Statistical Analysis shows Echos process voice to serve ads

> Nobody said any of those things verbatim, no matter how much you wish they had.

No, of course I'm paraphrasing. I hoped I had made it sufficiently comically obvious that no non-brain-damaged reader would ever believe I was representing that as a quotation, or even an unembellished paraphrase.

> The complaint is that the article title heavily _implies_ the study finds devices are listening to your conversations unprompted

I don't think anything implies 'unprompted' rather than 'prompted', and many people in this thread appear equally confused by that inference. I am in complete incomprehension of how "Your Echos Are Heard" suggests that the smart speaker is specifically listening to your unprompted speech.

> I don't think anything implies 'unprompted' rather than 'prompted' > I am in complete incomprehension of how "Your Echos Are Heard" suggests that the smart speaker is specifically listening to your unprompted speech.

1. Wake word systems are by design, always on, always listening. At one level, the speaker _is_ listening to unprompted speech.

2. Those systems are imperfect. Pretty much everyone I know can describe at least one occasion on which a voice assistant accidentally triggered, and I have personally witnessed Siri transcribe the words said _before_ "Hey Siri."

3. There's an urban legend that FB or Amazon are, without any prompting, listening in on conversations, and using that to improve user profiles. Moreover we've seen several stories on HN lately about Zoom still sending data when the user has clicked mute, so people are more likely to make that connection.

4. Even the abstract uses the phrase "egregious privacy breaches" and doesn't provide sufficient clarity to distinguish between prompted and unprompted listening.

The title is ambiguous in a way that requires you to read the article to know whether this applies to unprompted or not -- both are equally supported conclusions IMO. And that same ambiguity lets anyone project their biases onto the article, retweet / repost / share, and demand. People are jumping to conclusions, certainly, but ambiguity interacts with "fast" social media in the form of people reading only the headlines before commenting.

> both are equally supported conclusions

Yes, I would agree with this. In other words, the word ‘echo’ entails nothing at all about whether it refers to prompted or unprompted speech (which of course it doesn’t). That’s precisely why their argument that “they must be referring to unprompted speech because they used the word ‘echo’” is not just illogical but utterly mystifying and verging on schizophrenic thought derailment.

I mean, come on, let’s recap what we’re talking about. This guy responded to this question:

>> What part of the paper gives you the impression they imply voice assistants are listening to everything?

With this answer:

> For me, it's this: "Your Echos are Heard"

> That's what gives me the impression they imply voice assistances are listening to everything.

> I don't refer to voice commands or normal interaction as "echos" so the user of the word "echos" here implies something nefarious.

This is the most brain-damaged nonsense I have ever heard in my life. They are seriously arguing that the word ‘echo’ is some sinister cryptic message indicating – for absolutely no reason any sane reader can decipher – that Amazon is listening to everything you say.

Come on. I know you’re committed to arguing that his comment is actually a brilliant masterpiece of logic, because I violated the law that One Must Always Be Superficially Polite and so the template dictates that I must be Actually Wrong and Humiliated for my Arrogance, but you can’t convince me that you really believe that garbage represents a reasoned thought.

(Incidentally, in case the original commenter is reading this, I should underscore that I’m not trying to attack him personally. We all say stupid shit now and then. I’ve said far more than my fair share. But no one gains from being nauseatingly insincere about it, as though it were a grave insult to acknowledge that someone said something silly on one occasion.)