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Not OK, Google

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Re: Not OK, Google

#471

Post by Programmatic »

bhauer wrote: post #278
pimlottc wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody was thinking about "the cloud" back in those days. Back then, your data, you programs all lived and ran on your own computer in your home. Most people didn't go online, and if you did, it was mostly to read and download data to use locally on your own computer. Connections were intermittent and slow. The idea that your own data would be stored online was almost unimaginable; even using network-depending applic…

I feel your message is the most important in this thread because it's the crux of the whole concern about privacy and the cloud. Where technology has failed us most is in the utterly stagnant evolution and maturation of secure private networks. The following is a utopian notion, but had private networks seen as much R&D as the public clouds, they would be significantly less cumbersome than today's clunky VPNs. Imagin…

Let me preface this by first saying that I absolutely can't wait to have my own personal home automation, AI assistant, etc. on prem without the cloud:

I think that as far as the nascence of these features goes, the cloud model will beat the on-prem features any day of the week for several reasons. Lack of configuration to set up, ease of use from anywhere without network configuration, etc. are table stakes. But the biggest at this point is the sheer amount of training and A/B testing data you can ingest to determine what is useful for your end users.

The velocity of cloud-based products is nothing short of amazing and I doubt that on-prem will compete with the feature set and ease of use of always connected solutions until there are feature-complete, mature cloud versions to then bring in.

Re: Not OK, Google

#472

Post by majewsky »

deburo wrote: post #459
plg wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that (in the main) younger people have lower privacy thresholds than older people. Not for everyone (of course). Just on average. My impression also is that most early adopters of this kind of technology are younger people. (again: mostly) So this brings up an interesting question about the future. As the young early adopters age, what will happen? a) their privacy thresholds will also increase and t…

I don't think A will necessarily happen for most. We are a product of our experiences. If, as we grow up, we get comfortable using always-online technologies and never suffer any consequence from those experiences, I don't see what would motivate us to suddenly doubt these technologies. I am confident B is the most likely situation; that's how societies move forward so quickly with tech.

Devil's advocate says that if you want B to happen, you should start working on more Ashley-Madison-style hacks, to enable more people to have their "oh holy crap" moments.

Re: Not OK, Google

#473

Post by davidcgl »

Many readers are skeptical about the usefulness of personal AI assistants. This reminds me of what Jeff Bezos said about disruptive technologies [1], which I think resonates well among many tech company executives. You (they) need to be willing to be doubted for a very long time.

[1] http://www.geekwire.com/2011/amazons-bezos-innovation/

Any time you do something big, that’s disruptive — Kindle, AWS — there will be critics. And there will be at least two kinds of critics. There will be well-meaning critics who genuinely misunderstand what you are doing or genuinely have a different opinion. And there will be the self-interested critics that have a vested interest in not liking what you are doing and they will have reason to misunderstand. And you have to be willing to ignore both types of critics. You listen to them, because you want to see, always testing, is it possible they are right?

Re: Not OK, Google

#474

Post by bovermyer »

mojuba wrote: post #50
ubercore wrote: post #11

Google Now has done the same for me, told me how long it will take to get to a bar I frequent. My reaction was quite exactly "Oh that's neat, thanks!" and I went and had a great burger that night. Totally OK for me Google. I respect that people have different privacy thresholds, but I think the fact that it's different for everyone is being lost in articles like this.

One tiny caveat being that, Google (and others as well, to be fair) will be able to indirectly collect data even on the privacy-aware part of the population who don't use Google much. The simplest example being, even if you don't use GMail, still some part of your emails inevitably end up in GMail inboxes. Now also consider this: just being a guest in a Google-stuffed house means you are under surveillance. So no, it…

If you don't care for the products or services, you could always opt not to buy/use them. That includes avoiding areas where Google appliances are present. I'm fine with trading privacy for AI-driven convenience, though I already have a phone I like and an Echo, so I have no compelling reason to buy these particular products right now.

Re: Not OK, Google

#475

Post by majewsky »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #324
Klathmon wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which IMO is a valid thing. If you are sending something to someone, they are free to do what they want with it. You can't force them to treat it differently. If i'm on gmail, then you need to talk to gmail to talk to me. It's a tradeoff you'll need to make. If you want you can GPG encrypt the email, but there is nothing from stopping me (legally, morally, or otherwise) from just decrypting it and replying with the c…

I dunno, it's not quite that black and white. If I send someone (say) a poem I wrote, even if unsolicited, I retain the copyright and the moral rights in that poem. The recipient doesn't get carte blanche to reproduce it just because I sent it to them. So, by the same token, does Google have the rights to profile people even if they haven't consented to that? One answer, as with copyright, is to see what the law says…

At least in Germany, Google definitely does not have the rights to profile people that have not opted in. The interesting part is

1. finding someone who is not using any Google service at all, and

2. finding their data in a Google database.

Re: Not OK, Google

#476

Post by et-al »

msabalau wrote: post #116
jpalomaki wrote: post #16

For consumers this will be a choice between keeping their data private and having intelligent systems that perform better. So far I haven't seen much, but based on my limited experience I believe customers are going to continue handing over their data to Google and Facebook in exchange for personalised services. The truth is, the only times my smartphone has actually felt smart is when Google has been mining my infor…

There 50 million domestic workers in the world: living, breathing, naturally intelligence, autonomous human beings that people welcome into their homes. Not surprising, given that during almost the entirety of our evolutionary experience everyone one knew knew everything about one. The notion that people would object to a company knowing some things about one in order to place slightly more relevant ads is silly. It…

Except afaik, those workers aren't coordinated and reporting back to some central agency. If a housekeeper in New York happens to be snooping on their client, it doesn't mean one in Los Angeles is acting the same way. The damage is limited.

Re: Not OK, Google

#477

Post by thaumasiotes »

jeffdavis wrote: post #199
ubercore wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and to illustrate your point, I have an email very similar to someone else's. I very frequently get their emails (invoices, church events, travel itineraries, purchase receipts). Google thinks they're _my_ trips, and updates me about flight times. I think this example serves both our points. To your point, it's totally leaked this other person's info into my "google world" because I'm on gmail. On the other han…

That's one of the interesting things about AI. There's no way to clairfy/correct when something is wrong, and most of the time you don't even know something is wrong. It's not clear whether these AI models have much incentive to correct anything. If 99% of people with attributes x,y and z are bad candidates for a job, will you even get an interview? Is there any attempt to account for the fact that attribute x is som…

> If 99% of people with attributes x,y and z are bad candidates for a job, will you even get an interview? Is there any attempt to account for the fact that attribute x is something you were born with?

Why would that matter to the company? People are born with stupidity.

Re: Not OK, Google

#478

Post by dragonwriter »

pjlegato wrote: post #454
dragonwriter wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the original show there wasn't a currency Incorrect, in the original series, there was a currency ("credits") that was explicitly referenced several times; it was also referenced in at least one, and possibly more, early TNG episodes. Sometime in the TNG era, Roddenberry laid down an edict that money, including the "credits" that had been repeatedly referenced previously, did not exist in the federation, and so…

Currency was later re-introduced to enable the Ferengi race to be portrayed as greedy merchants.

> Currency was later re-introduced to enable the Ferengi race to be portrayed as greedy merchants.

I don't think that's really accurate; the Ferengi were portrated as greedy merchants focused on profit starting fairly early in TNG without direct reference to currency (gold -- not the later "gold-pressed latinum" -- was mentioned, IIRC, as an item of interest, but not in any context which implied it was used as currency); I think gold-pressed latinum as introduced as a currency in DS9 because DS9's role as commerce hub was central to the theme of the series, and having currency just made telling stories about that a lot more convenient.

Re: Not OK, Google

#479

Post by kps »

Nursie wrote: post #177
ubercore wrote: post #11

Google Now has done the same for me, told me how long it will take to get to a bar I frequent. My reaction was quite exactly "Oh that's neat, thanks!" and I went and had a great burger that night. Totally OK for me Google. I respect that people have different privacy thresholds, but I think the fact that it's different for everyone is being lost in articles like this.

When it first told me it knew hiw long my commute would take, I realised it was creepy as all hell that the people (in another country with few protections on data) providing my phone software knew enough about me to tell where I worked and when I was going there. And it annoys me that on maps, when you turn off all the spying capabilities there's no fallback to local history. You either share it with us or you get n…

  > ... it was creepy as all hell that the people [...] knew enough about me
No people know. Software metaphorically ‘knows’, but don't anthropomorphize it (it hates that).

Re: Not OK, Google

#480

Post by marak830 »

AidanRB wrote: post #383
marak830 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning* not leaving Linux. Too late to edit. Damn you fat thumbs.

That explains my confusion. It's not that complicated. Use a common distro like Ubuntu and everything's documented online.

I keep meaning to learnt it, and try it.

But my main coding(admittedly amateur and earning very little) uses .net. on top of that most of the games I play to relax are Windows does only(as far as I know for most).

O keep meaning to make time, but it just hasn't happened yet. I don't get paid as a programmer (English teacher), so I need to spend my free time earning money on what I know.

As always, one day when I have money to spare(or time, which is basically the same thing haha).

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