Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations • Hacker News Board

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#141

Post by pessimizer » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

bastawhiz wrote: post #53

arien wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And not to be anywhere near anyone else's listening devices. Isn't there a law in some US states that there needs to be consent before recording someone? How does this fit in and who would be held responsible, the owner of the listening device or the company behind it?

You already consented by agreeing to the terms of service. If someone else is talking to their smart device while you're talking, it's ostensibly their responsibility. There's no reasonable laws that prevent you from being overheard in the back of a recorded phone conversation

I find this reasonable; you wouldn't sue the manufacturer of a recording device if someone made a secret recording with it. I do think this means that the smartphone owner is liable, and should be fined or jailed.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#142

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 4:03 PM UTC

hknd wrote: post #35

TheAdamist wrote: post #3

"The man, who wants to remain anonymous, works for an international company hired by Google. " So not a Google employee at all, a probably low paid contractor who is in possession of thousands of audio files. Your privacy matters, except when the bottom line is involved.

The person is probably a temp/vendor from a consulting company (think accenture or cognizant), who should've signed the same NDA agreements as anyone working on that stuff.

[deleted]

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#143

Post by SolarNet » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 4:03 PM UTC

ptd wrote: post #91

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?

I don’t believe there are laws prohibiting video surveillance in public by businesses. Some states have laws prohibiting filming in locations where one expects privacy. Other states allow filming in private spaces as long as the business notifies employees and customers they are being filmed.

Yea most states also have a pretty clear "if the device is obvious" law. It's also why businesses put up "smile you are on camera" signs, especially if their camera isn't immediately recognizable.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#144

Post by baxtr » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 4:04 PM UTC

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #28

The one thing about these stories that keep coming out about the home assistants... they kind of create the impression that this is an issue specific to home speakers, and you can avoid it, by simply not buying them. That's misleading. Any voice command you use to operate any internet connected tech gadget, from phones to smart TV's, is potentially stored and flagged for human review. You really have to avoid using v…

Yes that’s true. But: with another device like a phone it is optional to turn a voice assistant on. Not so with a device with the sole purpose of being a voice assistant.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#145

Post by magashna » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 4:04 PM UTC

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?

Video and audio can have different laws. In my state, video recording in my home or business is legal, but if I record audio, I need 2 party consent.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#146

Post by joey_bob » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

ovi256 wrote: post #117

gringoDan wrote: post #95

I think the responses to this can be broken down into a 2x2 matrix: level of concern vs. understanding of technology. 1) Don't understand ML; not concerned - "I have nothing to hide." 2) Don't understand ML; concerned - "I bought this device and now people are spying on me!" 3) Understand ML; not concerned - "Of course, Google needs to label its training data." 4) Understand ML; concerned - "How can we train models/c…

This classification is very useful to discuss this issue. The difference between 3 and 4, noble as it is, can be caused by feasability concerns that push people into 3, not just ignorance of the privacy impact. Human labelling of training data sets is a big thing in supervised learning. Methods that dispense with this would be valuable for purely economic reasons beyond privacy - the cost of human labelling of data s…

Handling the data in an ethical way doesn't need to be handling the data in an completely anonymous fashion. That would be one solution, but you can also create a tust-based system for how the data being labeled is handled, similar to HPAA. In addition, there are simple operational methods that could help ensure the data is processed as close to anonymously as possible. For example with voice data, you could filter the voices, work with the data in segments, and ensure that metadata for the samples is only accesible by trusted individuals certified under the above framework.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#147

Post by whatshisface » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

ovi256 wrote: post #117

gringoDan wrote: post #95

I think the responses to this can be broken down into a 2x2 matrix: level of concern vs. understanding of technology. 1) Don't understand ML; not concerned - "I have nothing to hide." 2) Don't understand ML; concerned - "I bought this device and now people are spying on me!" 3) Understand ML; not concerned - "Of course, Google needs to label its training data." 4) Understand ML; concerned - "How can we train models/c…

This classification is very useful to discuss this issue. The difference between 3 and 4, noble as it is, can be caused by feasability concerns that push people into 3, not just ignorance of the privacy impact. Human labelling of training data sets is a big thing in supervised learning. Methods that dispense with this would be valuable for purely economic reasons beyond privacy - the cost of human labelling of data s…

It's not wrong for humans to label training data. It's wrong to let humans listen to voice recordings that users believed would be between them and a computer. The solutions are obvious: sell the things with a big sticker that says, "don't say anything private in earshot," revert to old fashioned research methods where you pay people to participate in your studies and get their permission, or ask people for permission to send in mis-heard commands like how Ubuntu asks me if I want to send them my core dumps.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#148

Post by bagacrap » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #126

noego wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 purpo…

> 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. This had its own set of norms associated with it: people would not take in photos that could be considered "indecent". Possibly by the extremely conserv…

What would they do with the indecent photos then?

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#149

Post by pessimizer » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

rev12 wrote: post #114

I think a lot of people here are under the assumption that voice commands, on any device, have the potential to be human reviewed. I am not sure whether or not the general public has that same assumption. That being said, my biggest concern is the fact that many of these device don't have a hardware microphone kill switch. I feel better when I know I can control when a device is listening in. I've read reports that s…

> I think a lot of people here are under the assumption that voice commands, on any device, have the potential to be human reviewed. I am not sure whether or not the general public has that same assumption.

That's because we, as an industry, have fooled them into thinking that AI is real, and that people who don't know it's real are idiots. We don't think students deserve a proper tech education, so unless they are professionally techies, they have to learn from marketing materials (designed to convince them to buy things.)

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#150

Post by lexandstuff » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 4:09 PM UTC

One thing that Google Home does noticeably poorly with is disabled voices and non-native speakers. Google Home would be really handy for a family member with down syndrome who can't read nor write but can easily learn voice commands, but Google Home doesn't currently understand him at all. My partner with a Malaysian Chinese accent also really struggles to use Google Home.

That said, I notice the quality of voice recognition is rapidly improving and I'm thankful for the work the Google engineering team are doing; voice recognition and language translation has the potential to improve the lives of so many people.