Big Brother is listening
Home Assistants seem to be a staple in an American’s daily lives nowadays, the two most popular being Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. These Home Assistants greatly benefit a consumer’s lives by performing tasks for them just through a voice command. Through the use of AI, home assistants learn to adapt to the user’s preferences, to provide a greater experience for the user. Of course, the invention of this product has provided humans with great convenience, however, a growing concern from consumers is whether these home assistants are listening to our every move, and what they are doing with the information?
This reminds me of a video I have watched, titled ‘Is Google always listening’. In the video, the man talked about buying dog toys for his nonexistent dog by his computer, without doing anything explicitly on his computer. Next, he went online, and the advertisements on the side were showing links for him to purchase said dog toys. I can confirm that this phenomenon is true, because I was discussing a company with my friend by the computer one day, and the next thing I knew was that there were advertisements from that company all over the websites I visited. To a consumer, this can be extremely creepy, but they have to understand that home assistants are also always listening since they have to listen for the ‘wake word’, like ‘Alexa’.
On a different light, there was a murder case, where Echo was able to provide evidence that the case was, in fact, a murder, and not an accident, due to recordings on the Echo, and also the suspect’s smart water heater. This shows how AI and IoT are not only always listening, but heavily integrated into our lives. So much that either the murderer was careless, or he didn’t even think of avoiding using the smart water heater because it would provide evidence to the case.
As for safety, Amazon actually allows users to delete their recordings online, whether or not Amazon actually listens to all conversations going on in your living room, and what they do with it, we will not know. With the connectivity of IoT, it is almost inevitable that companies will easily be able to gather all sorts of data, from your sleeping habits to how often you bathe. If you are really cautious about companies gathering your data and insist on staying off the grid, the best option nowadays is to avoid owning any sort of technological device.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/07/tech/amazon-echo-alexa-bentonville-arkansas-murder-case/index.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBnDWSvaQ1I
https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/12/tech/voice-technology-internet-of-things-privacy/index.html
6 comments on “Big Brother is listening”
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In the generation of AI and big data, personal privacy is really a big matter to concern. Your blog reminds me of the scandal of Facebook, a severe data leak that caused grave concern about user privacy possibly abused for political purposes. In fact, we’re losing control of our privacy. Using data mining and algorithm, tech companies can easily collect the data we’ve generated and extract great business value from it. It’s quite hard to keep the balance between privacy safety and business efficiency, maybe draconian regulations are needed to solve this problem.
A certain viewpoint toward your personal information being exposed to organizations is whether or not you have something to “hide” or something that others can take advantage of affecting you in the future. This viewpoint certainly sparks the concern regarding privacy and our ability to shy away from it. When it comes down to the convenience when using machines that make us susceptible to invasion privacy, some people may say its a threat, and a few may accept that fact and try their best to not explicitly “release” their information when in the presence of these machines. I believe that implementation of “big brother” is two sides of the same coin. It is a matter of users accepting or not accepting that monetary value into their lives while entering an environment where ears are numerous. This is certainly a concern in the developed world that have better cases of promoting basic human rights. It is a next step for the developed world to tryly come to an agreement that will be the status quo of how individual’s privacy can be used.
Very important topic and I liked the positive and negative examples you listed. I think it needs to be made an even bigger issue than it already is. Like in the case of Facebook some companies get so big and their services so widespread that it can be hard or basically impossible for people to abandon them even in the face of huge privacy scandals. In addition many people don’t seem to care about their data or just do not have the necessary knowledge to assess the risks. That’s why it is on the lawmakers to do something about it. A few month ago the EU passed the GDPR, a massive data privacy law to protect personal data. I think it is a step in the right direction, even though many companies were not happy about it. While technological progress especially in data analytics is essential we shouldn’t leave consumer protection behind in the process. Going off grid completely cannot be the solution.
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/data-protection-eu_en
I completely agree with you on this, I have also had very creepy experiences with targeted advertisements. I have my home completely packed with all the latest and greatest smart devices and a friend whom I had not seen in a few years came over, we started talking about going on a buggy or “side by side ATV”, keep in mind we never googled it or anything. So after just talking about it we decided to go on a ride in one, I uploaded an Instagram story in it but again I did not explicitly write anything about it, just the picture, somehow when we returned from riding my instagram was packed with adds for these ATVs and I was completely freaked out since I had never had an ad for that before nor had I ever even searched for those things in my phone.
Another recent case that scared me is how I was talking to my mom about how the side effects of my ADHD medication affect me, the second I open my phone up to instagram I get an ad for ADHD medication supplements with supposedly no side effects. From that moment on I have been completely convinced that something is going on, but the foreseeable future I see no other option than just embracing this.
Thank you for your article, it sparked up my thoughts on this again since I thought I was maybe just experiencing some coincidences and overreacting but apparently I am not alone on this.
There really needs to be more awareness and attention to the risks and inhibitors inherently inside the AI and machine learning technology. They might not only listen, but even talk, take action, or even threaten…What we really need to accomplish is not only endless improvements about technologies all the time but also considering social and psychological effects in the context of fast-devoloping technologies. Scientists are not supposed to shake off their responsibility to the privacy and physical safety of the public.
It is a fact that the more connected we are, the more chances to be listen. There’s a movie named Snowden base on a true story about cybersecurity, hacking and privacy. In the movie, you can see how the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States is able to even access to a Facebook users cam without any type of consent. The question that applies then is where is the line between privacy and security? the answers might defer a lot from every different individual. I believe that every person should have the right to decide in which point they want to be observe and feel safe. A very interesting movie from Netflix shows a future where the police can access without any kind of restriction to what you see at every moment. This shows that this inquietud exist in our population and that is something we should be more aware of.