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Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

sciencemag.org

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Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#201

Post by kadoban »

hangonhn wrote: post #50
IvyMike wrote: post #18

Leela : Didn't you have ads in the 21st century? Fry : Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.

I never appreciated Futurama when I was younger. At the time it felt like worse Simpsons but in the future. But later on I realized it’s a really good critique of our contemporary society disguised as the future looking back on us with Fry standing in for the audience. Some of the jokes are funny because they’re so biting.

A _lot_ of sci-fi in general is social commentary and/or recreational sociology.

By moving the setting to an unfamiliar one, you can make parallels to back to _familiar_ societies in a way that allows the audience to see them with a new eye. It's a nice trick to get around familiarity blindness and sidestep some biases.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#202

Post by rchaud »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #186

This kind of shit is just another example of why OSH is so important. Anyone who thinks we can convince people not to adopt a technology like this at scale is absolutely kidding themselves...we MUST develop functionally equivalent, affordable, and sexually appealing open alternatives that make privacy the easy, automatic default

Unfortunately, this won't happen. People aren't buying smart speakers because they're necessities. They are responding to the constant badgering from Amazon, Google and Apple to buy them. They'll use gimmicks like "Alexa, look up [trending event]" and convince people it's the only acceptable way to search for information about something.

A privacy-focused equivalent wouldn't do nearly as well because it wouldn't be pulling any of these tricks.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#203

Post by FridayoLeary »

IvyMike wrote: post #18

Leela : Didn't you have ads in the 21st century? Fry : Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.

Thank god that at least google, fb, amazon etc. are trying so hard to improve our advertising experience as much as possible. Where would we be if the ads directed at us were not so personalized....

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#204

Post by rchaud »

swiley wrote: post #195

I think people underestimate the degree to which the general population is susceptible to mass manipulation following the recent death of personal computing.

How recent are we talking?

15 years ago I was working at my college's IT helpdesk. The majority of students that brought in their machines told me they didn't use their computers for anything besides MS Word, AIM, Flash games and DVDs.

Of course there were the art students with Adobe troubleshooting issues, or Econ students with STATA questions, but 90% of the time the computer was an entertainment-centric device.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#205

Post by InvertedRhodium »

XorNot wrote: post #188
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't need anything else, it does.

Then how do you have all that money? And where are you keeping it? (1) Earning that money is still growing the economy, and (2) even a zero-interest bank account is growing the economy (you're just not seeing any remuneration for your part in that) - and (3) even if you took the money home and destroyed it, since you're still working, you're providing a very useful deflationary function since it means someone else ca…

What if I just take it home and keep it?

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#207

Post by rchaud »

whalesalad wrote: post #145

Yet another thing to add to the long list of reasons why I’ll never have a smart speaker in my home.

You won't have to. Eventually these speakers will have long-range parabolic microphones so one set up on a neighbour's patio will pick up sounds from your house.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#208

Post by idownvoted »

streamofdigits wrote: post #90

We have gotten to the point where the simple (and arguably essential) task of individuals learning about what the economy is producing is degenerating into a societal gangrene. No, this is not all the handywork of Zuck and the "don't be evil" company. All the conditions for their "success" have been engineered in the previous decades of the adoption and scaling of TV tech: The captive population of couch potato, over…

> why is forced consumption such an existential need that must be serviced at all costs

I think this is just half the picture. Most mindless consumption doesn't happen all the time by all people. And most mindlessly consumed products still have some people who get a true benefit out of it.

> the scene rat races

To be more precise: The rat-race is on for those moments during a day when people are mindless. And with Zuck and the "don't be evil" company trimming down our attention-span I postulate that they are to blame, because they make us more mindless.

Re: Researchers fear a scenario in which smart speakers feed sleepers subliminal ads

#209

Post by [deleted] »

fny wrote: post #198
XorNot wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, this is not what economic growth is. Any efficiency improvement, any self-improvement, anything, is economic growth. If you don't have economic growth, then tomorrow cannot be better then today. But that is a very different question to "should we cut down more rainforest?" You've got the cause and effect backwards, and it's exactly what lobbyists for the problem areas want: arguing against economic growth is p…

You're conflating economic growth with efficiency. Economic growth is measured in gross domestic product . The total of goods and services produced in a given year. So as efficiency increases, you actually need to consume more to achieve the same growth since your production costs decrease.

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