Now any idiot off the street can answer your dumb Alexa questions

Image: GRANT HINDSLEY / getty

Why get paid literal pennies to do menial Mechanical Turk work for a mega corporation when you can do the same thing for free?

It is this very question, which Amazon apparently hopes you’re too stupid to ponder, that is posed by the latest ham-fisted attempt to improve Alexa. Say hello to Alexa Answers, an Amazon program designed to let any idiot off the street answer questions put to Alexa that somehow managed to stump the digital assistant. 

“Discover questions Alexa doesn’t have an answer for,” implores the program’s launch page, “submit your own and share them with the world.”

Alexa Answers, which launched today, banks on the idea that people with time to kill will honestly and without malice go online to answer Alexa questions posed by their fellow man. Your reward for being such a good corporate citizen? Well, that’s unclear. 

“Every time Alexa shares your answers, you earn points,” explains Amazon. “Answer more questions to help more people, unlock achievements, and compete for top contributor status.”

Image: screenshot / alexa answers

Essentially, working tirelessly in your spare time for no compensation in order to improve the functioning of a smart assistant on behalf of a large corporation will now garner you a shiny gold star. 

Ain’t 2019 grand?

Alexa, you were supposed to never forget. 

But we haven’t even reached the fun part. A crucial element of the entire dystopian enterprise is the ability to see questions asked by, presumably, real Alexa users — and holy shit are they dumb. 

From “how do babies cry,” to “can dogs cry tears,” to “what’s the cows eat,” the questions are a window into the soul of every 6-year-old child left alone with nothing to do but yell into their disembodied robot friend. 

And that’s not all. The entire premise of this exercise, mind you, is that these are questions “Alexa doesn’t have an answer for.”

Like, for example, “what year was the september eleventh attack?”

Image: screenshot / alexa answers

Alexa, you were supposed to never forget. We were all supposed to never forget. 

Importantly, there is some barrier to answering these questions — albeit a small one. To insert your nuggets of wisdom into the Alexa ecosystem, you must first log in with an Amazon account. The answer must also be “accepted” before it is actually read aloud by Alexa to an inquisitive customer.

According to Fast Company, “[in] some cases, human editors as well as algorithms will be involved in quality-control measures.” The publication further notes that “a basic upvote and downvote system will help keep out low-quality responses.” 

Image: screenshot / alexa answers

Good luck with that. 

Still, we should acknowledge all the great aspects of this program. After all, when you absolutely, positively, have to know how high an elephant can jump, Alexa Answers will now finally have your back. And for that, all the untold hours of free labor put in to make this thing happen will have been worth every penny.