[toss1]

Of course we all want children to be as equipped as possible "to listen critically to strangers, and ... to differentiate good ideas from dangerous ones"

THAT IN NO WAY LETS MANUFACTURERS AND SELLERS OF PRODUCTS OFF THE HOOK !!

If you want to make money selling or providing products to consumers, and especially to children, IT IS YOUR JOB #1 TO MAKE THEM INHERENTLY SAFE.

If you cannot make it inherently safe, it is not ready to sell. Period

Stop attempting to insert some defenses you think children should have against bad advice and dangerous products -- it is utterly irrelevant.

The fact that the mom was there and turned it into a learning event was PURE DUMB LUCK. They got lucky this time. They'd better damn well fix it solidly or pull the product.

The fact that this is even a question in a modern society is mind-boggling.

[dwringer]

Perhaps I should have made clear that I agree Amazon has some responsibility here in what kinds of things go onto their platform, but to me it seems like a problem with no obvious solution. Particularly as we move toward more dynamic digital assistants that scrape content directly from the internet, I think we will run into more situations like this. To me it just seems like the safest course would be to treat Alexa and other digital assistants more like a courier than a family friend. Parents let deliveries into the house all the time, but shouldn't leave children alone with the delivery person. I'd expect a courier service to fire their couriers (and take appropriate legal action) if they demonstrated problematic behavior toward children on their route, just as I expect Amazon to take steps to prevent what happened here with Alexa, but I worry that the inherent potential for danger is ever present.

[toss1]

Nice, but how is anyone to not leave children alone with an always-on device?

The solution is simple.

If the system is not yet designed, built,& tested to a sufficiently high standard that crap like this will not happen, then you pull it from the market. Period.

It is not like this feature is critical, or even a rounding error on any Amazon data sheet. They have no right to run such an inherently dangerous POS into customers' houses.

And, perhaps vendors will decide to stop using the unfiltered cesspool of the Internet as a free data source to productize. It is a stupid short-cut.