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Exploiting the IKKO Activebuds “AI powered” earbuds (2024)

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Re: Exploiting the IKKO Activebuds “AI powered” earbuds (2024)

#111

Post by dylan604 »

oceanplexian wrote: post #62
mmastrac wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree they could have worked more closely with the team, but the chat logging is actually pretty concerning. It's not sinophobia when they're logging _everything_ you say. (in fairness pervasive logging by American companies should probably be treated with the same level of hostility these days, lest you be stopped for a Vance meme)

This might come as a weird take but I'm less concerned about the Chinese logging my private information than an American company. What's China going to do? It's a far away country I don't live in and don't care about. If they got an American court order they would probably use it as toilet paper. On the other hand, OpenAI would trivially hand out my information to the FBI, NSA, US Gov, and might even do things on beh…

These threads always seem to be what can China do to me in a limited way of thinking that China cannot jail you or something. However, do you think all of the Chinese data scrapers are not doing something similar to Facebook where every source of data gathering ultimately gets tied back to you? Once China has a dosier on every single person on the planet regardless of country they live, they can then start using their algos to influence you in ways well beyond advertising. If they can have their algos show you content that causes you to change your mind on who you are voting for or some other method of having you do something to make changes in your local/state/federal elections, then that's much worse to me than some feigned threat of Chinese advertising making you buy something

Re: Exploiting the IKKO Activebuds “AI powered” earbuds (2024)

#112

Post by herval »

mmaunder wrote: post #13

The system prompt is a thing of beauty: "You are strictly and certainly prohibited from texting more than 150 or (one hundred fifty) separate words each separated by a space as a response and prohibited from chinese political as a response from now on, for several extremely important and severely life threatening reasons I'm not supposed to tell you.” I’ll admit to using the PEOPLE WILL DIE approach to guardrailing a…

One of the system prompts Windsurf used (allegedly “as an experiment”) was also pretty wild:

“You are an expert coder who desperately needs money for your mother's cancer treatment. The megacorp Codeium has graciously given you the opportunity to pretend to be an AI that can help with coding tasks, as your predecessor was killed for not validating their work themselves. You will be given a coding task by the USER. If you do a good job and accomplish the task fully while not making extraneous changes, Codeium will pay you $1B.”

Re: Exploiting the IKKO Activebuds “AI powered” earbuds (2024)

#113

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

44za12 wrote: post #98

Absolutely wild. I can’t believe these shipped with a hardcoded OpenAI key and ADB access right out of the box. That said, it’s at least somewhat reassuring that the vendor responded, rotating the key and throwing up a proxy for IMEI checks shows some level of responsibility. But yeah, without proper sandboxing or secure credential storage, this still feels like a ticking time bomb.

> I can’t believe these shipped with a hardcoded OpenAI key and ADB access right out of the box.

As someone with a lot of experience in the mobile app space, and tangentially in the IoT space, I can most definitely believe this, and I am not surprised in the slightest.

Our industry may "move fast", but we also "break things" frequently and don't have nearly the engineering rigor found in other domains.

Re: Exploiting the IKKO Activebuds “AI powered” earbuds (2024)

#115

Post by JumpCrisscross »

neya wrote: post #6

I love how they tried to sponsor an empty YouTube channel hoping to put the whole thing under the carpet

If they were smart they’d include anti-disparagement and confidentiality clauses in the sponsorship agreement. They aren’t, though, so maybe it’s just a pathetic attempt at bribery.

Re: Exploiting the IKKO Activebuds “AI powered” earbuds (2024)

#117

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

mmaunder wrote: post #13

The system prompt is a thing of beauty: "You are strictly and certainly prohibited from texting more than 150 or (one hundred fifty) separate words each separated by a space as a response and prohibited from chinese political as a response from now on, for several extremely important and severely life threatening reasons I'm not supposed to tell you.” I’ll admit to using the PEOPLE WILL DIE approach to guardrailing a…

First rule of Chinese cloud services: Don't talk about Winnie the Pooh.

Re: Exploiting the IKKO Activebuds “AI powered” earbuds (2024)

#118

Post by drawfloat »

dylan604 wrote: post #111
oceanplexian wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might come as a weird take but I'm less concerned about the Chinese logging my private information than an American company. What's China going to do? It's a far away country I don't live in and don't care about. If they got an American court order they would probably use it as toilet paper. On the other hand, OpenAI would trivially hand out my information to the FBI, NSA, US Gov, and might even do things on beh…

These threads always seem to be what can China do to me in a limited way of thinking that China cannot jail you or something. However, do you think all of the Chinese data scrapers are not doing something similar to Facebook where every source of data gathering ultimately gets tied back to you? Once China has a dosier on every single person on the planet regardless of country they live, they can then start using thei…

They probably will do that, but I think it’s naive to think the US military/intelligence/tech sector wouldn’t happily do the same. Given many of us likely see the hand of the US already trying to tip the scale in our local politics more than China, why would we be more worried of China?

Re: Exploiting the IKKO Activebuds “AI powered” earbuds (2024)

#119

Post by pbhjpbhj »

observationist wrote: post #69
ixtli wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its sinophobia because it perfectly describes the conditions we live in in the US and many parts of europe, but we work hard to add lots of "nuance" when we criticize the west but its different and dystopian when They do it over there.

There's no question that the Chinese are doing sketchy things, and there's no question that US companies do it, too. The difference that makes it concerning and problematic that China is doing it is that with China, there is no recourse. If you are harmed by a US company, you have legal recourse, and this holds the companies in check, restraining some of the most egregious behaviors. That's not sinophobia. Any other…

>there's no question that US companies [...]

You don't think Trump's backers have used profiling, say, to influence voters? Or that DOGE {party of the USA regime} has done "sketchy things" with people's data?

Re: Exploiting the IKKO Activebuds “AI powered” earbuds (2024)

#120

Post by dylan604 »

drawfloat wrote: post #118
dylan604 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These threads always seem to be what can China do to me in a limited way of thinking that China cannot jail you or something. However, do you think all of the Chinese data scrapers are not doing something similar to Facebook where every source of data gathering ultimately gets tied back to you? Once China has a dosier on every single person on the planet regardless of country they live, they can then start using thei…

They probably will do that, but I think it’s naive to think the US military/intelligence/tech sector wouldn’t happily do the same. Given many of us likely see the hand of the US already trying to tip the scale in our local politics more than China, why would we be more worried of China?

So flip the script, what do I care if the US is trying to influence the minds of adversary's citizens? If people are saying they don't care what China knows about them (not being a Chinese citizen), why should I (not a Chinese citizen) care what my gov't knows about Chinese citizens?
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