Hey Google, play some morning music.

This Morning

I got out of bed this morning to the sound of my Son crying. He seems to be going through a phase where he doesn’t like to sleep past 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning. I brought him back to our bed and laid him down hoping he would fall back asleep. Mom was downstairs making coffee already so he decided going back to sleep wasn’t an option.

I’ve become fond of our breakfast time on Saturdays lately. We usually wake up and make some Eggo’s and Ill tell the Amazon Echo in the kitchen to play some breakfast music. He dances in his seat while we eat to some soothing music. This morning I thought since he was awake and we have a Google Home we might as well listen to some soothing wake up music. Unfortunately I was wrong!

Hey Google, play some morning music.

The sound that erupted from this little can beside the bed ripped through our mostly silent house. I couldn’t understand anything coming from the monstrosity that was anything but soothing morning music. The dog barking, music blaring I was a bit startled (OK, the dog wasn’t really barking, but it sounds good right?).  As my wife was yelling “Hey Google, stop!” I was finally able to hear the only word I understood, AK47.

A Little Backstory

A couple of weeks ago while in our bedroom I had the bright Idea to get google to play some sing along songs to keep our son entertained.

Hey Google, play some sing along songs

“MOTHER******” ripped through the speaker as my son sat there looking at me. I’ll let you guess what those last six letters are. Horrified I yelled at it to stop. In the back of my mind all I was thinking was, “This conversation with daycare will be interesting!”

I assumed, very wrongly, that “sing along songs” was a pretty common phrase for children’s songs.  I can’t see any possible way someone would consider what Google provided as a sing along song.  Maybe I’m biased but I think most people would agree with me.  What Google provided was shocking to say the least.  In all fairness when I tested this with Amazon Echo, when my son was out of the room, it responded it couldn’t find a playlist for it.

 

So Amazon is Better Than Google?

I don’t want for this post to imply that Amazon Echo is better than Google Home. Both shine in their own ways and are useful.  I do believe that in a rush to catch up with the Echo, Google overlooked some things.  Google powers much of the world’s voice command functionality since it is on every Android phone out there. Google should have run into some of these situations prior or should have accounted for them.  This could be a situation where Machine Learning algorithms took over and provided bad feedback but it goes to show even more that learning algorithms are not set it and forget it black boxes.

So what should Google Home do?  It could be argued a lack of diversity may contribute to this problem and that argument may be valid. It also shows that the company has not fully thought out use cases for the product.  If something like this happens on my smart phone, it’s probably not a big deal because I’m the one that will be hearing it. If this happens on an at home device it can be a huge deal!  We are raising a new generation that will have grown up with information not at the tips of their fingers but within the sound of their voice.

In technology we have to consider that what we are building today will greatly influence children for generations afterwards. It’s critical for us to consider how they might interact with that technology and what the consequences may be. While this may be considered and edge case in the very early days of these devices, it probably is no longer an edge case.  It is important for us to make sure that we are taking steps to build technology responsibly.