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Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

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Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#121

Post by martin-adams »

cj wrote: post #111

I've long been curious how GDPR should be applied to Google Home, Alexa, etc. These devices record and upload voice recordings to the cloud (with a percentage apparently shared with Google contractors to process). The audio clips can be recordings of conversations of people who have not consented to being recorded. And I can't imagine it's possible for Amazon or Google to reasonably comply with Art. 15 or 17 (right o…

>> The audio clips can be recordings of conversations of people who have not consented to being recorded

My guess would be that the person who does consent to the terms of service of the device and plugs it in will be the one responsible for ensuring that it is used in a way that does not invade the privacy of anyone else. It would be similar to me buying an IP camera, agreeing to the terms of service then putting it in my neighbours house without their knowledge.

In the context of the GDPR, I think the question comes down to what rights a third party person has when a user puts their personal information on the company's servers. If someone uploads a video of me without my consent to YouTube, can I get it removed under the GDPR?

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#122

Post by notinversed »

gringoDan wrote: post #95

I think the responses to this can be broken down into a 2x2 matrix: level of concern vs. understanding of technology. 1) Don't understand ML; not concerned - "I have nothing to hide." 2) Don't understand ML; concerned - "I bought this device and now people are spying on me!" 3) Understand ML; not concerned - "Of course, Google needs to label its training data." 4) Understand ML; concerned - "How can we train models/c…

You're getting too lost in the weeds here.

It doesn't matter if a company takes your data, does a poor job of anonymizing it, and then decides to label it as "training" for their "AI" or if they just stick it all in a flat .txt files and process it in Fortran.

It's the exact same thing. You should be mad about the data being saved and used. Splitting hairs over implementation details to try and find a loophole is just a waste of time.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#123

Post by smsm42 »

electrograv wrote: post #15

So Google’s response is (paraphrased as fairly as I can while removing the sugar-coating): ’Yes, we hire people to listen in to and transcribe some conversations from the private homes of our customers (so as improve our speech recognition engines); but the recordings aren’t linked to personally identifiable information.’ Even assuming they have only the purest intentions here, I still don’t understand how they can p…

> For example, what’s to stop me from saying “Hey Google, I am

Even more fun, if you call a bank, you often have to key-in your account number (which can be easily decoded if your phone sounds back the tones, which most do), then tell you name, your address and sometimes your other PII like Social Security number or part of it. Record that call and that's a complete identity theft package, nicely wrapped, just replay it to the bank (which name you've also have recorded, if the user called on speaker, which they did because who wants to keep the phone pressed to your head all the time while you're waiting and listening to the muzak) and you get full access to the user's bank account.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#124

Post by checktheorder »

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #28

The one thing about these stories that keep coming out about the home assistants... they kind of create the impression that this is an issue specific to home speakers, and you can avoid it, by simply not buying them. That's misleading. Any voice command you use to operate any internet connected tech gadget, from phones to smart TV's, is potentially stored and flagged for human review. You really have to avoid using v…

Whenever I'm in the home of a friend who's enthralled with their smart speaker gadget, I like to make red-flag-raising requests to their gadget. Asking for good sniper vantage points in Washington DC, a safe rohypnol dosage for 10-year-olds, the soonest flight to a non-extradition country, those sorts of things.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#125

Post by mgamache »

ethbro wrote: post #99
bastawhiz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You already consented by agreeing to the terms of service. If someone else is talking to their smart device while you're talking, it's ostensibly their responsibility. There's no reasonable laws that prevent you from being overheard in the back of a recorded phone conversation

(IANAL, but) Not accurate in the US. Most states are either one party or two party consent states. One party = you can unilaterally record anything (not sure this includes things you're not actively involved with, e.g. spying). Two party = you must have consent of everyone in the recording. By a plain reading of two party consent statutes, people are in violation if their home speaker records a guest without obtainin…

And of course there are children to consider:

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/suit-alleges-am...

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#126

Post by pjc50 »

noego wrote: post #101
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #41

I mean. Of course they are. Do you expect to be able to do any meaningful level of training on data that hasn't been properly labeled? At some point, a human has to go in and correct the software when the software gets it wrong. If you want services that do what Google Home does, you have to have this. Even with that, I'm sure that the engineers are flagging voice requests that happen more then once, or where some on…

I wonder how people felt about handing all their personal photos over to a stranger just so they can get developed and printed, back in the 1990s. By today's standards, that would be incredibly creepy. But everyone did it because... having photos is pretty awesome. It would be nice if companies like Google made it very clear that specific forms of user-data can/will be human reviewed for development/operational purpo…

> I wonder how people felt about handing all their personal photos over to a stranger just so they can get developed and printed, back in the 1990s. By today's standards, that would be incredibly creepy. But everyone did it because... having photos is pretty awesome.

This had its own set of norms associated with it: people would not take in photos that could be considered "indecent". Possibly by the extremely conservative standards of your local chemist. Then Polaroid invented a camera where you didn't have to submit your photos to the judging eye of someone else ...

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#127

Post by jacobsenscott »

What's most interesting to me is that an army of contractors is required to get even the low accuracy levels of voice recognition we have today. The "AI" revolution is pure smoke and mirrors designed entirely to bilk investors out of their dollars. There's been no improvement in "AI" in the last 50 years, except that we have a lot more data to push through the same useless models.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#128

Post by natch »

amacneil wrote: post #33

Serious question: how do people think the ML models for Home, Alexa, Siri, etc are trained, if not with human labeling?

Apple pays real humans to enlist in research studies to collect data. That’s how they built FaceID for example. They have stated this publicly.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#129

Post by ethbro »

mgamache wrote: post #119
ethbro wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(IANAL, but) Not accurate in the US. Most states are either one party or two party consent states. One party = you can unilaterally record anything (not sure this includes things you're not actively involved with, e.g. spying). Two party = you must have consent of everyone in the recording. By a plain reading of two party consent statutes, people are in violation if their home speaker records a guest without obtainin…

My understanding of recording law is that in One Party states you need to be part of the conversation to record it. Speculation: This would mean that the device / owner would be in violation if the owner was not in the room?

Ironically, if the owner were not in the room, I'd expect the device manufacturer would be more directly liable.

How can a homeowner be responsible for a device for which they (a) don't control the operation of & (b) don't control the software of?

At that point, whether a device captures incidental recording seems entirely under control of the manufacturer.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#130

Post by groovybits »

lovetocode wrote: post #108

I own 4 Home Minis, 1 Home and 2 Home hubs I honestly don't care so long as my data is used to improve the functionality and stability of my investment. It is quite another thing if they are selling my conversations to third-party vendors.

Per article:

> The man, who wants to remain anonymous, works for an international company hired by Google. His job is to listen to the audio clips and to write out what he hears, so that Google can improve the speech assistant.

So,

> It is quite another thing if they are selling my conversations to third-party vendors.

That is exactly what Google is doing.

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