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

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#231

Post by ben_w » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

TheAdamist wrote: post #164

hknd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

and how are they going to enforce the NDA? contractors are being paid peanuts in bad working conditions - firing them might land them a better job elsewhere, and they don't have any assets to sue for any kind of monetary damages.

That can still bankrupt the person on the receiving end of the lawsuit. Just because damages don’t necessarily fully compensate for the loss, doesn’t mean it’s not a massive deterrent to the behaviour.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#232

Post by isostatic » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

delecti wrote: post #162

isostatic wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5) Understand ML; concerned - "Why do other people in the ML industry think it's OK to use and store peoples data in without informed consent (which are only those in group 3, and group 1+2 don't have informed consent)"

That's group 4. How is worrying about informed consent not just a subset of concern about the ethics of collecting training data?

No, group 4 is "we must collect training data, how do we get arround the ethical questions"

Group 5 is "We must be ethical, can we still collect training data"

Different priorities, different outcomes.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#233

Post by isostatic » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #225

isostatic wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There have been some stories in HN about opting out of face recognition as well Easiest way to do that is to wear a niqab or burka.

Face coverings are not legal in public in all countries, but even where they are, why should someone concerned about creeping surveillance go to great lengths to modify their own behaviour because someone else is unwittingly breaking the law because a product they bought was made by someone who couldn’t be bothered to do it right?

> Face coverings are not legal in public in all countries,

And that of course is the point.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#234

Post by munificent » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

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…

> In conversations about this with engineers the response I've gotten is essentially: "Just trust that we [Google/Amazon/etc.] handle the data correctly."

No one is afraid of power when it's in their own hands. A common failure mode is that people assume a given power that's in their hands today will always be.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#235

Post by Balgair » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

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…

>Tech workers have a responsibility not just (to) understand the technologies that they work with

Ok, I agree completely with you, 100%. However, based on my limited worldview, tech workers barely understand the tech they work with at all [0]. Asking for the ethical implications to be mulled over is unlikely to happen considering the near-weekly HN threads on "interviewing sucks, heres how to fix it, lol". We can't even figure out how to hire someone let alone how to impedance-match with them on deep issues like ethical implications of ML/AI.

[0] https://stackoverflow.com/

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#236

Post by css » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

rosszurowski wrote: post #224

A bit tangential, but I tried sharing this link with a few friends on Facebook Messenger, and noticed it's blocked because it "violates Community Standards" [1]. Even shortened bit.ly links are blocked. Anyone know why that would be the case? I'm trying to not assume malice (eg. maybe it got misflagged?) but it certainly feels like censoring and is yet another push for me to drop Messenger too. [1]: https://i.imgur.c…

Google Translate links have been blocked for a long time because translate.google.com can be used as a proxy.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#237

Post by rosszurowski » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

css wrote: post #236

rosszurowski wrote: post #224

A bit tangential, but I tried sharing this link with a few friends on Facebook Messenger, and noticed it's blocked because it "violates Community Standards" [1]. Even shortened bit.ly links are blocked. Anyone know why that would be the case? I'm trying to not assume malice (eg. maybe it got misflagged?) but it certainly feels like censoring and is yet another push for me to drop Messenger too. [1]: https://i.imgur.c…

Google Translate links have been blocked for a long time because translate.google.com can be used as a proxy.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#238

Post by sotruetome » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

testvox wrote: post #206

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...

As long as you are warned that you are being recorded then the law considers you to have given consent if you decide to continue to talk. This is why all the home devices make a loud sound that you cannot disable before they begin recording.

Except that I don't know what that sound means. I know what the one my device makes is, but I've never heard the others. Unless it's a human voice saying, "This conversation is now being recorded" I can't be expected to know what a random beep from a device means. It could just mean the person got a notification or something. (And even if it is a recognizable sentence, it assumes I understand the human language the device is set to.)

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#239

Post by Alex3917 » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

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…

The reason companies use lots of live data is because people get upset when facial recognition doesn't work on people with different skin colors, voice recognition doesn't work for people with accents, etc. Doing #3 is literally the result of #4.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#240

Post by munificent » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:19 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…

Anyone who's worked in a photo lab before will tell you that "norm" gets ignored all the time. Some people just do not think about the fact that an actual human is going to see their BDSM photos with the secretary.