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You are so wrong about this. So wrong that I made a HN account for the first time in years just to respond to this. You're not the only one who thinks this, but

You are so wrong about this. So wrong that I made a HN account for the first time in years just to respond to this. You're not the only one who thinks this, but you were the one who said it, so here you go: Your phone/computer's speech recognition is done by your phone/computer recording your voice and sending it to Microsoft/Apple/Google, then Microsoft/Apple/Google transcribing it on THEIR computers, storing your data, and sending the transcription back to your phone/computer. It doesn't require any processing power on your computer, besides the power to record and send your voice. You seem to think that because you bought a computer, that means that it's going to be your "personal assistant" unconditionally. It's not. It's going to give your voiceprint, location information, and other personally identifying information to MS/AAPL/GOOG. F/OSS might get similar features but they will lag years behind, and will not have the same impact on society that large corporations with datacenters/server farms can have. Eventually, you'll start seeing friendly suggestions and helpful tips, like your traffic schedule (this is already the case). You'll receive SUGGESTIONS on where to go. Friendly suggestions like, "Did you mean to go to the strip club/bar? How about going to church instead?" This could amplify inequality. Imagine Microsoft Clippy saying, "Hi, I noticed that you need $350 for crack rocks. May I suggest Honest Achmed's Pawn Shop only 1.2 miles from your trap house? We compared prices of the Internet of Things enabled devices you have on Amazon and we noticed that your 202X Macbook has a resale value of about $350." You'll eventually be CONTROLLED by some algorithm somewhere. There's nothing PERSONAL about the assistance they'll provide.

yogthos 11y ago
>It doesn't require any processing power on your computer, besides the power to record and send your voice. Sure, however this approach has a lot of downsides, such as utter lack of privacy. As we've seen many times historically the pendulum swings between thin and thick clients. Right now the computational power needed to do this kind of processing is very expensive so it's done on server. However, faster hardware will make it possible to do it on personal devices as well. Also worth pointing out that privacy doesn't exist for most people already. The mode of interaction with the computer isn't going to change any of that one way or the other.

yogthos 11y ago

>It doesn't require any processing power on your computer, besides the power to record and send your voice. Sure, however this approach has a lot of downsides, such as utter lack of privacy. As we've seen many times historically the pendulum swings between thin and thick clients. Right now the computational power needed to do this kind of processing is very expensive so it's done on server. However, faster hardware will make it possible to do it on personal devices as well. Also worth pointing out that privacy doesn't exist for most people already. The mode of interaction with the computer isn't going to change any of that one way or the other.