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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

#331

Post by munchbunny »

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…

I'm perhaps in a subcategory of (3) that falls under "Understand ML; concerned".

Knowing what I know about how people I have worked with have come close to or have actually mishandled data despite the best of intentions, I do not trust any of these teams without an explicit accountability mechanism that is observable by an outside entity. I'm not looking to punish slip-ups, because mistakes happen, but I am looking for external enforcement to keep people honest.

It's not that I think the engineers using this data are mustache twirling villains, it's that I think mishandling is inevitable due to inattention (yes, even you make mistakes!), and we have to design our data pipelines against that.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#332

Post by gooberwonder »

a3n wrote: post #321
cronix wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the 5th category. 5) Understand ML; concerned - won't allow any of these things in my house period because they will always use them for things behind the scenes that they won't state. I don't care how well trained they are, or "ethical." Ethical... according to who, and at what time period in the future? Ethics change. The data they have on you won't. Look at all of the politicians and other people getting in…

I won't have one either. Well, I have my Android, which I guess is essentially the same. I was visiting my neighbor the other day. We were wondering something about special counsel mueller, and she decided to ask Alexa. This was new, and I was surprised she had this surveillance device, but I didn't say anything. There was some back and forth, then I said to her "I think you're ordering motor oil " "Alexa, stop! Alex…

Are there microphone-blocking phone cases? All I can really find is https://www.privacycase.com/, and it seems like overkill.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#333

Post by JaggedNZ »

foobiekr wrote: post #312
cronix wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the 5th category. 5) Understand ML; concerned - won't allow any of these things in my house period because they will always use them for things behind the scenes that they won't state. I don't care how well trained they are, or "ethical." Ethical... according to who, and at what time period in the future? Ethics change. The data they have on you won't. Look at all of the politicians and other people getting in…

This. There’s nothing that binds today’s ethical company to voluntary ethical behavior when things get tough (or they get acquired).

There's nothing that stops the most ethical companies from being completely compromised by state actors either.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#334

Post by blacksmith_tb »

a3n wrote: post #321
cronix wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the 5th category. 5) Understand ML; concerned - won't allow any of these things in my house period because they will always use them for things behind the scenes that they won't state. I don't care how well trained they are, or "ethical." Ethical... according to who, and at what time period in the future? Ethics change. The data they have on you won't. Look at all of the politicians and other people getting in…

I won't have one either. Well, I have my Android, which I guess is essentially the same. I was visiting my neighbor the other day. We were wondering something about special counsel mueller, and she decided to ask Alexa. This was new, and I was surprised she had this surveillance device, but I didn't say anything. There was some back and forth, then I said to her "I think you're ordering motor oil " "Alexa, stop! Alex…

Do they know it was you, specifically? I would say they know your neighbor was talking with someone else, and possibly that politics were being discussed (not really something they seem to have put a lot of effort into recognizing, since it doesn't lead to shopping...) If you're interacting with an Echo or gHome you can always ask it "who am I?" GOOG is sneaky enough to recognize you on any other device, Alexa, not so much (and in this case you shouldn't be on their radar to being with).

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#335

Post by marzell »

cronix wrote: post #307
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…

I'm in the 5th category. 5) Understand ML; concerned - won't allow any of these things in my house period because they will always use them for things behind the scenes that they won't state. I don't care how well trained they are, or "ethical." Ethical... according to who, and at what time period in the future? Ethics change. The data they have on you won't. Look at all of the politicians and other people getting in…

Additionally, in order to be 'ethical' by any means, they still have to collect the data in the first place. Regardless of actual intentions around ethical/defined practices, that always leaves the possibility for someone else to access that data and do unintended things with it.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#336

Post by outworlder »

cronix wrote: post #307
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…

I'm in the 5th category. 5) Understand ML; concerned - won't allow any of these things in my house period because they will always use them for things behind the scenes that they won't state. I don't care how well trained they are, or "ethical." Ethical... according to who, and at what time period in the future? Ethics change. The data they have on you won't. Look at all of the politicians and other people getting in…

Before I go further: do you own a smartphone? If not, you can ignore the rest.

So, assuming you have a smartphone. That is a device which has:

- Permanent network connection. Doesn't matter what you do on your Wifi, it has the cellular data network. Which is controlled by an independent processor with its own firmware

- Excellent noise-cancellation microphones. They may not be able to pinpoint the sound source like an Echo would, but they are still pretty sensitive

- Accurate location updated via GPS. If you block GPS, it can still use the cell phone towers as an approximation, plus any SSID beacons nearby

- Very powerful processor, capable of listening for 'interesting' data before sending anything

- Similar functionality to an Echo / Google Home / Apple whatever. They'll be listening for "hey siri" or "ok google"

And so on. Plus, anyone you interact with will have such a device in their pockets.

Given that. why would an Echo be of any particular concern? At least you can monitor their network activity easily. Not so with a smartphone, which is a much higher threat. And yet most people sleep with them next to their beds.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#337

Post by deepgrave4 »

thrwer3434312 wrote: post #39
DanHulton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Scary though isn't it ? With increasing moves in these companies to govern human thought, I can imagine a time when it'll be extremely difficult to have any independent thought of your own. It's already this way in the academia/media, where anything outside the norm is considered 'blasphemy'.

We're one step away from mass-produced brain-computer interfaces. When a substantial portion of the population hooks in, they will cease to be human.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#338

Post by georgebarnett »

blackflame7000 wrote: post #256
mikeash wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it feasibility, or just laziness? My car has a little blurb that explains that they collect data to use for training and gives me the choice to participate or not. Opting out doesn’t affect any functionality. Why can’t Google do the same thing?

Because Google's first allegiance is to the shareholders and data has value so it's not in their best interest to make it easy not to share your data.

No it’s not.

Google has many primary concerns it needs to manage. That’s how you get big - by managing lots of concerns successfully.

If they drop one too long, they start going backwards very quickly.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#339

Post by Analog24 »

la_barba wrote: post #212
tbrownaw wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

We test our medicines on a small group that is representative of the entire worlds population. We build soil models based on sampling a small region. We don't test your entire blood to do a medical test. I don't know what you mean by "real data", but representative sampling is how work gets done in every single domain in the world. Google can do this.

This is a very different kind of problem than the ones you listed. One drop of blood is going to be very similar to any other in and individual. That's not true when it comes to language data (or many other types of data for that matter). The data you would record in a prepared setting (i.e. reading from some predefined set of phrases) is typically not even close to representing the full distribution of phrases/dialogues that human's use.

Furthermore, Google/Amazon/FB do use representative sampling of real user data, it's not feasible to transcribe every interaction with Google Home/Alexa/Siri. This akin to what you're suggesting but it no way addresses the privacy concerns. The only real way to do that is to use authorized data or scripted interactions, which, as described above, are not actually representative samples. It is complicated and nuanced problem.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#340

Post by pdonis »

outworlder wrote: post #336
cronix wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the 5th category. 5) Understand ML; concerned - won't allow any of these things in my house period because they will always use them for things behind the scenes that they won't state. I don't care how well trained they are, or "ethical." Ethical... according to who, and at what time period in the future? Ethics change. The data they have on you won't. Look at all of the politicians and other people getting in…

Before I go further: do you own a smartphone? If not, you can ignore the rest. So, assuming you have a smartphone. That is a device which has: - Permanent network connection. Doesn't matter what you do on your Wifi, it has the cellular data network. Which is controlled by an independent processor with its own firmware - Excellent noise-cancellation microphones. They may not be able to pinpoint the sound source like a…

On my smartphone I can at least turn off the apps that would automatically listen for voice commands; I can use the phone just fine without them. And if I thought there was enough of a threat that Google or someone else was listening in using my phone's microphone without my knowledge, even with the apps turned off, I would switch to a rooted phone that would give me more control.

For the Echo/Google Home/etc. devices, I don't have any of the above options, so I simply don't buy them and don't use them.

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