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Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

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Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#91

Post by croutonwagon »

harha wrote: post #86

I had one of these when I worked for Google, I didn’t quite trust it though, so I had it in the bathroom to limit what my employer could listen to. Imagine discussing a product idea at home with friends, then having that stolen by an engineer at one of these companies (who figured out how to find the interesting conversations) for a promotion or new position. On a larger scale these might get hooked up with some adve…

I just dont have them in the house.

Every now and then i get called paranoid.

And sure, my phone can function the same (though i specifically have siri disabled on our iphones)

Its just a cost benefit. I can get off the couch and flip a switch or use a remote to turn on a song. I really dont need speach recognition for those functions.

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#92

Post by nitrogen »

jdc wrote: post #87
econcon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, Amazon hasn’t cracked the code on hyper-efficient GB into KB lossless I thought kbg archiver solved it eons ago.

Nope, its high compression comes at the cost of similarly high CPU and memory usage.

Compressed audio at speech quality uses miniscule amounts of storage, especially with modern codecs like Opus.

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#93

Post by [deleted] »

marricks wrote: post #60
Waterluvian wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it matter? The bottom line is that once there’s microphones in your home, Google just has to wait out the normalization of deviance until nobody’s surprised or upset that they transfer everything to their servers for analysis. If they don’t today, they will one day. They don’t have a choice on the matter because it’s a money maker.

Google did this with “we don’t scan your emails for ads”. Initially, 2009 ish, that was a big line a lot of people cared about but years later here we are, Google scanning emails for targeted ads and that fight is over. EDIT: Thanks for the reply exittheone, I see GMail actually stopped this ad scanning practice in 2017[1], likely with google sign in on chrome and so many places it’s very possibly they just don’t tha…

[deleted]

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#95

Post by weehoo »

feralimal wrote: post #68
jasonvorhe wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see the calculation of that bandwidth peak.

It might not be as high as you think, if they are processing the data and sending a summary over, rather than the raw sound file.

Dragon Naturally Speaking ran on clients without network access in the 90s. A given household might have 20,000 words spoken in a day. With speech to text, then compression, this would be a 20kb network request. If you only sent data once a month the data/day could likely be reduced even further. This could easily be Trojan-horsed alongside valid requests without anyone noticing.

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#96

Post by crocodiletears »

sschueller wrote: post #94

Google sent me two of these home speakers for free. Why? I never asked for it and I will never use it.

In the abstract, this reminds me of the selfish ledger concept video, where they discussed pushing specific products on relevant customers in order to fill gaps in data collection.

https://youtu.be/QDVVo14A_fo

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#97

Post by choeger »

I might sound like a grumpy old granddad to some of you (and I am not even that old), but did you really think that a huge company would offer to put microphones into your living room for your advantage? They are going to benefit from this and you are going to pay for it. How? For instance with dynamic pricing. Your loved ones tell you how much they want that vacation on that Greek island? Good luck finding a cheap flight. You are sharing your Netflix subscription? Sorry, but not while that person is in the same room. You are applying to that exciting position? Nah, with that statement we heard on your dinner table, we think you are a cultural bad fit for our team.

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#98

Post by Kiro »

sukilot wrote: post #28
paulcole wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I can imagine those problems! Those problems are brought up literally every time I mention that in-home speakers are not the end-of-the-world-nightmare-scenario so many people treat them as. I just don’t particularly care. Also if someone wants to cut out the middleman and buy my personal conversations directly, feel free to reach out. Great value! Last night I talked about weed and Top Chef!

Enjoy your privilege of not being interesting or important enough to be the target of criminal activity or government opppression. Millions of people aren't so lucky, and they deserve empathy as they work to build a better world for you to carelessly enjoy.

The privilege is that you have so few real problems that this is something you have time to worry about. The millions of people you talk about couldn't care less since they have immediate non-hypothetical problems to focus on.

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#99

Post by IshKebab »

sschueller wrote: post #94

Google sent me two of these home speakers for free. Why? I never asked for it and I will never use it.

Probably because you signed up for or bought something else and it was a deal. Either that or they made a mistake. Google aren't in the practice of just sending free hardware to people for no reason so I'm not sure what your point is?
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