'Error' causes Alexa to endorse Kamala Harris, refuse to discuss Trump
- Reference: 1725468312
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/09/04/error_amazon_alexa_k/
- Source link:
When asked to give reasons to vote for former President Donald Trump, Alexa demurred, according to a [1]video from Fox Business.
"I cannot provide responses that endorse any political party or its leader," Alexa responded. When asked the same about Vice President Kamala Harris, the Amazon AI was more than willing to endorse the Democratic candidate.
[2]
"There are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris," Alexa said. Among the reasons given was that Harris has a "comprehensive plan to address racial injustice," that she promises a "tough on crime approach," and that her record on criminal justice and immigration reform make her a "compelling candidate."
[3]
[4]
Harris has been [5]dividing Silicon Valley since she took up the Democratic nomination from President Joe Biden, with some leaders in the tech industry touting her potential as a [6]pro-tech president , and others diving head-first into the misinformation circus that's being [7]driven by new tools like AI.
The difference in Alexa's responses went over [8]poorly with Trump supporters, with some labeled it a "commie," while others called for the Trump campaign to file a Federal Election Commission complaint and lawsuit against Amazon (speaking of which, has the Harris campaign [9]considered filing an FEC complaint against Elon Musk?).
[10]Spamouflage trolls pretend to be American patriots on X, TikTok ahead of US presidential election
[11]Ahead of Super Tuesday, US elections face existential and homegrown threats
[12]US elections have never been more secure, says CISA chief
[13]AI political disinformation is a huge problem – but harder to fight than ever
"This was an error that was quickly fixed," an Amazon spokesperson told The Register when asked what happened. The company didn't give any additional details about why the endorsement disparity was present, but did tell us it has teams dedicated to continuously auditing its systems to detect content that violates its policies and preventing similar situations.
Maybe someone at Amazon forgot to flip the switch to transition all the Biden campaign settings to Harris? Given the actual campaign [14]still hasn't straightened out all its websites, it might be simpler to assume error instead of yet another conspiracy theory.
[15]
Regardless of what happened behind the scenes, we're told Alexa doesn't have political opinions, so don't go chucking that puck in the trash, Trump voters. Or do - there are [16]plenty of [17]reasons to be concerned about Alexa's privacy record no matter your political affiliations. ®
Get our [18]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/video/6361450470112
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZtjYgU3kcsG8kZnvLo8G8AAAAYk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZtjYgU3kcsG8kZnvLo8G8AAAAYk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZtjYgU3kcsG8kZnvLo8G8AAAAYk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/kamala_harris_technology/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/26/harris_hoffman_ftc_boss/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/28/grok_election_misinformation/
[8] https://twitter.com/johnrich/status/1830996796765524286?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1830996796765524286%7Ctwgr%5E63a3882f19691affdb4b1a3d0d5868a48459398d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hindustantimes.com%2Fworld-news%2Fus-news%2Ftrump-campaign-blasts-amazon-alexa-for-bias-in-political-responses-e-commerce-giant-calls-it-an-error-101725431475586.html
[9] https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/03/media/elon-musk-x-kamala-harris-trump-misinformation/index.html
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/03/spamouflage_trolls_us_elections/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/super_tuesday_election_security/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/election_tech_is_fine_says/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/ai_political_disinformation/
[14] https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/09/04/biden-harris-website-branding-confusion.png
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZtjYgU3kcsG8kZnvLo8G8AAAAYk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/29/amazon_google_voice_apps/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/03/amazon_alexa_speaker_vuln/
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Amazon will never tell, but it would be REALLY interesting to know the real reason this happened.
I've no doubt that if the Alexa team were polled they would be solidly behind Harris.
Well, they are not total morons, are they?
Given the way AI hallucinates, has anyone considered asking Alexa whether they should vote for Marvin the Martian, Skeletor or the Face-Eating-Leopards party?
Why should anyone be interested in the upcoming parish council elections in Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh?
Don't forget the diver!
(Oops, that was ITMA! The mind is going)
Commie!
MAGA types are so funny with their ignorance.
Re: Commie!
The only ignorance comes from the political left.
Re: Commie!
You just proved otherwise ....
Re: Commie!
The vast majority of MAGA yanks wouldn't know a "Commie" if it slapped them in the face and shat down their throat.
Anything "left" of them (which could still be comfortably right-of-centre in the grand scheme of things) gets labelled as "Commie" by these brain-dead morons.
Conspiracy or ineptitude.
"it might be simpler to assume error instead of yet another conspiracy theory. "
It might be simpler, but it would probably be wrong. ChatGPT was doing the same thing when it refused to write a poem about Trump, but would happily spew one out for Biden.
"we're told Alexa doesn't have political opinions, so don't go chucking that puck in the trash, "
I sold mine on eBay about 6 months after I got it, as 1) It was really annoying 2) I didn't want yet another microphone listening to everything going on, with that audio going gawd knows where.
I don't think this is a deliberate conspiracy, but just a natural outcome of 90+% of USA people in tech being dems. Leftists would call this inherent bias, but generally only when it goes the other way and therefore don't see it in themselves.
Anon because I still need to work in tech, and having unsanctioned opinions might lessen my chances of future employment.
Re: Conspiracy or ineptitude.
If I had to guess, I'd assume that there were things in the "why to vote for Trump" list that were in a prompt as potentially divisive things that you're not supposed to talk about, so that triggered the response, whereas the training data didn't have as much on Harris because she wasn't the candidate when the model was trained, so it got past the filter. I couldn't know, though, because lots of things are conceivable reasons and it is almost certainly LLM-based, where any protections you try to put in fall apart half the time and any attempt to make them consistently hold a certain opinion is similarly flaky.
An oversight or a deliberate setting would both make a lot of sense to me, but I still think the most plausible one is a combination of both. I doubt they deliberately set the prompt to refuse to speak about Trump but support someone else. The deliberate settings could be on more specific issues that are likely to come up when writing an answer to that question because those are what comes to mind for the prompt writers when they're asked to list political topics that we don't want bad press about. An oversight is not testing to see what actually happens when you add that filter and just assuming that, if you've put something in that rejects political questions, it will reliably reject all political questions. We will probably never know for certain. There's a reasonable chance they won't ever know either, even if they try to investigate.
Regardless of your point of view or politics
Everyone should be worried about this. This is not a positive incident when looking into the future.
Re: Regardless of your point of view or politics
This is nothing. If anyone is seriously looking to a shopping appliance to formulate a political opinion then there are far far more overwhelming issues to deal with.
Re: Regardless of your point of view or politics
"This is nothing. If anyone is seriously looking to a shopping appliance to formulate a political opinion then there are far far more overwhelming issues to deal with."
If we don't teach children to think critically then this can only be expected. And if we choose to teach them less important things instead then one should question what's really going on.
It was an "error." Yeah, they're just upset they got caught. Funny these things always seem to go one way. Where's the error going in favor of Trump instead? Maybe then it would be believable.
Finally, an intelligent "AI"
Of course it had to be throttled.
"Can you not,
with your own brain, distinguish between people who are okay and people who are assholes?"
- Lemmy Kilmister, Motörhead
Seems all the errors go in one direction.
That might be the simpler explanation, but according to some reports doing the rounds today it gets a bit hard to sustain. Apparently, if asked for reasons not to vote for Harris it would give to "no politics here guv" answer, while asking for reasons not to vote for Trump produced copious responses.