Who, Indeed?

March 14, 2017 4:17 PM

Many people, when presented with a speech-driven software agent, are tempted to ask the big questions, to see how smart the system actually is. For example, "Who poop?" The answer provided by Amazon's Alexa may suprise you!
posted by murphy slaw (27 comments total)

Sir Patrick Stewart.
posted by kewb at 4:19 PM on March 14, 2017 [5 favorites]

i see that nobody who writes for The New Yorker is on that list
posted by indubitable at 4:29 PM on March 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

May have been patched. I can't get any response other than "I'd rather not answer that".
posted by BrandonW at 4:31 PM on March 14, 2017 [4 favorites]

Ditto.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:32 PM on March 14, 2017

Yeah, mine also doesn't want to answer it. You can still ask it to roll one hundred dice though.
posted by Pyry at 4:32 PM on March 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

Everybody.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 4:41 PM on March 14, 2017 [4 favorites]

Previously on MetaFilter.
posted by Wordshore at 4:47 PM on March 14, 2017

I think more whimsical search queries should have a soundtrack of someone doing the dishes.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:47 PM on March 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

Whoop whoop!
Who poop?
Hugh ... ? Pooh ...?
Hoop, you:
Hew Pu!
Whew. (Pee-ew!).
posted by the quidnunc kid at 4:48 PM on March 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

After the next patch it'll just order this handy reference book for you.
posted by traveler_ at 4:58 PM on March 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

Who poop, thou ask'st, in these bad days, my mind?
posted by en forme de poire at 5:21 PM on March 14, 2017

As for the search itself, it sounds like, specifically, British children need to be reminded that their monarchs poop.
posted by en forme de poire at 5:23 PM on March 14, 2017

Ask not who poop?
The British Monarchy poops for thee.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:25 PM on March 14, 2017 [4 favorites]

The AWS Alexa division runs software developer promotions called "Alexa Skills Challenge" and seemed pretty enthusiastic about pushing through their certification system pretty much any clever or cute enhancement that was functional and not outright illegal/offensive. The "Who poops" question may have been one of those.
posted by sammyo at 5:27 PM on March 14, 2017

...including Steve Ballmer, Florence Nightingale, and Nietzsche

Steve Ballmer, Florence Nightingale, and Nietzsche walk into a bar...
and ask where the restrooms are
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:43 PM on March 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

OMG! I have been meaning to do an AskMe on this. Only I found this by accidentally asking 'What die?"
I seem to get the same list of names.
Link
posted by hot_monster at 6:21 PM on March 14, 2017 [3 favorites]

You can still ask it to roll one hundred dice though.

Oh gosh! So you can.
I just asked mine to roll 100 100 sided dice.
This will confuse the toddler. (Who mainly plays hide and seek with Alexa by asking it to count to 10, and then hiding from it).

It's still telling me the dice results....
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 6:24 PM on March 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

Twas I!
posted by evidenceofabsence at 7:50 PM on March 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

Nobody asked "Who farted?"
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:52 PM on March 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

The AWS Alexa division runs software developer promotions called "Alexa Skills Challenge" and seemed pretty enthusiastic about pushing through their certification system pretty much any clever or cute enhancement that was functional and not outright illegal/offensive. The "Who poops" question may have been one of those.

I think that's unlikely. Third party Alexa "skills" have to be activated with an invocation name, eg "Alexa, ask Fart Detective who poop" would invoke the "Fart Detective" skill to ask that question.

(There are some 3P skills that can be launched with a different format -- for example, you can play Jeopardy with "Alexa, play Jeopardy", but I think these are close corporate partnerships.)

Anything else Alexa can do is most likely specifically provided by Amazon. I suspect this was one of the many Alexa easter eggs that got a bit more attention than expected and was just off-color enough for some corporate image control.

That's my guess, anyway, as someone who's developed some Alexa skills.
posted by jammer at 8:09 PM on March 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

Oh, one more thing, not of much consequence, but a matter of form: Alexa is not an Amazon Web Services product, it is part of the "Amazon" retail umbrella. They try to maintain a fairly solid boundary between the divisions. However, the speech recognition and conversation technology that it uses is available as an AWS service named Amazon Lex.
posted by jammer at 8:18 PM on March 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

Nobody asked "Who farted?"

That's never a question, rather a confession.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:13 AM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

A: Old Rear Admirals poop; modern Rear Admirals bridge.
posted by rongorongo at 3:50 AM on March 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

As a quick follow-up: Now that I'm fully wake and not slightly tipsy, I went back to read the skills invocation document and it looks like "play" can be used with an invocation name to launch a skill that is properly configured. So my example of "Alexa, play Jeopardy" would be a perfectly standard way to launch a skill called "Jeopardy".
posted by jammer at 8:00 AM on March 15, 2017

I got pretty annoyed that Alexa was not giving me any information I was requesting, so I tossed a dismissive 'fuck you alexa how much is that doggie in the window?'

Yeah. We're back on speaking terms. :)
posted by ezust at 8:04 AM on March 15, 2017

I like asking Alexa to recite π to 1000 digits.
posted by slogger at 1:54 PM on March 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

I just tried asking what the first 20000 digits of pi are.
It's currently reading out lots of numbers...
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 5:33 PM on March 16, 2017