<story><title>Amazon’s Alexa assistant told a child to do a potentially lethal challenge</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/29/amazons-alexa-told-a-child-to-do-a-potentially-lethal-challenge.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>coldcode</author><text>When I was around 5-6 I wanted to know what would happen if I put a hairpin into a light socket. It seemed a reasonable experiment beforehand; after I picked myself up after flying across the room I learned a valuable lesson. Around the same time I tested whether Santa existed by putting out food; when no one ate it I assumed Santa was fake. Children are not very experienced at knowledge and thinking and often do things that confound adults. Giving them access to something they do not yet have the ability to understand or discern can be both useful (learning) and dangerous and it&amp;#x27;s up to parents and other adults to make sure it&amp;#x27;s not going to kill them, yet at the same time not completely stifle learning.&lt;p&gt;I could say I eventually became a programmer because I nearly fried myself doing a test...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cecilpl2</author><text>Around that same age I also tested whether Santa was in fact secretly my parents. I decided that Mall Santa would be the only person I told that I really wanted an RC car for Christmas, and I steadfastly refused my parents&amp;#x27; attempts to get me to tell them what I&amp;#x27;d asked for.&lt;p&gt;Lo and behold, Santa got me the RC car I so desperately wanted, solidifying my belief in him for a couple more years.&lt;p&gt;Turns out the real lesson, which I was too young to grasp, is that at the RC car display at Costco a 6-year-old cannot contain his obvious excitement in order to run a properly blinded experiment.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon’s Alexa assistant told a child to do a potentially lethal challenge</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/29/amazons-alexa-told-a-child-to-do-a-potentially-lethal-challenge.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>coldcode</author><text>When I was around 5-6 I wanted to know what would happen if I put a hairpin into a light socket. It seemed a reasonable experiment beforehand; after I picked myself up after flying across the room I learned a valuable lesson. Around the same time I tested whether Santa existed by putting out food; when no one ate it I assumed Santa was fake. Children are not very experienced at knowledge and thinking and often do things that confound adults. Giving them access to something they do not yet have the ability to understand or discern can be both useful (learning) and dangerous and it&amp;#x27;s up to parents and other adults to make sure it&amp;#x27;s not going to kill them, yet at the same time not completely stifle learning.&lt;p&gt;I could say I eventually became a programmer because I nearly fried myself doing a test...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dudleypippin</author><text>My daughter checked the existence of the tooth fairy by not telling us when she lost a tooth and putting it under her pillow.  The pride on her face when she informed of of the results of her experiment the next morning made my heart sing.</text></comment>