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(Video: Fox News)

Following the ultimately harmless but potentially fatal advice given to a 10-year-old girl by Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa, Fox News’ “The Five” panel discussed the question of where responsibility lies in the expanding realm of artificial intelligence.

The young girl was thankfully being supervised by her mother Kristin Livdahl on Sunday when she asked Amazon Alexa for a challenge. Alexa responded, suggesting that the ten-year-old, “Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs.”

Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall began the segment with startling, yet somehow unsurprising, news that China has developed an AI prosecutor that is said to be able to examine crimes and determine charges with near-perfect precision.

Panelist and retired Marine Johnny “Joey” Jones remarked, “You know, I’d love to really rip into this one. And obviously, I don’t want AI prosecutors deciding my fate. But if you look around the country at some of the DAs we elect and how corrupt some of our local judicial systems are, I mean, maybe it would be a step in the direction of justice.”

He continued: “All I can think about is the — I think it’s the Tom Cruise movie, it’s the ‘Minority Report’ where they start arresting people before they commit a crime, which is kind of like what we see with some of the purge in the military, that you were friends with somebody, we think you might become a radical, so let’s go ahead and kick you out. I’m afraid that we’re kind of heading in that direction in this country already.”

As far as the recent incident with Alexa, Amazon’s Twitter account promptly responded to the mother’s complaint, but logical questions arise as to whether or not companies that develop artificial intelligence devices are creating monsters too big for them to control – let alone for the average user to do so.

Marshall turned to Fox News’ “Gutfeld” regular Kat Timpf for her take on artificial intelligence.

“Kat, on the Amazon story, because I love your answers. They’re very witty and that’s the — and I would say, lighter of the stories. But Alexa, what’s your take as I think the younger member of the — youngest member of this panel with Alexa, Amazon, and TikTok and these messages, these challenges for kids?” she asked.

“Yes, I have no children. I also have no Alexa,” Timpf responded. “But I will say the issue with, you know, technology and AI, in general, is when things go wrong, who is responsible, right? I mean, if I were to be running around telling kids to put pennies in sockets, I don’t think it’d be good enough for me to just say, ‘oh, my bad, I won’t do that anymore.'”

“There would be — you know, I’d go to prison or at the very least there’d be an investigation. So, that’s the question here. When these things mess up, who’s responsible for that?” she wondered.

Marshall concluded, “And you know what? I know you don’t want to have kids after listening to our parenting advice, especially Joe’s. Nice to sit down, teach your kid to read, teach your kid to spell.”

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Frank Webster

Staff Writer

Frank (Chip) Webster is a musician and composer, former teacher of percussion and U.S. Army Infantry veteran. He holds a degree in English from Arizona State University.

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