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Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

nytimes.com

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Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#31

Post by oulipo »

amelius wrote: post #23
oulipo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are building this at https://snips.ai (disclaimer: I'm a co-founder). You can build 100% on-device Voice AI assistants which are running on a Raspberry Pi 3, and we are open-sourcing the platform You can take a look at our blog to get started if you want to build your own assistant: https://medium.com/snips-ai/building-a-voice-controlled-home...

Interesting! Under what license are you open-sourcing the platform? And what is your business model? How well do you perform in benchmarks? (Assuming there are benchmarks)

It will be mostly GPL, the business model is to sell licenses for industrial device builders!

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#32

Post by bluGill »

amelius wrote: post #7

Why don't we have open-source voice-assistants yet? I mean, if we can have an open-source OS (e.g. Linux), then surely we can have open-source speech recognition, right?

In addition to snips, there is also mycroft.ai. Both are still in the early stages, and work slightly differently. Check them both out.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#33

Post by ryandrake »

oulipo wrote: post #21
jacquesm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please check into 'reproducible builds' and ways to ensure the software is not modified between the point where you build it and the point where it gets deployed. There will most likely at some point be an attempt to use your reputation to achieve the exact opposite of your stated goals so beware of that.

We'd love to hear more about what you think of this, perhaps you can contact me mael.primet@snips.ai and I would love to do a Skype with you, if only because I read quite a few of your posts over the year and am curious to know you. We are providing the source, and people can rebuild it from scratch and ensure that their device is running the open-source code. In theory, it is each user who should deploy his device.…

> If an industrial partners want to ship our software to many devices, indeed it will be needed for them to prove he hasn't modified the software and we are happy to learn about best practices to help them do so, so we will look at this

Yea, as a privacy conscious user this would be the attack vector that I’d be most nervous about. “Partners” taking the open source engine and loading it up with surveillance. Being able to re-compile and deploy a vanilla version from source is critical. There are a lot of “smart” devices out there that I would buy if only I had root and/or could decide what software ran on it.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#34

Post by sp332 »

amelius wrote: post #7

Why don't we have open-source voice-assistants yet? I mean, if we can have an open-source OS (e.g. Linux), then surely we can have open-source speech recognition, right?

Mozilla is making one. The first release last year was already very good, and hopefully it will improve with time. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/a-journey-to-10-word-error...

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#35

Post by josefresco »

oulipo wrote: post #15
jacquesm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a co-founder of https://snips.ai and we are building a 100% on-device and private-by-design platform to build Voice AI assistants Excellent! How will you guarantee that your devices will not leak data?

We are open-sourcing the code, and people can have their own network monitoring to see that there is no data leaking

"and people can have their own network monitoring"

Is this monitoring built into your product? If not, wouldn't a user of any AI assistant have this same ability?

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#36

Post by craftyguy »

oulipo wrote: post #21
jacquesm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please check into 'reproducible builds' and ways to ensure the software is not modified between the point where you build it and the point where it gets deployed. There will most likely at some point be an attempt to use your reputation to achieve the exact opposite of your stated goals so beware of that.

We'd love to hear more about what you think of this, perhaps you can contact me mael.primet@snips.ai and I would love to do a Skype with you, if only because I read quite a few of your posts over the year and am curious to know you. We are providing the source, and people can rebuild it from scratch and ensure that their device is running the open-source code. In theory, it is each user who should deploy his device.…

Will the device have any components in it which require proprietary firmware? Think long and hard about that before answering.

edit: I thought you were also doing something similar to Mycroft and their 'mark 1' thing. I was wrong.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#37

Post by bargl »

oulipo wrote: post #3

You can't trust the large companies who have a culture of profiting off your data to protect your privacy. This is why we need AI at the edge, and not in the clouds, and Privacy-by-design thinking in our architectures. This is the only way for people to know their data won't be compromised and misused, because it never leaves their devices. Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder of https://snips.ai and we are building a 100% o…

Have you run into any problems improving or training your algorithm if you're limiting the data it has access to? What are some of the things you've done that make you "wish" you could be an online off-device tool?

I ask because most of what we hear is that online tools will get better over time because you are sharing your data. How do you work around this, or is that even an obstacle?

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#38

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

fortythirteen wrote: post #26

The things people are willing to give up for the most minimal of conveniences are only going to get worse in the next decade. I wouldn't be willing to put an open wiretap in my home, even if it did something amazing, like extend my lifespan. The quality of my life is not significantly improved with these devices, and all of their practical uses can be duplicated with the minimal effort of tapping a screen a couple of…

I'm seriously shocked by the number of people that are putting always on "assistants" in their home - but more so on the number of people that should know better, like HN people.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#39

Post by crankylinuxuser »

bluGill wrote: post #32
amelius wrote: post #7

Why don't we have open-source voice-assistants yet? I mean, if we can have an open-source OS (e.g. Linux), then surely we can have open-source speech recognition, right?

In addition to snips, there is also mycroft.ai. Both are still in the early stages, and work slightly differently. Check them both out.

There's also Sirius by University of Michigan.

Its also completely open source, and can do text, voice, and picture search.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#40

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

rb808 wrote: post #4

With a court order can authorities turn on the microphone and just listen to everything? Seems easy to do but I haven't heard about it yet. I guess phones can do the same. Presumably the Russians and Chinese do this already. :)

Why would you possibly think you'll hear about times governments forced companies to turn these into wiretaps? You won't until you do - but then you'll know it was going on for years.
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