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Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

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Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#451

Post by cameronbrown »

spunker540 wrote: post #346
qroshan wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The reason is "people" lack education in technology" This is a dumb statement. Lots of tech people use all of these devices. In fact smart tech people differentiate between machine listening and humans listening. A Math, Tech person know that the probability of a human listening to my recording is close 0.000001%. Humans, including yourself, make far worse decisions every day in your life that have much higher detri…

Yeah I’m a software engineer for GAFAM, am fully tech literate and I like my Echo Dot. I’m simply not concerned about the privacy issues. I have yet to see evidence that they are using my data in any way that I would object to. I thought it’d be fun to go back through my two years of recordings to see if it captured any accidental conversations, and it was so boring to go through. They are entirely expected questions…

I'm also a GAFAM engineer. (Personal opinion ahead etc..)

I agree with you that nobody is listening and it isn't valuable data even if they were.. My biggest issue is that the devices are a black box. Nobody knows if they're hacked or compromised which is why hardware disabled buttons. More transparency is critical. I think I should be able to monitor all of my smart devices' activity with as much done on device as possible.

Apple and (now) Google have made strides with on-device ML lately - I hope things continue down this path.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#452

Post by scarejunba »

mav3rick wrote: post #407
tziki wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to hacker news, where facts don't matter and big tech is always out to get you.

Watch this be downvoted and people post comments like "DuckDuckGo way better", "I want an offline smart speaker", "Google doesn't know technology".

These people are going to be easily outcompeted in society while they find terror in every corner and box shadows. On the Internet, this shrill outrage may pass for conversation but in real life people will walk away.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#453

Post by rch »

oppositelock wrote: post #304
saluki wrote: post #115

I was a huge Google Fan but this is becoming lunacy. I understood trading some data and privacy for great search results, maps and free quality email. But people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes (beyond what smartphones are already capable of) I just can't comprehend it. Why would people voluntarily do this in exchange for being able to ask for weather, play a playlist, add a todo and…

What does having a Nest thermostat get you? I'm a tech dude, I build modern software, but I live in a dumb, old fashioned house. My programmable Honeywell thermostat, which has no internet connection, does a perfectly fine job of keeping my home the right temperature. My door locks use a key, and keys have great battery life, and my smoke detectors beep instead of speaking to me. What am I missing by not having inter…

People managing AirBnB checkouts in cold, remote areas appreciate being able to check and adjust the thermostat remotely.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#454

Post by jcranberry »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #311
jcranberry wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't selectively listen. It processes all audio input for those key words. Once it hears the keyword, it then sends a recording of what you say next to a server.

Aren’t “OK Google, hey Siri, hey Alexa” all processed/recognized locally? Otherwise, it would be a horrible idea to send EVERYTHING off to the internet for processing. Not even concerning privacy issues, it would just be unworkable that way. (This is at least true for the iPhone, Hey Siri is recognized locally before anything is sent off to the net) Re reading your comment, I guess you mean: the sound processing goes…

Yes, that's exactly what I meant.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#455

Post by 0xffff2 »

beznet wrote: post #317
oppositelock wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does having a Nest thermostat get you? I'm a tech dude, I build modern software, but I live in a dumb, old fashioned house. My programmable Honeywell thermostat, which has no internet connection, does a perfectly fine job of keeping my home the right temperature. My door locks use a key, and keys have great battery life, and my smoke detectors beep instead of speaking to me. What am I missing by not having inter…

Im in the same boat, I find the concepts very fascinating but almost all of it is trying to solve problems that don't even exist for me. The only thing my friends with IoT devices do are party tricks on voice command with their smart lights. Other than that, I find the so called 'problems' these devices solving are extraordinarily trivial.

My favorite part of my IoT loving friends' party tricks is that they only even seem to work about 40% of the time. Most of the gimmicks might be worth having if they worked 99.9% of the time and I didn't have to sell my soul to get them, but as is they're a half-baked solution to problems that I don't actually have.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#456

Post by mrrsm »

groby_b wrote: post #419
nwalker85 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have kids. They forget to turn off lights, mess with my thermostat, leave doors unlocked. The peace of mind of being able to remotely check/access/control all of this is great.

Or you could spend time with your kids, educating them to actually function as adults. But I suppose conditioning them for life in a surveillance society does that job.

How did you infer how they were raising their kids or how much time they spend with their kids from that comment? To me, it sounds more like you just want to attack them.

I'm an adult, I know I forget to turn things off sometimes and it is really nice to be able to remotely check on things like if a light is on or off or something similarly as trivial.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#457

Post by jcranberry »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #296
jcranberry wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't selectively listen. It processes all audio input for those key words. Once it hears the keyword, it then sends a recording of what you say next to a server.

This is not accurate. At least on the Google home the "wake word" is baked into the hardware and no audio gets through that piece of hardware until the wake word is detected. Obviously there can be defects, but Google is not getting 100% of the audio from your home.

I highly doubt the 'wake word' is embedded in devices on a hardware level rather than software. That sounds like a terrible idea on multiple levels.

You are using 'Google' in a vague way which may be why you are confused about what my comment meant. The Google device gets 100% of audio it hears, because it can't magically hear a 'wake word' without listening to all audio. It only sends audio to a Google server after the wake word.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#458

Post by godelski »

saluki wrote: post #115

I was a huge Google Fan but this is becoming lunacy. I understood trading some data and privacy for great search results, maps and free quality email. But people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes (beyond what smartphones are already capable of) I just can't comprehend it. Why would people voluntarily do this in exchange for being able to ask for weather, play a playlist, add a todo and…

> I guess I value my privacy more than others and don't like the idea of entities compiling a record of my data that they can sell and market.

I think a lot of people don't understand how much their data is worth. It is something I frequently hear, that "my data is useless, so why hide it?" or "what are they going to do, see that I like cat photos? HA!". I think these kinds of comments are slowly diminishing as the average person is seeing 1) these tech companies are worth $1+ trillion 2) people get scared and think Facebook is always listening because they every so often hit the mark too well. But I don't think most even know the extend of the data that these companies have (e.g. they think that Google only has their email data and knows nothing about financial), let alone how that data can be used.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#459

Post by kelnos »

saluki wrote: post #115

I was a huge Google Fan but this is becoming lunacy. I understood trading some data and privacy for great search results, maps and free quality email. But people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes (beyond what smartphones are already capable of) I just can't comprehend it. Why would people voluntarily do this in exchange for being able to ask for weather, play a playlist, add a todo and…

> But people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes (beyond what smartphones are already capable of) I just can't comprehend it.

I don't get this position: my (Android) phone can already record my voice, so how does having a Google Home materially increase the privacy risk?

The GH does have access to mains power and a wifi connection, so that makes it easier to record all the time and upload a lot of data vs. a phone, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to me to think that Google would be doing something nefarious with GH and then absolutely nothing on Android. I've also noticed that when I call out to my GH, my phone will usually respond too, so it's not like my phone can't understand me, even when it's in my pocket, so the capability is definitely there.

So if you do trust Google enough to have an Android phone, then you should probably trust them just as much to have a GH. Beyond that, then it just comes down to bugs: what if GH is too sensitive and thinks you've uttered the wake word often when you haven't? Ok, then some conversations may get recorded that you didn't intend. That's certainly a concern, but "I just can't comprehend it" would seem a bit hyperbolic in that case.

> ... includes transcripts or even audio of all your household conversations/activities over the past three years

This seems to indicate to me that you believe that GH etc. are always recording and uploading every sound it hears, all day long, without regard for the wake word. If you believe this, I guess that is your prerogative, but I guess we're probably not going to have a productive discussion here.

Re: Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home

#460

Post by godelski »

eslaught wrote: post #335
mey wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I value privacy, my nest thermostat is the only IoT device in my house that talks to the internet or can be accessed remotely without a VPN. What I find most valuable is it programs itself. Am I cold? Turn it up a bit, hot? Turn it down a bit. Suddenly I have stopped having to adjust it at all. Even as life has changed. It has some nice other features, such as preheating/cooling, telling me how long it will take to g…

Ok, but what on this list actually requires an internet connection? I guess the integration with your power company. But aside from that? You could put a local AI model into the Nest, and it shouldn't need to talk to the internet at all. It can keep the data locally, and be programmed to draw inferences without help from the mothership. For some reason we've decided it's ok to gratuitously connect everything to the i…

> You could put a local AI model into the Nest

Why do you even need AI for this? This kind of task is solvable pretty easily and is really only an ML task in the most broad of senses.

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