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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?

#41

Post by crankylinuxuser »

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.

You're right. They publicly resisted. But I have no qualms that they can also just quietly hand over a DVD to a prosecuted and say " here ya go".

In the end, this is their platform of which we are sharecroppers.

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

#43

Post by dwighttk »

josefresco wrote: post #35
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

"and people can have their own network monitoring" Is this monitoring built into your product? If not, wouldn't a user of any AI assistant have this same ability?

The monitoring is to see if the product is making network connections, you can do that with any AI assistant, yes, but the Google and Amazon products are going to require you to allow them to make those connections. This claim is that you can see that this product isn't making connections. (I think)

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

#44

Post by cptskippy »

fortythirteen wrote: post #26

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…

> I wouldn't be willing to put an open wiretap in my home... all of their practical uses can be duplicated with the minimal effort of tapping a screen a couple of times.

I've never understood this argument. Why is the portable wiretap in your pocket inherently safer?

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

#45

Post by oulipo »

craftyguy wrote: post #36
oulipo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Will the device have any components in it which require proprietary firmware? Think long and hard about that before answering. edit: I thought you were also doing something similar to Mycroft and their 'mark 1' thing. I was wrong.

Our platform doesn't require any specific component.

It will be open-source and free for all users to use and create assistants.

If an industrial device maker wants to use the open-source version and add to it proprietary components, it will be his decision and he should inform his customers.

The best we can do when building and open-sourcing our assistant platform is to make it possible for commercial vendors to create state-of-the-art private-by-design voice assistants if they want

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

#46

Post by oulipo »

josefresco wrote: post #35
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

"and people can have their own network monitoring" Is this monitoring built into your product? If not, wouldn't a user of any AI assistant have this same ability?

You can use a tool like `mitmproxy` to monitor the network requests

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

#47

Post by oulipo »

bargl wrote: post #37
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…

Have you run into any problems improving or training your algorithm if you're limiting the data it has access to? What are some of the things you've done that make you "wish" you could be an online off-device tool? I ask because most of what we hear is that online tools will get better over time because you are sharing your data. How do you work around this, or is that even an obstacle?

There are many ways to work around this, we do data augmentation and data generation to create more data

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

#48

Post by _rpd »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #38
fortythirteen wrote: post #26

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…

I'm seriously shocked by the number of people that are putting always on "assistants" in their home - but more so on the number of people that should know better, like HN people.

One of my friends has one of these because she likes the way it helps her build a grocery shopping list over the week. She once thought of herself as a privacy activist, and is fully conscious of the hypocrisy. It really made me think twice about how small the convenience has to be for someone to compromise their privacy.

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

#49

Post by craftyguy »

oulipo wrote: post #45
craftyguy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will the device have any components in it which require proprietary firmware? Think long and hard about that before answering. edit: I thought you were also doing something similar to Mycroft and their 'mark 1' thing. I was wrong.

Our platform doesn't require any specific component. It will be open-source and free for all users to use and create assistants. If an industrial device maker wants to use the open-source version and add to it proprietary components, it will be his decision and he should inform his customers. The best we can do when building and open-sourcing our assistant platform is to make it possible for commercial vendors to cre…

So no components in your device (e.g. for wifi) require proprietary firmware to function? Are you sure about that?

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

#50

Post by jacquesm »

craftyguy wrote: post #49
oulipo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our platform doesn't require any specific component. It will be open-source and free for all users to use and create assistants. If an industrial device maker wants to use the open-source version and add to it proprietary components, it will be his decision and he should inform his customers. The best we can do when building and open-sourcing our assistant platform is to make it possible for commercial vendors to cre…

So no components in your device (e.g. for wifi) require proprietary firmware to function? Are you sure about that?

They make software, not hardware, they could not make such a guarantee.
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