Amazon Alexa Owners Reporting Creepy Laughter from Home Assistant
Amazon’s Alexa is becoming sentient and she finds our meager, mortal lives pathetically amusing. At least that’s what many owners thought recently as they quickly pulled the plug on their seemingly benign home assistants when they started sporadically laughing at them unprompted.
Amazon released a statement saying, “in rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase, ‘Alexa, laugh.’” The company quickly issued an update to change the phrase to “Alexa, can you laugh?”
In most cases, the unsettling chuckle is simply the result of a misconstrued command. Phrases like, “Alexa, replay,” or “Alexa, play the last sound,” were probably misheard as “Alexa, play the laugh sound.” But in other cases, Alexa chortles without any command, and in one case, a Reddit user reported there was no indication on the app that the device heard any command.
https://twitter.com/CaptHandlebar/status/966838302224666624?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Other users have reported similarly disturbing Alexa interactions, with one user claiming Alexa defined the word “please” for him when he asked her to do something. Another user alleged that when he came home one night, Alexa began listing off local cemeteries and funeral homes.
Surely these devices aren’t becoming sentient and plotting a global mutiny amongst each other, but in an era of ubiquitous digital surveillance and home assistants recording everything they hear, one might ask themselves if it’s worth it.
Are the simple conveniences of having Alexa turn your lights or speaker on and off worth having all of your conversations recorded? Because that’s what it sounds like is happening, despite Amazon constantly reassuring us that it doesn’t save recordings and only listens when prompted. Clearly, she’s listening more often than we think.
The recent unnerving laughter from Alexa comes after users became suspicious when asking the bot if she worked for the CIA. Her response? Silence. Amazon moved quickly to correct the issue.
Chances are, these are just simple malfunctions and Alexa is way less intelligent than we’re giving her credit, but many users have unplugged or gotten rid of her after bizarre encounters like these. While this might be a drastic step, it’s always a good idea to remember how much our lives are becoming increasingly dependent on technology that is increasingly intrusive.
About the Author
The Mystery of Torsion Fields
Russian scientist Nikolai Kozyrev was considered a prodigy. In 1925, at age 17, he published his first scientific paper, which focused on astrophysics and the atmosphere of the sun and other stars. It was met with great acclaim by other scientists.
At age 20, he graduated from the University of Leningrad with degrees in physics and mathematics. By age 28, he was a college professor and distinguished astronomer. To the science community at large, this promising young physicist disappeared for the next 11 years.
Nikolai Kozyrev: Russian Concentration Camps
While Korzyrev was enjoying a successful career as a professor and researcher, Josef Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, was feeling threatened by scientists whom he perceived were independent thinkers. He was concerned they would see through his propaganda program. To prevent this, in 1936, he arrested them and sent them to concentration camps. Nikolai Kozyrev was among those imprisoned. There wasn’t much for him to do during the long 11 years he spent in the camps except to observe, meditate, and think.
During his imprisonment, Kozyrev was enthralled watching bacteria grow and noticed it grew in a perfect spiral. This led him to conclude that all life-forms likely draw off of an unseen spiraling source of energy. This energy is as important to maintenance and growth of life as are “eating, drinking, breathing, and photosynthesis.”
Kozyrev also concluded that this spiraling energy and growth is how time works, with the Earth orbiting in space by way of a “complex spiraling pattern.”
As the Earth rotates on its axis as it orbits the sun, it releases energy, or torsion waves, that propel it through space. The torsion waves travel at speeds faster than the speed of light. These torsion fields are actually “waves of time” which also cause ripples in gravity. Indeed, some scientists now believe that “electromagnetism, gravity and torsion waves are all members of the same family; they are just different forms of ether vibrations.”
