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Under your definition, your phone is a 24/7 microphone connected to either Google or Apple, your PC a 24/7 microphone connected to Microsoft and literally every

Under your definition, your phone is a 24/7 microphone connected to either Google or Apple, your PC a 24/7 microphone connected to Microsoft and literally every other vendor that has a service running. The privacy concern is valid, but its also valid for literally every other piece of electronics. At some point you have to trust that it's only recording during the short period after you say "OK Google" and if it were doing something more nefarious someone would figure that out and it'd be huge and damaging news. These are basically first-generation products. The idea is to improve upon their problems, find where they are useful and where they are not, and step closer to having a real virtual assistant.

visarga 10y ago
TL;DR - automate privacy protection in order to serve the uninformed masses of people leaking sensitive data online We're disclosing more and more private information to assistants, but especially to Facebook, Google and the respective phone company we're using. I think it would be the case to study automatic detection of sensitive information disclosure, in order to place better privacy guards. I envision a system where the web browser or voice agent would immediately know the sensitiveness level of information we are about to divulge, and route it through anonymous systems or block the leak before it happens. A database containing our online identities, credit cards, passwords and text run through a topic classifier would make good features for sensitive disclosure protection. It would be the privacy equivalent of antivirus software. Maybe we could have a smart (privacy protecting) web browser and agent. In the future, people are going to have to convince their personal assistants if they need to disclose any private info to third parties. It's not going to be so easy to collect massive hordes of private data about people. It's just the natural step for privacy, in a world where AI is already being used so much to undermine it. Time to get some AI fighting for our side of the privacy war.

visarga 10y ago

TL;DR - automate privacy protection in order to serve the uninformed masses of people leaking sensitive data online We're disclosing more and more private information to assistants, but especially to Facebook, Google and the respective phone company we're using. I think it would be the case to study automatic detection of sensitive information disclosure, in order to place better privacy guards. I envision a system where the web browser or voice agent would immediately know the sensitiveness level of information we are about to divulge, and route it through anonymous systems or block the leak before it happens. A database containing our online identities, credit cards, passwords and text run through a topic classifier would make good features for sensitive disclosure protection. It would be the privacy equivalent of antivirus software. Maybe we could have a smart (privacy protecting) web browser and agent. In the future, people are going to have to convince their personal assistants if they need to disclose any private info to third parties. It's not going to be so easy to collect massive hordes of private data about people. It's just the natural step for privacy, in a world where AI is already being used so much to undermine it. Time to get some AI fighting for our side of the privacy war.