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

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#381

Post by bb101 » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 12:03 AM UTC

jammygit wrote: post #166

noir_lord wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aldous Huxley got there earlier with A Brave New World as well. Speculative Fiction was ahead of the curve in that era.

Anyone want to recommend a book? Let me join in by suggesting the Asimov robot books, which I’ve just begun

Iain Bank's Culture series deals with self-conscious machines with the same rights and freedoms as humans. Each machine has a value denoting its mental equivalence to a human, and some starship Minds are close to gods (similar to comparing a human to amoeba).

'Never forget I am not this silver body, Mahrai. I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side. ‘We are quicker; we live faster and more completely than you do, with so many more senses, such a greater store of memories and at such a fine level of detail. We die more slowly, and we die more completely, too. Never forget I have had the chance to compare and contrast the ways of dying.’ [1]

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12016.Look_to_Windward

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#382

Post by jolmg » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 12:03 AM UTC

inflatableDodo wrote: post #373

outworlder wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Before I go further: do you own a smartphone? Someone really needs to make a decent modular smartphone with a detachable radio.

I guess it makes sense to detach the radio if you're not using your phone to receive calls...

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#383

Post by pdonis » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 12:06 AM UTC

rurban wrote: post #346

pdonis wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. device…

Even a rooted phone will not help, since the monopolistic baseband processor will do it. The big ARM CPU is just for the users, the baseband is for control of the public masses and mass surveillance.

> the monopolistic baseband processor will do it

The baseband processor isn't running Siri or Google Voice on my phone. Yes, if the state has a back door into the baseband processor there's not much I can do about it, but that's not the threat model that I'm avoiding by not using devices like the Echo or Google Home.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#384

Post by askvictor » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 12:13 AM UTC

inflatableDodo wrote: post #373

outworlder wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Before I go further: do you own a smartphone? Someone really needs to make a decent modular smartphone with a detachable radio.

Pull out the SIM card? I guess once eSIMs catch on, this won't be an option.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#385

Post by diminoten » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 12:36 AM UTC

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…

What's strange about this conversation is that your refusal to trade privacy for convenience is passed off as some kind of no-loss decision, when in reality there are all kinds of downsides to living your life the way you claim you do.

The conversation can't even be had until the facts are presented honestly, and when you present your position this way, it's not honest.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#386

Post by jacobsenscott » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 12:45 AM UTC

jononor wrote: post #211

jacobsenscott wrote: post #127

What's most interesting to me is that an army of contractors is required to get even the low accuracy levels of voice recognition we have today. The "AI" revolution is pure smoke and mirrors designed entirely to bilk investors out of their dollars. There's been no improvement in "AI" in the last 50 years, except that we have a lot more data to push through the same useless models.

100 bucks for anyone who uses a 50 year model/method and get within twice the word-error-rate of today's speech recognition systems. Also, how do you explain the progress on ImageNet challenge over the last 10 years? Each method there uses the same dataset, yet error rates (top5) have gone from 30% in 2011 to around 3% in 2016.

Faster computers, and more of them.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#387

Post by taneq » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

basch wrote: post #356

pdonis wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. device…

Theres a mute button on the echo. You can turn voice off just the same as you can on a phone.

There's also the perma-mute button which you can activate by not buying one in the first place.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#388

Post by agentphil » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

bscphil wrote: post #377

outworlder wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Similar functionality to an Echo / Google Home / Apple whatever. They'll be listening for "hey siri" or "ok google" This seems to be a pretty big assumption, without which your whole argument falls apart. In my case, at least, I have no such functionality enabled. You could argue that the manufacturer of my phone could push a software update that enables it without my knowledge (in fact, they likely couldn't, becau…

EU governments and telcos spy on you by law. 10 years ago there was a law across entire EU that forced telecom companies to store the position and call numbers of users for the past 6 months. Germany got even fined because it did not implement the law.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#389

Post by taneq » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 1:18 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #383

rurban wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a rooted phone will not help, since the monopolistic baseband processor will do it. The big ARM CPU is just for the users, the baseband is for control of the public masses and mass surveillance.

> the monopolistic baseband processor will do it The baseband processor isn't running Siri or Google Voice on my phone. Yes, if the state has a back door into the baseband processor there's not much I can do about it, but that's not the threat model that I'm avoiding by not using devices like the Echo or Google Home.

> that's not the threat model that I'm avoiding by not using devices like the Echo or Google Home.

100% this. IF a state intelligence agency is after my data they'll get it somehow (most likely just by asking). My concern is the rampant dragnet aggregation of personal data that I didn't expressly provide them by companies like Google and Facebook. I mean, Google having access to your emails that you store in Gmail? Kind of understandable. Google buying MasterCard transaction records to cross-reference against your web browsing data as tracked by any site using Google Analytics? No.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#390

Post by LocalH » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 1:19 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #354

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…

Imagine 20 years from now you decide to run for political office. Do you want someone "ethically" going through all your old recorded conversations looking for statements that will be politically incorrect 20 years from now?

Not only you, but your kids. People have lost sponsorships and contracts because of things one of their parents said before the person in question was even born. Look at last year's incident where Eli Lilly pulled their NASCAR sponsorship of Conor Daly over something his father had said a decade before Conor existed. https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/motor/2018/08/24/eli-l...