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Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

nytimes.com

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Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#21

Post by oulipo »

jacquesm wrote: post #19
oulipo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are open-sourcing the code, and people can have their own network monitoring to see that there is no data leaking

Please check into 'reproducible builds' and ways to ensure the software is not modified between the point where you build it and the point where it gets deployed. There will most likely at some point be an attempt to use your reputation to achieve the exact opposite of your stated goals so beware of that.

We'd love to hear more about what you think of this, perhaps you can contact me mael.primet@snips.ai and I would love to do a Skype with you, if only because I read quite a few of your posts over the year and am curious to know you.

We are providing the source, and people can rebuild it from scratch and ensure that their device is running the open-source code. In theory, it is each user who should deploy his device. If an industrial partners want to ship our software to many devices, indeed it will be needed for them to prove he hasn't modified the software and we are happy to learn about best practices to help them do so, so we will look at this

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#22

Post by amelius »

robotrout wrote: post #9
amelius wrote: post #7

Why don't we have open-source voice-assistants yet? I mean, if we can have an open-source OS (e.g. Linux), then surely we can have open-source speech recognition, right?

Voice assistants are difficult, both electro-acoustically to get a good clean voice signal from the ambient room noise and voice-assistant generated audio (this is called barge-in), as well as the software to actually parse that speech. A great open-source voice-assistant is ambitious. But why isn't there a great open-source version of any $iot_appliance? IOT, in general, is crawling with companies that are looking f…

> A great open-source voice-assistant is ambitious.

Yes, I get that. But so was writing the Linux kernel.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#23

Post by amelius »

oulipo wrote: post #10
amelius wrote: post #7

Why don't we have open-source voice-assistants yet? I mean, if we can have an open-source OS (e.g. Linux), then surely we can have open-source speech recognition, right?

We are building this at https://snips.ai (disclaimer: I'm a co-founder). You can build 100% on-device Voice AI assistants which are running on a Raspberry Pi 3, and we are open-sourcing the platform You can take a look at our blog to get started if you want to build your own assistant: https://medium.com/snips-ai/building-a-voice-controlled-home...

Interesting!

Under what license are you open-sourcing the platform?

And what is your business model?

How well do you perform in benchmarks? (Assuming there are benchmarks)

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#24

Post by pdkl95 »

shawn-butler wrote: post #20
pdkl95 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A warrant is required only as long as "voice assistant" technology "is not in general public use"[1]. Kyllo v United States created a bright-line[3] test that removes the warrant requirement to see "details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion"[2] when use of the technology is normalized. Note that this removes the warrant requirement in general , even if you persona…

Amazon resisted a warrant from a prosecutor seeking all Alexa recordings from a house that was the site of murder. Trial in Arkansas I believe. I don't think it ever went anywhere precedent setting however because the defendant eventually gave permission to Amazon to turn it over. Still pretty muddy waters. I would trust Amazon a little more than I would trust the smart tv makers, but that's just my bias.

> I would trust Amazon

Note that re: Kyllo v United States, trust in any specific manufacturer is irrelevant. The SCOTUS ruled that use of a technology - not a product - requires a warrant when it is "is not in general public use".

The Kyllo case involved two federal agents that used their own thermal imaging camera to search a house for the presence of people and grow lights.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#26

Post by fortythirteen »

The things people are willing to give up for the most minimal of conveniences are only going to get worse in the next decade.

I wouldn't be willing to put an open wiretap in my home, even if it did something amazing, like extend my lifespan. The quality of my life is not significantly improved with these devices, and all of their practical uses can be duplicated with the minimal effort of tapping a screen a couple of times.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#27

Post by ggg9990 »

amelius wrote: post #22
robotrout wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice assistants are difficult, both electro-acoustically to get a good clean voice signal from the ambient room noise and voice-assistant generated audio (this is called barge-in), as well as the software to actually parse that speech. A great open-source voice-assistant is ambitious. But why isn't there a great open-source version of any $iot_appliance? IOT, in general, is crawling with companies that are looking f…

> A great open-source voice-assistant is ambitious. Yes, I get that. But so was writing the Linux kernel.

Linux kernel is the outlier, not the norm. You can’t take a regular runner and ask him why he isn’t running as fast as Usain Bolt.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#28

Post by amelius »

ggg9990 wrote: post #27
amelius wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A great open-source voice-assistant is ambitious. Yes, I get that. But so was writing the Linux kernel.

Linux kernel is the outlier, not the norm. You can’t take a regular runner and ask him why he isn’t running as fast as Usain Bolt.

Yes, but we only need one Usain Bolt to push the boundary of running.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#29

Post by anonoholic »

oulipo wrote: post #3

You can't trust the large companies who have a culture of profiting off your data to protect your privacy. This is why we need AI at the edge, and not in the clouds, and Privacy-by-design thinking in our architectures. This is the only way for people to know their data won't be compromised and misused, because it never leaves their devices. Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder of https://snips.ai and we are building a 100% o…

> I'm a co-founder of https://snips.ai

Yes, we know. You post to literally every voice-assistant related comment thread. If you aren't a bot, you must have a (voice powered?) bot sniffing out threads to post on.

If you're going to do that, please at least learn the difference between a disclaimer and a disclosure. :sigh:

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#30

Post by jacquesm »

oulipo wrote: post #21
jacquesm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please check into 'reproducible builds' and ways to ensure the software is not modified between the point where you build it and the point where it gets deployed. There will most likely at some point be an attempt to use your reputation to achieve the exact opposite of your stated goals so beware of that.

We'd love to hear more about what you think of this, perhaps you can contact me mael.primet@snips.ai and I would love to do a Skype with you, if only because I read quite a few of your posts over the year and am curious to know you. We are providing the source, and people can rebuild it from scratch and ensure that their device is running the open-source code. In theory, it is each user who should deploy his device.…

I'm sorry, I don't do skype or hangouts but I'll be happy to email with you. However, it is probably better if you find someone who is really an expert in the field. But I can definitely see that there is a potential problem here if you are open sourcing your code and industrial partners ship your software without some kind of clear way in which you can ascertain that what got shipped is what you intended and not some kind of perverted variation.

This might be a good starting point:

https://reproducible-builds.org/

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