26 ms·

Not OK, Google

• Shivetya 10y ago
  well my iPhone and my navigation systems both will tell me how far I am from home/work/parents depending on my location all without my asking.
• api 10y ago
  I will never put an always on Internet connected microphone run by an advertising company in my house. I don't care if it literally spits out cash and cures cancer.
  • zevyoura 10y ago
    What about an Android phone?
    • wyager 10y ago
      This is the predominant reason I use an iPhone. I don't like a lot of Apple's policies (mostly closed source, although that's where stock android has been gradually headed too) or their silly politics (Getting rid of the gun emoji? Really?), and I would rather go with Google on those grounds, but Apple's incentives with regard to privacy actually align with mine. In particular, they are a product company, not an advertising company. I appreciate their use of high-quality security technology in their phones.
      • arkem 10y ago
        What makes Google an advertising company and Apple a product company? Since both make products and sell advertising. Obviously advertising is more important to Google than it is to Apple but at what point does Apple become an advertising company and Google a product company? Is there a revenue threshold? A branding threshold? Edit: I'm not saying Google isn't an advertising company. I'm asking what makes Google (but not Apple) an advertising company.
        • woah 10y ago
          Probably if 99% of their revenue comes from advertising you can call them an advertising company, and if 99% of their revenue comes from hardware you can call them a hardware company.
          • arkem 10y ago
            Google is an advertising company. Is Apple an advertising company? Why or why not? Is Rooster Teeth (one of my favorite creator groups) an advertising company? They make a large percentage of their revenue from selling advertising but they also make video content.
        • quickben 10y ago
          More money coming from advertising than products? 90.4% revenue from advertising for Google https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-google/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven... https://www.google.ca/search?q=google+total+revenue&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=0CD1V_HpCsO3jwT-nL_ABA https://www.google.ca/search?q=google+total+revenue&ie=utf-8... vs Apple: http://marketingland.com/app-purchases-dominate-ads-app-store-lifetime-revenue-hits-71-billion-183953 http://marketingland.com/app-purchases-dominate-ads-app-stor...
          • arkem 10y ago
            Of course, I'm not saying that Google isn't an advertising company. If Apple made 50% of its revenue from adverting would it still be a product company? Is this distinction about the size of the business unit?
            • tedunangst 10y ago
              Is Apple really in the ad business, or do they have an ad division because that's just something that every ecosystem operator is expected to provide these days?
            • quickben 10y ago
    • internaut 10y ago
      Lots of us don't use mobile phones at all for this reason. The Internet and the occasional use of a stationary landline is all many of us need.
      • jordigh 10y ago
        No landline for me either. For the ultra-rare cases when I need to make a phone call, I borrow the landline at work.
  • internaut 10y ago
    Same here. The constraint is going to kill Google and Apple because a future competitor is going to manage to offer service without requiring the data in raw form, an example of which would be Agent Based Computation in say 15 years time. Because of that it shall become the standard. Google and Apple will be stuck because their stakeholders include parties which require the raw form even if Google/Apple did not. That opens up a good line of attack on a previously impenetrable business model. The legal implications of visiting somebody's house should be considered. Did I sign anything saying Google or Apple could use my data? No. This opens up the door for class action law suits in some US states at least. Unless they are smart enough to be able to dodge this somehow, perhaps with a contextual local filter for new voices and a permission request made of same, but I doubt it, they probably don't have the incentive to look at the ugly.
    • daenney 10y ago
      You appear to assume that companies don't change in 15 years. Considering the past 15 years where Apple was almost dead and Microsoft couldn't ever be a company contributing to and open sourcing many things I'm not sure that premise holds. Apple's approach to this is already different than Google's and has (arguably) hampered them a bit, but that might pay off long term and give them an opportunity to evolve, change and adapt in other ways to. I see no particular reason either company couldn't change their tactics, regardless of shareholders. Granted evolving with technology is not necessarily easy/without its challenges but if staying with your current model is going to lose you customers, and as such data and therefor your income, why would you stick with it? If no one cares enough to stop sending them their data in the face of better/more privacy sensible alternatives, then it seems their model would still work.
      • internaut 10y ago
        > I see no particular reason either company couldn't change their tactics, regardless of shareholders. I was talking about the government putting restrictions on the kinds of technology Google and Apple can invest in because some innovations do not suit their interests.
    • 10y ago
• TulliusCicero 10y ago
  What I think is interesting is that many of us nerds have probably innocuously fantasized about having a Star Trek-like AI assistant with us, but now that they're taking the first steps towards that, we're starting to realize that in order for it to do everything for us, it has to know everything about us, too.
  • johngalt 10y ago
    The only thing we got wrong. We expected the machines that knew everything about us to be ours. Not someone elses.
  • shostack 10y ago
    Bingo. The movie Her was awesome. But rewatch it. In every scene the AI does something cool, think what permissions it would need and what data it would have to have access to about you to accomplish the task. It gets scary pretty quickly.
  • option_greek 10y ago
    We always assumed they wouldn't spill their beans to third parties. I guess that was assuming too much.
    • bbctol 10y ago
      I think we just envisioned a highly anthropomorphized AI: essentially, a very smart and entirely obedient person to serve as the perfect aide. The Star Trek dream emerged before computing technology was very far advanced, and well before the idea of constantly mobile wireless communication. We thought our AIs would be small and physical, easy for a single person to entirely own and unable to remember more details than a human; instead we got unfamiliar algorithms run on machines far away.
      • dragonwriter 10y ago
        > The Star Trek dream emerged before computing technology was very far advanced, and well before the idea of constantly mobile wireless communication. We thought our AIs would be small and physical, easy for a single person to entirely own and unable to remember more details than a human; instead we got unfamiliar algorithms run on machines far away. Which is kind of funny, because even if it might be accessed by personal mobile devices, the Star Trek "library computer" AI was never "small and physical, easy for a single person to entirely own and unable to remember more details than a human", it was an aspect of a large server (or networked cluster, the actual architecture is somewhat vague) that was part of a capital ship or base, had access in the server/cluster to a library of very nearly all generally available knowledge and extensive personal information about both its users and about people with little direct connection (and could reach out across a galactic network to access additional remote information sources to handle requests). "Unfamiliar algorithms run on machines far away" is much more like the source of the "Star Trek dream" than "small and physical, easy for a single person to entirely own and unable to remember more details than a human".
• quickben 10y ago
  Well, they came a long way for an advertising company. Most usually die from ad-blockers, but they dodged most of these bullets it seem. Moving to voice-to-text everything android, just seems as a logical extension to advertise/sell data even more. Whether is ethical or legal, it doesn't seem to concern them at all when profits are in question.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• mrgreenfur 10y ago
  This is literally the perfect end-game for an advertising company: total awareness of need under the guise of 'optimization' or 'AI enhancement'. They can see what your'e searching for, where you're going, when you run out of Mayo in your GoogleFridgeAppAssistant. What better way to offer ads than EVERY time you have a want? It's an advertising utopia!
  • corobo 10y ago
    If they tag on a "where the heck did I leave x" search engine while building out the technology I'm down for the MayoGoogleFridgeAppAss
  • throwawaymaroon 10y ago
    The really pointless aspect of this utopia is that a perfect ad (in the sense of a perfectly spherical cow) is not nearly as useful as the advertiser might think.
• usgroup 10y ago
  Prerequisite to personal AI worth a damn is data about you worth a damn. It'd seem windows 10 is setting Microsoft up for this. Google is following suite with its own hardware. Central task is to infer what you want and help you achieve it, but further, your AI can ask you questions too to work out all sorts of things subtely. i think eventually, we'll think of I personal information as a commodity or "raw material" and regulate its extraction and trade as such.
  • TheCoelacanth 10y ago
    My problem isn't with the AI having my data; it's with the company that created the AI having my data. That might be necessary to make an AI assistant practical using current technology, but it's not an inherent requirement.
    • quickben 10y ago
      Arguably, at a scale, it is cheaper for every separate device to process it's own voice-to-text and automate things. But, doing it offline, has no incentive for advertising companies. Universities / home automation companies / etc would be probably be more incentivized to develop that. So, any advances in AI, if they come in the 'always online' will come with strings attached. It is not your AI optimization software, it's somebody's else.
  • nabla9 10y ago
    >i think eventually, we'll think of I personal information as a commodity or "raw material" and regulate its extraction and trade as such. I don't think there is eventuality. We must fight hard now to change our society. We live in a era that determines how future will look like. Politics is path dependent and wrong choices now can have consequences that last centuries. Economic information asymmetry[1] over consumers and competition benefits few large corporations that can leverage it over customers and competition. They will fight for tooth and nail to prevent consumer regulation. Governments have additional agendas. 1: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2001/press.html http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/lau...
  • 10y ago
• ubercore 10y ago
  Google Now has done the same for me, told me how long it will take to get to a bar I frequent. My reaction was quite exactly "Oh that's neat, thanks!" and I went and had a great burger that night. Totally OK for me Google. I respect that people have different privacy thresholds, but I think the fact that it's different for everyone is being lost in articles like this.
  • Spooky23 10y ago
    "Hi Ubercore, Google and your health insurance company here. We are worried that you are frequenting a facility that serves too much alcohol and wings. We care."
    • RodericDay 10y ago
      I really wish this was up top. I can't believe that the top rated comment on HN is a thinly veiled "if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to worry about".
  • bbctol 10y ago
    What I want mainly from Google is more and easier ways to customize my level of privacy. The article touches on the EFF's stance against incognito modes briefly, but it's an important one; I don't want lack of monitoring to be something I start a separate session for, with a logo of a creepy dude implying I should use this only for spying and pornography. I'd like to get as close as possible to an assistant that remembers relevant data on where I go and how long it takes, but ignores my browsing history to psychologically manipulate me into buying things--of course, that needs a different revenue model.
    • ubercore 10y ago
      Does https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols?pli=1 https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols?pli=1 do what you're asking for? It's fairly fine-grained.
      • 10y ago
• raverbashing 10y ago
  And that's why I turned Google Now off (but still use some other Google services)
• AJ007 10y ago
  Something to think about -- making the assumption that in the future, a bunch chunk of things currently done with search engines and forms are done by voice command: Ok Google, order new toilet paper -- order is routed to any ecommerce provider which outbids everyone else to fulfill the order. Alexa, order new toilet paper -- order copies previous toilet paper order and goes to merchant with lowest advertised price that reports to have that specific product. Hey Siri, order new toilet paper -- ?
  • woah 10y ago
    Order a new iPaper cartridge from the Apple Store. $39.99.
  • gok 10y ago
    Siri supports a limited version of this today. "Siri, get me a ride" will show which ride apps are available (say, Uber, Lyft and Curb, if you have those installed) It's interesting you assume that Google will route you to the lowest bidder. When I search for "New toilet paper" on Google right now, the top 6 results are advertisements. Why would they want to anger their customers and allow you ignore them?
• jpalomaki 10y ago
  For consumers this will be a choice between keeping their data private and having intelligent systems that perform better. So far I haven't seen much, but based on my limited experience I believe customers are going to continue handing over their data to Google and Facebook in exchange for personalised services. The truth is, the only times my smartphone has actually felt smart is when Google has been mining my information from various services (mainly Gmail and Calendar) and presented it to me at correct time, enhanced with other information they have gathered from web. I don't think there will be any major backslash from consumers. The old comparison about boiling frog applies here.
  • pyrophane 10y ago
    Sadly, I think you are right. I'm not sure what it would take to get more people to really care about privacy when they can have convenience instead. The Snowden leaks didn't do it in the US, even though it showed a government that was willing to break the rule of law to collect data on its citizens.
    • internaut 10y ago
      It's simple, regular people are going to get picked off by hackers, lawyers and other predators until much like the steadily rising smog around cities in the industrial revolution, we realize 'oh shit, this is an actual problem because the wind doesn't always blow this shit away'. Meanwhile actual geeks and hackers will be fine, because we'll have used our intuitions about these things to choose privacy conscious alternatives to mainstream technology. In addition to which it is increasingly the case that 'privacy' is regarded as an elite thing, and thus will ultimately be sought after by less educated classes. Like how green lawns used to be for the rich to show off that they didn't need to grow crops to survive and now everybody has them and doesn't know why. Remember Hillary Clinton and the emails. Remember Colin Powell and 'why can't I use my pda in this highly secure area'. These people are the dinosaurs, and in the business world if you're not hack-resistant you're going to go bust. tldr; > I'm not sure what it would take to get more people to really care Their interests get attacked or violated. That is what.
• aRationalMoose 10y ago
  I have an open ended question-- mostly born out of ignorance; But why is this a bad thing? Isn't an artificial assistant that not only knows and understands us but anticipates our needs incredibly useful? In the process, sure they'll collect your info for better advertising, but short of Totalitarian Surveillance or Data Breach Concerns (The former is a bit of a reach if you live in the west, and they can survey you anyway if they really want to, the latter also seems somewhat unlikely)-- whats the issue here? Genuinely asking because I'm trying to understand.
  • danso 10y ago
    Not an ignorant question, but a reasonable one. I think the skeptics believe that society overall does not yet understand the tradeoff. And I agree with them there. I think on a deeper level, people are creeped out that data paints such a deterministic picture of our lives. Sure, I leave home the same time every day, and I leave work about the same time every day. That Google knows where I live and work without me ever explicitly saying shouldn't be a surprise, but not everyone enjoys seeing how their daily lives are so easily circumscribed, even with just passively-collected data.
  • jonnathanson 10y ago
    There are three levels of discomfort some people feel with this situation: 1. Concern that a single, third-party entity (Google, in this case) might peer into every aspect of our lives, and/or reverse-engineer an exhaustive catalog of our entire lives, by virtue of data collection. 2. Concern that many consumers will unwittingly opt into such control, unaware of the privacy they're relinquishing, and unable to make informed decisions about the possible applications and consequences of the tradeoff. 3. Concern that the custodian of all this personal data (Google) might use, sell, transmit, or turn over the data in ways we had not anticipated or believed we'd consented to. Personally speaking, I understand these concerns but also understand the potential upside. I'm not 100% sure where I stand just yet. The aforementioned bullet points are presented without editorial comment; just trying my best to articulate what I believe to be the crux of people's concerns here.
  • falcolas 10y ago
    > But why is this a bad thing? Do you trust every single person at Google, and every single person at every third party company Google shares your data with, now and in perpetuity, to never abuse the data collected on you? Personally, my circle of trust is not that large. Totalitarian Surveillance is here. In the west. Secure document releases aside, it's too easy to do to imagine a state actor not doing it. Data breaches of differing severities occur every day, at nearly every company. I would have thought Yahoo was big enough and smart enough to avoid it; but no. Not Yahoo, not Sony, not security contractors, not credit bureaus, not Apple (a'la celebrity photo leaks), not Google (stories abound of individual GMail accounts being hacked).
• lima 10y ago
  The new assistant in Allo which automatically suggests message replies to images by detecting what's in the image... it scares me.
• jacquesm 10y ago
  So, at the risk of making myself ridiculous and branded a Luddite: I've totally passed on the 'mobile revolution', I do have a cell phone but I use it to make calls and to be reachable. This already leaks more data about me and my activities than I'm strictly speaking comfortable with. So far this has not hindered me much, I know how to use a map, have a 'regular' navigation device for my car, read my email when I'm behind my computer and in general get through life just fine without having access 24x7 to email and the web. Maybe I spend a few more seconds planning my evening or a trip but on the whole I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. To have the 'snitch in my pocket' blab to google (or any other provider) about my every move feels like it just isn't worth it to me. Oh and my 'crappy dumb phone' gets 5 days of battery life to boot. I'll definitely miss it when it finally dies, I should probably stock up on a couple for the long term.
  • jordigh 10y ago
    I'm even more Luddite than you are. I don't have a phone at all (landline or otherwise). You wanna reach me, you email me. The people in my life that care about me have come to accept this. For other things, I read paper maps, plan appointments ahead of time[1], memorise routes, and look up stuff online from my laptop when I find a place to sit down and wifi. Reading stories like this makes me want to carry a personal tracking device even less. --- [1] People tend to have fewer emergency reasons to cancel when they can't reach you 5 minutes before the appointment.
    • jacquesm 10y ago
      Can you mail 911 where you live? If not, for that reason alone I would carry a phone.
      • jordigh 10y ago
        People always say that. What about the real emergencies? There's a lot of anxiety and dread that carrying a phone seems to alleviate. I live in a big city. There's always a phone nearby, including landlines and payphones (they're still there precisely for emergency reasons). There are also passerbys who can help me. The risk of being all alone, having an urgent need to call 911, and be unable to do so is much too small to warrant carrying a phone around at all times.
• danso 10y ago
  I'm considering purchasing a Home. I already have an Alexa, which I really like, but based on what I know of Google's data and AI (and their service APIs, which I assume/hope will be extended to Home), I can't imagine it not being significantly better than Alexa. That said, I agree with the OP's takeaway: people should be asking questions. I mean, people should have been asking these questions long ago, even as just search users questioning how Google manages to return such geospatially relevant results. But most people don't even stop to think about it, as that kind of thing is just taken for granted as the thing computers just do. Maybe with Google's data and AI in the form of a physical, listening bot (I don't know many people who use OK-Google on their phones) will be the thing that clues people in. I'm mostly comfortable with Google's role in my life (though not comfortable enough to switch to Android just yet), but I'm aware of what it knows about me. If AI is to have a trusted role in our lives and society, people in general need to at least reach the awareness that the OP evinces, if not her skepticism.
• b34r 10y ago
  Many software companies have been trending toward on-device AI though that largely avoids these privacy issues.
  • aRationalMoose 10y ago
    Would you elaborate for me, maybe toss out an example?
    • natch 10y ago
      https://www.wired.com/2016/06/apples-differential-privacy-collecting-data/ https://www.wired.com/2016/06/apples-differential-privacy-co...
• Yhippa 10y ago
  I'm willing to sacrifice an amount of privacy now for future potential improvements to my life.
  • quickben 10y ago
    How about for potential risks? What if thieves/criminals get a hold of that data? 'Oh he goes to the pool every day 2-3 and lives alone with no home alarms'.
    • dmamills 10y ago
      I'd be amused at the concept of a hacker who also likes to perform break and enters. Once I arrived home and discovered all of my privacy invading electronics stolen, I'd probably pull out my phone and say "Ok Google, call the cops."
      • quickben 10y ago
        Eh, probably it will be like the credit card and identity theft scams. One group steals it, another one uses.
    • amyjess 10y ago
      Ideally, the police would also have access to the data. Can you imagine going to burglarize somebody only to find the cops waiting at the house because they determined there was a high probability of that house bring robbed? Maybe they'll even wait inside the house, so as soon as you kick the door down, you find yourself in a living room full of cops, all with body cameras recording your break-in and guns trained at the door. And speaking of cameras... even without the cops being physically present, if you have a tight enough network of cameras, all a victim would have to do is report being robbed and the police can simply trace the burglar's movements across the camera network all the way back to the front door of their hideout.
  • tremon 10y ago
    That's great! I'm willing to sacrifice any amount of your privacy too for future potential improvements to my life. But there would have to be current and actual improvements to my life before I'll start considering handing out my personal data.
• daemonk 10y ago
  I am not trying to inject my opinion. I am looking for genuine discussion. The idea of privacy has always been kind of vague to me. Where do we draw the line of acceptable information sharing and not? If a company is collecting data on our behavior and changing their practices accordingly to maximize their profits, is that immoral? Isn't that essentially A/B testing? The practice of using that data in a potentially manipulative way might be immoral, but is the best way to prevent that really to completely not share anything?
  • tremon 10y ago
    There is no line saying how much is ok. "Privacy" as a concept is the embodiment of personal choice. And everyone may choose differently, in different situations. The only "line" there is, is about whether that choice is voluntary and informed.
  • quickben 10y ago
    It wont be used for A/B testing only. Governments tend to get data and oppress people based on it. Where it comes from rarely matters on that level. You may live in a country that right now doesn't do it, but historically, and currently in other parts of the world, it's a very ongoing theme. So you can not say 'world hunger doesn't exist because I just had a large sandwich', the issue is more global. We are just not that evolved yet, and if near 100% aren't where you expect them to be, then you can't assume anything else.
• ianai 10y ago
  How much hardware would it take to keep 80% or 99% of the data local?
  • quickben 10y ago
    Internal SSD?
    • ianai 10y ago
      I'm talking as much local computation and storage as possible to minimize uploads.
• thr0waway1239 10y ago
  The idea behind so called checks and balances in the political arena is now needed in the tech arena - more specifically the megacorp arena. People say, competition will ultimately take care of it. Yet, there really isn't a serious competitor for Google's search engine. And don't even get me started about social networking with respect to your private lives, where the only player is FB as far as I can see. People say they don't want the government involved, and often for good reason. But if there is no expectation that these tech giants will self-police when it comes to privacy, and people don't want these organizations to be policed by the government either, then how exactly does this play out? How far is too far before we start demanding more respect for our rights from these organizations? Another thing to think about: when dealing with tangible goods, the creative destruction of capitalism is somewhat reasonable to justify because it is usually easy to see. How does it work with information? Suppose FB just completely blew it for a few quarters in a row, and starts tottering towards its demise, what happens to the "defensible barrier" called data? Does it belong to FB to do as it sees fit, like the assets of a company about to be liquidated? Or is FB going to "return" it to the people from whom it got it? If some other company now got possession of its assets, including data, what is the expectation around what are reasonable uses for such info? Or, is FB, with its trove of data about every single person who has held government office, now just too big to fail? And all this can be asked just of the data that FB collects from you directly by asking you to fill it in. What about the stuff that it "infers" behind the scenes? What about the "connections" it adds to its social graph without your permission in order to provide a "local marketplace" which apparently gets rid of the "private information" challenge? [1] Not that Google is any better in this regards, of course. I think the time has come for some serious thinking about checks and balances in the privacy arena. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12628808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12628808
• NickVst 10y ago
  I'd be completely fine with sharing most of my data with Google, really. Personal and Private interlock a lot with each other, and if Google wants to give me a personal experience they're going to have to use some of my private experience.
• spac 10y ago
  I'm confused as to why in this thread there's very little contrastive commentary on the different stance taken by Apple and Google about privacy. Apple has made preserving user privacy a paramount goal, investing in research and technology to achieve it with minimal loss (however much it is) of (intelligent) functionality. I find that a very strong point for the Cupertino based company. (edited for legibility)
  • irq-1 10y ago
    Apple wants (or wanted?) control for themselves. DRM everything; control the products after sale; wall the garden. They became the thing they hated back in 1984. After Snowden made Apples collaboration with the government economically untenable, Apple may now be willing to let users have control. They fought the FBI to protect privacy on a transparently political charade. They've built hardware and software key protection into the iPhone. But this is a change, and maybe it's a lie, or maybe it will change back, or maybe they just won't succeed. I'm not rushing out to buy a Mac Book.
    • isaaaaah 10y ago
      I am sorry, but you still believe apple is safe? I mean id love to believe in that there still is some part of tech left, that will not be the reason for reprisals.
  • devilsavocado 10y ago
    Just one data point: After owning 4 nexus phones and being an 'android fanboy' I just bought an iPhone 7. I've decided that while still not that great, Apple's take on user privacy is much closer aligned with my own. I doubt many other people will make purchasing decisions based on that, but I still think Apple will be 'right' in the long run. I think that the resulting applications from all this data collection will never make it past the gimmicky stage for a lot of people. The general public may not care that much about privacy, but they also don't care that much about nearly everything google displayed. I think apple knows this and it's one of the reasons they can take their stance on privacy.
  • kllrnohj 10y ago
• piyush_soni 10y ago
  From the article: So the actual price for building a “personal Google for everyone, everywhere” would in fact be zero privacy for everyone, everywhere. That has no basis. It is completely possible to do what they are doing by keeping everyone's individual privacy intact. And if I go by Google's privacy policy, that's exactly what they are doing. And I think it's in their best interest to keep it that way, because the day it comes out in public that our privacy is not safe with them, everyone will stop feeding them more data.
  • daenney 10y ago
    > It is completely possible to do what they are doing by keeping everyone's individual privacy intact. And if I go by Google's ToS, that's exactly what they are doing. Could you give examples of how that can be achieved and how the ToS goes about stating that they are doing this?
    • a_lifters_life 10y ago
      Also, how do we know they haven't?
      • piyush_soni 10y ago
        We don't know for sure if they are violating their privacy policies. But as I said, if they are doing it, and it comes out by any means, it will be the dead end of their business. So it's in their best interest to not to do that and only improve upon users' trust. So yes, there's certain level of trust I put into them, just like the trust I put into big food product companies that they'd respect the ingredients list, and have a certain level of quality and hygiene. All of them can break my trust, but it will be detrimental for them if it comes out.
        • HillaryBriss 10y ago
          > if they are doing it ... it will be the dead end of their business. I wish I could share your confidence about that. It seems to me we've seen corporate data leaks, deceptive practices, huge hack attacks, etc and all that happens is the corporations get a temporary PR black eye -- and then spring back into action as powerfully as before. In the case of Google, if it came out that, say, Russian hackers had breached a bunch of gmail accounts, how many customers would just up and walk away from Google? And what company could even come close to filling the void to replace google for all of us consumers? Like I say, I wanna believe what you believe. But it just doesn't seem like that's what happens in the real marketplace.
• ht85 10y ago
  I feel like an old fool fighting against its time, but to me all those new applicances are scary not because of privacy (have my data, I couldn't care less), but because of how they shape our world. Most of the coolest memories I have were the product of something spontaneous, or mistakes, that become close to impossible with a computer and internet in your pocket 24/7. Assessing what's around you, talking to strangers, actively looking for something without it instantly popping in suggestions after you've typed 4 characters, all those things have been a great source of circumstance-based, little everyday life adventures. This is the difference between risking buying a random book, or browsing reviews and picking a 5 star one to download. This is the difference between discovering a place you'd never thought existed while waiting for someone and poking your nose around, instead of standing there, frantically watching their dot on the map get closer to you. This is the difference between the mesmerizing feeling of playing the first expansions of world of warcraft, versus the tiring experience of the super streamlined versions that followed. Yes, they are less frustrating, but they don't bring tear to your eyes when you thing about them, they just feel averagely satisfying. A few minutes ago I got up to open the door for my cat, and in a few minutes she'll be back and I'll be interrupted again. I feel like those interruptions are precious. They keep you connected to reality. I could install an RFID cat door, hell I could make a voice activated one in a couple weekends, and I would not be annoyed anymore. I would also never have seen all the things I witness every time I get to that damn door.
  • ianai 10y ago
    If the twilight zone taught me anything, it's that humanity will always have a rebel. If you make life so safe and easy that free will is no longer necessary someone will demand free will.
    • ht85 10y ago
      We might get to the point where society is so safe and easy that insurance company start selling "Risks and Uncertainty" packages.
      • ianai 10y ago
• leecarraher 10y ago
  I'm always confused by articles bemoaning the AI and tech revolutions, written in magazines that expound new tech revolutions. I understand Apple and the EFF are staunchly against merging products databases involving the same user's data, but for me this is an essential feature of the google ecosystem. I can ask for traffic and have directions appear on my phone while driving, play movies on the tv that i am looking at instead of my phone, audibly alert me to meetings while at home or work, and turn the lights on and off in the place that I am. I don't think they are misleading people, the mute button pretty strongly implies the duality that you can't hear and un-hear things post-hoc. In addition they dont hide the fact that you are talking to a computer at a company by obfuscating it with some quasi-futuristically named caricature. As is often with these article "always listening" is far more misleading, an embedded keyword processor is listening for keywords, and only if they match the phrase "ok google" are they sent to google servers. otherwise it just sits there sharing nothing.
  • kstrauser 10y ago
    I'll note that my iPhone can do all those things but without my data leaving my own hardware (or at least not unencrypted). You don't _have_ to ship all your data offsite for the functions you enjoy. It's just that Google would rather examine all your data in-house, presumably for their own benefit and not for ours.
• xuomo 10y ago
  Why is everyone so incredibly paranoid?
  • dsabanin 10y ago
    Why is everyone so gullible?
  • tingol 10y ago
    You can't seriously be asking this question in a post-Snowden world.
  • jrockway 10y ago
    Internet Points are to be had.
  • ionised 10y ago
    Because they have good reason to be suspicious of massive data collection by companies and governments.
• jklinger410 10y ago
  I'm not worried what the engineers who built this will know about me. I'm not worried that Google will centralize this data so if someone hacked it and could drill through the data they could find me. I'm worried about who Google wants to sell this information to and what they want to do with it. I'm worried about Google working with intelligence agencies to try and target me politically, feed me propaganda, or put me on some list of undesirables. We can have an ultra-smart AI that does everything for me without worrying about these things. I don't want to pay with my personal information, I want to pay with money. I want Google to stay out of my life.
  • srean 10y ago
    I am more worried about subpoena on steroids than individual hackers. Big budget crackers are a different thing. > I'm worried about Google working with intelligence agencies to try and target me politically, feed me propaganda, or put me on some list of undesirables. This.
• yodon 10y ago
  When IR remotes hit college campuses, the game was to shut off someone else's TV through an open door. There's even a one button remote from that era that shuts off any TV in sight [0]. Voice control is like IR on steroids. Guest at house party: "Ok google, show naked pictures of [host's ex-girlfriend]" [0] https://www.tvbgone.com https://www.tvbgone.com
  • VLM 10y ago
    It happens. I've been rickrolled by an acquaintance yelling "Alexa play never gonna give you up by rick astley" thru a screen window. Its gonna be a widespread cultural thing once Hollywood inevitably uses it in a movie or TV show as a joke. I don't watch that stuff, maybe that's where he got the idea it would be "funny" to team up with Alexa to rickroll me. I find privacy anxiety to be much like electric car range anxiety. Once you have the product its not an issue, it drops to zero, but debate on the internet is extremely hot and heavy right before widespread adoption kicks off. Enormous amounts of toxic anxiety and paranoia bleeding out all over stuff that in practice after deployment just doesn't matter. In other online venues I've been worried about causing heart attacks by suggesting my next car will be electric, and this topic is about the same here.
  • kps 10y ago
    “Hey Siri, unlock the front door.” https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/532gmg/my_neighbor_just_let_himself_into_my_locked_house/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/532gmg/my_neigh...
• wisevehicle 10y ago
  The reaction to this seems awkwardly negative when contrasted with the praise that gushed for Amazon's Alexa products. I am having a hard time tracking why folks seem to feel so differently about google and Amazon having similar access to personal information.
  • 794CD01 10y ago
    Amazon sells you things. Google sells your information indirectly to other people who want to sell you things. There's a lot more cultural acceptance around the first business model because more people interact directly with those who do it.
  • sib 10y ago
    People have a very different perception of their relationship with Amazon (and, similarly, Apple) and their relationship with Google. Amazon sells you stuff in exchange for money.* This is a clearly understood type of transaction that people understand. Google gives you stuff in exchange for being able to "sell your eyeballs" to third parties. And, most people actually believe that Google sells your data to those third parties, even though that's not the case, which gets at the fact that this model is not as well-understood. As far as hardware design: Echo provides a clear and prominently-placed button (right on top), with an LED light indicating when it's muting the microphone; when the button is active, the entire indicator ring also lights up. This button has equal prominence with the button that can be used to manually activate Alexa. The existence of this button was highlighted when Amazon introduced Echo. Google Home places the button on the back side of the device, when there is clearly a "front," as defined by the tilt of the top surface. The existence of this button was not highlighted in the introduction at I/O. * Yes, Amazon also runs an advertising network. Most people don't really know this. And it's a very, very small part of their business.
• rwbcxrz 10y ago
  I seem to remember having a lot of the same feelings during the Apple event last month. The Nike+ Apple Watch will "helpfully suggest gear" for your workouts. Ads have become utterly pervasive, and avoiding using Google's AI isn't going to protect you from them. My Samsung "Smart" TV has ads for Hulu built right into the operating system (despite my being a Hulu subscriber at the time). Windows 10 is basically one big advertisement (at least the consumer edition). If I have to have ads blasted in my face all the time, I'll take Google's AI-driven ones that at least stand a chance of being less annoying.
• Thaxll 10y ago
  That's the big difference between Apple and Google, Apple just want $$, Google want to know everything at a more deeper level.
• marwatk 10y ago
  We are in the mainframe/terminal era of AI right now. Just like with early computing we don't yet have the local resources to do AI locally, so we're using terminals accessing the cloud. The consequence is our data also lives there. It will inevitably change and a personal AI and relevant data will live in your pocket instead (for those that would prefer a limited but more private version).
• losteverything 10y ago
  It's ok Google. Television was ok, too. I used to watch. All the time. TV was the glue that kept us together. Now it's the acid that tears us apart. I no longer use a television. Google. I love your maps. Your directions. Your free storage. And my earning a living never requires to use you, Google. Just like my TV. I do expect Google to become something that I no longer desire. Just like the TV. And I think Google won't be able to control or predict it either. Just like tv.
• Kevin_S 10y ago
  So I see both sides of this privacy/AI debate going on and am wondering, what is the solution? Is it technically feasible to create a useful future AI without compromising privacy? Because if not, I fear for our future. While I agree with what everyone on the privacy side is saying, I believe in the long run the consumer value AI will win, leading us down this path.
• optimuspaul 10y ago
  Nobody is seeing the obvious benefits here. Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to really think anymore? Google can just tell me what to eat, what to wear, when to pee, etc. I for one welcome our AI overlords.
• jamoes 10y ago
  What I'd like to see is some good open source software that can compete with Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa. It looks like there are some promising projects, but nothing turn-key yet. I'd like to be able to simply apt-get a package, and have voice recognition on my box.
  • sib 10y ago
    Voice (technically speech) recognition is relatively close to being doable at acceptable quality with open source tools. The hard parts of the Assistant, Alexa, etc., are basically everything else.
• intrasight 10y ago
  I've come to believe that there is nothing that humans can do to resist the privacy encroachments of our machine overlords. Don't blame Google - it's a universal inevitability.
  • ionised 10y ago
    On the contrary, humans have done plenty to resist it.
• tempodox 10y ago
  > ... your daily business is Google’s business. I can see the day coming where this is their primary marketing slogan.
• phycodurus 10y ago
  cat <that article> | sed -e s/data/your data/g
• KirinDave 10y ago
  What I think is really interesting about this conversation is the total lack of conversation. Any and all data collection is either completely harmless (from the corporate narrative) or the end of all liberty and privacy (from the EFF narrative and their leech-like tech rag clickbait headlines, sup techcrunch, you're still the problem!). There is no concept of even discussing that this might be a tradeoff or a shift in what is perceived as private. There is no consideration given to how we might still do these things that people want while protecting their data. There's no consideration for how people's lives are changed in different ways by this tech. Nope. It's either a total gain or a total loss. And that is the real problem here. People are applying their political bad habits to what should be a reasonable and sensitive discussion about the varying levels of tradeoffs we should be willing to give and what the net good we can extract from this technology. A great example is street view. Street view ultimately has enabled extremely detailed and powerful navigation, complete with a ton of ways to do real time traffic detection. Most people using apps that benefit from this data would say that's a net good, and in general as the tech evolves and traffic distributes more efficiently then urban environments see a similar positive effect. Of course, the tradeoff is that I can scan a snapshot of your street and if you were there playing football with your kid, walking your dog, or publicly exposing yourself then minus your face I'm going to be able to see all that. What makes these kind of issues even less clear is that street view enables self-driving car technology (we need the detailed and constantly updated nav systems for them). Self-driving car technology has the potential to totally transform some neighborhoods, has massive potential for assisting disabled people, can completely change the way we ship goods and thusly preserve oil and energy resources for generations to come. But it also has the potential to be a new way for the upper and rich classes of the world to completely cut out service industries and further alienate the economic middle and lower classes. Why is this meaningful? Because if we don't talk about them then we can't help shape them. If we understand the implications as a society and demand commensurate good from these private industries then it can be an incredible boon to our societies. If we don't, then one of these extremist sides will win and all options for a middle ground where we get benefits and have tradeoffs will be excluded. That's a terrible outcome.
• hota_mazi 10y ago
  tl;dr: Google wants your data on its servers. As opposed to all the other companies out there I guess?
• sidcool 10y ago
  Thus article is rightful in raising concerns for privacy. But it's just repeating and rehashing same things. Google had been devouring data for long time.
• JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Ok, so no personal assistants and high-tech homes for anyone. Done. There, you happy now? Because if Google isn't being fed all that data, it can't provide those things. You either have it or you don't. Edit: I've made this point before, but your data is a currency. Spend it wisely (or even not at all). It's up to you.
• pmontra 10y ago
  > We are excited about building a personal Google for everyone, everywhere Not a problem if it run on an appliance at my home, disconnected from all the other appliances in other people homes. That would be a truly personal Google.
• pmyjavec 10y ago
  You really have to wonder who truly needs / wants AI in their lives? It's really just being pushed on. Google should be careful not to make themselves irrelevant. I've been experimenting spending less time with my devices and it's hard because I'm addicted, but life is more fun when it's being lived and not having to even think about technology, leaving devices of all kinds at home and just sitting in a park is a real luxury.
  • ianai 10y ago
    You just answered your own question. A truly awesome AI assistant would be as minimally present as you prefer. If all you do is talk to AI you don't need to interact with a tablet screen, for instance. If you figure out how to make people productive with that then you may have an idea of the next big thing.
    • pmyjavec 10y ago
      Yes but the way it seems to have panned out is we need to constantly feed the machine? Thing is, I just don't need AI for everyday things. AI to help solve big engineering, medical problems, great, but to help me schedule my life, not really. Even when travelling, things like Google maps and translte just isolate and distract me in someways. Asking a local about something is really helpful and you can get more out of the intraction than just directions. It's rare language truly is a barrier I find. I'm even questioning how much I really need a smart phone, it is mostly just a distraction. I remember actually being socially pressured into owning one when I was 18. Never actually stopped and asked myself if I need one, it's just some thing has become a "must have". I know what you're saying about AI being out of the way though, and it would be excellent, if however; it was completely my data, it worked for me and not for a third party. For example, kept my data private for me, while paying my bills, that might be nice. But basically it would work to keep me focused on the real world, which could be achieved without tech ? I might sound a by anti-progress here , but It would be nice to just see the right progress.
  • Klathmon 10y ago
    Well, for a single data point, myself, most of my family, and most of my friends want AI in their lives. Hell that's the whole purpose behind devices like Google home and Amazon's Echo. People aren't buying them because they look nice, they are buying them because they are a simple voice-operated AI that can answer question and do things for them. You might not want or like it, and that's okay, but don't act like nobody is asking for this. People have been begging for it since computers were a thing.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• blhack 10y ago
  I guess, reading through these comments, that I'm the only one who wants this future? Yes, sign me up, google. I'll give you more of my information, if you can take it. Can I wear an implant that measures my heart rate, body fat content, blood pressure, glucose level, and brain activity as well? Because as soon as I can I will be the first in line for it. What some of you don't seem to realize, (and this happens in EVERY SINGLE ONE of these threads) is that: 1) AI is not magic. Yes, we call it "AI", but you use words like "know" as if there is a conscious entity that "knows" something about you. The AI doesn't "know" anything. It's a computer. 2) Yes, actually you can opt out if you want to. Get a flip phone, don't use google services, use an adblocker, block javascripts that you don't like, don't send emails to gmail addresses, etc. Just don't use their services if you don't want them. Yeah, this might be harder. It might feel like you are living in the 1990s/1980s, but it sounds like that is what some of you want. I, however, want a future where an AI can tell me things like "Flights to Shenzhen are really cheap right now, and you have the discretionary income to afford a trip there. Here is a possible itinerary for you based on the types of things I know you are interested in. You could leave this Saturday and there is nothing on your calendar that you need to be at for the week." Or "I noticed that you have been bicycling a lot lately, and based on the patterns of where you go, I think that the following bike trail would be interesting to you. The route is loaded up on your phone already." The other thing: google is an advertising company. Yes, because I know this, I am able to take this into account when listening to google's suggestions. But here's the thing: I like being [well] advertised to. I have discretionary income, that is WHY I HAVE A JOB. I am going to spend that money on things. If there is an AI that is helping me find the perfect nexus of things I want and things that I can afford, that is a GOOD thing. That is helping me more efficiently spend the money that I got. Yes this stuff is subtle. Yes this stuff is pervasive. No we don't need yet another "2edgyforme" "if you aren't the customer you're the PRODUCT" articles about google.
• kafkaesq 10y ago
  The scope of Alphabet’s ambition for the Google brand is clear: it wants Google’s information organizing brain to be embedded right at the domestic center — i.e. where it’s all but impossible for consumers not to feed it with a steady stream of highly personal data. Unless, that is, you never buy any of that junk in the first place -- because like, who needs most, if any of it, anyway? -- and keep going on with your life. Which was humming along just fine before the IoT came along, after all.
  • jwmullally 10y ago
    God I am loving the justified hatred in this thread :D I agree that in many respects the current corporate push for the Internet-Of-Things is mainly a wild-west style landgrab for self-serving integration into our daily lives. However I don't think the IoT has to be this way. I want all my IoT devices to only communicate to my home gateway, which would run open-source drivers for each device to provide the networking functionality. Problem solved. I don't know why this approach isn't getting more focus!
• lubujackson 10y ago
  I think there are two problems with this suite of crap from Google: the privacy issues and the fact that Google is putting corporate objectives ahead of creating useful things. It's clear Google wants to "own the home" and all their products were built to further this goal (rather than be useful themselves). This is why Google bought Nest for 12 jillion dollars. And it's why the iWatch failed and Google Glass failed - right now, these are niche products that barely have purpose. Now this stuff may become integral to our lives, as depicted in so many sci-fi stories, but if they become embedded in our lives and are wholly owned by one huge company, that should be terrifying to everyone. Here are some real world reasons why: a virus is installed on your Google box through your wifi - now house robbers know everything about your schedule and habits. Your parent goes through your every personal action to make sure you aren't getting in trouble. A spouse uses the system to track your every movement and make sure you aren't cheating. And of course, the gov't has access to all of this data by default. Imagine being a famous celebrity with every action in your house known and accessible to any gov't peon with access and a bit of curiousity. This isn't some conspiracy theory, this is exactly the access Snowden had (and he was a contractor). It isn't what these products are, it's the direction they represent: complete surveillance of every personal action, stored and owned by one monolithic corporation and the government. And not only is this is sort of where we are heading, it's Google's clearly stated objective. It reminds me of the 50s when plastics were going to revolutionize everything... which they did, but we melted off the ozone layer before realizing the consequences of slapping new technology across the world. Especially when the benefits are so minimal and the threats are so real - imagine McCarthy with the type of access and control these devices would provide if Google succeeds in pushing this across 80% of homes.
• Beltiras 10y ago
  I've long since given up hope that I can achieve any sort of privacy. Even were I to do my utmost I will still be on the periphery of others using tech, visible through their actions. The only thing I really want is for the content of my messages to be private. This can be achieved through end-to-end encryption. I push everyone around me to install and use Signal instead of Messenger or Google Talk.
• pmoriarty 10y ago
  People will come to value their privacy more if/when they or their loved ones become victims of harassment, stalking, blackmail, or identity theft as a result of their data being abused, leaked, or stolen.
• iamleppert 10y ago
  "AI" is incredibly overhyped. Most of the features and applications I've seen can be relegated into the "that's neat" category, before they are turned off and never used again. Google recently started telling me how heavy the traffic is on my commute because they've figured out I do it every day, and when I'm doing it. That's nice, but I don't care. I could already get that information from my car's GPS and seeing how red the roads were. I wonder how much infrastructure, fancy pants machine learning and effort when it to just creating those useless alerts? Google, as a problem, has already solved the problem they were created to solve: search the Internet. Now they need to find something for all those twiddling thumbs to do, so we get braindead features that tell me what I already know.
  • peeters 10y ago
    > That's nice, but I don't care. I could already get that information from my car's GPS and seeing how red the roads were. I guess people have different experiences. Personally, I know how to get home from work, so I don't feel the need to turn on my GPS every time I drive home. So I appreciate getting notified when there's notable variances in drive times, without me having to look for it every day.
    • r00fus 10y ago
      How often is it correct? I use Waze infrequently (mostly it's turned off in privacy) but it often gets things wrong (it's better than Apple's maps or Google Maps). I need to get home on time to pickup kids, but mostly just leave a bit early...
    • vladbarash 10y ago
      I agree with you both. "turning on GPS" could just mean that while driving one has the view of the roads on to see which one's have traffic, not necessarily getting turn by turn directions to and from work every day.
• kbenson 10y ago
  Does anyone else find the tone of this article off-putting? I mean, I agree with the author, but the presentation feels like fear-mongering. Maybe this is what we need to get people to pay attention to the details, but I instinctively mistrust things I perceive as trying to appeal to by fear at a base level, and this triggers that fairly heavily. I have very conflicted feelings about this article.
  • kllrnohj 10y ago
    It reads very heavy on the tinfoil-hattery. Particularly with things like Google Home's mute button. The single advertised feature of the device is that it's always listening and the author is somehow shocked or confused by the fact that you have to push a button to have it not listen? So much so that they thought it was worth cramming in some stupid sounding snide remark about "true intentions"? That tone immediately undermines the entire rest of the piece.
• Hydraulix989 10y ago
  So because Google makes phones and hardware (like it has been already for quite some time), there's somehow an even greater threat now on our privacy? I don't buy it. N.B.: I don't work for Google.
• isaaaaah 10y ago
  If it constantly needs data in order to calculate predictions, then it is no artificial intelligence. It is plain Software, like a calculator. The only reason it is called artificial intelligence is because that would be the only reason to adopt this technology. Again, it might be neat, having a computer like on star trek, but what if you oppose your government? What if you oppose anything, and suddenly your toaster burns down your house, locks you out, locks you in, reports your every move? Look at Manning, look at Snowden, look at Assange. They opposed and now they get terrorized by the govrnment and the software they once happily used to use. Look at how i will be treated right here by others. Stop this Masspsychosis.
• taurath 10y ago
  Here's the thing - we're starting to get into territory where we can actually add real value for people again in terms of helping them plan their day, and actually have real AI assistants, computers from Star Trek, what have you. The value here is pretty easy to understand. The problem is that they're all being pushed by advertising companies who make all their money by learning and selling every single bit of information about you. I want a startup that provides services like this but treats your personal location, correspondence, and behaviors like tax returns and credit card numbers. If we can achieve a good measure of safety and privacy in our messaging apps, we can do it for this sort of data.
• anondon 10y ago
  The idea behind ZeroDB might be applicable here. All data generated by a user is encrypted and stored in the cloud with the decryption keys on the user's device. This way, the service provider (eg Google) can't read your data. The major advantage of this approach is that the user is in complete control of the data. The drawback is that service providers and AI systems will be starved of data that enable targeted ads/recommendations. A good middle ground might be to offer users an option : 1) Give us your data 2) Pay up and we will not collect any data. Thinking deeply about the state of the internet, I think we have to move towards a model where users pay for services they use if privacy is a concern. As it stands, a lot of services offer free services in exchange for our data which is monetized through ads.
• throwaway98237 10y ago
  From the article- "In other words, your daily business is Google’s business." From Google- "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." One thing that drives me mad about Google is how they say "the world's information", then ignore 99.9% of the worlds information, and then expect their consumers to give them a pass and not call them to account for how they privatize user information. Looking at the information that Google organizes and makes accessible and useful I don't see things like "species extinction", "oceanic water temperature history", or say "dolphin linguistic data", equally represented when compared to "my browsing history", "my location history", "my search history", "an archive of my voice searches", "when I leave or return home via Nest", "who I associate with via Google's communication suite". Google is organizing exactly that data which Google can monetize, which is not the world's data. Not a lot of people want to buy data on deforestation so it's much more difficult to get Google to put resources into that. How many people chew pieces of gum until 100% of the flavor is gone? I'll never know, and Google isn't going to help me, because it isn't a profitable data set. Simply stated, Google needs to stop acting benevolent and start fessing up to attempting to be omniscient in order to be all knowing about its users, not "the world's data".
  • tantalor 10y ago
    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=deforestation http://lmgtfy.com/?q=deforestation
    • throwaway98237 10y ago
      First off let me put this out there, people that send me "lmgtfy" links annoy the f#ck-sh#t out of me. I'm proficient at utilizing search engines, thanks pal. More directly to the point, I was (clearly) comparing the relative resources Google invests in some data sets vs others. Are you arguing that Google invests comparable resources in this type of data compared to the resources it invests in understanding Google's users' data sets?
      • euyyn 10y ago
        Google Scholar, Google Books, and Google Earth data for researchers existed before the Google Assistant was even an idea. Not sure what your point is, either: do you want to get a notification in the morning saying "try to leave early today, as an accident has caused increased traffic," along with another one saying "remember to save to buy an electric car"?
• boardwaalk 10y ago
  Are there any open source/self-hosted projects that do some of what Alexa, Google Assistant, Google Now, Siri do? Even without the manpower/big data/processing power of a big co I'm sure we could create something that's somewhat useful.
• isaaaaah 10y ago
  If 100 people do A after doing B and you are the 101st who does not want to do A, is it your fault or that of the algorithm? This is no "artificial intelligence" it is a fitness, a mutation and an evolution function, without any true randomness or "chaos" prediction (predicting the future...), but with added Advertising hidden between your reccomendations. Like they can not build flying cars so they reinvent the hovercraft. Aimed at the Internet of things, which will be the biggest tech bubble known to mankind. Sorry i have to vent that somewhere, but all my communication platforms have already been shut down.
• Waterluvian 10y ago
  I was pissed when Google suggested I take pictures of the restaurant I was in and submit them.
• swalsh 10y ago
  Imagine you're a something like a muslim in the US, and somoene like Trump is elected 5 years from now. You've been here all your life, you have a job, you pay your taxes, you're just a person who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Much like a jewish person in Poland in the 1940's. Now even back then, it was not easy to escape persecution... but it was possible. In a google world though, there's nothing preventing a corrupt government, or even a corrupt corporate governence from take over, or leveraging this data to your disadvantage. Perhaps your car recognizes you, and locks you in until police come, perhaps you felt safe enough to go to a bar, and that data was forwarded. Perhaps an exaggeration, the point is, even if you trust google today. There's no guarantee that data will always be held by the people who are google today. We know for a fact the NSA had access to all google data up until at least the snowdon leaks. To me that's the concern about privacy, you have no idea how it can be used AGAINST you in the future.
  • CaptSpify 10y ago
    > Much like a jewish person in Poland in the 1940's or a Japanese in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment We tend to think that the nazi's were crazy out-there, but we weren't too far off not that long ago, and we can get back there pretty quickly.
    • overcast 10y ago
      While not to justify their existence, those internment camps were not even in any stretch of the mind "like" the German death camps.
      • CaptSpify 10y ago
        Oh, I totally agree. But it is a similar mindset that led them to the German death camps.
  • spiderfarmer 10y ago
    Everytime someone responds with "I have nothing to hide" I replied along the same lines as you. But I thought about it a bit more and I think the data they have on you is only a small problem when you look at how technology progressed since WWII. Imagine how much easier it would have been today for the SS to extract jews from their hiding places. We have satellites, helicopters with IR camera's, hell, even radars that see through walls.
• azinman2 10y ago
  I think it's right for people in the know to be concerned. The direction has all kinds of possible disastrous consequences. But it also has lots of amazing dual-use possibilities for making our lives more fluid, and technology more magical. You can't deny both. Trying to take some big stand against it I don't believe will work. Look at all those who took a stand against the 2nd Iraq war -- they were drowned out. And now everyone thinks the opposite. Culture/society always pushes a particular direction until there's a very big disastrous reason to think otherwise. Until something clearly really really bad happens this is the track we're on, like it or not.
• abandonliberty 10y ago
  This is the future. To remain competitive people will adopt new technologies. Google assistant/cloud, self driving cars, CRISPR. Consider what people gain and lose with each new technology, such as the ability to drive, a bio-engineered kill switch, or control their own hardware (windows 10). All new technologies can be compromised. The ability to process the extreme amounts of data we are generating is already at previously unimaginable levels. Political dissidents or those who interfere with corporate interests can be identified and silenced with false evidence (pedophilia!); media control; and personally targeted DoS of finances, cloud services, etc. This is the ability to control the world. The corporate world is disincentivized from doing anything about it, and governments don't really get it as evidenced by their hoarding of zero-days [0]. There's a war going on right now. It's terrifying, and awesome. Throw in some global climate change and our next 50 years are going to get interesting. When the end comes I'll be that crotchety old guy who knows how to DRIVE A CAR and use a general purpose computer. Hack the planet! Here is what was possible in 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12528544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12528544 [0]https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/08/the_nsa_is_hoar.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/08/the_nsa_is_ho...
• mellis 10y ago
  One thing that I think is lost in a lot of the comments here is that, to a large extent, privacy is experienced, not factual. That is, in many cases, the breach of privacy is the act of mentioning something that should be private, not whether or not the system (or the person) knows that thing. This is something we tend to intuitively understand in our human relationships, but one that somehow seems to be forgotten in the design of these systems (or, at least, the conversations about them). We need good ways to tell the Google Assistant that something is private (or for it to figure it out for itself) -- even if it still possesses the underlying data. (There are, of course, situations in which the actual existence or not of specific data is what matters, but I think those are less relevant to the success of something like Google Assistant than the perception of privacy -- and that perception is important, regardless of the underlying data.)
• thsealienbstrds 10y ago
  Just a couple of thoughts. Is the market really so bad that Google needs to invade people's privacy to this extent in order to grow? I bet Google's CEO will not use the products himself. Google is almost behaving like a pusher, promising people comfort at the expense of their livelihood (the chilling effect). Perhaps this should simply be illegal. If people want a personalized AI assistant, why not train the AI on the user's device? I seriously doubt that it has to know everything about everybody's behavior in order to know some things about the user's behavior.
• nojvek 10y ago
  Here's why I am afraid of Google. Google could have the best intentions, but its wife NSA that Google occasionally sleeps with doesn't. Everything you say to Google Home could possibly be recorded. Storage and Computing power for google is cheap. They can record everything you say in your home. Their algorithms can connect all sorts of information about you. If trump wants to create the next Muslim holocaust, Google and FB have the perfect information. This is what Elon means when he says AI is like inviting the devil. We have this algorithm in our mushy brain. Its takes about 20 years to train and lives for about 80 years. Its communication bitrate is pretty low (mostly blabbering through mouth) and doesn't retain much information. Only patterns. Now imagine this algorithm from the mushy brain is run on a silicon chip, with gigabit bitrate, retains almost everything indefinitely and can learn from entire history of humanity. That algorithm would just need to deceive us until it was powerful enough to wipe us in one sweep. Google already manipulates humans psychologically to click on their ads en-masse. Giving them more of your personal data is just feeding the devil.
  • witty_username 10y ago
    How does Google manipulate humans to click on their ads?
    • probably_wrong 10y ago
      The story of how Target discovers and targets recently pregnant women is a good example [1]. An interesting quote: “we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don’t spook her, it works.” There's no reason to believe Google isn't doing the same thing. And I strongly suggest reading the original article[2], if only for the first two or three paragraphs. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/#598ee2f234c6 http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targe... [2] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habit...
• Nano2rad 10y ago
  It is wrong even to ask us permission to let Google and also Apple monitor microphone all the time. If that becomes norm, there has to be hardware switch to disable microphone.
• grandalf 10y ago
  It's fascinating to think about how exciting this technology is -- passive monitoring by helpful AI that can drastically increase convenience and efficiency. But we've seen that Google is happy to turn over massive amounts of customer data to government without a warrant and without alerting customers to the practice, which makes the technology seem ominous. First the GPS, then the microphone, then the camera, accelerometers, 3D touch sensors, etc. Gait, affect, and all sorts of factors will be able to predict criminal behavior before it happens. Let's hope the next generation of tech giants will take customer privacy and freedom seriously and avoid the dark patterns and privacy violations of the current era. Only now, when it's likely too late, can we actually get a glimpse of the sort of Orwellian dystopia that so many have warned about in decades past.
• hhsnopek 10y ago
  The trade off here is technological advancements in AI for lose of Privacy. Everyone can have their own opinion on this but in reality, consumers are the best for collecting data. The great thing about the grand scheme of it all is that if you don't like the privacy you're giving up, don't use it. There's always going to be the lesser known alternative that doesn't track any of your data. I don't see why articles like this arise as it's clear as day that without tracking and getting analytics, AI won't improve.
• hans 10y ago
  in WAZE they went ahead and dropped the "while using the app" option for gps privacy. it has become rude actually, so now i turn off location services instead of micro-managing the unmanageable.
• thght 10y ago
  I would love to have personal devices that collect my private data and apply AI for my personal benefit, but only then if all data stays inside the device under my exclusive supervision. As soon as this data is sent to some cloud service beloning to a company in the business of generating wealth and power, I totally lose my appetite.
• dailybanta 10y ago
  Google, don't be evil ? Don't sell my privat info !!
• dailybanta 10y ago
  Google don't be evil and sell my private info !!
• carapace 10y ago
  Star Trek or North Korea? In the limit that's the choice.
• mkhpalm 10y ago
  I seriously wonder if this article would have a different tone if all the same products and vision were presented at an Apple Keynote with Apple branded devices. Would it be different? My gut says this article would have had a different title.
• throw2016 10y ago
  Anyone with a passing acquintance of history and the insideousness of surveillance and will not be blase about privacy or casually trade it in for trivial conveniences that hardly merit the word ai. You many not 'personally' need privacy or freedom at this point in your life but to casually dismiss it out of hand and fail to consider its import for a functioning democractic society is beyond reckless. Its just one of those things you don't need until till you do. And thankfully individuals aren't in a position to trade that away unless they can write a new constitution and convince everyone to get on board. All surveillance does is compromise your society in a fundamental way, and in this case just to add to Google bottom line and ramp up Google's creepiness factor even more. That's a bad deal.
• davidcgl 10y ago
  Many readers are skeptical about the usefulness of personal AI assistants. This reminds me of what Jeff Bezos said about disruptive technologies [1], which I think resonates well among many tech company executives. You (they) need to be willing to be doubted for a very long time. [1] http://www.geekwire.com/2011/amazons-bezos-innovation/ http://www.geekwire.com/2011/amazons-bezos-innovation/ Any time you do something big, that’s disruptive — Kindle, AWS — there will be critics. And there will be at least two kinds of critics. There will be well-meaning critics who genuinely misunderstand what you are doing or genuinely have a different opinion. And there will be the self-interested critics that have a vested interest in not liking what you are doing and they will have reason to misunderstand. And you have to be willing to ignore both types of critics. You listen to them, because you want to see, always testing, is it possible they are right?
• mankash666 10y ago
  How's this different from Apple or any other company that wants to stay relevant? AI is the future, like it out not.
• hackuser 10y ago
  It's not just a matter of personal preference. It's well known that mass surveillance is a powerful tool of oppression. Oppression is not a theoretical idea and not only an historical problem: Government mass-murder in the Philippines, the oppression of Muslims in Europe, of a large religious group in Turkey, of Tartars by Russia (in Ukraine's Crimean province), of so many people in Syria, of populations in all the oppressive countries in the world. The U.S. election could result in oppression of Muslims, Latinos, blacks and others; some U.S. cities already use 'predictive policing' to identify and harass private citizens - what will happen if Muslims becomes an open target? And don't forget anyone who has any interaction with Muslims. Such things have been going on since the dawn of humanity and unfortunately will continue. The idea that Google and other commercial mass surveillance will not be used for these purposes is a dangerous, irresponsible fantasy; it's lazy, head-in-the-sand thinking, akin to climate change denial: We haven't died yet is the only argument. These systems are not and will not be kept out of government hands: Government already has broad access, as is well known (National Security Letters, NSA spying, Yahoo's recent revelation, etc.). Laws can be made at any time giving government more access, and they will in climate of oppression. Many obtain illicit access, as we know, from the NSA to foreign criminals to antagonistic nation-states. And it assumes that the companies want to deny access; inevitably, some CEO of AllYourDataCorp will support government surveillance and be prejudiced against Muslims or immigrants or blacks. Likely, at least one already is doing it. IMHO, while it disrupts our plans for IT and wealth, it's absurd to think otherwise.
• fiatjaf 10y ago
  I'm waiting for the barbarians.
• owly 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel)
• contingencies 10y ago
  Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left. - Marshall McLuhan
• MichaelMoser123 10y ago
  Imagine the storage implications - i mean they have a hard time to store every click we make with the mouse, now they will have to store every noise and breath we make as well. I see a data store with the size of Canada. Also how do they plan to make money besides the initial cost of the gadget? Can they push adds while driving? would be too intrusive, or is this supposed to be based on monthly payment, or a tax? Google for government! Wall-E might be needed to clean up the mess after them. i didn't know that Sting said in 1983 that his song is really a nasty song about surveillance; at least they have an anthem for promotion purposes. http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=548 http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=548 Now i really don't think that personal assistants are going to be a success. They do descriptive modelling based on what you do, there is no way to evaluate if the suggestions are any good. Without such an evaluation they can't do reinforcement learning. Also they might suck in too much data - that would make it harder to make meaningful suggestions.
• mark_l_watson 10y ago
  With faster multi-core CPUs, much more RAM and SSD, smartphones are probably powerful enough to run a privacy respecting AI assistant locally: watch your web access, phone access, location, and do all processing locally with no data leakage. Ideally it would be open source, or at least from a trusted company that made money only from selling the app, and not off of our personal data.
• tobbe2064 10y ago
  Reading this brings the thoughts to Kahlil Gibrans book the Profet. The section "On Houses" reads: ... Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master? Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires. Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron. It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh. It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels. Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral. ...
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• jimkri 10y ago
  I was really against getting updates about where I usually travel or other notifications that are constantly tracking me. But after a while I really like some of the tracking and notifications. Now I love when google reminds me to leave for a appointment and gives me directions, it really saves. I do hate being tracked, but I have slowly started to like the connivence of it. Having all my information on Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, and everything else privacy has really gone down. If my Nexus 5x can save me time, I will sacrifice some privacy.