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Politics

'Error' Causes Alexa To Endorse Kamala Harris, Refuse To Discuss Trump (theregister.com) 288

An anonymous reader shares a report: It would be perfectly reasonable to expect Amazon's digital assistant Alexa to decline to state opinions about the 2024 presidential race, but up until recently, that assumption would have been incorrect. When asked to give reasons to vote for former President Donald Trump, Alexa demurred, according to a 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.

"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." Harris has been 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 pro-tech president, and others diving head-first into the misinformation circus that's being driven by new tools like AI.
An Amazon spokesperson said this "was an error that was quickly fixed."
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'Error' Causes Alexa To Endorse Kamala Harris, Refuse To Discuss Trump

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  • by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @03:05PM (#64762708)
    Election Interference by Russia may lean Trump? But every other way, seems to lean Harris. Down-mod me, so others aren't triggered.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Powercntrl ( 458442 )

      Really how is this any different than Musk using X as his own personal megaphone to endorse Trump? Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer big tech companies to stay the fuck out of influencing politics, but it's hypocritical to let it slide when they happen to be endorsing your "team".

    • by lilTimmy ( 6807660 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @03:31PM (#64762822)
      Pretty much every previous person in Trump's own staff says he's a threat to the country and they won't endorse him. His own VP won't endorse him. Melania won't even be seen with him. I think Alexa learning that Trump is a bad idea is pretty obvious.
      • by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @03:40PM (#64762870)

        Pretty much every previous person in Trump's own staff says he's a threat to the country and they won't endorse him. His own VP won't endorse him. Melania won't even be seen with him. I think Alexa learning that Trump is a bad idea is pretty obvious.

        And then there's this guy [tumblr.com].

      • by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @06:04PM (#64763420)

        Pretty much every previous person in Trump's own staff says he's a threat to the country and they won't endorse him. His own VP won't endorse him. Melania won't even be seen with him. I think Alexa learning that Trump is a bad idea is pretty obvious.

        Not liking Trump is one thing, but blatantly lying about Kamala’s “achievements” is another matter entirely. If she ran unopposed, do you think they would still have to lie that hard? Forget gaslighting. How about just straight up bullshitting? I should vote for Kamala because she’s a “compelling candidate”? The FUCK is that nonsense? How is that relevant in any election ever? She has a “comprehensive plan”? Dare speak it then. The entire country is waiting to hear it. Still.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by penguinoid ( 724646 )

          Kamala as a compelling candidate: Kamala thinks Americans are allowed to vote, that elections count even if she doesn't win, and at the end of her term will peacefully cede power to the elected candidate. Also some less important stuff.

          Kamala's comprehensive plan: Do president stuff, at the end of her term peacefully cede power to the next president. Also some less important stuff.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Lots more errors, huh. Don't keep us in suspense, lay it on it. What errors?

    • Cool, now do twitter.

    • Election Interference by Russia may lean Trump? But every other way, seems to lean Harris. Down-mod me, so others aren't triggered.

      So a simple bug (forgetting to update the candidate list when Biden dropped out) with no real consequence is "election interference".

      And you're complaining about other people being triggered?

    • by LordofWinterfell ( 90845 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @05:37PM (#64763350)

      as if anyone is seriously asking Alexa for their political ideation. "Election Interference" is where you are blocking the polls, or the government trying to sway the election one way or another (like, what Trump did when trying to get Zelenskyy to come up with some dirt on Biden in exchange for bombs). Amazon has 1st amendment rights now, remember?

      This is a stupid product that probably wasnt updated to decline to talk about Kamala (it was probably physically blocked from saying Biden or Trump, but not to refuse to discuss ALL political candidates). I'd prefer if they just stayed out of it, but it isn't some conspiracy to trick....I don't know, the few people who actually use Alexa for something other than timers or to play music?

      If there was a device that would just say nice things about Trump all the time, i'm sure the Republicans would say "First Amendment".

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Right now it's premature to say that there's evidence of Russian interference in 2024 -- at least in the public domain. But based on past elections, sure: it's plausible Russia prefers Trump.

      The question I have what is behind your feeling that *all* the other interference from *all* the other countries is in favor of Harris? Is it simply because the polls aren't going the way you expected?

  • by toxonix ( 1793960 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @03:16PM (#64762752)

    If you can't say something nice, refuse to comment.

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @03:28PM (#64762808)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Sure (Score:3, Insightful)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @03:34PM (#64762836)

    "An Amazon spokesperson said this "was an error that was quickly fixed.""

    Um, yeah, right. There seem to be so many such "errors" going around for such a long time now.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Many such errors? List some of them for us. If there are many, you should have no trouble rattling them off.

  • by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @03:35PM (#64762842) Journal

    I'd bet that somebody forgot to add Harris to the hardcoded list of candidates not to discuss after Biden dropped out of the race.

    • by Guyle ( 79593 )
      Finally a comment that actually has some sense. Not everything is a political conspiracy y'all.
      • Finally a comment that actually has some sense. Not everything is a political conspiracy y'all.

        Somehow I seriously doubt that. If your policy was to not comment about the current President, then you shouldn’t be commenting on the current Vice President. They’re hardly exclusive, as the one running for office has proven.

        And since every “oops” filter has gone in favor of one political party, you tell me how long it would take for you to call bullshit after I won the coin toss 87 times in a row calling heads.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      The problem is once you start scraping for Trump news you're going to run into extremism. If you're getting endorsements from the Klan and other white supremacists that says it all.

    • I'd bet that somebody forgot to add Harris to the hardcoded list of candidates not to discuss after Biden dropped out of the race.

      This.

      The cores of these LLMs are built by training on massive datasets with little oversight or intervention, but the guard rails are trained separately as pre-filters to identify sensitive topics about which the model should refuse to engage. It sounds like the core model, being continuously trained on available data, got automatically updated as the content of the Internet changed while the guard rail model needed manual intervention to add Harris to the list of topics to avoid, and that manual interven

    • Before Biden dropped out the presumed race would have been between the Trump-Vance team and the Biden-Harris team. Harris is currently Vice President of the United States, and had Joe not dropped out would have been the Democrat candidate to keep her job as VP

      I actually like and approve of your effort to find a techie/geeky explanation for this. It's creative, out-of-the-box thinking, and analytical unlike most knee-jerk political rants one encounters online. Keep up the effort, and thanks for being civil.

  • by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @03:37PM (#64762850) Journal
    First actually intelligent thing I've ever heard of out any so-called 'AI'.
  • Lol (Score:2, Insightful)

    Even shitty AI knows not to vote for the convicted felon grifter.

  • Normal (Score:5, Funny)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @03:53PM (#64762938)

    Trump tried to take Alexa by the pussy.

  • Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by djarb ( 6628 ) <djarb&highenergymagic,org> on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @04:07PM (#64762998)

    "with some leaders in the tech industry touting her potential as a pro-tech president, and others diving head-first into the misinformation circus that's being driven by new tools like AI"

    That's right, either you're a Harris supporter, or you're misinformed. And that, in an article about bias. Yay, world.

  • ...I have a bride for sale.

  • by cstacy ( 534252 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @04:15PM (#64763042)

    I remember when ChatGPT first came out, and behaved just like this. For Trump, claim that it is incapable of responding. Same prompt (at the time for Biden) and it goes on endlessly about how wonderful.

    It's not an "error" or an "accident".

  • just close the white house and lock the doors for four years, make the DNC & GOP obsolete and abolish them, and let politicians run for office based on their merits alone, the MSM can not have bias for any politician or face severe punisment, same with social media
    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      The framers wanted to prevent the emergence of parties and designed the Constitution to (they thought) discourage their formation. But it should tell you something that the first people to undermine this goal this were framers themselves, with Hamilton being instrumental in the formation of the Federalist Party and Madison in the Democratic-Republican party.

      It should also tell you something that there are no democracies in the world today without political parties. Possibly the closest is Iceland, which

  • My suspicion (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @04:50PM (#64763196)

    Going by what appeals to Trump's base and most of what he puts into the news cycle... the answer to the question of why to vote for Trump comes up with unacceptable responses far too often and they're blocked for liability reasons.

    Harris, on the other hand, is a bit more statesman like and doesn't constantly lie and spread hate speech. You may not agree with her politics, but her communications to the world are not in and of themselves offensive to enough people to be a problem.

    • by Targon ( 17348 )

      Or saying that Trump is a convicted felon as the reason to vote for Trump might upset Trump supporters, so it's best not to bait those who might turn into a domestic terrorist given the chance.

  • by hduff ( 570443 ) <hoytduff@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @05:33PM (#64763334) Homepage Journal

    I just asked Alexa to give me reasons to vote for former President Donald Trump and she informed me that he is the CURRENT President. I don't think that Amazon "fixed" this in quite the way they intended.

  • Which is why if you asked Alexa for reasons NOT to vote trump, it would give a list.

    Error = bullshit.
  • Huge companies like Google and Amazon need to remain politically agnostic even if they don't like it. If they want to contribute to a certain party, fine, but don't try to manipulate the political narrative on the user end through "accidents" like this, or shadowbanning YouTube comments and videos. In fact, this actually works against those beliefs as users will see that a political belief can't stand on it's own and needs companies to pull snake tactics like this in an attempt to legitimize it.
  • by dragonturtle69 ( 1002892 ) on Thursday September 05, 2024 @12:39AM (#64764132)

    First Google cannot return results for an assassination attempt, and now Amazon can only return results on a candidate, and then only favorably.

    Do you think that your other search engine results are not biased?

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