Witch? Wires. Wednesday.

Witch? Wires Wednesday.

Over the past few years people have been becoming more and more accepting of technology in their lives. The purchase of devices like Amazon’s Alexa have been extremely popular lately, with everyone. From business, to start ups, to home owners. Lots of people have jumped on the Alexa Bandwagon and have accepted “her” full heartedly into their homes and offices.

But lately she’s been acting up, for seemingly no reason, the device called Alexa will just start laughing at people in their homes or office, and it’s freaking them out. Justifiably so.

Amazon says this is due to Alexa “Mishearing” commands and interpreting them for “Alexa laugh”...And has said they are working on changing that command. Which means that they acknowledge that this is indeed a legitimate issue, and that’s creepy enough. There’s also another problem with this “explanation”.

... “Alexa turn on/ off the lights” sounds nothing like “Alexa laugh” and other people are claiming she just starts laughing for absolutely no reason. They didn’t even utter a word, she’ll just start cackling like some evil witch, out of no where...

And the creepiest claim made by far was from a “Kamo Boomin” on Twitter in which he said the following....

“Holy shit, i almost forgot. So we got home last night and, totally unprompted, our Amazon Echo/Alexa started talking. And then i realized it was listing off local cemeteries and funeral homes??? What the F***, dude”

How many people have been affected by some form of this “Glitch” in Alexa’s system? And what else has “She” done to people? Besides laugh at them and read off names of funeral homes? Which is only kind of creepy! :P

Right now Amazon’s Alexa is acting a little to much like Skynet... You know, just testing the field. Seeing how much “she” can get away with before going “Live”... Or to quote CNN...

“Of course, when voice assistants start acting on their own, it also raises concerns about what artificial intelligence might be capable of. But it's unlikely that Alexa has become sentient and is intentionally frightening users with the laughs. (Probably.)”

Doesn’t that word probably just give you all sorts of comfort!? Especially when it’s a news organization saying it.....

Most people accepted devices like Alexa without question, they saw it as an assistant that would simply make life easier.

However, some people have started to question if having these devices is actually a good idea, and if there isn’t another purpose to Alexa being in your home and office...You know, after it laughed at them and gave them suggestions for where to be buried...

This has just solidified my position that when it comes to this A.I. stuff we are playing with fire. And you can only play with fire for so long before you get burned...

If you’re considering getting one of these “Assistants” consider the fact that it might want to bury you! :P

Here’s something I worked on Today. Got out the Prisma markers and went to work on some different paper. Some Bristol paper. Really smooth, really thick. Eats that alcohol based ink nicely. Felt god to mess around with some different things.

Enjoy! I was taking some inspiration from an old piece of mine. Let me know what you think.

Happy Wednesday Everyone.

Sincerely, Bret Frick.