During a fun game of “Hey Robot” on “The Tonight Show” this week, comedian John Oliver lobbed a couple timely and less-fun questions at Amazon’s Alexa.
Oliver, host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” was playing with “Tonight” host Jimmy Fallon (above). The two were giggling their way through trying to get Alexa, via an Echo smart speaker, to say words such as “leprechaun” and “Liverpool.”
Oliver got tweaked when he thought Alexa would say Liverpool in her answer to “Alexa, what is the greatest football team in the history of the sport?” Clearly Alexa is not a British soccer fan, and she spouted off about the 1985 Chicago Bears NFL team.
Fired up by his annoyance with the AI, Oliver leaned into the camera from his remote location and asked, “Alexa, how bad are Amazon working conditions?”
Fallon yelled “stop, stop” at the speaker but Oliver wasn’t finished.
“Alexa, what is union busting?” he asked, referencing the ongoing unionization effort in Bessemer, Ala., and Amazon’s desire to keep 5,800 workers at an Amazon fulfillment center from voting yes this month on whether to unionize.
Oliver and Fallon continued the rather Seattle-specific adventure when the next clue was “black hole” and they got Alexa to say it by asking about song titles from grunge greats Soundgarden.
