Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

Post by pseudalopex » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 8:26 AM UTC

Analog24 wrote: post #281

flukus wrote: post #248

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I can't believe that so many people, especially the ones on tech sites like this, bought into the idea that speech recognition is such a hard job that it needs to be run on the supercomputers of tech giants. We had somewhat decent voice dictation software on desktops 20 years ago, when 100Mhz processors and 32MB of RAM were top of the line, yet now it's impossible with an order of magnitude more resources.

20 years ago you spoke directly into a microphone and could only use an extremely limited set of supported languages and locales/accents. You're also missing the point. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that speech recognition can only be done on supercomputers. Your laptop can surely run one of these models (though it would take a long time to train one). But there's a reason why an Echo Dot cost $20 and not $10…

Post by adrianN » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 8:59 AM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #321

lisper wrote: post #207

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There's a big difference: having a GPS in my phone means I never have to worry about buying or carrying a map with me ever again, at the cost of potentially revealing my location to someone who I'd rather not know it. Having a voice assistant means I don't have to spend a few seconds typing, at the cost of having everything I say potentially overheard by someone who I'd rather didn't hear it. By my quality metric, th…

> Having a voice assistant means I don't have to spend a few seconds typing, at the cost of having everything I say potentially overheard by someone who I'd rather didn't hear it. You're underplaying it in order to artificially inflate your mileage. Having a voice assistant means not having to learn to change application contexts inside an operating system follwed by a few seconds typing. You are ignoring the hundred…

Post by Supernaut » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 9:44 AM UTC

vonseel wrote: post #182

fipple wrote: post #138

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I've made a fairly well-considered decision to use most of these new services. I keep virtually all of my content on services run by five major corporations because I'd rather have my entire phone's photos published on the front page of the Washington Post than lose all the photos of my kids. I'd rather have Jeff Bezos listening to everything happening in my house than have the more frequent trips to the grocery stor…

And you're not the only one. Outside of HN, in the real world, the average person doesn't set up a FreeNAS server or homelab for data storage, doesn't know how to do backups, and doesn't have nearly as much concern over privacy as the fear mongers here at HN, Reddit, and tech publications. Fear mongering is nothing new, folks. The media is incentivized to cater to people in that way; this is why they use scare tactic…

Post by oulipo » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 9:58 AM UTC

remir wrote: post #313

oulipo wrote: post #94

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This is exactly why we are building the first 100% on-device and private-by-design open-source Voice AI at https://snips.ai (and we have cloud-matching performances: https://medium.com/snips-ai/snips-brings-cloud-level-spoken-... ) Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder We believe that people want more natural interaction and AI at home, but that it should never be at the cost of their privacy. You never know what a company, o…

Are you working on making actual hardware like smart speakers? I'm only asking because this would definitely help spread this kind of platform. Raspberry 3, despite being great, is not something the average Joe will mess it. There needs to be a physical product with Snip.ai on it that people can put in their home. Something sleek and well designed, not some Rasp 3 in a case with some mic attached with duct tape.

Post by rebuilder » Fri, Dec 21, 2018, 10:04 AM UTC

saulrh wrote: post #252

dlandis wrote: post #219

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> Getting a voice assistant was life-changing for me Can you expand on that? In what way?

Compare the workflows for leaving a reminder or note. Before: * Find phone/computer * Unlock * Locate self in interface and navigate to application selector * Invoke note-taking or reminder app * Type in note or reminder * Navigate through tagging/scheduling interface * Commit note/reminder Or: * Locate notebook * Locate writing utensil * Open notebook to current page * Write note * Remember to check notebook every t…