7 ms·

As a matter of practicality using this data adversely against customers is unlikely. 1. This is literally almost everyone on the road (that should frighten you

As a matter of practicality using this data adversely against customers is unlikely. 1. This is literally almost everyone on the road (that should frighten you more than insurance companies having this data) 2. Insurance is a highly regulated industry. Each state has a department of insurance that regulates how insurers apply rate and underwriting. 3. There are many voluntary opt-in programs out there that reward good behavior and marginally penalize bad behavior. Those programs focus on a few behaviors, none of which are distraction at the moment and they are all opt-in. Full disclosure - I work at a large insurance company and am also an EFF donor. This is near and dear.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
> As a matter of practicality using this data adversely against customers is unlikely. People are not perfectly spherical insurance customers operating in a vacuum. In light of that, what non-adversely uses does this data have with respect to the people whom are the target of this data collection?
- rubyfan 7y ago
  Helping them and everyone else find behavioral solutions to avoid using their phone while driving, for example rewarding good behavior with discount, gift cards, etc. There are a number of insurance companies literally trying to help adjust behavior in order to save lives of those distracted and the innocent bystanders and other drivers on the road.
  - loeg 7y ago
    This is literally using the data adversely to the "badly behaved" customers.
drb91 7y ago
Honestly they could start by building voice controls that people want to use rather than the voice assistant bullshit. Idk what the google one is like, but siri is a toy.
- toss1 7y ago
  The Google assistant is sort of ok while it works, but it often fails in the most critical situation. E.g., "OK Google, Call Home". nothing. Why? Because it is telling you, usually with a silent on-screen notification that you need to unlock your phone. I have found that trying several times including swearing seems to unlock it. But this is still creating a distraction while driving. Very poorly thought out.
  - RhodesianHunter 7y ago
    It's not that it's poorly thought out, it's that speech-to-text is just ok, and deriving meaning from even perfect text is hard.
    - kwhitefoot 7y ago
      Dragon Dictate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking) worked on less capable hardware 20 years ago and didn't need to be online to do it so how come voice recognition is so bad now. You don't even need general purpose speech recognition to call someone on your mobile, just enough to recognize a trigger sound and the name of the person you want to call. This is how I could use voice recognition on my Nokia N73 to call anyone in my address book.
      - atoav 7y ago
        As I understood it the hard thing isn’t converting speech to text, it is understanding which text should lead to which actions. Strangely enough in command line interfaces this works perfectly, so maybe we need just a more speech friendly way to call commands? And why you’d need the cloud is beyond me. A speech assistent that fails once you don’t have a internet connection is not only annoying, in some cases it could become outright dangerous.
        jrib 7y ago
        I agree. I suspect most people would be a lot happier with a dozen or two commands customized to their personal use cases. Instead we have companies shuffling data back to their servers attempting (and usually failing in my experience) to handle arbitrary commands mostly for the company's benefit
UweSchmidt 7y ago
It is virtually guaranteed that this data will be used adversely against customers. Insurances want to find reasons why not to pay out, and will find those reasons in the data they collect. Insurance may be "highly regulated" but regulation on what data can be collected is underdeveloped.
FerretFred 7y ago
"As a matter of practicality using this data adversely against customers is unlikely" It's the Insurance Industry - of course they'll use it against their customers!
asdff 7y ago
Why would they ever not use this data adversely against customers? Insurance companies already have offered an OBD tracker that would supposedly be used to prove you were a safe driver and therefore lower your rates. Why on earth would they not use this data to say "well you check twitter on the highway every morning, therefore we are raising your monthly payments by 20%." This is the entire insurance industry business model.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago

> As a matter of practicality using this data adversely against customers is unlikely. People are not perfectly spherical insurance customers operating in a vacuum. In light of that, what non-adversely uses does this data have with respect to the people whom are the target of this data collection?

rubyfan 7y ago
Helping them and everyone else find behavioral solutions to avoid using their phone while driving, for example rewarding good behavior with discount, gift cards, etc. There are a number of insurance companies literally trying to help adjust behavior in order to save lives of those distracted and the innocent bystanders and other drivers on the road.
- loeg 7y ago
  This is literally using the data adversely to the "badly behaved" customers.

drb91 7y ago

Honestly they could start by building voice controls that people want to use rather than the voice assistant bullshit. Idk what the google one is like, but siri is a toy.

toss1 7y ago
The Google assistant is sort of ok while it works, but it often fails in the most critical situation. E.g., "OK Google, Call Home". nothing. Why? Because it is telling you, usually with a silent on-screen notification that you need to unlock your phone. I have found that trying several times including swearing seems to unlock it. But this is still creating a distraction while driving. Very poorly thought out.
- RhodesianHunter 7y ago
  It's not that it's poorly thought out, it's that speech-to-text is just ok, and deriving meaning from even perfect text is hard.
  - kwhitefoot 7y ago
    Dragon Dictate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking) worked on less capable hardware 20 years ago and didn't need to be online to do it so how come voice recognition is so bad now. You don't even need general purpose speech recognition to call someone on your mobile, just enough to recognize a trigger sound and the name of the person you want to call. This is how I could use voice recognition on my Nokia N73 to call anyone in my address book.
    - atoav 7y ago
      As I understood it the hard thing isn’t converting speech to text, it is understanding which text should lead to which actions. Strangely enough in command line interfaces this works perfectly, so maybe we need just a more speech friendly way to call commands? And why you’d need the cloud is beyond me. A speech assistent that fails once you don’t have a internet connection is not only annoying, in some cases it could become outright dangerous.
      - jrib 7y ago
        I agree. I suspect most people would be a lot happier with a dozen or two commands customized to their personal use cases. Instead we have companies shuffling data back to their servers attempting (and usually failing in my experience) to handle arbitrary commands mostly for the company's benefit

UweSchmidt 7y ago

It is virtually guaranteed that this data will be used adversely against customers. Insurances want to find reasons why not to pay out, and will find those reasons in the data they collect. Insurance may be "highly regulated" but regulation on what data can be collected is underdeveloped.

FerretFred 7y ago

"As a matter of practicality using this data adversely against customers is unlikely" It's the Insurance Industry - of course they'll use it against their customers!

asdff 7y ago

Why would they ever not use this data adversely against customers? Insurance companies already have offered an OBD tracker that would supposedly be used to prove you were a safe driver and therefore lower your rates. Why on earth would they not use this data to say "well you check twitter on the highway every morning, therefore we are raising your monthly payments by 20%." This is the entire insurance industry business model.