Maybe robots aren’t as smart as we think they are.
A guy posted a video on YouTube showing how easy it is to trick Amazon’s personal assistant Alexa in a number guessing game.
The YouTuber, Norm Krumpe, asks his new Echo Show to pick a number between one and 1 million. The soothing voice on the other end agrees and asks its owners to make a guess. It would normally take all day to pick the correct number, but Krumpe has a plan: Confuse Alexa’s robot brain into spilling the beans.
How will he do this? By answering with a curveball: 3.2.
For a split second, it appeared Alexa was still in control, scoffing at his decimal number and asking for a whole number without skipping a beat. But inside, it was having a meltdown. The assistant then asked to “Please guess a whole number between zero and 545,387.”
Krumpe caught the oddly specific request and delivered the final blow, “Hmmm, 545,387.”
Ah, success.
Though the game was likely created by a third-party, this blunder goes to show that robots are only as smart as their creators.