In what could have been a potentially lethal challenge, Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, asked a 10-year-old girl to touch a live electrical plug with a penny.

The girl’s mother Kristin Livdahl, a US resident, tweeted about the incident on December 26, sharing a screenshot of the Alexa’s response via an Echo smart speaker to the girl’s question “tell me a challenge to do,” a BBC report said.

“The challenge is simple: Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs,” Alexa said.

OMFG My 10 year old just asked Alexa on our Echo for a challenge and this is what she said. pic.twitter.com/HgGgrLbdS8

— Kristin Livdahl (@klivdahl) December 26, 2021According to Livdahl, they were doing physical challenges from a physical education teacher on YouTube earlier. The child wanted another challenge when Alexa suggested she attempt this one it had “found on the web.”

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Alexa sourced the challenge from Our Community Now, an online news publication. When CNBC reached out to the news website for comment, they did not immediately respond to the request.

Known as ‘the penny challenge,’ the dangerous challenge had become popular a year ago when it was circulated on TikTok and other social media websites. The challenge is potentially lethal as metals are good conductors of electricity and inserting them into live socket may lead to electric shocks and fires.

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"I know you can lose fingers, hands, arms," BBC quoted Michael Clusker, station manager at a fire station, as telling The Press newspaper in 2020.

Since the report emerged, Amazon has fixed the error.

"As soon as we became aware of this error, we quickly fixed it, and will continue to advance our systems to help prevent similar responses in the future," an Amazon spokesperson told CNN in a statement.

According to experts, the incident is evidence of the lack of common sense in AI systems.

Also read: How far Artificial Intelligence has come, and what the future looks like

“No current AI is remotely close to understanding the everyday physical or psychological world,” CNBC quoted artificial intelligence expert Gary Marcus as saying. To get to the AI we can trust, fundamental advances need to be made in this field of study, he said.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)

First Published:Dec 30, 2021 5:52 PM IST