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A Team at Amazon Is Listening to Recordings Captured by Alexa

72 points by howard941 8y ago

headalgorithm 8y ago
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19629513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19629513 for more discussion on this and the original Bloomberg article
Deinos 8y ago
Large discussion already occurring: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19629513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19629513
nerdjon 8y ago
With the exception of the fact that this is going to sell clicks... Is this really news? I thought they confirmed this years ago? Same with Google and Apple...
zachr 8y ago
Am I supposed to be surprised? This is just logical. Of course they employ people to grade the quality of assistants' voice recognition and responses.
- minikites 8y ago
  Does that excuse Amazon's behavior? None of us were surprised when we learned about the NSA's Echelon or PRISM programs after all.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    I would NEVER put an Alexa in my home - but has Amazon done anything wrong here? You agreed to the terms of use, they’re doing expected work to anyone that has any idea how this all works, there seems to be no malicious intent even implied. IDK, if you don’t want someone potentially listening you, don’t put an Echo in your home.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      >has Amazon done anything wrong here? There's the contract that was actually signed, which Amazon didn't break, and then there's the contract people think they signed. It's generally considered your fault when you sign a contract with the devil and get tricked, but the devil is still evil. In other words, Amazon is evil in this situation and their customers made a mistake. If it had been made clear to non-technical people that they would get listened to by the listening device, then it would all be on them. However, this comes as a surprise to the average person, because it doesn't take that much work to encourage a false belief in the mind of a non-expert.
      - zachr 8y ago
        Fundamentally for a voice assistant to assist you it needs to listen to you. I don't see how this could possibly be surprising to anyone.
        whatshisface 8y ago
        The headline in this case is that humans are also involved in the listening, which is technically advantageous but not technically necessary. It is also worth mentioning that the recording gets uploaded out of your house, which is again technically advantageous but not technically necessary.
    - bem94 8y ago
      > they’re doing expected work to anyone that has any idea how this all works For sure. But lots of people dont't know how this stuff works and should not be expected too. I wonder how many average consumers of Alexa products would feel differently about their purchase if it said on the box "some people at amazon are likely to listen to what you say". Sure, everyone agrees to the terms of use, but that doesn't seem to count for much in the way of "informed consent" these days. Maybe to the letter, but not the spirit.
      - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
        >But lots of people don't know how this stuff works and should not be expected too. How does caveat emptor not apply here? If you put an internet connected microphone in your home - it seems very reasonable to assume someone could listen in on that.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Nobody should be surprised by this. To actually test your voice recognition software in a definitive manner you need to compare you kind of have to compare your software's analysis to human analysis and that requires humans to listen to the audio or at least snippets of it. The software is competing with a human after all, you need to test its performance compared to the humans.
shanehoban 8y ago
Is this newsworthy? I know people who work at Apple. Their job is to listen to recordings taken by Siri, regardless of what the intention is. E.g. they listen to text messages people say to Siri - to send, searches, anything said to Siri.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  I think it’s newsworthy to remind normal people that technology isn’t magic. In the case of always on microphones in your home, that is important imo.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
maxxxxx 8y ago
We really have to go back to a model where most computation is done on the client and data mainly goes from server to client and not the other way. They shouldn’t be using real conversations for training their models or at least only in a very limited and open manner. Soon these companies will see everything we do, hear everything we say and read everything we write. That’s not a good future.
- furst 8y ago
  There are actually a few projects that follow this model much closer than Alexa/Siri/Google Assistant, or at the very least let you control host the computation on your desktop so you know where all your traffic is going. https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/ https://snips.ai/ https://snips.ai/
- saiya-jin 8y ago
  > Soon these companies will see everything we do, hear everything we say and read everything we write. Seriously, in 2019, you are actually surprised this is happening? After all the news that keeps popping out, proving that almost every single effin' company out there is after as much client data as possible, regardless of morals and sometimes even laws? People actually pay for devices that keep monitoring them, hilarious (and sad tbh). To save few clicks and feel 'modern'? I fail to see the proper added value in ones life of all these assistants, not in the light of all the technical f_ckups that shouldn't have happened by simple design decisions.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    I am not really surprised as such but I am worried that my worst suspicions seem to always come true. If that trend continues then our future will be very bleak and very suppressive.
- wybiral 8y ago
  There's a team of people at Mozilla working on adding an offline speech recognition API [1] to Firefox. This is particularly exciting to me because I have a SpeechRecognition-based "assistant" framework that I would love to make 100% locally served. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1248897 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1248897
tracer4201 8y ago
Buzz Feed of all sources for something just about everyone knows. What’s the goal other than driving clicks and trying to stir up pointless outrage?
- hbosch 8y ago
  Buzzfeed cites Bloomberg as the source in this article.
dekhn 8y ago
I think this sort of process, assuming the privacy and security teams have their say, is an absolutely legitimate part of product improvement.
pxtail 8y ago
I'm wondering if they are recording some fun conversations or maybe telling family/friends: "hahahah, hey Mike, you wouldn't believe what this weirdo said to Alexa... and he lives there ..., yep there ... just three blocks away, I know because he ordered toilet paper just after that..."
Causality1 8y ago
The smart solution would've been for Amazon to make it an opt-in program and offer people a dollar credit for some servic they'll never use in exchange for signing up. Amazon would've had millions of users consenting to any amount of data collection and be free and clear in the press.
joshuaheard 8y ago
I am fine with this, if the purpose is solely for product development. I have a problem with the data not being anonymous and their mocking some of the clips in a shared internal forum. The data should be anonymized and management should stop the mocking of clips on internal forums.

72 points by howard941 8y ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19629513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19629513 for more discussion on this and the original Bloomberg article

Deinos 8y ago

Large discussion already occurring: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19629513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19629513

nerdjon 8y ago

With the exception of the fact that this is going to sell clicks... Is this really news? I thought they confirmed this years ago? Same with Google and Apple...

zachr 8y ago

Am I supposed to be surprised? This is just logical. Of course they employ people to grade the quality of assistants' voice recognition and responses.

minikites 8y ago
Does that excuse Amazon's behavior? None of us were surprised when we learned about the NSA's Echelon or PRISM programs after all.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  I would NEVER put an Alexa in my home - but has Amazon done anything wrong here? You agreed to the terms of use, they’re doing expected work to anyone that has any idea how this all works, there seems to be no malicious intent even implied. IDK, if you don’t want someone potentially listening you, don’t put an Echo in your home.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    >has Amazon done anything wrong here? There's the contract that was actually signed, which Amazon didn't break, and then there's the contract people think they signed. It's generally considered your fault when you sign a contract with the devil and get tricked, but the devil is still evil. In other words, Amazon is evil in this situation and their customers made a mistake. If it had been made clear to non-technical people that they would get listened to by the listening device, then it would all be on them. However, this comes as a surprise to the average person, because it doesn't take that much work to encourage a false belief in the mind of a non-expert.
    - zachr 8y ago
      Fundamentally for a voice assistant to assist you it needs to listen to you. I don't see how this could possibly be surprising to anyone.
      - whatshisface 8y ago
        The headline in this case is that humans are also involved in the listening, which is technically advantageous but not technically necessary. It is also worth mentioning that the recording gets uploaded out of your house, which is again technically advantageous but not technically necessary.
  - bem94 8y ago
    > they’re doing expected work to anyone that has any idea how this all works For sure. But lots of people dont't know how this stuff works and should not be expected too. I wonder how many average consumers of Alexa products would feel differently about their purchase if it said on the box "some people at amazon are likely to listen to what you say". Sure, everyone agrees to the terms of use, but that doesn't seem to count for much in the way of "informed consent" these days. Maybe to the letter, but not the spirit.
    - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
      >But lots of people don't know how this stuff works and should not be expected too. How does caveat emptor not apply here? If you put an internet connected microphone in your home - it seems very reasonable to assume someone could listen in on that.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

Nobody should be surprised by this. To actually test your voice recognition software in a definitive manner you need to compare you kind of have to compare your software's analysis to human analysis and that requires humans to listen to the audio or at least snippets of it. The software is competing with a human after all, you need to test its performance compared to the humans.

shanehoban 8y ago

Is this newsworthy? I know people who work at Apple. Their job is to listen to recordings taken by Siri, regardless of what the intention is. E.g. they listen to text messages people say to Siri - to send, searches, anything said to Siri.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
I think it’s newsworthy to remind normal people that technology isn’t magic. In the case of always on microphones in your home, that is important imo.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

maxxxxx 8y ago

We really have to go back to a model where most computation is done on the client and data mainly goes from server to client and not the other way. They shouldn’t be using real conversations for training their models or at least only in a very limited and open manner. Soon these companies will see everything we do, hear everything we say and read everything we write. That’s not a good future.

furst 8y ago
There are actually a few projects that follow this model much closer than Alexa/Siri/Google Assistant, or at the very least let you control host the computation on your desktop so you know where all your traffic is going. https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/ https://snips.ai/ https://snips.ai/
saiya-jin 8y ago
> Soon these companies will see everything we do, hear everything we say and read everything we write. Seriously, in 2019, you are actually surprised this is happening? After all the news that keeps popping out, proving that almost every single effin' company out there is after as much client data as possible, regardless of morals and sometimes even laws? People actually pay for devices that keep monitoring them, hilarious (and sad tbh). To save few clicks and feel 'modern'? I fail to see the proper added value in ones life of all these assistants, not in the light of all the technical f_ckups that shouldn't have happened by simple design decisions.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I am not really surprised as such but I am worried that my worst suspicions seem to always come true. If that trend continues then our future will be very bleak and very suppressive.
wybiral 8y ago
There's a team of people at Mozilla working on adding an offline speech recognition API [1] to Firefox. This is particularly exciting to me because I have a SpeechRecognition-based "assistant" framework that I would love to make 100% locally served. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1248897 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1248897

tracer4201 8y ago

Buzz Feed of all sources for something just about everyone knows. What’s the goal other than driving clicks and trying to stir up pointless outrage?

hbosch 8y ago
Buzzfeed cites Bloomberg as the source in this article.

dekhn 8y ago

I think this sort of process, assuming the privacy and security teams have their say, is an absolutely legitimate part of product improvement.

pxtail 8y ago

I'm wondering if they are recording some fun conversations or maybe telling family/friends: "hahahah, hey Mike, you wouldn't believe what this weirdo said to Alexa... and he lives there ..., yep there ... just three blocks away, I know because he ordered toilet paper just after that..."

Causality1 8y ago

The smart solution would've been for Amazon to make it an opt-in program and offer people a dollar credit for some servic they'll never use in exchange for signing up. Amazon would've had millions of users consenting to any amount of data collection and be free and clear in the press.

joshuaheard 8y ago

I am fine with this, if the purpose is solely for product development. I have a problem with the data not being anonymous and their mocking some of the clips in a shared internal forum. The data should be anonymized and management should stop the mocking of clips on internal forums.