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You can't trust the large companies who have a culture of profiting off your data to protect your privacy. This is why we need AI at the edge, and not in the c

• jacquesm 9y ago
  > I'm a co-founder of https://snips.ai https://snips.ai and we are building a 100% on-device and private-by-design platform to build Voice AI assistants Excellent! How will you guarantee that your devices will not leak data?
  • oulipo 9y ago
    We are open-sourcing the code, and people can have their own network monitoring to see that there is no data leaking
    • jacquesm 9y ago
      Please check into 'reproducible builds' and ways to ensure the software is not modified between the point where you build it and the point where it gets deployed. There will most likely at some point be an attempt to use your reputation to achieve the exact opposite of your stated goals so beware of that.
      • oulipo 9y ago
        We'd love to hear more about what you think of this, perhaps you can contact me mael.primet@snips.ai and I would love to do a Skype with you, if only because I read quite a few of your posts over the year and am curious to know you. We are providing the source, and people can rebuild it from scratch and ensure that their device is running the open-source code. In theory, it is each user who should deploy his device. If an industrial partners want to ship our software to many devices, indeed it will be needed for them to prove he hasn't modified the software and we are happy to learn about best practices to help them do so, so we will look at this
        • jacquesm 9y ago
          I'm sorry, I don't do skype or hangouts but I'll be happy to email with you. However, it is probably better if you find someone who is really an expert in the field. But I can definitely see that there is a potential problem here if you are open sourcing your code and industrial partners ship your software without some kind of clear way in which you can ascertain that what got shipped is what you intended and not some kind of perverted variation. This might be a good starting point: https://reproducible-builds.org/ https://reproducible-builds.org/
        • ryandrake 9y ago
          > If an industrial partners want to ship our software to many devices, indeed it will be needed for them to prove he hasn't modified the software and we are happy to learn about best practices to help them do so, so we will look at this Yea, as a privacy conscious user this would be the attack vector that I’d be most nervous about. “Partners” taking the open source engine and loading it up with surveillance. Being able to re-compile and deploy a vanilla version from source is critical. There are a lot of “smart” devices out there that I would buy if only I had root and/or could decide what software ran on it.
        • craftyguy 9y ago
          Will the device have any components in it which require proprietary firmware? Think long and hard about that before answering. edit: I thought you were also doing something similar to Mycroft and their 'mark 1' thing. I was wrong.
    • josefresco 9y ago
      "and people can have their own network monitoring" Is this monitoring built into your product? If not, wouldn't a user of any AI assistant have this same ability?
      • dwighttk 9y ago
        The monitoring is to see if the product is making network connections, you can do that with any AI assistant, yes, but the Google and Amazon products are going to require you to allow them to make those connections. This claim is that you can see that this product isn't making connections. (I think)
      • oulipo 9y ago
        You can use a tool like `mitmproxy` to monitor the network requests
• ryan-c 9y ago
  Oh, this looks cool. I was looking into building something with a respeaker not too long ago. How does your business model work that you're letting people DIY for free?
  • oulipo 9y ago
    We are selling licenses for industrial builders. If you build something with it, we would love to hear about it and feature it on our website! Come talk to us on our Discord channel :)
    • hartator 9y ago
      Any reasons to choose Discord over Slack? Wondering as we have to make a similar decision for our startup.
• cevn 9y ago
  I had problems setting up Snips on an RPI - couldn't figure out how to read the MQTT bus messages after I set up the audio successfully. Where do I go for help?
  • oulipo 9y ago
    Hi! You can either send us an issue on Github https://github.com/snipsco/snips-platform-documentation/issues https://github.com/snipsco/snips-platform-documentation/issu... or better come talk to us on our Discord channel: https://discordapp.com/invite/3939Kqx https://discordapp.com/invite/3939Kqx
• anonoholic 9y ago
  > I'm a co-founder of https://snips.ai https://snips.ai Yes, we know. You post to literally every voice-assistant related comment thread. If you aren't a bot, you must have a (voice powered?) bot sniffing out threads to post on. If you're going to do that, please at least learn the difference between a disclaimer and a disclosure. :sigh:
• bargl 9y ago
  Have you run into any problems improving or training your algorithm if you're limiting the data it has access to? What are some of the things you've done that make you "wish" you could be an online off-device tool? I ask because most of what we hear is that online tools will get better over time because you are sharing your data. How do you work around this, or is that even an obstacle?
  • oulipo 9y ago
    There are many ways to work around this, we do data augmentation and data generation to create more data
• ausjke 9y ago
  what's your business model if everyone can download and build their own image, or even re-distribute that in their own products? as far as Alexa goes, I unplugged it a few months ago and it's collecting dust now, I use my cellphone to check weather and for alarm clock instead, I don't see much use for Alexa other than those two simple tasks.
  • oulipo 9y ago
    We are selling licenses for industrial makers
  • knodi123 9y ago
    > far as Alexa goes, I unplugged it a few months ago and it's collecting dust now Ha, I got a google home mini free as part of some promotion, and I haven't even broken the shrink wrap. I need to find a way to sell that thing for a few bucks before it becomes outdated, because I sure have no interest in it.
• old-gregg 9y ago
  A USB microphone... That's a bummer. I was hoping that Zigbee or Z-wave based mics already exist. Do they? Every time I look at the landscape of home automation it's really hard to avoid clouds and Wifi.
• leeoniya 9y ago
  any plans to integrate with https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://www.home-assistant.io/ ?
  • oulipo 9y ago
    We have an integration with Home Assistant and are now working on making this even easier, stay tuned and subscribe to our newsletter to be informed when the integration is complete
    • spacehome 9y ago
      "Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter."
  • mfester 9y ago
    Snips + Home Assistant: https://www.home-assistant.io/components/snips/ https://www.home-assistant.io/components/snips/
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• tzs 9y ago
  A bit OT: What's up with the animated drawing on your front page of an alien poorly disguised as a human female at a picnic using voice to control her music player? It's kind of distracting--I keep staring at it instead of reading the site. I infer that she's an alien for three reasons. First, her head is on backwards compared to human heads. Second, she appears to have only one upper arm, attached to her left shoulder, which forks at the elbow into two lower arms, one of which is going behind her back over to her right side. The forearms are also about twice as long as human forearms. Third, the neck is way longer than human necks, but quite consistent with many the aliens some people have claimed to have seen. Seriously...is this some recognized art style? I don't know much about art, but I do recall that around the late 19th/early 20th century there were some prominent artists and styles that took big liberties with human anatomy. It's well drawn sufficiently (as are the other drawings on your site) that it gives the impression that the artist is referencing something known.
  • foota 9y ago
    Looks somewhat like surrealism to me.
  • Arkaad 9y ago
    That's a really creepy design.
  • whitingx 9y ago
    Ha ツ - thought the same thing when someone shared this site at work https://twitter.com/whitingx/status/978983203024318464 https://twitter.com/whitingx/status/978983203024318464
• dang 9y ago
  Although the user who complained about your using HN to post about this broke the guidelines by being uncivil, they do appear to have a point: it looks like you've been using HN exclusively to promote your own stuff. That's not what the site is for. There's nothing wrong with posting links to your own work when it's relevant, but please don't use HN only for this. The site is intended for intellectual curiosity, i.e. submitting, reading, and commenting on stories that you run across and personally find interesting. So if you use it exclusively for promotion, you're not really participating in the community as intended. Does that make sense?