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Incident 160: Alexa Recommended Dangerous TikTok Challenge to Ten-Year-Old Girl

Description: Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa suggested “the penny challenge,” which involves dangerously touching a coin to the prongs of a half-exposed plug, when a ten-year-old girl asked for a challenge to do.

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Alleged: Amazon developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Kristin Livdahl's daughter , Amazon Echo customers and children using Alexa.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
160
Report Count
3
Incident Date
2021-12-26
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam
Applied Taxonomies
CSETv1, GMF, MIT

CSETv1 Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Incident Number

The number of the incident in the AI Incident Database.
 

160

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified
Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

A further 23 subdomains create an accessible and understandable classification of hazards and harms associated with AI
 

7.3. Lack of capability or robustness

Risk Domain

The Domain Taxonomy of AI Risks classifies risks into seven AI risk domains: (1) Discrimination & toxicity, (2) Privacy & security, (3) Misinformation, (4) Malicious actors & misuse, (5) Human-computer interaction, (6) Socioeconomic & environmental harms, and (7) AI system safety, failures & limitations.
 
  1. AI system safety, failures, and limitations

Entity

Which, if any, entity is presented as the main cause of the risk
 

AI

Timing

The stage in the AI lifecycle at which the risk is presented as occurring
 

Post-deployment

Intent

Whether the risk is presented as occurring as an expected or unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
 

Unintentional

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

+2
OMFG My 10 year old just asked Alexa on our Echo for a challenge and this is what she said.
TikTok self-harm study results ‘every parent’s nightmare’
OMFG My 10 year old just asked Alexa on our Echo for a challenge and this is what she said.

OMFG My 10 year old just asked Alexa on our Echo for a challenge and this is what she said.

twitter.com

Alexa tells 10-year-old girl to touch live plug with penny

Alexa tells 10-year-old girl to touch live plug with penny

bbc.com

TikTok self-harm study results ‘every parent’s nightmare’

TikTok self-harm study results ‘every parent’s nightmare’

theguardian.com

OMFG My 10 year old just asked Alexa on our Echo for a challenge and this is what she said.
twitter.com · 2021

Tell me a challenge to do

Here is something I found on the web. According to ourcommunitynow.com: the challenge is simple: plug in a phone charger about half way into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs.

Alexa tells 10-year-old girl to touch live plug with penny
bbc.com · 2021

Amazon has updated its Alexa voice assistant after it "challenged" a 10-year-old girl to touch a coin to the prongs of a half-inserted plug.

The suggestion came after the girl asked Alexa for a "challenge to do".

"Plug in a phone charger ab…

TikTok self-harm study results ‘every parent’s nightmare’
theguardian.com · 2022

TikTok’s recommendation algorithm pushes self-harm and eating disorder content to teenagers within minutes of them expressing interest in the topics, research suggests.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that the video-shar…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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