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Comment by smoyer | Hacker News Reader

"Telly station CW-6 said the blunder ..."

I don't think it's a blunder to say (almost) any sentence ... we do still have freedom of speech. To think that these viewers would expect that no one ever utters the phrase again is ridiculous. Next they' expect there to be legislation prohibiting certain words on any broadcast. An as more voice controlled devices are created, there are bound to be conflicts.

If they'd written this article correctly, they'd have an auto-playing audio clip that says "Alexa, order me a sandwich". A child named "Ok Google" will be the next version of "Little Bobby Tables".

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"We'll take this opportunity to point out that voice-command purchasing is enabled by default on Alexa devices.

"This is not the first time an ill-conceived TV spot has caused havoc with voice-control systems."

There's nothing ill conceived about the TV spot.

Surely it's the TV spot which is ill-considered rather than the opt out setting... Right ;)

If the TV spot they're referring to was an Xbox One advertisement with the phrase "Xbox on", yes, it was ill-conceived because it was a commercial for the voice-control system being advertised. It would be like an Amazon commercial triggering Alexa.

No, the phrase itself is not a problem, but when advertising your own product you should know better.

> "We'll take this opportunity to point out that voice-command purchasing is enabled by default on Alexa devices.

This is what's unethical. If users don't understand how they may be charged, they ought not to be charged.

I recently got a Google Pixel and one of the first things it does is map your voice to "OK Google", so not just anybody will trigger it. It has you say the phrase several times.

My previous android phone didn't do this. The side effect is it doesn't catch all my different inflections of "OK Google". When I first said it, I said it in a super dull, boring voice. Now that's the only way I can trigger it. However, I haven't looked into training it further.

My friend had a phone that did this, but apparently my voice was similar enough to be able to trigger it too.

Can you change this to something else? One of my big frustrations with Google's assistant is that I have to say "Ok Google" which is long and clunky. I'd rather just say "Google" or even rename it to something else. Voice input should be fast and fluent. A four syllable activation phrase that doesn't quite roll off the tongue is neither.

Nope. And I don't think you'd want it switching on every time you use the word google as a verb.

You can on my 2014 Moto X. Mine is trained to "Listen up, phone!"

My phone let me change it. It listens for "personal assistant." I also have some version of Moto-X.

A problem with doing this on an Echo is that a Google Pixel has quite a bit of local processing power. I expect the trigger pre-processing on the Echo is fairly limited. It's also intended to be a shared device.

I also don't know how big a problem any of this is. Sure, it could be an issue but the fact that there are news stories about individual cases implies it's not rampant.

One thing I hate is when I say 'OK, Google' and my watch, phone and tablet all try and respond! I wish it was possible to customise the trigger phrase between devices in some standard way, e.g. 'OK, Watch', 'OK, Phone', or a shout-out to Radiohead with 'OK, Computer' and maybe even something like automatically recognising 'OK, ${HOSTNAME_OR_BLUETOOTH_IDENTIFIER}'...

Assuming that you use the same account on each. They should just decide between them which has better clarity and respond accordingly.

I have the opposite problem re: what voice I use. When I say it "normally" the phone doesn't respond. Then, I say it in my "WTF why don't you understand" voice and it responds instantly.

I never remember to start off being angry at my phone, so it always takes me two tries.

These are all becoming my new mic check phrases by the way. One two, One two is done.

Just because you can do a thing, does not mean you should do that thing.

If something has harmful or annoying consequences, especially to people you don't want to piss off, doing that thing by accident really is a blunder no matter how much legal right you may have to do it.

(Also known as "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose".)

> If something has harmful or annoying consequences...

You blame the person who built the thing to have harmful and annoying consequences. The one who made the blunder here is Amazon.

Freedom of speech protects you from government persecution. Nothing to do with whether you thought through what you were going to say or not.

If Amazon etc have zero security that's their problem not mine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_recognition is hardly a new thing. Further, if Amazon get's 200,000 orders for a doll house in the same second should be able to detect that as a mistake.

I am not saying you can or cannot do what the TV anchor did. But you confused freedom of speech with this issue.

I had a coworker in college who executed a fork bomb on a production server. His excuse was that protecting from fork bombs is not his job and should have already been done by the admins. He was obviously fired on the spot. Just because you can, doesn't always imply that you should.

Having freedom of speech, or any other freedom does not mean freedom from consequences.

For example you have the freedom of speech to call your boss an asshole, your boss has the freedom of association to end your association with his/her business aka fire your ass.

Your boss can not violate your freedom of speech by preventing you from speaking in the manner you choose, but you can not violate your bosses freedom of association by forcing him/her to providing you with a job...

In the case of the fork bomb, that is neither a Freedom of Speech or Freedom of Association issue,

Employees in most business are required to treat company property with respect and care for BUSINESS PURPOSES ONLY, launching a fork bomb has no business value and is thus using company resources in a non-business purpose which is prohibited. Just like running a bit coin miner would be a firing offense.

You can put a passcode on it. I've got mine set so that I have to also say my passcode in order for it to register, easy peasy

I'm more arguing that Amazon, Google and any other companies that produce/use voice activated systems shouldn't limit my ability to say what I want to - whether it's broadcast or not. I'm not arguing against the idea that there are things I shouldn't say or that might actually be illegal despite my free speech rights (the proverbial yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is a perfect example).

One side note is that I hope this doesn't become the "include no matter what" feature we've seen with IoT, etc. Imagine voice activation in an airliner cockpit - a terrorist walks to the forward lavatory and yells "dive and disable all controls". (yes ... it's very implausible but I predict there's at least one case where someone doesn't think through all the ramifications of their voice interface).

>>Freedom of speech protects you from government persecution.

Sorry no, in the US the 1st amendment protects you from government persecution, in other nations other laws protect your freedom of speech from government persecution

However this idea that "freedom of speech" is only about government is dangerous to the idea of freedom of speech. While protecting against government censorship is very important, protecting against other forms of censorship are also important.

Somebody please channel George Carlin.

Edit: i was wrong

That's not the impression I got from the article. He was just paraphrasing the little girl, saying "Alexa ordered me a dollhouse", which coincidentally sounds like "Alexa, order me a dollhouse".

you're right, i misinterpreted

Freedom of speech doesn't make it legal to order things to someone else's account. That's fraud.

My friend's name is Alexis, we basically turn off Alexa when she's over. Now, what if Alexis is helping me pick out a doll house for my daughter and I say Alexis, Order me a dollhouse?

Now let's say this is a biopic that happens to be playing on your TV? All true events, and if you enabled purchasing directly from your Echo without safeguards you'll get an attempt to purchase a dollhouse. None of this is fraud, none of this is intentional. These are all shortcomings with where we're at.

Now if I ran an advertisement that said "Alexa, order me a SuperafunTime My Brand Dollhouse"- I should be slapped with whatever the law allows.

I'm not a lawyer, but wouldn't it require intent? It's not like the TV station is profiting from people receiving dollhouses.

At most there's some form of tenuous indirect profit, but seeing as there's a backlash I doubt doing this was their intent.

Also not a lawyer, but isn't that where gross negligence picks up the slack?

Yeah, like publishing an unsecured interface for executing purchases? Or installing one on your phone?

You're absolutely right, Amazon did commit fraud by not confirming that the person doing the ordering is the owner of the account. They should be held liable for the result.

What? I'd be willing to bet the T&Cs have a section along the lines of "Amazon is not liable for accidental purchases made by the user, minors, exceptionally realistic sounding parrots, or other unauthorized persons that are in the presence of the device with the permission of the owner."

In other words, when you stick an automated device in your home and give it permission to spend your money, you should probably exercise a bit of caution operating it. In the same way, credit card companies are not charged with fraud when little Timmy uses his Mother's Visa card to buy a few hundredweight of gobstoppers...

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