'Jeopardy' Contestant Causes Chaotic Tech Issues For Viewers

don't name your kid Alexa

[LifeinAsia]

One more reason to turn off your wire tapping, er- smart home, device (or not get one in the first place) when watching TV [kfiam640.iheart.com].

[ronin]

That's hilarious - moreso, because the "answers" in Jeopardy are questions, so no wonder poor, dumb Alexa software thought it was being repeatedly addressed and asked questions.

I have heard it suggested - and this seems entirely sensible to me - that, even though "Alexa" is the official name of the sub-brand, individual households should have the facility to set their own custom wake-up word, rather than there being a single, hard-coded, non-alterable wake-up word. It's not clear to me why Amazon has never yet introduced this.

Side-note: I have also heard it suggested - and this seems even more sensible - that no matter how sophisticated our household robots and AIs become, we should never seek to anthropomorphise them. That is, they shouldn't look like humans or pets, nor should they be given human or pet names. Lest we forget they are circuitry and 1s and 0s and inadvertently attribute more to them than is good for our sense of what is real. (Given the supremacy of consumerist imperatives, I imagine that particular suggestion will never be given much consideration.)

[lucy24]

And it wouldn't hurt to default to a name that doesn’t already exist as a name--especially not one that spent a number of years in the top 100.

Analogously, I sometimes find myself wondering how it would have worked out if the real-life Siri’s parents had instead chosen to name her, say, Hjørdis.

[tangor]

Cute is as cute does ... something like ham radio "callsigns" might have been more appropriate! :)

On the other hand, folks melting down on always listening speakers should expect occasional glitches!