Trying to Save Someone’s Life? Don’t Ask Alexa or Siri
You know how your digital voice assistant like Siri or Alexa is "just okay" at understanding you and giving you helpful answers to your questions? Yeah . . . they do even worse when there are actual stakes.
According to a new study out of the University of Alberta in Canada, voice assistants are not, I repeat, NOT a reliable source of information during a life-or-death emergency.
The researchers asked 123 different critical first aid questions about things like heart attacks, poisonings, and choking to the four most common digital voice assistants: Amazon's Alexa, Google Home, Apple's Siri, and Microsoft's Cortana.
And they found that Google gave acceptable medical advice 56% of the time . . . Alexa came in at 19% . . . and Siri and Cortana never came through.
So if there's a real emergency, it's a better bet to call 911.
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