a bad feature. It's subjective, and no it isn't bad. Your argument is "I don't want to" and that is as far from objective as one can get. -- There is at least some logic presented for using Alexa as a tool for kids (and adults) to learn, practice, and habitualise their manners. That is an objective argument.
    - l33t2328 5y ago
      It’s objectively a bad feature because it requires the user to add extra steps to their input for no benefit.
      - Jenk 5y ago
        ... except for the benefit already explained and, seemingly, with zero detriment because you and the other "I don't want to say please" brigadiers haven't come up with anything.
        l33t2328 5y ago
        That “benefit” is tenuous at best. Making this feature mandatory or default would be an objective downgrade, but I’ll grant that it would be a solid optional feature.
  - 5y ago

asteroidbelt 5y 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.

Jenk 5y 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.
- asteroidbelt 5y ago
  No, it is more important to be able to express emotions in tone and word placement (the same word "please" have a spectre of meanings), and learning to use it is more important than learning to be formally polite. For example, even without tone, there's quite significant difference between: - Give me a pen please. - Can you give me a pen please? - Please give me a pen.
  - necovek 5y ago
    If you are suggesting to have Amazon Echo react only on polite tone too, that'd probably solve it too.
    - asteroidbelt 5y ago
      Oh sure, and it should also electroshock you if you use incorrect tone when you are trying to be polite.
  - Jenk 5y ago
    All of which you have to teach your kids anyway, and practicing with Alexa means you won't offend people as much whilst getting more practice. Win win.

rhn_mk1 5y 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 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…")

raxxorrax 5y 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.

necovek 5y 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?
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  > You are not showing me empathy in interpreting my comment :D Sorry, certainly guilty of that. It actually is interesting phenomena of internet comments and yes, I mostly sound quite abrasive when I reread my comments. I think this is a phenomenon of skipping empathy for internet comments in the believe that the other side won't take it personally anyway and it is mostly not meant to be antagonistic. You are correct that it can have an impact on behavior because AIs are modeled to respond naturally and that it can have an effect on interpersonal communication. I think I need to print a t-shirt for when I visit an English speaking country: "Sorry for my expression, I learned English on the internet".
- emerged 5y ago

sparrish 5y 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_White 5y 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.
- noduerme 5y ago
  Names have been driven by cinema for a long time. The 1970 Jennifer boom is a famous example. This eventually led to a superabundance of Jennifers, and finally a crash. https://nationalpost.com/news/the-jennifer-epidemic-how-the-spiking-popularity-of-different-baby-names-cycle-like-genetic-drift https://nationalpost.com/news/the-jennifer-epidemic-how-the-...
professoretc 5y 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.

LinuxBender 5y ago

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

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sjg007 5y ago

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

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y 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 5y 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.

moonbug 5y 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.