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Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#51

Post by jammygit »

Iv wrote: post #36
probably_wrong wrote: post #19

So far, most of the comments here are a good example of both why this happened and why it will happen again. When people complained that putting microphones in your home 24/7 was creepy, the response was "that's nonsense, Siri is not sending anything unless you specifically ask for it". When it turned out that it does send things you didn't intend, the response was "well, it's not like anyone is listening anyway". No…

> We really need mandatory ethics courses in CS. And a ritual like they have in Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring

One Canadian student engineering team recently won an engineering competition by creating a cell phone tracking system for an airport. The ethics are pretend, the engineering association only cares about punishing people for mistakes (at least, as I'm told by the seniors I've spoken to).

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#52

Post by gambiting »

kalms wrote: post #15
throw03172019 wrote: post #3

I actually think they should collect this data. Siri doesn’t understand basic things from me.

What are basic things to you?

Saying "call X" where X doesn't have an English name(and Siri is set to English) is just bound to fail. It's like the most basic functionality that all voice assistants fail at miserably - google assistant is equally garbage at it.

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#53

Post by atoav »

taneq wrote: post #23
shalmanese wrote: post #5

People have really bad intuitions around privacy. The predominant mental model is that there is a single, motivated adversary who is uniquely interested in attacking them. In reality, privacy almost always involves large, impersonal systems ingesting masses of data to either increase profits or commit crimes. It may sound bad that some random person is hearing your sex sounds but that person has heard a thousand othe…

Excellent point. I'm way more creeped out about some shadowy corporate spook digging through my photos, but I'm way more likely to actually be materially disadvantaged by $search_company analysing my search terms, realising I'm really REALLY interested in buying [X], and quietly dropping from their results any mention of [X] vendors who haven't paid at least $y for advertising this quarter (including, most likely, my…

And if you zoom out and watch the impact of privacy violations on a state level?

Privacy violation is power. And all power that isn‘t elected should be limited by those who are, so we can shape our future. The way things are now companies like facebook or google could easily threaten any elected leader with annihilation simply by using the gathered data and sending the right messages to the right people. They wouldn’t even have to use fake news for that.

Privacy never really was a individual problem, it is a systemic one.

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#54

Post by ctz »

londons_explore wrote: post #40
probably_wrong wrote: post #19

So far, most of the comments here are a good example of both why this happened and why it will happen again. When people complained that putting microphones in your home 24/7 was creepy, the response was "that's nonsense, Siri is not sending anything unless you specifically ask for it". When it turned out that it does send things you didn't intend, the response was "well, it's not like anyone is listening anyway". No…

> We really need mandatory ethics courses in CS. Voice recognition isn't really possible without someone listening to train the system. If the option is "don't have a voice assistant at all" or "have a voice assistant that sometimes has a human listening", I suspect the public would mostly choose the latter. When you call a company helpline and get connected to a human rather than a robo-voice, most people are happy…

> Voice recognition isn't really possible without someone listening to train the system.

IBM ViaVoice was released in 1997, and did standalone voice recognition to an acceptable degree from my recollection (after a couple of hours training).

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#55

Post by jammygit »

calcifer wrote: post #20
shalmanese wrote: post #5

People have really bad intuitions around privacy. The predominant mental model is that there is a single, motivated adversary who is uniquely interested in attacking them. In reality, privacy almost always involves large, impersonal systems ingesting masses of data to either increase profits or commit crimes. It may sound bad that some random person is hearing your sex sounds but that person has heard a thousand othe…

> People have really bad intuitions around privacy. > Having worked at companies that collected that data [...] No, you just have a different personal definition of privacy. The fact that you think your use of my data is innocuous doesn't mean you are not violating my privacy. If your use was really, trully unobjectionable you'd be fine with getting clear and explicit consent. Somehow, I don't think an honest consent…

Especially if its hidden 5 layers deep in some settings and you don't know it exists, and is opt-out

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#56

Post by AstralStorm »

shawnz wrote: post #42
probably_wrong wrote: post #19

So far, most of the comments here are a good example of both why this happened and why it will happen again. When people complained that putting microphones in your home 24/7 was creepy, the response was "that's nonsense, Siri is not sending anything unless you specifically ask for it". When it turned out that it does send things you didn't intend, the response was "well, it's not like anyone is listening anyway". No…

I think this is a mischaracterization of what "the response" was except maybe from laypeople. The idea that real people's input was analyzed as part of the system (for Siri, Amazon etc) was always well documented and I never saw anything in the official documentation or the media response to these technologies that suggested otherwise. In my opinion it's only now which they see that they can capitalize on this misund…

Why no fuss initially? Here's a few options to explore:

- People and by consequence journalists want new thing and incumbent to succeed (potentially underdog and novelty effect)

- Some journalists were well paid to tout it

- Lobbyists and think tanks were well paid to quell any potential political and legal concerns

- The matter was indeed not obvious to either users or journalists

- Experts in privacy were being discounted and undermined

- Legal landscape has changed (see GDPR)

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#57

Post by pluma »

pluma wrote: post #44
shalmanese wrote: post #5

People have really bad intuitions around privacy. The predominant mental model is that there is a single, motivated adversary who is uniquely interested in attacking them. In reality, privacy almost always involves large, impersonal systems ingesting masses of data to either increase profits or commit crimes. It may sound bad that some random person is hearing your sex sounds but that person has heard a thousand othe…

Sure, corporate privacy abuse is a different beast and bad for different reasons but your mistake is thinking of this as an either-or scenario. Yes, you may not care about whose audio you're listening to. But someone might. They may not even know the person prior to listening to that audio and still pose a threat. Stalking is an obvious problem. But what if they think they recognise a voice and then act on that infor…

BTW, this is what most feminists[0] mean when they talk of "rape culture". It's not about women being dragged into the bushes and sexually violated. It's about a widespread lack of understanding of consent.

If I allow you to touch my shoulder, that means you're allowed to touch my shoulder, not my groin. It also doesn't mean I allow you to touch me any time you want or that it was okay when you touched me before without asking.

Likewise if I allow you to process my e-mail address to send me an invoice, that doesn't mean I allow you to track how many times (and when) I opened the e-mail or to send me marketing e-mails or to give my e-mail address to someone else or that it was okay when you previously stored my e-mail address without telling me.

In tech we like to say "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission" and on HN we praise disruption, but remember that these things are meant to be about technology and established business practices, not people. Technology can't give consent and corporations aren't people (no matter how much certain politicians in the US try to convince you) but people are people and you should respect their consent above all else[1].

[0]: No, I'm not talking about Buzzfeed and its ilk. Mainstream journalism cares more about clickbait stories than about academic discourse, so don't base your opinion on feminist issues on the yellow press.

[1]: Obvious caveat that there is a whole separate discussion to be had about respecting consent when people present a threat to themselves or others.

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#58

Post by calcifer »

joshuamorton wrote: post #49
calcifer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People have really bad intuitions around privacy. > Having worked at companies that collected that data [...] No, you just have a different personal definition of privacy. The fact that you think your use of my data is innocuous doesn't mean you are not violating my privacy. If your use was really, trully unobjectionable you'd be fine with getting clear and explicit consent. Somehow, I don't think an honest consent…

> If your use was really, trully unobjectionable you'd be fine with getting clear and explicit consent. This ignores human nature: requiring people to make a decision, any decision, is a friction point that will lose users. Something like "we'd like to increment a counter when our app crashes, we won't log anything else than that single bit". So first of all, you'll have people who will claim that you could be lying,…

> requiring people to make a decision, any decision, is a friction point that will lose users

One could argue that's a good thing.

> you'll have people who will claim that you could be lying

That's not a claim, that's a fact. You could very well be lying and I wouldn't know as I don't have access to the internals of your company.

> But now all the people who truly didn't and don't actually care will have to make a decision. And making choices takes effort.

The horror!

> So some people will just refuse to make a choice, and you'll lose users.

Good, people shouldn't blindly sign up to services they don't understand just because it's a new shiny thing.

> I don't change them. I don't want to think about them. I don't care enough.

Good for you. I'm also in Europe and I think GDPR is fine and I do change the cookie settings instead of just clicking through.

> And it's just effort I have to expend before I actually get to the stuff I'm interested in. Like a government mandated paywall

Music to my ears.

> requiring explicit consent for otherwise innocuous things is just bad for business with little gain

I couldn't care less about what's good or bad for a data collecting business, I care about the people whose data will inevitably be leaked by said business in a future breach.

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#59

Post by mrtksn »

gambiting wrote: post #52
kalms wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are basic things to you?

Saying "call X" where X doesn't have an English name(and Siri is set to English) is just bound to fail. It's like the most basic functionality that all voice assistants fail at miserably - google assistant is equally garbage at it.

These assistants are really not working well in multi-lingual settings but I suspect that the stuff Apple was doing wouldn't improve it. Some functions are disabled if you have Siri in one language and your device in another.

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#60

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

abhisuri97 wrote: post #21
probably_wrong wrote: post #19

So far, most of the comments here are a good example of both why this happened and why it will happen again. When people complained that putting microphones in your home 24/7 was creepy, the response was "that's nonsense, Siri is not sending anything unless you specifically ask for it". When it turned out that it does send things you didn't intend, the response was "well, it's not like anyone is listening anyway". No…

Minor point: While I do agree that ethics course should be a part of CS curricula, wouldn’t managers be the ones who likely pushed for the pattern you’re remarking upon? (Ie ethics classes would be more useful for them?)

Tangentially related: The Technical University of Berlin is considered to have one of Germany's best departments of philosophy.

The reason: after World War 2, the university was located in the British-controlled sector, and their administration made philosophy mandatory for all students.

Because never again should young people be given the power of an engineering/science education without any regard to the ethical implications of the possibilities.

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