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

sciencemag.org

291–300 of 329 posts

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

#291
Why external speakers? Is easier to play them back in the phone! I tell you how it will start. A company finds out the way subliminal message can help people to be better. They release an app, it works! They promise it will always be free. After a few years they sell it for 100 million to Facecook, Facecook keeps it free for a few years untill they find a way to make money. Voila!

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

#292

Investigating spooky claims: "Facebook is always listening to you!": I assume that many researchers have attempted to figure this out by snooping traffic from the app. It takes a bit of technical skill to do this. If there was any strong sign of this, I assume it would have come out by now. Maybe there's a super secret bit of code that bypasses Android's microphone controls, does speech-to-text and intent processing…

>Also, anyone might be a light sleeper or wake up at the wrong time and discover this.

Besides the sleep staging link in the article, what about monitoring your fitbit to know your current sleep phase, and would turn off the ad when it sensed you waking up.

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

#293
Besides paid advertisements, what other uses are there? Like propaganda? Let's say your totalitarian regime wanted everyone to love the dear leader even more. What are you going to do about it when you accidentally discover that the smart speaker is subversive? Or maybe a group of hackers wants to convince millions of people that buying the latest bitcoin fad/WSB meme/NFT is a sound financial decision? Are we one vulnerability in Alexa away from this?

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

#294
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…

> If you don't have economic growth, then tomorrow cannot be better then today. Untrue, just look at Europe before and after the Bubonic Plague. You see massive economic collapse, but people are better off. Well, the people who are still alive are better off.

It's even worse: after the Plague there was a big economic growth due to the shrinking of the population.

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

#295
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of what problem exactly? Do you think modern society would even exist without economic growth being the main driving factor? The idea that people would just sit around creating things for altruistic reasons is a utopian pipe dream. Constantly seeking material growth isn't perfect but it provides more positive aspects than negative ones.

> it provides more positive aspects than negative ones. I mean, the negative aspects are pretty significant with the whole climate change and mass extinction going on. To make up for that we get cat videos and iPhones?

So you're suggesting that we eschew all the modern conveniences we have that help us live longer healthier lives to stop climate change?

Do me a favor and look up the average live span before the advent of electricity.

Stop presenting a false dilemma by pretending all we've gotten out of our progress is iphones and cat videos. I think you know that's not true at all.

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

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of what problem exactly? Do you think modern society would even exist without economic growth being the main driving factor? The idea that people would just sit around creating things for altruistic reasons is a utopian pipe dream. Constantly seeking material growth isn't perfect but it provides more positive aspects than negative ones.

One of the problems is ecological destruction which has increased with economic growth. I would argue that because growth is so unevenly captured by those at the top, a very high gini coefficient is another problem.

We've reversed a lot of that destruction in the past century.

You're benefiting daily from that growth and your modern lifestyle (in 1st world countries) is far above what people enjoyed even half a century ago.

Unfortunately destruction is a necessary evil. There's no way to improve society while simultaneously avoiding any ecological change. Unless you're suggesting we all go back to some sort of nomadic lifestyle?

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

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition doesn't mean "having ideas" or going separate ways. "Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared" (wikipedia). For example, competition is when you keep millions of empty apartments to make sure everybody struggles and will pay more and do whatever you say to find a place to live. Competition is also when you teach children in schools that they should…

What are the limits to this abolition of competition? How could you possibly eliminate all zero sum games? Watching toddlers ‘compete’ makes me believe competition is very human and a natural extension of desire. How do you abolish desire?

Toddlers also can't shit in a toilet or eat tidily, but they learn to...

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

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the problems is ecological destruction which has increased with economic growth. I would argue that because growth is so unevenly captured by those at the top, a very high gini coefficient is another problem.

We've reversed a lot of that destruction in the past century. You're benefiting daily from that growth and your modern lifestyle (in 1st world countries) is far above what people enjoyed even half a century ago. Unfortunately destruction is a necessary evil. There's no way to improve society while simultaneously avoiding any ecological change. Unless you're suggesting we all go back to some sort of nomadic lifestyle?

Not absolutely, but it can be a hell of a lot better than it is. We don't, for example need to have such a lot of disposable packaging, we don't need to farm the way we do etc

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

#299
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it provides more positive aspects than negative ones. I mean, the negative aspects are pretty significant with the whole climate change and mass extinction going on. To make up for that we get cat videos and iPhones?

So you're suggesting that we eschew all the modern conveniences we have that help us live longer healthier lives to stop climate change? Do me a favor and look up the average live span before the advent of electricity. Stop presenting a false dilemma by pretending all we've gotten out of our progress is iphones and cat videos. I think you know that's not true at all.

It's not a zero sum game. We can live perfectly comfortable moved without a lot of the stuff have, or doing things slightly differently. Some things we as consumers wouldn't even really notice, like better insulation standards.

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

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starvation has not been a production issue in a long time. It's a geopolitical distribution issue.

its all linked. you can't just gift stuff without destroying much of economic organization and ownership concepts etc. you can't get local production going without owning the problem of corrupt local elites (which most likely you educated in your own image) etc...

If the local economic organisation doesn't feed everyone maybe it has issues... It's a question of priority.
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