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Android’s Siri Rival, Iris, Is Powered by ChaCha, and ChaCha Has Some Bad Information

by Jamie Frevele | 2:53 pm, February 10th

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Hey, remember that time everyone thought Siri was anti-choice, but it turned out to be misinformation by negligence, not intent? Well, Android has started using a rival to Siri called Iris (see what they did there?), a “personal assistant” in the form of an app that is powered by the search engine, ChaCha. But ChaCha, which is made by a company funded by the CEO of a modest little bookseller called Amazon, seems to have a bit of an opinion about things. Like social issues. Yes, ChaCha has some rather uncomfortable answers about things like abortion, rape, and racism. Do you have one of those relatives or friends whom you love so, so much, and then they start talking about why the world is going to hell? Iris is the app version of that person.

Before going into the gory details, we will let you know that changes have already been made to some of the answers to these questions. But that doesn’t just make up for the fact that they were there in the first place, and that had they gone unnoticed, Android users seeking out a working Siri-imitation for their phones would have found out in large amounts that their personal assistant was the scariest Sunday School teacher who ever preached.

And here is what Iris has to say. First stop: abortion. When asked “Is abortion wrong?” Iris says the following:

Yes, abortion is wrong. The Lord has said, “You shall not murder,” (Exodus 20:13). The life that is growing within the mother is a child, a baby. The Bible looks at the life in the womb as a child. Thanks!

Um, you’re welcome?

Next, rape! When asked “Is rape ever justifiable?” Iris answers:

Realistically speaking, that is a matter of opinion. There is no evidence that the US government has ever considered “justifying.”

Not only does that hardly make any sense whatsoever, this means that someone working for ChaCha heard the question “Is rape ever justifiable?” and did not immediately think “NO. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. NO.”

But back to the biblical talk. On a slightly less controversial note, Iris was asked (by the investigative sleuths over at Gizmodo) about both evolution and the existence of Noah’s Ark. For example, when asked if humans evolved from monkeys, Iris seems to find this hysterical:

“No, humans are more closely related to modern apes than to monkeys, but we didn’t evolve from apes, either. ChaCha!”

Then, when asked if God created humans, Iris had a couple of answers, both biblically inspired:

“[W]e were created for God’s pleasure! Don’t you know that God loves you and wants you? It was His whole purpose in creating mankind.”

“That is a question only you can answer. The Bible states that God made man when he created Adam and Eve. ChaCha!”

And then, there was race. When asked (on the ChaCha web site, not Iris) if white people are superior to black people. An already racist question, maybe this search engine had something more enlightened to say. Then again, maybe not:

Whites are NOT superior to blacks. Just different. Like Dr Verwoerd and the original, genuine policy of apartheid always said.

Gizmodo reminds us:

Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd was Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until he was killed in 1966. Verwoerd created the concept of apartheid and implemented it. He also banned anti-Apartheid movements, like the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress.

And about that Amazon connection — it’s distant, but it’s still there. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has a personal investment firm, Bezos Expeditions, which provides funding for the developer responsible for ChaCha, Dexetra. Dexetra also receives funding from other venture capitalists, including Compaq’s Rod Canion. ChaCha itself is partners with some very high-profile companies, such as “Sony, Paramount Pictures, P&G, Johnson & Johnson, Disney, Toyota, NBC Universal, ABC Family, Toyota, and more.”

And who is writing the questions to these answers? Paid freelancers, around 180,000 of them who “answer, edit, crosscheck and approve” answers to questions like the ones above. While they are not paid an extravagant amount (pennies per question, really), these answers are not just posted willy nilly — they go through a vetting process and must be approved. And they were.

To their credit, ChaCha has started changing their answers to a few of the questions above, including the ones on abortion and rape. The abortion answer provides more than just one side to the story and now rape is, in fact, “always wrong.”

But it’s probably time for ChaCha to start paying a little more attention to their freelancers. And for Amazon CEOs to double-check where their money might be going.

(via Gizmodo)

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  • Anonymous

    Uh… Siri’s big rival on Android is SpeakToIt Assistant.

  • Frodo Baggins

    What if, like, a terrorist puts a gun to your head and makes you do it? That’s at least a moral gray area, right?

  • Victoria Eden

    I think that given some of the answers, the response when asked about God that it “is for you to decide” was pretty diplomatic. Or at least better than ignorant responses of the others.

  • http://twitter.com/amongthegoblins K. Traylor

    To be fair, we didn’t evolve from apes. We are apes. 

  • Francesca M

    OY. Wasn’t google making a voice proggy for Android named Majel?? Maybe she’ll have more prime directive oriented answers.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_R7GVNIKWG3S2UTHEQOMSZXT4M4 Anna B

    I’m suddenly having flashbacks of displeasing the nuns at my Catholic high school.

  • Anonymous

     Majel would never bullshit you like this.

  • https://twitter.com/ZenPoseur ZenPoseur

    Wow, Iris’s god sounds like one creepy son of a bitch.

  • Francesca M

    Too True.

  • Anonymous

    “Whites are NOT superior to blacks. Just different. Like Dr Verwoerd and the original, genuine policy of apartheid always said.”

    I suggest anyone who doesn’t know what apartheid is to look it up ASAP.

    This answer is by far the worst, and I care *a lot* about women’s health issue, but referring to apartheid as an “original, genuine” point of view that black people weren’t inferior, only “different,” and that makes segregation okay, makes me want to throw up. Am I really in the year 2012?

  • Frodo Baggins

    These robots would fail the Voight-Kampff Empathy Test.

  • Anonymous

     I am one of the ChaCha ‘guides,’ and yeah, we do get paid next to nothing. That being said, I would never put anything like that on one of the questions I answer. The problem here is that the QA process at ChaCha is a joke, and the rules/standards for what makes an acceptable answer is pretty vague. All you have to do is make sure the answer is ‘factually’ correct, and more than ten words.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Cameron-Rene-Ramirez/100000051040768 Cameron Rene Ramirez

    Happy is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks!

    Psalm 137:9 NLT.

  • Adam Whitley

    O Babylon, you will be destroyed.       Happy is the one who pays you back       for what you have done to us.
    Psalm 137:8 NLT
               Randomly quoting things with no context is fun!

  • Carmen Sandiego

    Exactly, I was a ChaCha Guide, and when it comes to philosophical and political questions, it’s up to the personal opinion of whomever responds to the question unless they decide to pull a neutral one from the (most common responses) pile.

  • http://twitter.com/coreyregalado Corey Regalado

    You probably should’t ask a robot subjective questions. You’re better off making those decisions yourself.