Amazon Is Poorly Vetting Alexa's User-Submitted Answers (venturebeat.com) 11
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, and Cortana can answer all sorts of questions that pop into users' heads, and they're improving every day. But what happens when a company like Amazon decides to crowdsource answers to fill gaps in its platform's knowledge? The result can range from amusing and perplexing to concerning. Alexa Answers allows any Amazon customer to submit responses to unanswered questions. When the web service launched in general availability a few weeks ago, Amazon gave assurances that submissions would be policed through a combination of automatic and manual review. But an analysis of public Alexa Answers data conducted by VentureBeat shows that untrue, potentially sponsored, and offensive questions and answers are accepted and served to the over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices sold to date.
We've asked Amazon for more information about how Alexa Answers works, but the company has so far been cagey about the details. It's unclear why some questions designated "live" on the Alexa Answers dashboard are served to Alexa users while others aren't. In our testing, most questions and answers worked when we tried them, regardless of their status. Some questions and answers we submitted to Amazon during our investigation have since been removed, and we expect that at least some of the examples [mentioned in the article] will be, too. When contacted for comment, an Amazon spokesperson said: "High quality answers are important to us, and this is something we take seriously -- we will continue to evolve Alexa Answers."
We've asked Amazon for more information about how Alexa Answers works, but the company has so far been cagey about the details. It's unclear why some questions designated "live" on the Alexa Answers dashboard are served to Alexa users while others aren't. In our testing, most questions and answers worked when we tried them, regardless of their status. Some questions and answers we submitted to Amazon during our investigation have since been removed, and we expect that at least some of the examples [mentioned in the article] will be, too. When contacted for comment, an Amazon spokesperson said: "High quality answers are important to us, and this is something we take seriously -- we will continue to evolve Alexa Answers."
Same old same old (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Because there's normally a crowed based indicator of reputation of the poster. Whereas it's not the best way to assure expertise in a specific topic it seams to give readers a pretty good indication of past habits of the poster.
The problem is that users automatically assume responses from Alexa are all of high quality. Really, the problem is that the majority of users have no idea about the necessity of checking and verifying the expertise, authority or trustworthiness of the publisher.
Instead of the massiv
Speeding Ticket (Score:2)
Seems like they published first, then checked the results... batting out of order, Amazon.
"Cow farts theory"!? (Score:2)
Amazon Q&A? (Score:3)
How about they fix the "answers" on Amazon itself first?
"Does this product perform Y function?"
A1: I dunno, I got this for someone else
A2: I never opened it
A3: I ordered the wrong color
A4: It has function Z!
Not that shocked (Score:2)
Bout 3 seconds till 4chan gets ahold of this (Score:2)
could the answers been rigged (Score:2)
I wonder how many answers were given by reporters in order to create this story :-)
seriously, if wiki cannot stop the abuse, what makes amazon think they can.
And nobody saw this coming (Score:1)
n/t
Oh sure, you can trust the entire Internet (Score:2)
And what made Amazon think this was a good idea? This is just asking for abuse. Propaganda machines, internet :\
trolls, hate groups, religious fanatics, flat earthers. I would think that Amazon would be wise to all of this