Alexa, why is my education so expensive?
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A university is outfitting living spaces with thousands of Echo Dots | TechCrunch
Soon, Saint Louis University students won’t be able to avoid Amazon’s near ubiquitous smart speakers. The university announced this week a plan to outfit
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@PJH said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
A university is outfitting living spaces with thousands of Echo Dots
This system is not tied to individual accounts and does not maintain any personal information for any of our users, so all use currently is anonymous.
An interesting choice of word.
Additionally, neither Alexa nor the Alexa for Business management system maintains recordings of any questions that are asked.
What about other Amazon entities?
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@PJH So, one shared account for all the university rooms? That will learn from all the questions from all students and tailors its answers accordingly?
How long before some smart asses ask a lot of stupidly-worded questions so that whenever someone asks, I don't know, what's the weather, the answer is something rude?
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@remi IME Alexa ignores or otherwise refuses to give an answer (other than something like "I don't know that") rude sorts of stuff.
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@boomzilla What about causing it to redirect to some funny/offensive website when asking it to go e.g. to the website of the university? Give the opening hours of the campus' pub when asking for the time of whatever lecture? Ask it for directions to go to the library and be redirected on a path which looks like a dong drawn on a map? Rick roll anyone who asks for music (or music of a specific type)?
No idea how you'd get it to do any of those, but trust a campus full of students to find a way.
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Cool, now a hacker can listen to absolutely everything. Too bad they don't have cameras, you could have a real time 3D model of inside the building.
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@remi I have no idea, but I get the impression that the sort of stuff you're talking about is controlled by Amazon, not any sort of automated machine learning thing.
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@boomzilla I thought (well, more like I expected) Alexa was learning from your queries so it can e.g. offer you music more to your taste, but TBH I never really considered it seriously. I'm probably wrong.
Which is the same, honestly, because I think my ideas would have made nice pranks.
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@remi that's possible. I haven't used that sort of thing enough, though I just heard a story from my in-laws about asking to play The Eagles and instead of music getting lectured about the football team from Philadelphia. Multiple times.
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@boomzilla it's likely using some form of personalisation, at least based on geographical areas but also maybe your interests (asking "what time is the match tonight?", assuming that works, would likely look at where you are and probably also at which sport you've manifested an interest for), but that might not really be tied that strongly to your individual profile.
If that's the case, the sheer number of devices in the same location and with people with the same interests is likely to skew the results, but probably no worse than any Google search would be.
The more I think about it, the less likely my prank ideas are. Oh well.
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Personally, I favour the plan proposed at the end of the article: unplug it, stick it in a drawer, and turn it in at the end of the year. Problem solved.
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@remi said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
it's likely using some form of personalisation,
Yeah, I was more thinking about the sort of stuff that happened with the MS nazi chatbot, and I don't think Alexa is particularly vulnerable to that.
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The university's site says there's a "minimal charge for losing or damaging your Dot". I wonder if that charge will be more than students can earn selling it on eBay.
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@boomzilla said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
I just heard a story from my in-laws about asking to play The Eagles and instead of music getting lectured about the football team from Philadelphia.
Not sure who to side with here...
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@PJH said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
This system is not tied to individual accounts and does not maintain any personal information for any of our users, so all use currently is anonymous.
Bull fucking shit from all the asses.
Alexa, what time is the campus pub open until?
10pm.
What about tomorrow?
6pm on Sundays.
Wait, how did you know the context of my follow up question if you don't store previous data, and have anonymized all users?
.... please lick the light socket. I promise the electricity is off.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
Bull fucking shit from all the asses.
Donkeys don't produce bull shit, they produce donkey shit.
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@pie_flavor I was hoping to find some source that would give me some insight into whether that's pretty much horse shit. Instead, here's this:
fucking (spoiler)
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@Gribnit Dude, fucking spoiler that.
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@pie_flavor only since you asked with genuine discomfort
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@Gribnit Me, I have none. But all NSFW stuff should be spoilered in case someone's boss walks by. Or teacher in my case.
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@pie_flavor That is work. you think those folks were doing that for fun?
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@Gribnit said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
fucking (spoiler)
haha made you look
How boring. No close ups, no fake grunting, fucking amateurs....
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@PJH said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
Additionally, neither Alexa nor the Alexa for Business management system maintains recordings of any questions that are asked.
...huh?
I have one of those, and the Alexa smartphone app that goes with it (which you need to have in order to set up and configure Alexa) absolutely does keep track of your questions. I suppose if this is super
mode it may not keep recordings, but it definitely keeps transcripts of every question it thinks I asked, which I can go back and review later.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
fucking amateurs
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@pie_flavor said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
fucking amateurs
I'm told that the paid porn industry is suffering, mainly because of that very issue.
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@Benjamin-Hall Not my fault if the fucking amateurs are producing better content than the fucking professionals.
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@Atazhaia said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
@Benjamin-Hall Not my fault if the fucking amateurs are producing better content than the fucking professionals.
2/4 needs more fucking.
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@Gribnit said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
@Atazhaia said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
@Benjamin-Hall Not my fault if the fucking amateurs are producing better content than the fucking professionals.
2/4 needs more fucking.
Not my fucking fault if the fucking amateur
sfucks are fucking producing better fucking content than the fucking professionalsfuckers, fucker .Better?
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Fucking @Tsaukpaetra fuck, yeah
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@Jaloopa said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
Fucking @Tsaukpaetra fuck, yeah
One is glad to be of service.
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@dkf said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
service
The list thereof is fairly long.
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@anonymous234 said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
Cool, now a hacker can listen to absolutely everything. Too bad they don't have cameras, you could have a real time 3D model of inside the building.
They have microphones and speakers so you probably could still do that, just not in color.
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@masonwheeler said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
@PJH said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
Additionally, neither Alexa nor the Alexa for Business management system maintains recordings of any questions that are asked.
...huh?
I have one of those, and the Alexa smartphone app that goes with it (which you need to have in order to set up and configure Alexa) absolutely does keep track of your questions. I suppose if this is super
mode it may not keep recordings, but it definitely keeps transcripts of every question it thinks I asked, which I can go back and review later.Back when I actually used Alexa, the app let you listen to the recordings and confirm if they matched what it thought it heard.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
@Gribnit said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
@Atazhaia said in Alexa, why is my education so expensive?:
@Benjamin-Hall Not my fault if the fucking amateurs are producing better content than the fucking professionals.
2/4 needs more fucking.
Not my fucking fault if the fucking amateur
sfucks are fucking producing better fucking content than the fucking professionalsfuckers, fucker .Better?
remember as Bill Burr says to avoid sounding racist, always swear after the the description:
"That asian motherfucker" sounds a lot better "that that fucking asian" ...
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