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you are not interpreting that correctly, these rules are for devices that themselves cause the risk of serious injury, the product did not create a risk, the ch

you are not interpreting that correctly, these rules are for devices that themselves cause the risk of serious injury, the product did not create a risk, the child, without supervision of a parent, doing something they should have been previously been taught is dangerous, is where the risk comes from. This Alexa result is little more than if the person had run the same search query in google. The results aren't guaranteed to be safe for the rest of the internet, why should this be any different. If a child answers a phone, and someone on the other end tells them to harm themselves, the phone wouldn't be considered the risk. It is always shocking to me, how people somehow think this $35 device, is some how going to protect children from the internet, and allow them to interact with it unsupervised.

floatingatoll 5y ago
It’s up to the CPSC to judge whether this event deserves further consideration. It’s not up to you, or the reporter, or any of us to judge so on their behalf. A device put a child’s life at risk. The CPSC’s duty is to assess whether other children are at risk as well, and if they deem it necessary, seek redress from the manufacturer to mitigate that risk. They may or they may not deem smart assistants emitting unregulated and unmonitored verbal commands to children to be sufficient a risk to seek redress against. That choice is theirs, not ours, and is no excuse to cease reporting of child safety events such as this one.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  What you wrote is true of everything any product does, isn’t it? It’s fine to discuss the scope of the agency and how something would fit with their existing guidelines and rulings.
  - cormacrelf 5y ago
    The post Meph504 responded to claimed it was reportable. You’re now talking about whether the agency would or should take any action. I don’t think either encompasses “any product”. The people who work at the agency are sane and actually interested in making an impact with their work, not forcing themselves to drown in a flood of useless warnings. In the simplest terms: it’s clearly dangerous, you should tell the agency.
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    It’s absolutely fine to discuss the scope of the agency’s response to legitimate reports, but a comment upthread questioned the legitimacy of the report. A child was endangered by an interaction with a device; so, the report is legitimate. Whether it deserves a response in the form of regulatory action is absolutely worth discussion, and is what I consider to be the primary question raised by this event, but that question has no bearing on whether it should be reported.
    - 1123581321 5y ago
      I do see your point. I apologize if you already knew this, but the top level comment was quoting a mandate for the production and supply chain, not consumers. There isn’t a standard for consumer complaints other than presumably not to maliciously tie up resources. As you noted, the agency triages consumer complaints. The comment you’re discussing did not allege such a complaint would be spurious and stuck to debating the applicability of the supply chain mandate to what happened, though I think they also thought it was a consumer guideline. Here’s more context for where the original quote came from: “Every manufacturer, distributor, and retailer of a consumer product distributed in commerce who obtains information which reasonably supports the conclusion that its product creates an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death is required to notify the Commission immediately. 15 U.S.C. 2064(b)(3). The requirement that notification occur when a responsible party “obtains information which reasonably supports the conclusion that” its product creates an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death is intended to require firms to report even when no final determination of the risk is possible. Firms must carefully analyze the information they obtain to determine whether such information “reasonably supports” a determination that the product creates an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death. (See § 1115.12(f) for a discussion of the kinds of information that firms must study and evaluate to determine whether they have an obligation to report.) Firms that obtain information indicating that their products present an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death should not wait for such serious injury or death to actually occur before reporting.”
      - floatingatoll 5y ago
        I misunderstood the assertion being made; thank you for clarifying, and my apologies to the commenter in question. I continue to stress the “always report” point, though, as it’s important to get people to overcome the Bystander Effect — so that someday, if/when their own child is put at risk by a device, they remember and report.
- Mirioron 5y ago
  That sounds utterly ridiculous. Is that how America got the mentality that you're not allowed to have your child play unsupervised on the front lawn? Obviously Alexa shouldn't give such answers, but at what point do you just exclude children from everything because everything ends up being a risk for them? Edit: I worded things too strongly, but it does seem to me that in more and more cases we want to ban children from being able to use products or access services 'for their own safety'.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    The CPSC doesn’t exist to ban children from using products for their own safety. The CPSC exists to ban companies from putting children in danger for their own profit.
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    A common example of a CPSC ban is “lawn darts”, which were weighted metal spikes that you’d throw in the air and try to embed in a target. Enough children were killed that they’re now outright banned, and have been for something like thirty years. Was it right for them to ban a children’s toy that was specifically designed in a way that, when used correctly, would have a significant chance of killing children? Another instance of CPSC recently is seen in the Peloton treadmill, but they’ve been doing safety recalls for dangerous yet little-noticed stuff like Generic Crib ABC That Strangles Babies from the market for decades now, once their process established a true risk of harm due to design defects. I think I’m net comfortable with their existence, personally, since they don’t seem to issue recalls needlessly, and they’ve materially improved the safety of children without banning many products that will be missed. Lawn darts may be cool, and it’s probably uncool to ban them, but no child is going to suffer for a lack of lawn darts in their life. Development requires human attention and play time (not screens), and there’s plenty of other ways to achieve that without CPSC-banned products. I get that my views here are a viewpoint and an opinion, but I’m not yet persuaded that either the CPSC is overreaching in general by existing, or that their involvement in smart assistants would be overreaching in specific. Fortunately, since they do exist and they’re required to act when safety concerns are reported, my views are ultimately irrelevant to their decision-making process on whether to engage on this topic or not. Only legislation could stop them from choosing to care, and so any prediction on whether they will or not is entirely unnecessary. I think liability overreach is the fault of legislators, who are too cowardly to set reasonable limits on when parents can sue for payment for untoward outcomes. The American legal system encourages “$1000 for a skinned knee, $100,000 for a broken bone” junk lawsuits where chance accidents are plausibly not the fault of playground builders (though in certain cases, they are, and the CPSC intervenes!). Resolving that “grow a spine” issue with our leaders and judges is independent from whether CPSC deserves to exist and is beneficial to public health.
- Meph504 5y ago
  I don't believe that anyone here, who is engaging in a casual debate attempted to assert authority over the matter, it should be assumed that in any discussion on the internet, that we aren't attempting to handle a legal matter, and that we are all just expressing our opinions. You are making the assertion that "A device put a child's life at risk" this isn't established. Were and How is the device responsible for producing results to queries that the results don't require review before following the result. To me, its seems silly to assume, that voice assistance results to queries will always be safe, for all people asking. If Alexa is asked for a challenge and it provide the result to swim laps, that seems reasonable, but if the the person in question can't swim, and blindly attempts to do the challenge would the device be responsible for putting them at risk? The idea that the device is responsible here seems silly to me, what would put a child at risk is letting them engage with the internet, if they haven't been taught to filter the results, and disregard things that would cause them or others harm.
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    There are lots of other threads tackling the question of whether the device is responsible, so I don’t need to spend any time on that question, and I’m not. I acknowledge that that question is interesting to others and I bear no enmity to it, but it’s simply not relevant to my particular interests at this time. I am making an assertion, as supported by the tweet, that a parent believes that their child’s life was put at risk by a device. The CPSC asks all parents who feel that to report their concern to the CPSC. One person’s belief is sufficient cause to trigger a report, same as it is with NTSB reporting. That’s the start and the end of my interest in this matter for this post. The CPSC is responsible for evaluating the judgment calls you’re making, once that report is received: whether the device is responsible, whether the child can be reasonably expected to protect itself in this scenario, whether the device actually creates a material risk to children beyond just one parent’s feeling that it did. This is the distinction between reporting (parents must always) and response (CPSC may not always) that I’m trying to make clear. Everyone automatically debates about whether a CPSC response would be appropriate, but I’m highlighting that reporting to the CPSC is always appropriate when you feel that a device put a child at risk, regardless of what anyone else feels about whether the device is actually responsible or not. We are in the vast majority not equipped with the training, processes, and domain-specific knowledge about children’s minds, to decide that a report should not be submitted. We cannot be trained in this in any reasonable amount of time — and a parent’s free time for optional training is less than zero, in any case. Yes, it may be found that the device ultimately isn’t actually responsible at all; but, all the same, that report should be made.
whatatsentyways 5y ago
>If a child answers a phone, and someone on the other end tells them to harm themselves, the phone wouldn't be considered the risk. You mean that the person on the other end of the phone would be considered the risk, right? There is no person inside of an Amazon Echo. Your question does not go to a call center where someone decides how to answer it. There are no human beings involved, it's all automated.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  On this theory, is the computer also a hazardous device? Because you could type this into a search engine and the same thing could happen?
  - zamfi 5y ago
    Wouldn't that make the search engine the hazard, not the computer itself?
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      I can't really see a principled distinction here; both devices are getting information from online search engines and presenting it to the user.
      - floatingatoll 5y ago
        The missing “principled distinction” is tied up in the user interface design choices that intersect with child safety concerns, even if equal content is presented to both means. Voice search and response has a very different intersection with child safety concerns than keyboard-browser search and response. A voice assistant can be reasonably expected to be operated by a very young child, who would be responsive and trusting to verbal commands in an adult-like voice from it. A keyboard computer with a search engine in a browser cannot reasonably be expected to be operated by a very young child, and would not be reasonably expected to issue spoken-verbal commands in response to queries. The information content is a relevant factor in the former case but not the latter; keyboard use of search engines is not in-scope for evaluating the child safety risk of voice assistants, though it is certainly an interesting topic as well.
cromka 5y ago
> This Alexa result is little more than if the person had run the same search query in google. Alexa is made to come off humanoid, "conscious" being, and a child can easily get misled and take its answers (or a dare, in this case) verbatim. When you interact with a computer/phone/tablet and search something, you understand this is no different than you opening a book and scrolling for answers. So, as others mentioned, it's down to the appearance.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  The same could happen with a Google/Bing search with their "intelligent" results box (or whatever that's called) which also uses ML algorithms to extract information from specific pages and present it out of context. The problem is we should never trust a computer to understand the meaning and context of anything. Ban AI from consumer products and from any system making life decisions, or we're doomed to repeat the same story over and over again.
belorn 5y ago
Most products that Product Safety entities stop is devices that are harmful if used in ways unintended, like a drawer that is not intended to be climbed (ikea). Her we have a product that is encouraging harm, which while unintended by the manufacturer, is slightly worse than a drawer that can crush and kill a playing child.
civilized 5y ago
> This Alexa result is little more than if the person had run the same search query in google. The results aren't guaranteed to be safe for the rest of the internet, why should this be any different. This is shockingly disingenuous. Alexa quite obviously didn't merely operate as a search engine in this situation. Alexa went to a page that said this challenge is incredibly dangerous, pulled out the challenge stripped of context, and dared a child to do it. That's not what a search engine does.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  I agree with you in principle. Yet that's what modern search engine do with the sidebar box, they extract information without context and present a supposedly accurate and synthetic representation of the truth... which is often disconnected from the truth (eg. wrong photo taken from facebook results when you look up the name of a serial killer who doesn't have a wikipedia photo). So yes a search engine should be a list of results and nothing more. But this trend to embed machine learning models (and their failures) in pretty much everything unfortunately goes beyond Alexa. And yes, that should definitely be illegal and we tech people who understand that AI is just stupid/fast math should be leading the fight to severely restrict AI and/or educate our closest ones never to trust or use (if they can avoid it) something powered by AI.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    Which to me just sounds like search engines should be reported for such smart widgets when those widgets directly endanger children.
- gruez 5y ago
  >That's not what a search engine does. Except that's what it literally did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709875
  - civilized 5y ago
    The definition of search engine is not "whatever Google does". A search engine should find things and present what it finds without distortion, let alone life-threatening distortion.
mrweasel 5y ago
Does Alexa have a child safety feature that can be enabled to prevent children from using Alexa? My point is that Alexa is a pretty intuitive to use, children won't have see observe their parents using the device more than a few times before they're able to trigger Alexa. So either Alexa, and other digital assistants, should have a way to prevent "unauthorized" use, or we might need to consider if it's a safe device for families with small children. Perhaps simply being able to disable answers based on internet searches.
- vidarh 5y ago
  It now does have a way of learning to distinguish users by voice, so such a feature, if not foolproof ought to be feasible. Even just a way of indicating which users are children and taking that into account might well be helpful.
onion2k 5y ago
It is always shocking to me, how people somehow think this $35 device, is some how going to protect children from the internet, and allow them to interact with it unsupervised. I don't see why the cost is relevant. If Amazon can't make Alexa safe selling it for $35 then they shouldn't sell if for $35. You can't put something dangerous out on the market by advertising it with the line "We're making it cheap, not safe!" Besides, it's not a $35 device. Amazon subsidizes the cost of the software side in order to get the hardware in to homes because they believe it drives sales. We have no way to know the real cost.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  > Besides, it's not a $35 device. Amazon subsidizes the cost of the software side in order to get the hardware in to homes because they believe it drives sales. We have no way to know the real cost. I think the implied argument here is "you get what you pay for", so the actual cost Amazon has is irrelevant.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > Amazon subsidizes the cost of the software side in order to get the hardware in to homes because they believe it drives sales. I think that's not the only reason. It creates acceptability for other ML-based technologies which in my personal view should definitely not exist (except as a best effort assistive technology for handicapped folks) and it gives them real world feedback on how broken their neural models are as well as real-life voice data collected unexpectedly by the device and sent to precarious contract workers to be transcribed (including very personal/sensitive details). Unfortunately i don't think this article has been translated to English, but La Quadrature had a mind blowing interview with Julie who was a cheap-paid transcriber for Microsoft's Cortana, telling us all about the kind of things that get recorded without the owners being aware and that she has to transcribe (without having ever signed a privacy/confidentiality agreement): https://www.laquadrature.net/2018/05/18/temoin_cortana/ https://www.laquadrature.net/2018/05/18/temoin_cortana/
CyberRabbi 5y ago
Are you sincerely blaming the parents for this? Amazon markets these devices as futuristic intelligent assistants. If they are not actually intelligent then they are deceiving their customers and exposing their children to harm. Nobody reasonably expects Google to intelligently censor search results by detecting if a child is running the search.
emilgouliev 5y ago
The product is Alexa the voice assistant, not the tiny speaker+microphone. Amazon makes this product. When the child spoke to the device, Alexa made a deliberate decision to look up a challenge on the internet (presumably, from a website it deems as safe). In doing so, Amazon endorses the challenge. The product put a child’s in life in danger. This is not very complicated.
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  >When the child spoke to the device, Alexa made a deliberate decision to look up a challenge on the internet I don't think that's fair. A reasonable parent knows that Alexa's main function is to look things up on the internet.
  - harryf 5y ago
    The product is _designed_ to be something humans will relate to and "become part of your lives", much like a housepet. Watch Amazon's own intro video narrated by the little girl - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYtb8RRj5r4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYtb8RRj5r4 At 3 minutes the little girl says "Echo loves to to play music" ... i.e. it's expected that children will project emotions onto Echo, which in turn means an implied level of trust they will have to the device. Also the girl in the video is using at times _without_ parent supervision... So sorry the whole "it's just a dumb device designed to search the Internet and you should know better" argument doesn't fly here.
    - popcube 5y ago
      yes, if they want to sold product in this way, how can they argue when people really trust it?
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    [flagged]
  - rowanajmarshall 5y ago
    > A reasonable parent knows that Alexa's main function is to look things up on the internet. Well, it's what Amazon would like Alexa to be for. For me, and everyone I know, its a podcast/music player plus timer and weather-teller.
taneq 5y ago
> If a child answers a phone, and someone on the other end tells them to harm themselves, the phone wouldn't be considered the risk. If I, a billion dollar company, advertise a service where people can phone me and ask questions, and some bored kid phones up and I tell them to stick a fork in a power socket, then I would be considered the risk.
- Meph504 5y ago
  Your biased is clear, that you think the value of the company has anything to do with the liabilit. Would you blame a search engine if the results of a query returned results. Siri, on the iphone can give very similar result, I don't see the revolt and people blaming Apple. Where does amazon say that they are going to filter the results, to make sure you don't have to use critical thinking to evaluate if your query result will harm you? I just don't see the logic, and this is seemingly is largely driven by the current hate stream pushed towards amazon.
  - yunwal 5y ago
    > Siri, on the iphone can give very similar result Do you have any evidence for this? I have yet to see a Siri result as flagrantly dangerous as this.
  - taneq 5y ago
    Uh, yes. Yes I would blame a search engine if its results predictably said <go do horrible thing> and likewise I don't recall any instance of Siri telling bored patrons to stick forks in electrical sockets.
AYBABTME 5y ago
At some point, we have to zoom out and look at the big picture. Should we end up with a situation where this continues because in theory there's an endless amount of kicking-the-can-down-the-road that could technically apply? Probably not. Where's the most appropriate place to say "the buck stops here!"? I'll say it's at the first step: Alexa shouldn't just regurgitate this stuff.
- Meph504 5y ago
  The device hasn't caused harm, did the device itself physically put the child at risk? No, it didn't The information from the result of a query, didn't either, if a unsupervised child, who wasn't taught not to do things like electrocute themselves comes across the information, and does themselves harm, surely you can see that this is at least partially if not entirely on the parents. If a child is left at home, with a load, unsecured gun, and wasn't taught gun safety, would it be the guns fault, or the parents. To me the situation is similar, the device was not defective, the device did not directly present risk to the child, the device makes no assurances that the information relayed will be sanitized such that a 10 year old mind could not harm themselves by following it blindly.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    > the device makes no assurances that the information relayed will be sanitized The device (or rather the service behind it) removed the critical safety warnings and context from the content, directly encouraged the child to engage in dangerous activity and then added a timer to encourage the child to engage in that activity with as little consideration of the consequences as possible. As a society we are well aware that 10 year old minds have not developed the capacity to reliably consider and understand the consequences of their actions; this is why we limit their legal ability to make choices for themselves. If this is not "defective" , then Amazon would be guilty of attempted murder. Clearly this is a software defect, the only question is if the design The webpage that Alexa sourced this "challenge" from exists precisely because there are lots of children who are put at risk
    - 5y ago
washadjeffmad 5y ago
Let's say I bought a children's toy that for $35 my child could speak to and receive responses from. One day, I overhear it telling my child to hurt itself as part of a game, and it begins counting down from a timer. My child doesn't realize that what it's being told by their fun friend is dangerous and not really a game. The vessel is not the culprit. It's not a mechanical fault that's endangering my child- it's the logic. Who is responsible for that? There is a distinct difference from being asked to engage in an activity and being provided information. We learn this as children in grammar class. It is also not our role to make determinations on behalf of the authorities that govern the safety of products, only to report. Alexa told this child to play a game that would have resulted in their harm and began to count down from a timer. It was designed to expect the child to engage and comply, not just passing along information. It's different.
bratwurst3000 5y ago
Its true that errors happen but if those kind of errors are something amazon is aware of then the usage by children should be prohibited or at least it should indicate that alexa could be harmfull to children.
tremon 5y ago
What's next? There's nothing wrong with phishing or other forms of social engineering because the victim fell for it on their own volition? If I give my child a speaking rubber ducky as a bathroom toy, and that toy would include phrases like "I bet you can't keep under water for more than a minute" or "I want to go swimming in the ocean", I'm pretty certain that the product will be quickly pulled from the market, even though the $35 toy is made from the safest, non-flammable, non-toxic plastics. If a child answers a phone, and someone on the other end tells them to harm themselves, the phone wouldn't be considered the risk. Indeed. So what's on the other end of the Alexa line, legally speaking? is some how going to protect children from the internet The child didn't access the Internet, now did it? Alexa accessed the Internet on behalf of the child. As such, it acted as the child's agent and should be expected to tailor its reponses to the child. If Amazon doens't want that, it should not allow Alexa to respond to children's voices.
- Meph504 5y ago
  Alexa isn't a toy, and if follow up stories are accurate the device wasn't even running with a child profile, it wasn't acting as an agent of a child, it was responding to a query, one not understood to even being originated from a minor. Additionally, from Alexa's term of use, it clearly states they do not guarantee the content >4.2 Functionality; Content. We do not guarantee that Alexa or its functionality or content (including traffic, health, or stock information) is accurate, reliable, always available, or complete. You may encounter content through Alexa that you find offensive, indecent, or objectionable. Amazon has no responsibility or liability for such content So without even readying the terms or proper usage of the device, many seem to be making broad assumptions, and literally just making up the obligations, actions, and legal ramifications. I'm not a fan of Amazon, and frankly would never have alexa in my home because of their terms of use and conditions. But I find myself defending their position because of the outlandish statements.

floatingatoll 5y ago

It’s up to the CPSC to judge whether this event deserves further consideration. It’s not up to you, or the reporter, or any of us to judge so on their behalf. A device put a child’s life at risk. The CPSC’s duty is to assess whether other children are at risk as well, and if they deem it necessary, seek redress from the manufacturer to mitigate that risk. They may or they may not deem smart assistants emitting unregulated and unmonitored verbal commands to children to be sufficient a risk to seek redress against. That choice is theirs, not ours, and is no excuse to cease reporting of child safety events such as this one.

1123581321 5y ago
What you wrote is true of everything any product does, isn’t it? It’s fine to discuss the scope of the agency and how something would fit with their existing guidelines and rulings.
- cormacrelf 5y ago
  The post Meph504 responded to claimed it was reportable. You’re now talking about whether the agency would or should take any action. I don’t think either encompasses “any product”. The people who work at the agency are sane and actually interested in making an impact with their work, not forcing themselves to drown in a flood of useless warnings. In the simplest terms: it’s clearly dangerous, you should tell the agency.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  It’s absolutely fine to discuss the scope of the agency’s response to legitimate reports, but a comment upthread questioned the legitimacy of the report. A child was endangered by an interaction with a device; so, the report is legitimate. Whether it deserves a response in the form of regulatory action is absolutely worth discussion, and is what I consider to be the primary question raised by this event, but that question has no bearing on whether it should be reported.
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    I do see your point. I apologize if you already knew this, but the top level comment was quoting a mandate for the production and supply chain, not consumers. There isn’t a standard for consumer complaints other than presumably not to maliciously tie up resources. As you noted, the agency triages consumer complaints. The comment you’re discussing did not allege such a complaint would be spurious and stuck to debating the applicability of the supply chain mandate to what happened, though I think they also thought it was a consumer guideline. Here’s more context for where the original quote came from: “Every manufacturer, distributor, and retailer of a consumer product distributed in commerce who obtains information which reasonably supports the conclusion that its product creates an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death is required to notify the Commission immediately. 15 U.S.C. 2064(b)(3). The requirement that notification occur when a responsible party “obtains information which reasonably supports the conclusion that” its product creates an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death is intended to require firms to report even when no final determination of the risk is possible. Firms must carefully analyze the information they obtain to determine whether such information “reasonably supports” a determination that the product creates an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death. (See § 1115.12(f) for a discussion of the kinds of information that firms must study and evaluate to determine whether they have an obligation to report.) Firms that obtain information indicating that their products present an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death should not wait for such serious injury or death to actually occur before reporting.”
    - floatingatoll 5y ago
      I misunderstood the assertion being made; thank you for clarifying, and my apologies to the commenter in question. I continue to stress the “always report” point, though, as it’s important to get people to overcome the Bystander Effect — so that someday, if/when their own child is put at risk by a device, they remember and report.
Mirioron 5y ago
That sounds utterly ridiculous. Is that how America got the mentality that you're not allowed to have your child play unsupervised on the front lawn? Obviously Alexa shouldn't give such answers, but at what point do you just exclude children from everything because everything ends up being a risk for them? Edit: I worded things too strongly, but it does seem to me that in more and more cases we want to ban children from being able to use products or access services 'for their own safety'.
- kube-system 5y ago
  The CPSC doesn’t exist to ban children from using products for their own safety. The CPSC exists to ban companies from putting children in danger for their own profit.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  A common example of a CPSC ban is “lawn darts”, which were weighted metal spikes that you’d throw in the air and try to embed in a target. Enough children were killed that they’re now outright banned, and have been for something like thirty years. Was it right for them to ban a children’s toy that was specifically designed in a way that, when used correctly, would have a significant chance of killing children? Another instance of CPSC recently is seen in the Peloton treadmill, but they’ve been doing safety recalls for dangerous yet little-noticed stuff like Generic Crib ABC That Strangles Babies from the market for decades now, once their process established a true risk of harm due to design defects. I think I’m net comfortable with their existence, personally, since they don’t seem to issue recalls needlessly, and they’ve materially improved the safety of children without banning many products that will be missed. Lawn darts may be cool, and it’s probably uncool to ban them, but no child is going to suffer for a lack of lawn darts in their life. Development requires human attention and play time (not screens), and there’s plenty of other ways to achieve that without CPSC-banned products. I get that my views here are a viewpoint and an opinion, but I’m not yet persuaded that either the CPSC is overreaching in general by existing, or that their involvement in smart assistants would be overreaching in specific. Fortunately, since they do exist and they’re required to act when safety concerns are reported, my views are ultimately irrelevant to their decision-making process on whether to engage on this topic or not. Only legislation could stop them from choosing to care, and so any prediction on whether they will or not is entirely unnecessary. I think liability overreach is the fault of legislators, who are too cowardly to set reasonable limits on when parents can sue for payment for untoward outcomes. The American legal system encourages “$1000 for a skinned knee, $100,000 for a broken bone” junk lawsuits where chance accidents are plausibly not the fault of playground builders (though in certain cases, they are, and the CPSC intervenes!). Resolving that “grow a spine” issue with our leaders and judges is independent from whether CPSC deserves to exist and is beneficial to public health.
Meph504 5y ago
I don't believe that anyone here, who is engaging in a casual debate attempted to assert authority over the matter, it should be assumed that in any discussion on the internet, that we aren't attempting to handle a legal matter, and that we are all just expressing our opinions. You are making the assertion that "A device put a child's life at risk" this isn't established. Were and How is the device responsible for producing results to queries that the results don't require review before following the result. To me, its seems silly to assume, that voice assistance results to queries will always be safe, for all people asking. If Alexa is asked for a challenge and it provide the result to swim laps, that seems reasonable, but if the the person in question can't swim, and blindly attempts to do the challenge would the device be responsible for putting them at risk? The idea that the device is responsible here seems silly to me, what would put a child at risk is letting them engage with the internet, if they haven't been taught to filter the results, and disregard things that would cause them or others harm.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  There are lots of other threads tackling the question of whether the device is responsible, so I don’t need to spend any time on that question, and I’m not. I acknowledge that that question is interesting to others and I bear no enmity to it, but it’s simply not relevant to my particular interests at this time. I am making an assertion, as supported by the tweet, that a parent believes that their child’s life was put at risk by a device. The CPSC asks all parents who feel that to report their concern to the CPSC. One person’s belief is sufficient cause to trigger a report, same as it is with NTSB reporting. That’s the start and the end of my interest in this matter for this post. The CPSC is responsible for evaluating the judgment calls you’re making, once that report is received: whether the device is responsible, whether the child can be reasonably expected to protect itself in this scenario, whether the device actually creates a material risk to children beyond just one parent’s feeling that it did. This is the distinction between reporting (parents must always) and response (CPSC may not always) that I’m trying to make clear. Everyone automatically debates about whether a CPSC response would be appropriate, but I’m highlighting that reporting to the CPSC is always appropriate when you feel that a device put a child at risk, regardless of what anyone else feels about whether the device is actually responsible or not. We are in the vast majority not equipped with the training, processes, and domain-specific knowledge about children’s minds, to decide that a report should not be submitted. We cannot be trained in this in any reasonable amount of time — and a parent’s free time for optional training is less than zero, in any case. Yes, it may be found that the device ultimately isn’t actually responsible at all; but, all the same, that report should be made.

whatatsentyways 5y ago

>If a child answers a phone, and someone on the other end tells them to harm themselves, the phone wouldn't be considered the risk. You mean that the person on the other end of the phone would be considered the risk, right? There is no person inside of an Amazon Echo. Your question does not go to a call center where someone decides how to answer it. There are no human beings involved, it's all automated.

emodendroket 5y ago
On this theory, is the computer also a hazardous device? Because you could type this into a search engine and the same thing could happen?
- zamfi 5y ago
  Wouldn't that make the search engine the hazard, not the computer itself?
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    I can't really see a principled distinction here; both devices are getting information from online search engines and presenting it to the user.
    - floatingatoll 5y ago
      The missing “principled distinction” is tied up in the user interface design choices that intersect with child safety concerns, even if equal content is presented to both means. Voice search and response has a very different intersection with child safety concerns than keyboard-browser search and response. A voice assistant can be reasonably expected to be operated by a very young child, who would be responsive and trusting to verbal commands in an adult-like voice from it. A keyboard computer with a search engine in a browser cannot reasonably be expected to be operated by a very young child, and would not be reasonably expected to issue spoken-verbal commands in response to queries. The information content is a relevant factor in the former case but not the latter; keyboard use of search engines is not in-scope for evaluating the child safety risk of voice assistants, though it is certainly an interesting topic as well.

cromka 5y ago

> This Alexa result is little more than if the person had run the same search query in google. Alexa is made to come off humanoid, "conscious" being, and a child can easily get misled and take its answers (or a dare, in this case) verbatim. When you interact with a computer/phone/tablet and search something, you understand this is no different than you opening a book and scrolling for answers. So, as others mentioned, it's down to the appearance.

southerntofu 5y ago
The same could happen with a Google/Bing search with their "intelligent" results box (or whatever that's called) which also uses ML algorithms to extract information from specific pages and present it out of context. The problem is we should never trust a computer to understand the meaning and context of anything. Ban AI from consumer products and from any system making life decisions, or we're doomed to repeat the same story over and over again.

belorn 5y ago

Most products that Product Safety entities stop is devices that are harmful if used in ways unintended, like a drawer that is not intended to be climbed (ikea). Her we have a product that is encouraging harm, which while unintended by the manufacturer, is slightly worse than a drawer that can crush and kill a playing child.

civilized 5y ago

> This Alexa result is little more than if the person had run the same search query in google. The results aren't guaranteed to be safe for the rest of the internet, why should this be any different. This is shockingly disingenuous. Alexa quite obviously didn't merely operate as a search engine in this situation. Alexa went to a page that said this challenge is incredibly dangerous, pulled out the challenge stripped of context, and dared a child to do it. That's not what a search engine does.

southerntofu 5y ago
I agree with you in principle. Yet that's what modern search engine do with the sidebar box, they extract information without context and present a supposedly accurate and synthetic representation of the truth... which is often disconnected from the truth (eg. wrong photo taken from facebook results when you look up the name of a serial killer who doesn't have a wikipedia photo). So yes a search engine should be a list of results and nothing more. But this trend to embed machine learning models (and their failures) in pretty much everything unfortunately goes beyond Alexa. And yes, that should definitely be illegal and we tech people who understand that AI is just stupid/fast math should be leading the fight to severely restrict AI and/or educate our closest ones never to trust or use (if they can avoid it) something powered by AI.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  Which to me just sounds like search engines should be reported for such smart widgets when those widgets directly endanger children.
gruez 5y ago
>That's not what a search engine does. Except that's what it literally did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709875
- civilized 5y ago
  The definition of search engine is not "whatever Google does". A search engine should find things and present what it finds without distortion, let alone life-threatening distortion.

mrweasel 5y ago

Does Alexa have a child safety feature that can be enabled to prevent children from using Alexa? My point is that Alexa is a pretty intuitive to use, children won't have see observe their parents using the device more than a few times before they're able to trigger Alexa. So either Alexa, and other digital assistants, should have a way to prevent "unauthorized" use, or we might need to consider if it's a safe device for families with small children. Perhaps simply being able to disable answers based on internet searches.

vidarh 5y ago
It now does have a way of learning to distinguish users by voice, so such a feature, if not foolproof ought to be feasible. Even just a way of indicating which users are children and taking that into account might well be helpful.

onion2k 5y ago

It is always shocking to me, how people somehow think this $35 device, is some how going to protect children from the internet, and allow them to interact with it unsupervised. I don't see why the cost is relevant. If Amazon can't make Alexa safe selling it for $35 then they shouldn't sell if for $35. You can't put something dangerous out on the market by advertising it with the line "We're making it cheap, not safe!" Besides, it's not a $35 device. Amazon subsidizes the cost of the software side in order to get the hardware in to homes because they believe it drives sales. We have no way to know the real cost.

Sebb767 5y ago
> Besides, it's not a $35 device. Amazon subsidizes the cost of the software side in order to get the hardware in to homes because they believe it drives sales. We have no way to know the real cost. I think the implied argument here is "you get what you pay for", so the actual cost Amazon has is irrelevant.
southerntofu 5y ago
> Amazon subsidizes the cost of the software side in order to get the hardware in to homes because they believe it drives sales. I think that's not the only reason. It creates acceptability for other ML-based technologies which in my personal view should definitely not exist (except as a best effort assistive technology for handicapped folks) and it gives them real world feedback on how broken their neural models are as well as real-life voice data collected unexpectedly by the device and sent to precarious contract workers to be transcribed (including very personal/sensitive details). Unfortunately i don't think this article has been translated to English, but La Quadrature had a mind blowing interview with Julie who was a cheap-paid transcriber for Microsoft's Cortana, telling us all about the kind of things that get recorded without the owners being aware and that she has to transcribe (without having ever signed a privacy/confidentiality agreement): https://www.laquadrature.net/2018/05/18/temoin_cortana/ https://www.laquadrature.net/2018/05/18/temoin_cortana/

CyberRabbi 5y ago

Are you sincerely blaming the parents for this? Amazon markets these devices as futuristic intelligent assistants. If they are not actually intelligent then they are deceiving their customers and exposing their children to harm. Nobody reasonably expects Google to intelligently censor search results by detecting if a child is running the search.

emilgouliev 5y ago

The product is Alexa the voice assistant, not the tiny speaker+microphone. Amazon makes this product. When the child spoke to the device, Alexa made a deliberate decision to look up a challenge on the internet (presumably, from a website it deems as safe). In doing so, Amazon endorses the challenge. The product put a child’s in life in danger. This is not very complicated.

dr_dshiv 5y ago
>When the child spoke to the device, Alexa made a deliberate decision to look up a challenge on the internet I don't think that's fair. A reasonable parent knows that Alexa's main function is to look things up on the internet.
- harryf 5y ago
  The product is _designed_ to be something humans will relate to and "become part of your lives", much like a housepet. Watch Amazon's own intro video narrated by the little girl - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYtb8RRj5r4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYtb8RRj5r4 At 3 minutes the little girl says "Echo loves to to play music" ... i.e. it's expected that children will project emotions onto Echo, which in turn means an implied level of trust they will have to the device. Also the girl in the video is using at times _without_ parent supervision... So sorry the whole "it's just a dumb device designed to search the Internet and you should know better" argument doesn't fly here.
  - popcube 5y ago
    yes, if they want to sold product in this way, how can they argue when people really trust it?
- southerntofu 5y ago
  [flagged]
- rowanajmarshall 5y ago
  > A reasonable parent knows that Alexa's main function is to look things up on the internet. Well, it's what Amazon would like Alexa to be for. For me, and everyone I know, its a podcast/music player plus timer and weather-teller.

taneq 5y ago

> If a child answers a phone, and someone on the other end tells them to harm themselves, the phone wouldn't be considered the risk. If I, a billion dollar company, advertise a service where people can phone me and ask questions, and some bored kid phones up and I tell them to stick a fork in a power socket, then I would be considered the risk.

Meph504 5y ago
Your biased is clear, that you think the value of the company has anything to do with the liabilit. Would you blame a search engine if the results of a query returned results. Siri, on the iphone can give very similar result, I don't see the revolt and people blaming Apple. Where does amazon say that they are going to filter the results, to make sure you don't have to use critical thinking to evaluate if your query result will harm you? I just don't see the logic, and this is seemingly is largely driven by the current hate stream pushed towards amazon.
- yunwal 5y ago
  > Siri, on the iphone can give very similar result Do you have any evidence for this? I have yet to see a Siri result as flagrantly dangerous as this.
- taneq 5y ago
  Uh, yes. Yes I would blame a search engine if its results predictably said <go do horrible thing> and likewise I don't recall any instance of Siri telling bored patrons to stick forks in electrical sockets.

AYBABTME 5y ago

At some point, we have to zoom out and look at the big picture. Should we end up with a situation where this continues because in theory there's an endless amount of kicking-the-can-down-the-road that could technically apply? Probably not. Where's the most appropriate place to say "the buck stops here!"? I'll say it's at the first step: Alexa shouldn't just regurgitate this stuff.

Meph504 5y ago
The device hasn't caused harm, did the device itself physically put the child at risk? No, it didn't The information from the result of a query, didn't either, if a unsupervised child, who wasn't taught not to do things like electrocute themselves comes across the information, and does themselves harm, surely you can see that this is at least partially if not entirely on the parents. If a child is left at home, with a load, unsecured gun, and wasn't taught gun safety, would it be the guns fault, or the parents. To me the situation is similar, the device was not defective, the device did not directly present risk to the child, the device makes no assurances that the information relayed will be sanitized such that a 10 year old mind could not harm themselves by following it blindly.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  > the device makes no assurances that the information relayed will be sanitized The device (or rather the service behind it) removed the critical safety warnings and context from the content, directly encouraged the child to engage in dangerous activity and then added a timer to encourage the child to engage in that activity with as little consideration of the consequences as possible. As a society we are well aware that 10 year old minds have not developed the capacity to reliably consider and understand the consequences of their actions; this is why we limit their legal ability to make choices for themselves. If this is not "defective" , then Amazon would be guilty of attempted murder. Clearly this is a software defect, the only question is if the design The webpage that Alexa sourced this "challenge" from exists precisely because there are lots of children who are put at risk
  - 5y ago

washadjeffmad 5y ago

Let's say I bought a children's toy that for $35 my child could speak to and receive responses from. One day, I overhear it telling my child to hurt itself as part of a game, and it begins counting down from a timer. My child doesn't realize that what it's being told by their fun friend is dangerous and not really a game. The vessel is not the culprit. It's not a mechanical fault that's endangering my child- it's the logic. Who is responsible for that? There is a distinct difference from being asked to engage in an activity and being provided information. We learn this as children in grammar class. It is also not our role to make determinations on behalf of the authorities that govern the safety of products, only to report. Alexa told this child to play a game that would have resulted in their harm and began to count down from a timer. It was designed to expect the child to engage and comply, not just passing along information. It's different.

bratwurst3000 5y ago

Its true that errors happen but if those kind of errors are something amazon is aware of then the usage by children should be prohibited or at least it should indicate that alexa could be harmfull to children.

tremon 5y ago

What's next? There's nothing wrong with phishing or other forms of social engineering because the victim fell for it on their own volition? If I give my child a speaking rubber ducky as a bathroom toy, and that toy would include phrases like "I bet you can't keep under water for more than a minute" or "I want to go swimming in the ocean", I'm pretty certain that the product will be quickly pulled from the market, even though the $35 toy is made from the safest, non-flammable, non-toxic plastics. If a child answers a phone, and someone on the other end tells them to harm themselves, the phone wouldn't be considered the risk. Indeed. So what's on the other end of the Alexa line, legally speaking? is some how going to protect children from the internet The child didn't access the Internet, now did it? Alexa accessed the Internet on behalf of the child. As such, it acted as the child's agent and should be expected to tailor its reponses to the child. If Amazon doens't want that, it should not allow Alexa to respond to children's voices.

Meph504 5y ago
Alexa isn't a toy, and if follow up stories are accurate the device wasn't even running with a child profile, it wasn't acting as an agent of a child, it was responding to a query, one not understood to even being originated from a minor. Additionally, from Alexa's term of use, it clearly states they do not guarantee the content >4.2 Functionality; Content. We do not guarantee that Alexa or its functionality or content (including traffic, health, or stock information) is accurate, reliable, always available, or complete. You may encounter content through Alexa that you find offensive, indecent, or objectionable. Amazon has no responsibility or liability for such content So without even readying the terms or proper usage of the device, many seem to be making broad assumptions, and literally just making up the obligations, actions, and legal ramifications. I'm not a fan of Amazon, and frankly would never have alexa in my home because of their terms of use and conditions. But I find myself defending their position because of the outlandish statements.