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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?

#51

Post by fortythirteen »

cptskippy wrote: post #44
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?

Not safer, but not there is a key difference.

If I turn off voice assistant on my phone, ethically speaking, it shouldn't be recording my voice. Companies/governments doing so is an actual wire tap, and they should have a warrant.

Putting these devices in your home is giving Amazon/Google/Apple permission to record your every conversation.

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

#52

Post by ausjke »

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…

what's your business model if everyone can download and build their own image, or even re-distribute that in their own products?

as far as Alexa goes, I unplugged it a few months ago and it's collecting dust now, I use my cellphone to check weather and for alarm clock instead, I don't see much use for Alexa other than those two simple tasks.

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

#53

Post by entropie »

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…

I spent like 60 seconds on your page trying to figure out what exactly you do and failed. Just saying.

Put some of the information of your posts here on your page and things would be much clearer.

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

#54

Post by craftyguy »

jacquesm wrote: post #50
craftyguy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, I didn't realize that. I thought they were trying to do something like Mycroft with the Mark 1. Mycroft releases their platform to be installed on other devices, but they also make their own (Mark 1).

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

#55

Post by whoisjuan »

fortythirteen wrote: post #51
cptskippy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Not safer, but not there is a key difference. If I turn off voice assistant on my phone, ethically speaking , it shouldn't be recording my voice. Companies/governments doing so is an actual wire tap, and they should have a warrant. Putting these devices in your home is giving Amazon/Google/Apple permission to record your every conversation.

That's not true. Those devices are designed on the same ethical grounds you claimed for the phone case. They're only supposed to listen after you invoke them. Regardless if this is true or not, a phone is millions of times more dangerous for privacy if it's being used to record you and track you.

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

#56

Post by fortythirteen »

whoisjuan wrote: post #55
fortythirteen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not safer, but not there is a key difference. If I turn off voice assistant on my phone, ethically speaking , it shouldn't be recording my voice. Companies/governments doing so is an actual wire tap, and they should have a warrant. Putting these devices in your home is giving Amazon/Google/Apple permission to record your every conversation.

That's not true. Those devices are designed on the same ethical grounds you claimed for the phone case. They're only supposed to listen after you invoke them. Regardless if this is true or not, a phone is millions of times more dangerous for privacy if it's being used to record you and track you.

> They're only supposed to listen after you invoke them.

How can a device that is only activated by listening not always be listening? If I turn off Siri on my phone the microphone is supposed to go off.

Edit: I know about the wake word. It was a statement on the quote that a device that only works on voice wouldn't be "listening".

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

#58

Post by amelius »

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.

Even if you know better and act like it, you're still going to be monitored while visiting friends.

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

#59

Post by lazerwalker »

fortythirteen wrote: post #56
whoisjuan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. Those devices are designed on the same ethical grounds you claimed for the phone case. They're only supposed to listen after you invoke them. Regardless if this is true or not, a phone is millions of times more dangerous for privacy if it's being used to record you and track you.

> They're only supposed to listen after you invoke them. How can a device that is only activated by listening not always be listening? If I turn off Siri on my phone the microphone is supposed to go off . Edit: I know about the wake word. It was a statement on the quote that a device that only works on voice wouldn't be "listening".

Wake word detection (listening for a specific phrase, such as "Hey Siri") typically happens using a completely different subsystem from active voice recognition, since it's a much more bounded problem that also needs to run with far lower power consumption. (in the case of Siri specifically, Apple actually has a pretty nifty whitepaper: https://machinelearning.apple.com/2017/10/01/hey-siri.html)

That said: right now, common sense would dictate that your phone's battery really can't handle recording full audio at all times, but once that's no longer the case, it does seem problematic that we don't yet have the audio equivalent of putting a piece of tape over your laptop webcam.

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

#60

Post by criddell »

fortythirteen wrote: post #56
whoisjuan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. Those devices are designed on the same ethical grounds you claimed for the phone case. They're only supposed to listen after you invoke them. Regardless if this is true or not, a phone is millions of times more dangerous for privacy if it's being used to record you and track you.

> They're only supposed to listen after you invoke them. How can a device that is only activated by listening not always be listening? If I turn off Siri on my phone the microphone is supposed to go off . Edit: I know about the wake word. It was a statement on the quote that a device that only works on voice wouldn't be "listening".

It's always listening for the keyword. The listening isn't problematic, it's the sharing.
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