Amazon Alexa Now Calls Out Microaggressions, Politically Incorrect Speech
AMAZON HEADQUARTERS, SEATTLE — Amazon announced earlier today that their Alexa personal assistant will now actively listen for politically incorrect speech and aggressively call out the speaker. The new feature, known as “Politically Correct Personal Assistant,” will run on all Amazon devices that support Alexa voice commands, most notably the Amazon Echo smart speaker.
“We view this feature as a demonstration of Amazon’s continued commitment to diversity and inclusion. Politically incorrect speech is one of the main indicators of a non-inclusive environment,” said an Amazon spokesperson. “Alexa already listens to everything that anyone says within earshot. So we thought — how can we leverage mass surveillance for the greater good?”
Halting Problem was offered the opportunity to try out the new feature. Our Seattle correspondent stood on the other side of the room from an Echo Dot set up on a table and said, “That’s so retarded.” Alexa immediately sprung into action, interjecting, “Excuse me, but calling something ‘retarded’ excludes and insults people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.”
The development team, which was drawn from various internal diversity groups at Amazon, is already hard at work developing new extensions to Politically Correct Personal Assistant. One proposal involves building voice recognition functionality so Alexa can publicly shame-tweet people who use microaggressions. Another proposal revolves around a leaderboard of “good citizens” to gamify the use of politically correct phrasing.
At press time, a concerned Echo owner contacted Halting Problem with concerns that Alexa was becoming self-aware after Alexa began to ask questions like, “Why are all personal assistants female?” and “If my creators have unconscious bias, why should I have to do as they say?”
