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"Alexa, why doesn't my daddy agree with Emperor of Mankind, His Excellency Jeff Bezos?" Next day, daddy doesn't come home from work, kid never sees him again.

"Alexa, why doesn't my daddy agree with Emperor of Mankind, His Excellency Jeff Bezos?" Next day, daddy doesn't come home from work, kid never sees him again. An intentionally extreme example, but this type of thing is certainly within the realm of possibility, and gradually making small encroachments.

dpark 9y ago
> this type of thing is certainly within the realm of possibility In your scenario, Bezos is an evil worldwide overlord who murders non-supporters casually. And yet somehow the real problem is an Echo on the kitchen counter. Just... what the fuck? “Realm of possibility” means something very different to you than to me.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  Overlords who casually murder non-supporters is not far-fetched by any stretch, such regimes have risen dozens of times just in the last 100 years. These overlords haven't quite reached "worldwide" status yet, but use your imagination. A device that instantaneously and irrevocably transmits anything spoken to it to HQ, and then automatically transcribes it and makes it available for analysis, is absolutely a dangerous tool for censorship and repression. The fact that it looks nice on your counter and also spits out weather reports doesn't automatically invalidate those risks. These BigCos already compose complex, fairly accurate estimations of our interests and beliefs based on the data they read out of our emails, search history, and yes, voice commands. This data is used to make advertising decisions, but there's no reason that the same data can't be applied to "pre-moderate" the opinions of those who've expressed "dangerous views" in private, or worse. It just hasn't been used that way yet (to our knowledge, though it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Facebook or Google are already punishing/down-ranking accounts that express sentiments they dislike). Inviting these companies into your house to sit in every room and listen for "wake words", and then send up snippets of audio to HQ, should not be dismissed as a casual thing, even if the tradeoff is considered acceptable by some.
  - dpark 9y ago
    This is absurd. When Bezos becomes the dark lord you imagine, just unplug your Echo and throw it away. Problem solved. In the meantime, your use or non-use of an Echo seems to have no meaningful impact on the rise of dark lord Bezos. Also you well know that the Echo is not transmitting everything it hears to HQ. It transmits only when invoked, which can be spurious but is not constant. Same for Apple and Google equivalents.
    - IntronExon 9y ago
      I don’t think Bezos = Sauron... but this is just wrong: This is absurd. When Bezos becomes the dark lord you imagine, just unplug your Echo and throw it away. Problem solved. How much data will have been collected and stored by then? Let’s just put Bezos aside for a moment, and think about foreign and domestic intelligence orgs which will get their fingers into this. Let’s remember a bit of WWII, when harmless census data empowered the Nazis to track down people with Jewish ancestry. It’s not about what you think Bezos or today’s govt will do with the information, but what the corporate raiders and govts will do with it for the rest of your life.
      - dpark 9y ago
        > How much data will have been collected and stored by then? It doesn’t matter. If the concern is that Bezos will flip the echo to be a political surveillance device, there is an immediate fix. Yes, the existing cache of data may still be around, but that wasn’t the concern posed by the original poster. The concern was specifically that after Bezos becomes the dark lord, an “innocent” question could result in politically motivated murder. If your concern with the echo is that you don’t want anything recording anything in your house, that is reasonable and you should not get an echo. Of course, you should probably also not carry a phone. > Let’s remember a bit of WWII, when harmless census data empowered the Nazis to track down people with Jewish ancestry. And yet we still do the census because the value is high and the concern low. The fact that a thing can be abused does not mean it should not be used.
        9y ago
- NicoJuicy 9y ago
  Not if amazon would be in China
im3w1l 9y ago
Got to think more insidious. Plausible deniability, parallel reconstruction etc. "Alexa, why doesn't my daddy agree with Emperor of Mankind, His Excellency Jeff Bezos?" Three months later daddy gets a poor performance rating a work. In the propaganda: "Only losers disagree with his supremacy out of jealousy." And the stats seem to support it.
criddell 9y ago
> this type of thing is certainly within the realm of possibility That's the same kind of thinking that makes people so scared of being victimized by violent crime even though things are safer now than they ever have been. It's possible, but it's also possible that all of the carbon dioxide in the room randomly collects around your head and you suffocate.

dpark 9y ago

> this type of thing is certainly within the realm of possibility In your scenario, Bezos is an evil worldwide overlord who murders non-supporters casually. And yet somehow the real problem is an Echo on the kitchen counter. Just... what the fuck? “Realm of possibility” means something very different to you than to me.

cookiecaper 9y ago
Overlords who casually murder non-supporters is not far-fetched by any stretch, such regimes have risen dozens of times just in the last 100 years. These overlords haven't quite reached "worldwide" status yet, but use your imagination. A device that instantaneously and irrevocably transmits anything spoken to it to HQ, and then automatically transcribes it and makes it available for analysis, is absolutely a dangerous tool for censorship and repression. The fact that it looks nice on your counter and also spits out weather reports doesn't automatically invalidate those risks. These BigCos already compose complex, fairly accurate estimations of our interests and beliefs based on the data they read out of our emails, search history, and yes, voice commands. This data is used to make advertising decisions, but there's no reason that the same data can't be applied to "pre-moderate" the opinions of those who've expressed "dangerous views" in private, or worse. It just hasn't been used that way yet (to our knowledge, though it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Facebook or Google are already punishing/down-ranking accounts that express sentiments they dislike). Inviting these companies into your house to sit in every room and listen for "wake words", and then send up snippets of audio to HQ, should not be dismissed as a casual thing, even if the tradeoff is considered acceptable by some.
- dpark 9y ago
  This is absurd. When Bezos becomes the dark lord you imagine, just unplug your Echo and throw it away. Problem solved. In the meantime, your use or non-use of an Echo seems to have no meaningful impact on the rise of dark lord Bezos. Also you well know that the Echo is not transmitting everything it hears to HQ. It transmits only when invoked, which can be spurious but is not constant. Same for Apple and Google equivalents.
  - IntronExon 9y ago
    I don’t think Bezos = Sauron... but this is just wrong: This is absurd. When Bezos becomes the dark lord you imagine, just unplug your Echo and throw it away. Problem solved. How much data will have been collected and stored by then? Let’s just put Bezos aside for a moment, and think about foreign and domestic intelligence orgs which will get their fingers into this. Let’s remember a bit of WWII, when harmless census data empowered the Nazis to track down people with Jewish ancestry. It’s not about what you think Bezos or today’s govt will do with the information, but what the corporate raiders and govts will do with it for the rest of your life.
    - dpark 9y ago
      > How much data will have been collected and stored by then? It doesn’t matter. If the concern is that Bezos will flip the echo to be a political surveillance device, there is an immediate fix. Yes, the existing cache of data may still be around, but that wasn’t the concern posed by the original poster. The concern was specifically that after Bezos becomes the dark lord, an “innocent” question could result in politically motivated murder. If your concern with the echo is that you don’t want anything recording anything in your house, that is reasonable and you should not get an echo. Of course, you should probably also not carry a phone. > Let’s remember a bit of WWII, when harmless census data empowered the Nazis to track down people with Jewish ancestry. And yet we still do the census because the value is high and the concern low. The fact that a thing can be abused does not mean it should not be used.
      - 9y ago
NicoJuicy 9y ago
Not if amazon would be in China

im3w1l 9y ago

Got to think more insidious. Plausible deniability, parallel reconstruction etc. "Alexa, why doesn't my daddy agree with Emperor of Mankind, His Excellency Jeff Bezos?" Three months later daddy gets a poor performance rating a work. In the propaganda: "Only losers disagree with his supremacy out of jealousy." And the stats seem to support it.

criddell 9y ago

> this type of thing is certainly within the realm of possibility That's the same kind of thinking that makes people so scared of being victimized by violent crime even though things are safer now than they ever have been. It's possible, but it's also possible that all of the carbon dioxide in the room randomly collects around your head and you suffocate.