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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

#101

Post by noego »

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…

I wonder how people felt about handing all their personal photos over to a stranger just so they can get developed and printed, back in the 1990s. By today's standards, that would be incredibly creepy. But everyone did it because... having photos is pretty awesome.

It would be nice if companies like Google made it very clear that specific forms of user-data can/will be human reviewed for development/operational purposes. Personally, I just assume that anything I say after activating a digital assistant will be anonymized but listened to by a human one day. And I still think that Digital Home Assistants are pretty awesome despite that.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#103

Post by behringer »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #84
50656E6973 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The devices have a mute switch and can be configured to beep when they begin recording. Really this is just a bunch of fear mongering going on.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#104

Post by tbrownaw »

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.

Maybe if you get you training data by some very different source than your real data comes from, it won't be representative and won't work very well?

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#105

Post by anbop »

tbrownaw wrote: post #104
anbop wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe if you get you training data by some very different source than your real data comes from, it won't be representative and won't work very well?

Figure out how to run your business unit ethically or shut down the business unit. They don’t have the right to turn their transfer learning problem into an abusive privacy policy.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#106

Post by tadzik_ »

DanHulton wrote: post #26
r00fus wrote: post #13

My biggest frustration is going to a friends house which is blanketed with Echo/Google coverage and realizing that all my words could be used against me at a later time. How does one approach this situation?

I mean, it's roughly the same level of exposure you run into literally every minute you're out in public anyway - all those phones around you have microphones, and more and more, they're always listening in exactly the same fashion. This is how always-on "Hey Siri" or "Okay Google" works. Which isn't to say it isn't frustrating, just that your frustration at your friend is misplaced - they're not exposing you to anyt…

> they're always listening in exactly the same fashion. This is how always-on "Hey Siri" or "Okay Google" works

Afaik it is not, actually. The devices are taught to recognize the wakeup words (like "ok google") completely offline, and only the stuff recorded afterwards gets uploaded to the cloud of contractors.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#107

Post by energybar »

natch wrote: post #69
thrwer3434312 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't. They need to transcribe the data.

Not true. Apple has demonstrated how to do it and has published a paper on the topic. A. Bhowmick et al. Protection Against Reconstruction and Its Application in Private Federated Learning, 2018. Don’t just dismissively say “oh that’s different and doesn’t apply” until you read it and understand the range of problems Apple is tackling with this and similar approaches. A lot can be done when the organization makes pri…

Is this why Siri has worse performance compared to others?

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#110

Post by ethbro »

davidf560 wrote: post #81
kahnjw wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Absolutely. I feel like the pace of adoption has been mostly driven by per-bit storage costs falling (and high efficiency codecs).

Above all else, people will do useful things with computers once the price to do so matches the utility. And we're far on the other side of that with cameras.

I can't wait to see what the next decade+ does to all the Facebook-esque camera startups. It's going to be hard to monetize your customer's video feeds once regulation clamps down.

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