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I stopped using Alexa a few months ago after it almost burned my house down on Thanksgiving day, then it was virtually impossible to report to Amazon, and then
by wincy 5y ago
I stopped using Alexa a few months ago after it almost burned my house down on Thanksgiving day, then it was virtually impossible to report to Amazon, and then Amazon never sent me an email even acknowledging that they almost burnt down my house.
My daughter put a pizza into the Amazon Alexa Enabled oven/microwave. You can probably guess where this is going. She’s done this many many times, put it on the metal rack, and let me know it was good to go.
I opened the Alexa app on my phone and said, very precisely (I saved the log) “Alexa, bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for thirty minutes on first oven”.
Alexa interpreted this as “Alexa, fig at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for thirty minutes on first oven”.
A
Alexa interpreted “fig” as “microwave”, and proceeded to set the microwave/oven full of metal cookware to microwave for 30 minutes.
For some reason I thought being extremely precise and including degrees and things that would only make sense if you wanted to bake, or the fact that I have never microwaved something for that length of time, would inform Alexa and keep this from happening.
Around 21 minutes later my wife smelled something, as we were upstairs, and we had to open all the windows and leave a few hours early for our relatives house. Thank goodness we weren’t hosting.
Anyway that’s the last time I’ll use smart appliances like microwaves.
- nucleardog 5y agoSorry, I'm not really familiar with these oven/microwave combos but is it like... one compartment? Or do you store metal in your microwave when you're not using it?
- treis 5y agoOne compartment. They have a heating element like a conventional oven and metal racks for baking.
- wincy 5y agoI was wary of such a device too but wanted to try it for the convenience factor. Our other daughter is wheelchair bound and needs to have someone with her at all times, so it was nice that our 6 year old could put things into the oven even if she couldn’t operate the controls.
- nucleardog 5y agoOh wow, I can see how that could be convenient for certain cases (such as yours) but as a general consumer device that sounds like a phenomenally bad idea.
- thepasswordis 5y agoThis seems more like an unbelievable design oversight on behalf of the people making an oven microwave combo than a problem with alexa.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y agoMaybe I’m crazy, but to me, having a heating element that can burn my house down, directly able to be controlled from the internet seems like the first issue. I get the Internet of Things dreams (I understand, not agree), but who would want this? You still need to be there to load and consume the food. It’s not like the HVAC that can be of use to me while I’m not there yet.
- brnt 5y agoI dont know... When I put something in the oven, I'm already right there. Turning the knob is at least at fast as saying what I want, certainly at the precision of OPs statement. I keep failing to see the use case. Maybe I'm just a Luddite.
- wincy 5y agoThis was an Amazon branded device. They apparently no longer sell it. It makes me more upset that it seems like no human ever acknowledged that my $300 microwave malfunctioned so spectacularly. Especially considering how specific I’d learned to get with my commands to it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- stadium 5y agoBesides the incident, was it a value add to use Alexa instead of the buttons on the appliance? Our more of a novelty?
- wincy 5y agoWe had our daughter who can’t consistently work the microwave put things in then we’d have Alexa cook it. We’ve got a disabled daughter who needs to be monitored at all times so yes, it made things way easier and we’d used it a hundred times before with no issues. It never microwaved when it was supposed to bake before that.
- midasuni 5y agoWhy didn’t she just turn the oven on and then set a timer? What next, Internet connected pacemakers?
- sgtnoodle 5y agoPacemakers these days do have BLE and automatically communicate over the internet through bridges such as a smartphone app or dedicated night stand device.
- rambojazz 5y agoMaybe I'm overly paranoid, afraid of everything, and wrong... but I've always considered machine learning and AI a probability problem. In other words any solution is a probability with an error (the amount of which is unknown to the user). That's why I treat these toys with extreme caution, because I know that there is an error that is not negligible. Your experience reinforces my idea. Another example would be a self-driving car with the driver sleeping inside.
- hammyhavoc 5y agoThat's fucking terrifying.
- em-bee 5y agoi have never used any of these devices, so what's confusing me here is that is there no option to have the device repeat your command in it's own words to make sure it was correctly understood? i would be scared to use such a device to control appliances or make orders without doble checking that it is actually going to do what i want. even for something seemingly harmless as playing a movie if a misunderstanding could play something inappropriate for the kids.