Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by icebraining » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:27 AM UTC

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…

> If the option is "don't have a voice assistant at all" or "have a voice assistant that sometimes has a human listening"

It's false that those are the only choices. You don't have to use the whole pool of users as unwitting guinea pigs of your system. You can use a voice assistant that was previously trained on a well informed and hopefully paid pool of volunteers.

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

#92

Post by matsemann » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:27 AM UTC

jammygit wrote: post #48

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…

> When this story broke, I dipped into Apple’s terms of service myself and, though there are mentions of quality control for Siri and data being shared, I found that it did fall short of explicitly and plainly making it clear that live recordings, even short ones, are used in the process and may be transmitted and listened to. The implications of what they agree to are impossible to understand, by design. They're cra…

That's one thing I like with GDPR. It has to be informed consent for a lot of cases. Can't hide it and say you agreed to whatever in a hidden EULA.

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

#93

Post by sooheon » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:27 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #78

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 im…

> have one of Germany's best departments of philosophy. So what? Philosophy has barely anything to do with ethics. You can study philosophers that can argue for complete opposite sides of the same point at hand, so it does not give you any indication as to what is right or wrong. And Germany has a pretty poor record so far in terms of privacy protections/provisions, so I am not sure there is any indication that post-…

An education should not hand you a canned answer to what is "right" or "wrong", it should do almost the opposite. Learning to evaluate well founded opposing arguments is certainly more useful than being force fed moralist dogma du jour.

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

#94

Post by lawfulcactus » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:29 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #47

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…

In fact this isn’t the reason I have privacy concerns, it is actually the least concerning point. My points are: - while I might be an uninteresting target, this doesn’t mean others are not. Lawyers, Doctors, Jiurnalists, Activists and so on certainly are targets that are and will be spied on if it is easily possible for adverseries to get the data (e.g. without a real.court ruling etc). I profit from a society where…

while I might be an uninteresting target, this doesn’t mean others are not

And though you might be an uninteresting target now, there's no guarantee that will be the case in the future. The sorts of personal information people would like to keep private change with the society around them, and generally speaking, it's not possible to retroactively conceal information.

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

#95

Post by antihero » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:32 AM UTC

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.

We had this module at uni, nobody turned up because it was boring.

https://www.reading.ac.uk/modules/document.aspx?modP=CS3SL16...

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

#96

Post by skocznymroczny » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:33 AM UTC

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #90

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 was a prototype for Echelon IV. My instructions are to amuse visitors with information about themselves I don't see anything amusing about spying on people. Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. I have recorded their smiles as I tell them who they are Some people just don't understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance. The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can…

Well... time to reinstall...

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

#97

Post by mcintyre1994 » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:35 AM UTC

lokedhs wrote: post #45

completelylegit wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The day when you can just say “lights on, 50%” and the assistant in the next room understands you don’t mean it is when we will have the right amount of universal compatibility. Until we can derive decisions based on who is speaking and where they ”are” - I think it’ll always be clunky. “Hey Alexa tell Hue to set light scene livingroom to 80%” is cool that it exists for those who really need the solution but its not…

I listen to the Twit podcast, which is usually very good. One thing they do, however, is to stop themselves from saying the word Alexa, and if someone accidentally does so, they beep it out. Why? Because they don't want to set off any so-called smart speakers. I'd argue that going so low as to change the way we speak just to accommodate these devices is quite terrible, and if you have to watch what you say so that a…

Accidental Tech Podcast use "Hey Dingus" :)

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

#98

Post by raxxorrax » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:38 AM UTC

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…

But I don't get anything from people hearing my sex sounds and I do not care if they are interested in it or not. It still is a privacy invasion.

Most people I know use these services to switch radio stations. That is nothing that would require the voice to be recorded and processed anyway.

Microsoft sold me a their telemetry with the argument that it would offer better support. Support today is even worse than a few years ago, when they at least had some competent support staffers around. The only info they get is probably that people don't really like their services. How strange.

With this disposition to private information, I would not want to give it. Simple as that. It is a tragedy that today people employed and trusted with this information seem to lack the foresight it would require to handle it responsibly. That hasn't always been the case.

Frankly, if I knew in which company you had access to data, I would be certain to limit my exposure. Completely without seeing you as a nefarious actor that wants to do something bad. Because I just need people in those places that understand privacy and why it is required in many cases.

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

#99

Post by raxxorrax » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:41 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #86

calcifer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 de…

> One could argue that's a good thing. Then you should make that argument. If you think it's a good thing, put in the effort of saying why. Don't force me to imagine why it might be so. > That's not a claim, that's a fact. Sure. But asking for explicit consent for the innocuous thing: logging a bit and nothing else, doesn't change the fact that the company could be lying. Nothing is gained. If they're lying about log…

> Making people expend mental energy on otherwise unimportant/irrelevant decisions is anti-user.

Then don't ask them and let them explicitly toggle the option to share information. That isn't anti-user. Your privacy invasions are anti-user.

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

#100

Post by tinus_hn » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:43 AM UTC

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…

All Apple devices that support Hi Siri play a notification and display lights or a UI when it activates and starts sending data outside of the device. I don’t see what more they can do.

Of course a device that listens for an activation phrase is going to listen. And it’s never going to be 100% accurate. If you can’t accept that, just set it up so it only starts listening when you press the button.