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Every company building your AI assistant is now an ad company

juno-labs.com

81–90 of 178 posts

Re: Every company building your AI assistant is now an ad company

#81
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you okay with private and intimate conversations and moments (including of underage family members) being saved for replaying later? Is this somehow fundamentally different from having memories? Because I thought about it, and decided that personally I do - with one important condition, though. I do because my memories are not as great as I would like them to be, and they decline with stress and age. If a machi…

>That's why we have technology in the first place, to improve our lives, right? No, we have technology to show you more and more ads, sell you more and more useless crap, and push your opinions on Important Matters toward the state approved ones. Of course indoor plumbing, farming, metallurgy and printing were great hits, but technology has had a bit of a dry spell lately. If "An always-on AI that listens to your hou…

> you need to pause and rethink your life.

If you can't think of an always-on AI that listens but doesn't cause any horrors (even though its improbable to get to the market in the world we live on), I urge you to exercise your imagination. Surely, it's possible to think of an optimistic scenario?

Even more so, if you think technology is here to unconditionally screw us up no matter what. Honestly - when the world is so gloomy, seek something nice, even if a fantasy.

Re: Every company building your AI assistant is now an ad company

#82
post #59

Just when you've asked if there are eggs the doorbell rings, the neighbor stands there in disbelief, it told me to bring you eggs? Give him the half bottle vodka, it's going to expire soon and his son will make a surprise visit tonight. An argument arises and it participates by encouraging both parties with extra talking points. But this was only the beginning, after gathering a few TB worth of micro expressions it s…

> after gathering a few TB worth of micro expressions it starts to complete sentences

Apple bought those for $2B.. coming to Siri.

Re: Every company building your AI assistant is now an ad company

#83
The concern is real but the local solution is not ready. The author does not seem to think about that from the perspective of an "average consumer". I have been running my personal AI assistant on a consumer-grade computer, for almost an year now. It can do only one in thousand of the tasks that cloud models can do and that too at a much slow pace. Local ai assistant on consumer grade hardware is at least a few year away, and "always-on" is much further than that IMO.

Re: Every company building your AI assistant is now an ad company

#84
post #14

This strikes me as a pretty weak rationalization for "safe" always-on assistants. Even if the model runs locally, there’s still a serious privacy issue: Unwitting victims of something recording everything they said. Friends at your house who value their privacy probably won’t feel great knowing you’ve potentially got a transcript of things they said just because they were in the room. Sure, it's still better than als…

I wonder if the answer is that it is stored and processes in a way that a human can’t access or read, like somehow it’s encrypted and unreadable but tokenized and can be processed, I don’t know how but it feels possible.

It wouldn't matter of you did all that because you could still ask the AI, "what would my friend Bob think about this?" And the AI, who heard Bob talking in his phone when he thought he was alone in the other room, could tell you.

Re: Every company building your AI assistant is now an ad company

#86
post #16

This spiel is hilarious in the context of the product this company ( https://juno-labs.com/ ) is pushing – an always on, always listening AI device that inserts itself into your and your family’s private lives. “Oh but they only run on local hardware…” Okay, but that doesn't mean every aspect of our lives needs to be recorded and analyzed by an AI. Are you okay with private and intimate conversations and moments (inc…

[deleted]

Re: Every company building your AI assistant is now an ad company

#87
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's why we have technology in the first place, to improve our lives, right? No, we have technology to show you more and more ads, sell you more and more useless crap, and push your opinions on Important Matters toward the state approved ones. Of course indoor plumbing, farming, metallurgy and printing were great hits, but technology has had a bit of a dry spell lately. If "An always-on AI that listens to your hou…

> you need to pause and rethink your life. If you can't think of an always-on AI that listens but doesn't cause any horrors (even though its improbable to get to the market in the world we live on), I urge you to exercise your imagination. Surely, it's possible to think of an optimistic scenario? Even more so, if you think technology is here to unconditionally screw us up no matter what. Honestly - when the world is…

Not only is it improbable, it's a complete fantasy. It's not going to happen. And personally, I'm of the opinion that having AI be a constant presence in your life and relying on it to assist you with every minor detail or major decision is dystopian in the extreme, and that's not even factoring in the inevitable Facebook-esque monetisation.

>when the world is so gloomy, seek something nice, even if a fantasy

I don't need fantasy to do that. My something nice is being in nature. Walking in the forest. Looking at and listening to the ocean by a small campfire. An absence of stimulation. Letting your mind wander. In peace, away from technology. Which is a long winded way to say "touch grass", but - and I say this sincerely without any snark - try actually doing it. You realise the alleged gloom isn't even that bad. It's healing.

Re: Every company building your AI assistant is now an ad company

#88
post #22
post #19

It's interesting to me that there seems to be an implicit line being drawn around what's acceptable and what's not between video and audio. If there's a camera in an AI device (like Meta Ray Ban glasses) then there's a light when it's on, and they are going out of their way to engineer it to be tamper resistant. But audio - this seems to be on the other side of the line. Passively listening ambient audio is being tre…

> Passively listening ambient audio is being treated as something that doesn't need active consent That’s not accurate. There are plenty of states that require everyone involved to consent to a recording of a private conversation. California, for example. Voice assistants today skirt around that because of the wake word, but always-on recording obviously negates that defense.

Well, that's why I say "being treated"

I'm not aware of many bluetooth headphones that blink an obvious light just because they are recording. You can get a pair of sunglassses with a microphone and record with it and it does nothing to alert anybody.

Whether it's actually legal or not, as you say, varies - but it's clear where device manufactures think the line lies in terms of what tech they implement.

Re: Every company building your AI assistant is now an ad company

#89
> The always-on future is inevitable

Well the consumers will decide. Some people will find it very useful, but some others will not necessarily like this... Considering how many times I heard people yelling "OK GOOGLE" for "the gate" to open, I'm not sure a continuous flow of heavily contextualized human conversation will necessarily be easier to decipher?

I know guys, AI is magic and will solve everything, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ordered me eggs and butter when I mentioned out loud I was out of it but actually happy about this because I was just about to go on vacations. My surprise when I'm back: melted butter and rotten eggs at my door...

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