Connected technologies are invading our lives more and more fully with each passing day. We may not even notice how natural it\u2019s become to ask Siri or Alexa or Google to interpret more of our human experience, and expect our cars to respond to the rules of the road fast enough to keep our hides intact. Some of us are still bothered by technologies such as public cameras feeding images to facial recognition software, but plenty aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n
At this point, it\u2019s easy to laugh at a lot of AI failures because on balance they\u2019re mostly funny (just forget about the potential for fatal outcomes). Well, we think as the machines march on, and as malware continues to evolve, that will shift. While it\u2019s still fun, we took a look at some other AI failures.<\/p>\n
A classic example: A news program aired in California early this year set off something of a chain reaction. It was an AI mishap actually based on another AI mishap. Basically, reporting about Amazon Echo mistakenly ordering a dollhouse caused a bunch of Amazon Echos (which were, as usual, attentively listening to everything and not distinguishing the voice of their owner from other voices) to mistakenly order a bunch of dollhouses. Maybe don\u2019t play this clip at home.<\/p>\n
Burger King attempted to exploit the same bug and used their ads to engage viewers\u2019 voice-activated assistants. In a way, they succeeded. The real problem was a failure to anticipate human behavior: By activating a search for the iconic Whopper on collaborative site Wikipedia using Google Home, the fast-food giant all but assured users would mess with the Whopper entry. Which they did<\/a>.
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