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Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

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Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#81

Post by davidf560 »

kahnjw wrote: post #71
arien wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the case of the device being someone else's. I don't have any Google or Amazon smart listeners, so I never accepted them. Yet if my voice is in any of these recordings, well...

How do you square that with a security cameras? Do you need to consent every time you enter a space secured by them?

The rules regarding audio recording are different from video. This is why many security cameras do not actually record audio.

I think the laws are different primarily due to the different pace of audio vs. video recording technology. Audio recording of phone calls etc. has been feasible for a long time so laws were written about that. Ubiquitous video recording has really only become a thing in the past 2 decades or so.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#82

Post by tinus_hn »

electrograv wrote: post #15

So Google’s response is (paraphrased as fairly as I can while removing the sugar-coating): ’Yes, we hire people to listen in to and transcribe some conversations from the private homes of our customers (so as improve our speech recognition engines); but the recordings aren’t linked to personally identifiable information.’ Even assuming they have only the purest intentions here, I still don’t understand how they can p…

So without connecting this phrase to a person or other phrases, what information leaks? That the person exists?

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#83

Post by anbop »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #41

I mean. Of course they are. Do you expect to be able to do any meaningful level of training on data that hasn't been properly labeled? At some point, a human has to go in and correct the software when the software gets it wrong. If you want services that do what Google Home does, you have to have this. Even with that, I'm sure that the engineers are flagging voice requests that happen more then once, or where some on…

How about Google PAY MONEY to generate training data or gather it from informed people? (“Make $100 by recording your voice for Google’s machine learning algorithms.”) not “Arms full with an infant? This $50 device will solve all your problems” and then shipping those recordings to third party contractors in unsecured facilities.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#84

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

50656E6973 wrote: post #65
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #41

I mean. Of course they are. Do you expect to be able to do any meaningful level of training on data that hasn't been properly labeled? At some point, a human has to go in and correct the software when the software gets it wrong. If you want services that do what Google Home does, you have to have this. Even with that, I'm sure that the engineers are flagging voice requests that happen more then once, or where some on…

>This is only creepy if you don't understand how the software works. No, its only creepy if you're not sure whether or not conversations had in the "privacy" of your own home are being listened to by a faceless person

I mean. I don't have an always on system in my home. You don't have to use these services.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#85

Post by [deleted] »

kahnjw wrote: post #71
arien wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the case of the device being someone else's. I don't have any Google or Amazon smart listeners, so I never accepted them. Yet if my voice is in any of these recordings, well...

How do you square that with a security cameras? Do you need to consent every time you enter a space secured by them?

[deleted]

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#87

Post by libria »

Maximus9000 wrote: post #42
gtirloni wrote: post #23

From a computer science perspective, what should Google do to train its models in a privacy conscious way?

Pay beta testers who know what they're signing up for? Train the software with previously human transcribed audio (like TV/audiobooks/etc)

How about 2 Google Homes: The $100 Privacy version and the $30 Opt-in Testing version. That way some people get their privacy and I get Chicken Little to subsidize my cheaper IoT products. =)

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#88

Post by judge2020 »

rwc wrote: post #27
inerte wrote: post #16

Home, Siri, Alexa, M, they all do. I have friends that work on this field transcribing the audio, and measuring its accuracy. Sometimes it's multiple layers of contractors: An employee hands the task to a contractor, another contractor verifies the speech to text, and they're all managed by a contractor. Search for languages like Portuguese, Swedish, Chinese, etc on LinkedIn and you'll find the jobs posts https://www…

"They all do" ... my understanding is that this expressly does not happen with HomePod conversations.

Apple still stores the audio, but they said they can't allow you to download/GDPR request your recordings (like Amazon and Google allow you to do) since they're not associated with your Apple ID whatsoever. I wouldn't be surprised if they also human-review some audio.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#89

Post by duiker101 »

anbop wrote: post #83
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #41

I mean. Of course they are. Do you expect to be able to do any meaningful level of training on data that hasn't been properly labeled? At some point, a human has to go in and correct the software when the software gets it wrong. If you want services that do what Google Home does, you have to have this. Even with that, I'm sure that the engineers are flagging voice requests that happen more then once, or where some on…

How about Google PAY MONEY to generate training data or gather it from informed people? (“Make $100 by recording your voice for Google’s machine learning algorithms.”) not “Arms full with an infant? This $50 device will solve all your problems” and then shipping those recordings to third party contractors in unsecured facilities.

Why spend money when you can just use dark patterns? the backslash will probably be cheaper because the average customer doesn't care anyway!

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#90

Post by electrograv »

hammock wrote: post #49
electrograv wrote: post #15

So Google’s response is (paraphrased as fairly as I can while removing the sugar-coating): ’Yes, we hire people to listen in to and transcribe some conversations from the private homes of our customers (so as improve our speech recognition engines); but the recordings aren’t linked to personally identifiable information.’ Even assuming they have only the purest intentions here, I still don’t understand how they can p…

You paraphrased it in a different way and that might be why you're confused. Google says "the excerpts are not linked to personally identifiable information." To me that means the metadata is stripped, not that they strip anything out of the audio.

Thank you, good catch. I’ve edited my paraphrase to make it more accurate in this way.

That said, it still sounds like Google is trying to convince us that the data they capture (not just the metadata) is never linkable to personally identifiable information, which if true would genuinely ease many privacy concerns here.

As far as I know, just because data is not explicitly annotated with PII doesn’t erase the legal (and ethical) responsibilities associated with handling data that contains PII.

So even if they worded their response so it’s truthfulness is legally/technically defendable, it’s still a bit of a ‘red herring’ at least (I don’t think anyone is accusing Google of explicitly associating these audio recordings with user IDs).

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