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Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

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Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#51

Post by ben_jones »

danShumway wrote: post #39
carlosdp wrote: post #19

I like to imagine sometimes how these kinds of "revelations" happen in tech newsrooms. Reporter: Tell it to me straight, do you listen to the recordings? Google: Well yea, that's how we train the... Reporter: WE GOT 'EM! It's like the "Apple admits throttling CPU when battery starts dying" story all over again. It wasn't a secret, you just didn't ask before.

In some ways, this is missing the point. To people working in machine learning, this isn't a revelation. To ordinary people, it is. A common refrain that comes up in discussions about privacy is that ordinary consumers don't care about stuff like Google Home. They don't care about privacy, only weird tech people care about privacy. However, the fact that articles like this get traction shows that a substantial portio…

Or to put it a little simpler: Way fewer units would've been sold if consumers knew third world contractors would be listening to their private home conversations. If the way you make your meat is messy, you have an obligation to share that at the dinner table if you are a good actor.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#52

Post by jdsully »

Rapzid wrote: post #47

Doesn't seem much different than the disclaimer given when calling into a company that the conversation is being recorded for "QA and training" purposes(more like performance and CYA haha). I wonder how sensationalized people will get with the headlines for click-bait purposes. While "recordings" is technically correct, "interactions" may be a slightly more precise word to use in the headline. I'm imagining a ton of…

I don’t recall any google home device informing me that conversations may be recorded. Informing the user is the difference - not the actual recording.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#53

Post by saagarjha »

mehrdadn wrote: post #13
gibba999 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty nefarious. In traditional research and product development protocols, you would have people opt into something like this, and optionally pay them for it. If Google gave out a hundred thousand Google Home units for free to test subjects, with informed consent, there would be no big deal. It would cost Google $2.5 million, and it'd probably be enough data. If my web site policy discloses "I may randomly se…

> If my web site policy discloses "I may randomly send a thug to your house to shoot your children," and you come, visit, click through the license which warned you, and then I shoot your family, that doesn't mean I'm not doing something super-evil. You kinda had me until you lost me here. Analogies need to make sense. If you have to go this far with your analogy then that says more about your own argument than the o…

You're missing the point, which is that you can slip anything into a privacy policy or other long agreement, no matter how outrageous it may be, and nobody will read it. Putting anything there does not make it ethical or legally binding.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#54

Post by burkaman »

dzader wrote: post #49
stefan_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You recruit people for testing and obtain their informed consent? What do people here think how say medicine or research is developed?!

thats because medical research has real effects on people, someone listening to you ask google to the turn the lights on doesn't matter. at all. (save the omg well they might hear something important - no they wont, and no the person on the other end doesn't give a shit even if they do)

https://www.wired.com/2017/02/murder-case-tests-alexas-devot...

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#55

Post by jascii »

malvosenior wrote: post #17
flattone wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People. Like 15% of hn users and the like

I think everyone would notice the much higher data usage bill.

Since said 3 letter agencies often work together with the telcos, I assume it wouldn't be too hard to keep that bandwidth outside of the users bookkeeping.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#56

Post by windexh8er »

cblades wrote: post #28
windexh8er wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are three types of lies: lies of commission, lies of omission and lies of influence. Just because nobody "asked" Google (your example) doesn't mean Google didn't lie (and/ or mislead) about it (lie of omission). Most people assume machines are doing the voice processing. The game changes when there's a human with a, potentially, subjective thought process to what they're hearing.

No one that gives it more than a passing thought could fail to realize that there has to be some human interaction. Someone has to do manual transcription to check against output for some portion of the data.

I don't buy that. If Google trains models with humans then that should be transparent. Data collection sorely needs policies to cover transparency of processing and disclose all of the forms in a very straightforward manner.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#57

Post by yongjik »

danShumway wrote: post #39
carlosdp wrote: post #19

I like to imagine sometimes how these kinds of "revelations" happen in tech newsrooms. Reporter: Tell it to me straight, do you listen to the recordings? Google: Well yea, that's how we train the... Reporter: WE GOT 'EM! It's like the "Apple admits throttling CPU when battery starts dying" story all over again. It wasn't a secret, you just didn't ask before.

In some ways, this is missing the point. To people working in machine learning, this isn't a revelation. To ordinary people, it is. A common refrain that comes up in discussions about privacy is that ordinary consumers don't care about stuff like Google Home. They don't care about privacy, only weird tech people care about privacy. However, the fact that articles like this get traction shows that a substantial portio…

As an ex-Googler, I'd like to say that "ordinary people" still won't understand what privacy they're giving up. Before the news, they underestimated it; not they overestimate it, but still without clear understanding of what's happening.

A group of researchers listening to a random sample of audio clip with no way to identify actual speakers is very different from someone being able to look up your name and address and pull down your conversation for leisure. (To be fair, the latter is technically not impossible - it's just that such an act will likely trigger half a dozen alarms, and the perpetrator will be fired quickly. Unless it's the government secretly asking for your information - but then, if the government is specifically looking for you, all bets are off anyway.)

It's basically the same as Google search. If you type anything into Google's search box, your search will be recorded and preserved forever so that Google's engineers can analyze usage patterns. How else would they improve their search algorithm?

Edit: I probably shouldn't have used "forever" - I don't know exactly how long your search results will be preserved. If it helps, consider it replaced by "long enough that someone can write a TechCrunch article that enrages people".

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#58

Post by traumabasedmc »

smallgovt wrote: post #16
vezycash wrote: post #8

If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too. Even if they currently can't, they'll soon make a law to grant them access to Google's and Amazon's. After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device installed. And that's all it would take to push a law mandating the…

>> After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device installed. And that's all it would take to push a law mandating the installation of such devices in open spaces, eventually private ones. I agree that this hypothetical is an accurate depiction of the future, but I think eventually we'll see this as the better of…

What about the bad actors operating out of federal intelligence agencies? Do they get closely monitored too or do they get a pass because of top secrets?

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#59

Post by xondono »

stefan_ wrote: post #45
dev_dull wrote: post #35

Is this honestly surprising to any developer? How can you develop a product like Siri/OK Google without being able look closely at edge cases? And if you have to record conversations to troubleshoot even extremely rare edge cases, you still end up with a system that allows this eavesdropping.

You recruit people for testing and obtain their informed consent? What do people here think how say medicine or research is developed?!

Like paying for them? How is a multibillion dollar company like google supposed to pay such a large amount of money...

Think of the children! (of the shareholders)

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#60

Post by Someone1234 »

danShumway wrote: post #39
carlosdp wrote: post #19

I like to imagine sometimes how these kinds of "revelations" happen in tech newsrooms. Reporter: Tell it to me straight, do you listen to the recordings? Google: Well yea, that's how we train the... Reporter: WE GOT 'EM! It's like the "Apple admits throttling CPU when battery starts dying" story all over again. It wasn't a secret, you just didn't ask before.

In some ways, this is missing the point. To people working in machine learning, this isn't a revelation. To ordinary people, it is. A common refrain that comes up in discussions about privacy is that ordinary consumers don't care about stuff like Google Home. They don't care about privacy, only weird tech people care about privacy. However, the fact that articles like this get traction shows that a substantial portio…

> To people working in machine learning, this isn't a revelation. To ordinary people, it is.

The product's tagline/marketing lead is literally: "Get answers from Google." Why would ordinary people who purchased a product to "Get answers from Google" be surprised when it sends the questions to Google to get answers from Google..?

You don't need to be an ML expert to read the product's marketing and use basic reasoning to conduce that in order to get answers from X then X will need to know the questions. That has nothing to do with ML/AI/speech recognition. It is just basic common sense.

> However, the fact that articles like this get traction shows that a substantial portion of ordinary people don't understand what privacy they're giving up when they use Google Home.

They gain traction in niche tech circles, where people pretend that the general public doesn't grasp that Google/Amazon/Apple is on the other end and claim they're defending other's privacy.

The traction isn't proof of anything, except a handful of people really dislike these conveniences (and use other's purported ignorance as justification for their whole argument).

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