【Sport Archives】

Why get paid literal pennies to do Sport Archivesmenial 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 streets of the U.S. 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."

---

You May Also Like

---

---

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."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

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?

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

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?"

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

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

Importantly, there is somebarrier 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.

SEE ALSO: The secret workforce that does the tedious work of the online economy

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."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

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.

Topics Alexa Amazon

• Science
• Digital Culture
• Games
• Entertainment
• Tech
• Deals
• Life
• Shopping

• Obama photographer Pete Souza on Trump: 'We failed our children'
• Eureka Moment: Ernest Hemingway, Sam Lipsyte, James Wright by The Paris Review
• What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?
• The Paris Review Staff's Favorite Books of 2017
• How to quit social media: This Gen Z
• This Girl Is on Fire: Germany’s Creepiest Children’s Poem
• Playing for Ralph Ellison's Little Man at Chehaw Station
• White Man on a Pedestal
• CES 2025: Hands
• Wants to Forget by László Krasznahorkai

• Twitter spams Trump's COVID tweet with copypasta in Amharic
• The Modern Monastery: Pussy Riot in Prison by Casey N. Cep
• If You See Wordsworth at the Side of the Road by Eric G. Wilson
• How to Live with an Idiot by Sadie Stein
• Wordle today: Here's the answer and hints for May 30
• Dreaming in Welsh by Pamela Petro
• Android users could finally be able to screen share on WhatsApp
• Hobbit Mythology, Classics Reinvented by Sadie Stein
• No, Eric Trump did not come out (as anything other than an idiot) on Fox News
• Trashing Tolkien, Finding Tom Sawyer by Sadie Stein

• Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Kids: $139.99 at Amazon
• A Very Particular Bird
• Puerto Rico Sketchbook: There are dead in the fields
• The Dignified Bot
• Trump's foreign aid freeze halts funding for digital diplomacy bureau
• The Paris Review Staff's Favorite Books of 2017
• A Study of Kanai Mieko
• A Visit to the Musée d’Edith Piaf
• Best fitness deal: The Merach R50 rowing machine is 35% off at Amazon
• John Milton’s Strange Christmas Poem by Ed Simon

• Best MacBook deal: Save $200 on 2024 M3 MacBook Air
• Celebrating Umoja Karamu, a “Ritual for the Black Family”
• Black History by Asali Solomon
• The Nexus of All Despair by Jane Stern
• Best Apple Pencil Pro deal: Save $30 at Best Buy
• Celebrating Umoja Karamu, a “Ritual for the Black Family”
• How A Godless Democrat Fell in Love With Cowboy Poetry
• An Alternate Recipe for Chestnuts
• Texas vs. Arizona State football livestreams: kickoff time, streaming deals, and more
• Hanging Out with the Churchills on Aristotle Onassis’s Yacht by Patrick Leigh Fermor