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Not OK, Google

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Re: Not OK, Google

#561

Post by tobbe2064 »

Reading this brings the thoughts to Kahlil Gibrans book the Profet. The section "On Houses" reads:

...

Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master? Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires. Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron. It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh. It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels. Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.

...

Re: Not OK, Google

#562

Post by pmyjavec »

Klathmon wrote: post #469
pmyjavec wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do with it? Like what is a typical use case / interaction ? Do you ask it to put on a movie or tell you the time ? I totally disagree people wanted all their personal information fed to private corporations in the "cloud" BTW. Completely disagree. It's Orwellian.

>What do you do with it? Like what is a typical use case / interaction ? Do you ask it to put on a movie or tell you the time ? Control the lights in the house, make sure the garage door and front door are closed and locked at night, adjust the temperature, play some music (specific band, song, or genre) on one of the TVs or on my computer, read me things like the weather, calendar entries, emails, ask it how long it…

Your giving up lot of personal information and potential freedom of choice to have "AI" (not sure that's the right word for it anyway), do a bunch of these tasks just for, what you perceive as convenience.

For example, having content fed to you is potentially unhealthy, "Google, read me today news", are you telling me you just want to be fed any kind of information based on some kind of "preferences"?

As you said it's a choice but don't pretend people totally know what's being done with the data.

I hope there is age limit restrictions placed on this kind of thing.

Re: Not OK, Google

#563

Post by thesimpsons1022 »

oldmanjay wrote: post #500
thesimpsons1022 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a non-insignificant proportion of hacker news seems to actually work at google and run to their defense at anything somewhat critical of their overlord.

There just isn't any point to accusing people of shilling without evidence. The idea that one must be paid to hold a different opinion that you is offensive, and expressing it here isn't something the community wants.

i actually had 3 upvotes until the google people started to change that. so some do. i'm not accusing anyone of shilling. i've personally seen these threads and some proportion of people admit openly they work there. others, you click their profile and see they work at goog. don't need you to condescingly assume you speak for the community. Also forgot to mention all the people who defend google because they're desperate to work there

Re: Not OK, Google

#564

Post by kbart »

zardeh wrote: post #193
falcolas wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But why is this a bad thing? Do you trust every single person at Google, and every single person at every third party company Google shares your data with, now and in perpetuity, to never abuse the data collected on you? Personally, my circle of trust is not that large. Totalitarian Surveillance is here. In the west. Secure document releases aside, it's too easy to do to imagine a state actor not doing it. Data bre…

>Do you trust every single person at Google, and every single person at every third party company Google shares your data with, now and in perpetuity, to never abuse the data collected on you? Personally, my circle of trust is not that large. (Have worked at google in the past, may in the future, am not currently). You say this as though anyone at Google (or Microsoft or whatever) can go in and search for 'falcolas'…

" comfortable with giving Google the sort of amorphous entity my data, because no person is going to be looking at that data."

How do you explain this then?

http://www.theweek.co.uk/google/11581/google-worker-fired-fo...

Re: Not OK, Google

#565

Post by pdkl95 »

euyyn wrote: post #533
pdkl95 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have strict policies in place What guarantee do you have that these policies will never change in the future? Or are you simply assuming that risks never change?

I think the strongest guarantee is that the sustainability of their business very much depends on that. Billions of incentives to make not a single ex-employee able to say "I managed to hack my way to user personal data".

That's not much of a guarantee. First, you're relying on everyone acting rationally. I hope they would, but humans often act irrationally, especially if grudges or money is involved.

More important is your assumption that the decision would even be made by Google. Outside forces such as governments may force Google's hand.

> able to say

It doesn't matter what is said. If Google had sufficient deniability (perhaps an NSL gag order? or a sufficiently high purchase price?), they can say user personal data is secure while sending it outside their control.

--

The only guarantee that would be believable is if they indemnified their users against any future damages derived from their data collection, and there is no way Google (or any company) would willingly accept that kind of liability.

Re: Not OK, Google

#567

Post by ionised »

intrasight wrote: post #181

I've come to believe that there is nothing that humans can do to resist the privacy encroachments of our machine overlords. Don't blame Google - it's a universal inevitability.

On the contrary, humans have done plenty to resist it.

Re: Not OK, Google

#568

Post by Klathmon »

pmyjavec wrote: post #562
Klathmon wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What do you do with it? Like what is a typical use case / interaction ? Do you ask it to put on a movie or tell you the time ? Control the lights in the house, make sure the garage door and front door are closed and locked at night, adjust the temperature, play some music (specific band, song, or genre) on one of the TVs or on my computer, read me things like the weather, calendar entries, emails, ask it how long it…

Your giving up lot of personal information and potential freedom of choice to have "AI" (not sure that's the right word for it anyway), do a bunch of these tasks just for, what you perceive as convenience. For example, having content fed to you is potentially unhealthy, "Google, read me today news", are you telling me you just want to be fed any kind of information based on some kind of "preferences"? As you said it'…

> Your giving up lot of personal information and potential freedom of choice to have "AI" (not sure that's the right word for it anyway), do a bunch of these tasks just for, what you perceive as convenience.

Come on now, you can't handwave away what to me are very real benefits as "perceived convenience", and just because it seems like a lot of personal information to you doesn't mean it is for me.

Yes, i'm letting them see a lot of personal information, but that's not a bad thing. I get tangible benefits from it (not just this "AI", but many many other services), and I'm actually asking for more. Right now it only learns my music preferences from when i play stuff with Google Music, i'd love to feed my soundcloud history into it to give me a more well-rounded set of preferences. I'd also like to feed my netflix watch history into it to let them give me better tv/movie recommendations. This isn't a "mistake" by me, this is a conscious decision I am making to improve my life by giving them more information, just like how it's not a "mistake" that someone pays money for a service they want/need (even if you personally don't want or need that service).

Also, i'm not so sure that "AI" is the right thing to call it either, but it's the term that was chosen, so it's what i'll call it. I read somewhere once that "AI" stops being "AI" when we understand it, and just starts being "programming" at that point, and it makes a lot of sense. As we get better at making programs that feel "natural", it's less "magical AI that can do anything" and more "well understood programming techniques".

>For example, having content fed to you is potentially unhealthy, "Google, read me today news", are you telling me you just want to be fed any kind of information based on some kind of "preferences"?

Come on now, are we going to have an actual discussion here or are you just going to build up strawmen to kick down? First off, it's not my only source of news. I'm not having them "feed" me anything. Second, it's more of reading headlines that i might be interested in. For example, this morning it showed me 5 headlines:

* A new XKCD comic is out * "The Macbook pro 2016 October release date confirmed" from the University Herald * A story from TechCrunch saying that the Boeing CEO says he's gonna beat SpaceX at something * An article from PCWorld titled "Happy 25th once again to Linux" * And (funnily enough) this story from TechCrunch titled "Not OK, Google"

I'm not being "brainwashed" here, i'm not letting google determine what i'm interested in, i'm not taking anything there blindly at face value, it's just a list of headlines that I can either click to view the article, or lookup at my own will (or in many cases lookup on HN or Reddit for some discussion about it). Every one of those i'm interested in in some fashion. I personally find it funny that you think it's unhealthy to have an "AI" "feed" you information, while most traditional news networks are much more of a "feed", but they don't tailor to any kind of personal preferences (what fox news decides to air, is what fox news watchers are going to watch). That to me is much more dangerous! At least in this case I can tell the system that I don't like this story (because it's blogspam, or it's incorrect, or it's just done in bad taste), and to not show me stories like this again.

>As you said it's a choice but don't pretend people totally know what's being done with the data.

No, and I don't pretend to know what is being done with the data, that's the point. I give them that data, and they do what they want with it, and in return I get all of the benefits I get. There's nothing stopping them from selling it, there's nothing stopping them from releasing it to the public, there's nothing stopping them from looking through it personally to find "bad" things. But I have "faith" (if you can call it that) that they won't. Because if they do, i'm done with them. And a lot more people would be as well.

>I hope there is age limit restrictions placed on this kind of thing.

There is, as with most things online it's "under 13 needs adult supervision". Funnily enough I've read that toddlers LOVE these things. It's much easier for a child to tell the TV to play Thomas the Tank Engine than it is for them to fumble around with a remote, or have access to a phone. It's actually becoming a really good way to let little kids be involved in computers and technology at a younger age, which I believe will be a major benefit in their lives (the jury is still out on that though).

Re: Not OK, Google

#569

Post by bovermyer »

krupan wrote: post #489
bovermyer wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't care for the products or services, you could always opt not to buy/use them. That includes avoiding areas where Google appliances are present. I'm fine with trading privacy for AI-driven convenience, though I already have a phone I like and an Echo, so I have no compelling reason to buy these particular products right now.

And how are we going to know where google appliances are present or not?

By looking around and/or asking? Life isn't that hard.

Re: Not OK, Google

#570

Post by Klathmon »

type0 wrote: post #547
Klathmon wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What do you do with it? Like what is a typical use case / interaction ? Do you ask it to put on a movie or tell you the time ? Control the lights in the house, make sure the garage door and front door are closed and locked at night, adjust the temperature, play some music (specific band, song, or genre) on one of the TVs or on my computer, read me things like the weather, calendar entries, emails, ask it how long it…

In my experience lot of aging population feels that it's desirable to have such devices, that these could give them assistance to memorize tasks or do them automatically (e.g. closing garage door). There is many positives if it's implemented with ethical considerations. > People aren't dumb, they know these devices aren't magic. Yes they know that they aren't magic but for the most part they don't know how they work…

I haven't really noticed any one demographic using it more than others, most people tend to "get it" pretty quickly. Unless you are perfect, most of us need somewhere to jot down notes, or reminders to do things. Hell, there are times where my wife and I will be laying in bed and she will ask "did i forget to close the garage door?", and I can just ask the echo to close the garage door and lock the front door just to make sure.

>it's essentially black boxes with deceiving trade-offs, also almost no one reads TOS.

See, people keep telling me that they are "deceiving", but I just fail to see how. Nobody is saying that these work without your personal information. Nobody is saying that they aren't using your history to "teach" the service. Nobody is hiding the fact that they learn your preferences over time to get better. Why do you think they are deceiving?

To me it's quite the opposite (as this article shows). People are asking for more learning, more automation, more "AI", and the companies are putting out headlines like "Our AI can learn about you and your wants and needs FASTER than our competitors can!"

That's not hiding or deceiving...

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