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Incident 33: Amazon Alexa Plays Loud Music when Owner is Away

Description: An Amazon Alexa, without instruction to do so, began playing loud music in the early morning while the homeowner was away leading to police breaking into their house to turn off the device.

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Alleged: Amazon developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Oliver Haberstroh and Neighbors.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
33
Report Count
4
Incident Date
2017-11-09
Editors
Sean McGregor
Applied Taxonomies
CSETv0, CSETv1, GMF, MIT

CSETv1 Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Incident Number

The number of the incident in the AI Incident Database.
 

33

CSETv0 Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Problem Nature

Indicates which, if any, of the following types of AI failure describe the incident: "Specification," i.e. the system's behavior did not align with the true intentions of its designer, operator, etc; "Robustness," i.e. the system operated unsafely because of features or changes in its environment, or in the inputs the system received; "Assurance," i.e. the system could not be adequately monitored or controlled during operation.
 

Unknown/unclear

Physical System

Where relevant, indicates whether the AI system(s) was embedded into or tightly associated with specific types of hardware.
 

Consumer device

Level of Autonomy

The degree to which the AI system(s) functions independently from human intervention. "High" means there is no human involved in the system action execution; "Medium" means the system generates a decision and a human oversees the resulting action; "low" means the system generates decision-support output and a human makes a decision and executes an action.
 

Medium

Nature of End User

"Expert" if users with special training or technical expertise were the ones meant to benefit from the AI system(s)’ operation; "Amateur" if the AI systems were primarily meant to benefit the general public or untrained users.
 

Amateur

Public Sector Deployment

"Yes" if the AI system(s) involved in the accident were being used by the public sector or for the administration of public goods (for example, public transportation). "No" if the system(s) were being used in the private sector or for commercial purposes (for example, a ride-sharing company), on the other.
 

Yes

Data Inputs

A brief description of the data that the AI system(s) used or were trained on.
 

environment audio, Alexa software, user requests

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

+3
Alexa switches on and decides to have a party so loud the police came
Top 5 AI Failures From 2017 Which Prove That ‘Perfect AI’ Is Still A Dream
Alexa switches on and decides to have a party so loud the police came

Alexa switches on and decides to have a party so loud the police came

mashable.com

Alexa, please cause the cops to raid my home

Alexa, please cause the cops to raid my home

theregister.co.uk

Audio spy Alexa now has a little pal called Dox

Audio spy Alexa now has a little pal called Dox

theregister.co.uk

Top 5 AI Failures From 2017 Which Prove That ‘Perfect AI’ Is Still A Dream

Top 5 AI Failures From 2017 Which Prove That ‘Perfect AI’ Is Still A Dream

analyticsindiamag.com

Alexa switches on and decides to have a party so loud the police came
mashable.com · 2017

The future belongs to AI-powered devices that will play music and party on their own when we're not there.

At least that's the takeaway from a curious/disturbing incident involving a German guy in Hamburg.

While home assistant devices like …

Alexa, please cause the cops to raid my home
theregister.co.uk · 2017

We all assume that intelligent devices will either serve our every need, or try to kill us, but what if they just want to party?

Well, it could work out pretty expensive as Oliver Haberstroh found out when his Amazon Alexa started its own e…

Audio spy Alexa now has a little pal called Dox
theregister.co.uk · 2017

Updated Amazon's audio surveillance personal assistant device, Alexa, has acquired an external battery pack called Dox.

The appropriately named portable energy store, made by lifestyle gadgetry firm Ninety7, does not (thankfully) do what it…

Top 5 AI Failures From 2017 Which Prove That ‘Perfect AI’ Is Still A Dream
analyticsindiamag.com · 2018

We have in the past seen instances such as the failure of Microsoft bot Tay, when it developed a tendency to come up with racist remarks. Within 24 hours of its existence and interaction with people, it starting sending offensive comments, …

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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By textual similarity

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Amazon Alexa Responding to Environmental Inputs

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Dec 2015 · 35 reports
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Dec 2016 · 16 reports
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