Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It? • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by bluGill » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 8:48 PM UTC

philipodonnell wrote: post #64

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…

> The test is if the public expects audio in the home might be recorded and sent to a 3rd party. If the answer is "yes", then the police can use their own hardware to do the recording. Honest question, are you an attorney or can one comment? I am not, but I don't read this opinion the same way. The case referenced concerns using thermal imaging from outside a home to look inside it, which I guess makes sense then tha…

Courts tend to look at precedent. Any lawyer taking a case in this area will look at the case in question and try to twist it to state their side.

This isn't to say courts will rule one way to the other, or that the courts won't change their mind, but a well reasoned opinion form a different court is powerful.

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

#92

Post by tzs » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 8:55 PM UTC

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…

A bit OT:

What's up with the animated drawing on your front page of an alien poorly disguised as a human female at a picnic using voice to control her music player? It's kind of distracting--I keep staring at it instead of reading the site.

I infer that she's an alien for three reasons.

First, her head is on backwards compared to human heads.

Second, she appears to have only one upper arm, attached to her left shoulder, which forks at the elbow into two lower arms, one of which is going behind her back over to her right side. The forearms are also about twice as long as human forearms.

Third, the neck is way longer than human necks, but quite consistent with many the aliens some people have claimed to have seen.

Seriously...is this some recognized art style? I don't know much about art, but I do recall that around the late 19th/early 20th century there were some prominent artists and styles that took big liberties with human anatomy.

It's well drawn sufficiently (as are the other drawings on your site) that it gives the impression that the artist is referencing something known.

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

#93

Post by sp332 » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 8:55 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #90

sp332 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is making one. The first release last year was already very good, and hopefully it will improve with time. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/a-journey-to-10-word-error...

Not exactly. Mozilla is making a good speech to text engine. (the current open source engines are based on some old academic work that is now considered not the right way forward).

Well the second part of amelius's question asked about speech recognition.

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

#94

Post by oulipo » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

leeoniya wrote: post #88

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…

any plans to integrate with https://www.home-assistant.io/ ?

We have an integration with Home Assistant and are now working on making this even easier, stay tuned and subscribe to our newsletter to be informed when the integration is complete

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

#95

Post by crpatino » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 9:05 PM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #84

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a previous commenter said -- why are you not similarly shocked by the number of HN users that carry a remote recording (audio + video) device + GPS tracker in their pocket? Why should I be less concerned about a mobile device that waits for me to say "Ok Google" or "Siri" than a stationary device that waits for me to say "Alexa"?

You shouldn't.

However, putting ubiquitous extra devices around your home prevents you from isolating the part of your life you want private from the rest. i.e. We have a policy at home, all devices remain downstairs. My phone is further isolated by being, when not in active use, either in the bottom of a bag or in a drawer in my desk. GPS is turned off most of the time, again, unless being actively use by an app that I am in the middle of using.

I am aware that this is not enough under the assumption we are dealing with agresive adversaries that are out to get me, but my line of defense there happens to be to live an ordinary, boring life. The strategy above is an uncomfortable compromise to not give the keys of the kingdom right away, but also being able to benefit from modern conveniences (and no, I do not use my smartphone for every not-physiological action I perform during my day to day).

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

#96

Post by hartator » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 9:51 PM UTC

oulipo wrote: post #14

ryan-c wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, this looks cool. I was looking into building something with a respeaker not too long ago. How does your business model work that you're letting people DIY for free?

We are selling licenses for industrial builders. If you build something with it, we would love to hear about it and feature it on our website! Come talk to us on our Discord channel :)

Any reasons to choose Discord over Slack?

Wondering as we have to make a similar decision for our startup.

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

#97

Post by foota » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 9:56 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #92

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…

A bit OT: What's up with the animated drawing on your front page of an alien poorly disguised as a human female at a picnic using voice to control her music player? It's kind of distracting--I keep staring at it instead of reading the site. I infer that she's an alien for three reasons. First, her head is on backwards compared to human heads. Second, she appears to have only one upper arm, attached to her left should…

Looks somewhat like surrealism to me.

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

#98

Post by rconti » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 11:29 PM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #83

kop316 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the Parent commenter, but I can give some thoughts: - The phone is not designed to listen around the room explicitly, more near field, so it can't hear everything. - An iPhone seems to have pretty decent privacy settings (only the app can listen while app is open, etc) - I personally have a phone I can reflash with mostly open source software (only baseband/fivers proprietary), so I am reasonably sure that my pho…

It may not be designed to "listen around the room explicitly", but my phone makes a decent speaker phone, so it still has that capability. And to be honest, I'd be less concerned with what my Echo hears in my livingroom compared with what my phone hears all day long. The Echo has pretty decent privacy settings (only listens when you say the "wake word", etc).

I don't disagree with phone vs stationary speaker in your house, but the "wake word" issue is precisely what the article deals with.

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

#99

Post by jononor » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 12:26 AM UTC

soared wrote: post #80

jononor wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it record continiously? If I were developing such a device I'd use random sampling. Don't have use for all the audio in every home, but a little bit from everywhere can be useful. Can be used to improve the acoustic model of the room maybe, or improve targetting of ads[1]. Some snippets from the minutes before and activation could be especially interesting, to understand the context. 1. Or more nefarious th…

Or record audio, do speech to text, some light analysis, and upload the metadata. Or just upload a basket of words and their frequency, "Toilet Paper, 2, tv, 7, online, 4,"

Detecting who speaks is also a (relatively) lightweight analysis. Combined with bag-of-words can build personality/interest profile. Speech based gender detection can also be done, probably also detecting kids from adults. Now have good data about demographics of the household.

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

#100

Post by Arkaad » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 12:36 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #92

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…

A bit OT: What's up with the animated drawing on your front page of an alien poorly disguised as a human female at a picnic using voice to control her music player? It's kind of distracting--I keep staring at it instead of reading the site. I infer that she's an alien for three reasons. First, her head is on backwards compared to human heads. Second, she appears to have only one upper arm, attached to her left should…

That's a really creepy design.