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Skylake Has a Voice DSP and Listens To Your Commands
itwbennett writes: Intel's new Skylake processor (like the Core M processor released last year) comes with a built-in digital signal processor (DSP) that will allow you to turn on and control your PC with your voice. Although the feature is not new, what is new is the availability of a voice controlled app to use it: Enter Windows 10 and Cortana. If this sounds familiar, it should, writes Andy Patrizio: 'A few years back when the Xbox One was still in development, word came that Kinect, its motion and audio sensor controller, would be required to use the console and Kinect would always be listening for voice commands to start the console. This caused something of a freak-out among gamers, who feared Microsoft would be listening.'
The computer on Star Trek was always listening, too. This is obviously the way of the future.
"What could possibly go wrong"...
Im sure plenty of slashdotters will invest time and effort in explaining how this can be manipulated by unscrupulous hackers and foreign intelligence agencies to undermine user security. Yet other slashdotters will wax prophetic on how the erosion of our freedoms at the hands of malevolent corporations will be our downfall
I on the otherhand am offering a completely different take on this Skylake report. As a coincidental shareholder in the tinfoil industry I believe Skylake and other technologies will be a win-win for all parties involved: consumers, producers, and the spider people of Adramalech the dark Samarian god to whom children are sacrificed...remember, without your patented TIN FOIL helmet, Skylark will inform them of how many licks it took YOU to get to the center of the tootsie roll pop.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Tinfoil Skull Caps
Put them on, oh slashdot serfs.
Wouldn't it make more sense to have a voice-activated power button on the frame, rather than the CPU doing this?
"We made a new processor! It's not any faster but it has an always on mic and exposes a remote-control interface you know nothing about. Oh and did I mention the random generator is biased? You'll love it"
Can't imagine a much bigger waste of silicon than this.
"This caused something of a freak-out among gamers, who feared Microsoft would be listening."
We're much more realistic these days. Now we understand it's the NSA that will be listening. The nutbars are those innocent creatures naive enough to believe they won't.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
What? That's not what's going on? You mean the PC is always on in sleep mode, listening to everything thing you say and analyzing it for the words "Computer on", which will take it out of sleep mode? Assuming of course someone hasn't hacked it to record audio (and maybe video) all the time, because sleep mode is NOT the same as off.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Cool!
So touching the mouse or a key is too difficult I guess?
Is there any open-source voice command interface? Something simple, which runs commands?
I would even be happy if I could record some commands and define what to run when I say that. Or if it had some learning interface where I can define "oh I meant that existing command, next time you know this pronounciation variant".
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I haven't read anything that indicates the chip does anything other than listen for specific speech patterns and send specific commands to the computer (actually power on is really the only thing I can tell it actually does). I doubt there is any way of retrieving the audio input from the chip. They would have to go out of their way to even incorporate this capability which if it existed would pretty much mean a large number of people wouldn't buy the chip. So until some hacker actually successfully retrieves anything the chip actually records (which I doubt is possible), I think this is a step ahead. I would definitely want this capability.
I thought we could control our machines with brain waves...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
In freaking 1984, THE GOD DAMNED PARTY PAID for the telescreens! If one broke, they replaced it! They probably charged for the electricity the screens consumed, but hey, free gin?!
My point is... yea okay, this telescreen has some computational bits integrated into it, but wheres the FREE lifetime service and replacement agreement? Who is really liable for incorrect voicecrime detection, because the microphone is faulty? Its an ungood device, designed by the enemies of the party.
I'll just give up on those evil PCs with their built-in audio recording devices and rely on my nice, totally opensource and security updated Android smartphone instead!
Thank you mobile revolution and Google for saving my privacy!
I think hardware support for voice recognition would be awesome if it can be leveraged to provide a usefully accurate local recognition capability.
Yet I very much doubt this will ever happen because the whole point of voice recognition these days seems to be nothing more than an excuse to send data to MS / Apple / Google / Nuance / LEA / whomever.
Dragon Dictate/Nuance Naturally Speaking has had this feature for over 20 years. And they didn't need an on-chip DSP.
> Intel's new Skylake processor (like the Core M processor released last year) comes with a built-in digital signal processor (DSP)
Everyone here is obsessed over voice recognition and "big brother" listening in via the mic. The bult-in DSP, however, should be able to run in reverse as well, which may mean a ... CPU-accelerated Hatsune Miku?
I see a problem with this because of the NSA and their overreach into our private lives. They are already recording our phone calls, they already have access into the internet. So do we really want to have our computer's mic constantly hearing our conversations? MS records what your mic hears for Cortana's "improvement", what stops them from handing it over to the NSA?
Years ago I'd be considered crazy for this, but now with the NSA being who they the are, can you trust them? Can you trust MS? Can you trust your government. The same government that wants to do away with encryption?
Be seeing you...
Be in ZERO doubt, this is just another NSA/GCHQ sponsored extension of the TOTAL SURVEILLANCE society like the Bill Gates designed ALWAYS-ON, ALWAYS WATCHING, ALWAYS LISTENING Kinect 2 sensor bar of the original Xbox One.
Did you know not even ONE significant game has appeared since the Xbox One launch for the NOW OPTIONAL Kinect 2 sensor bar, even though Microsoft spent HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars developing the 'time of flight' motion sensor? No game publisher was ever working on significant Kinect titles for the Xbox One. So why did Bill Gates insist, right until the last moment, that every Xbox One owner would have to accept always-on Kinect spying, in order to play ANY game on the console?
Intel's audio DSP block can attempt to use the very vibrations of the PC itself to detect speech and other sounds. So, even of you physically find and disable anything connected on your PC that seems like a microphone, the very chip itself can still attempt to listen to you. Doesn't matter that this is a somewhat wonky kite flown by the NSA. It establishes a principle that will only progress with time.
Since Man first foolishly accepted the first ruler, 'elites' have sought the best way to place a spy into the home of every citizen. For tens of thousands of years, the method of intelligence gathering was limited by what was possible without so offending the spied upon that they felt inclined to overthrow the rule of those seeking to benefit from mass surveillance. Now, literally anything is possible, while the sheeple are subdued by a 'perfect' media machine.
The "Intel Active Management" (a governor that runs on a secondary CPU independent of the primary one, with cryptographically signed firmware and autonomous access to LAN, WiFi, Memory etc) is also quite disconcerting, but in fact only inclued on certain chipsets (see the tables for Broadwell and Skylake). Unless you are a large institution you probably don't want remote management capabilities.
It's hard to find which chipsets will feature this DSP but quite possibly some won't. Pay attention when you buy your motherboard and all will be well.
ThinkPenguin's already said they're not shipping Skylake for a variety of privacy and freedom related reasons. Intel's incorporating various privacy-hostile tech into its CPUs with the Intel Management Engine and further eroding compatibility and support for free software operating systems like Linux. In prior chips they released the source code, but were not fully cooperative. The gentlemen who was reverse engineering certain pieces so that the Intel graphics chips would work has said he won't do it any more. That means *even* if you say "I don't care about free software" your still going to get worse support from Intel now. The same is already the case for AMD and NVIDIA.
The only way we can begin to solve these problems is to stop giving in to Intel, AMD, and other companies. There are efforts under way to build ARM laptops that will be better. While there are some issues currently they're being overcome. The biggest of them being with the graphics probably won't have this generation as reverse engineering efforts for the Mali 400 failed, but there is promise with next generation ARM graphics chips.
I don't understand it.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Read Nyders comment 2 up from yours. Some people choose to live in ignorance because it's much easier. But it is naive to think that all of the new technologies that record,track, monitor what you are doing are for your benefit. Sure there may be some perceived benefits by you but that is the lie you are being sold.
I am sure some will jump on here and will mock comments like mine by saying wear your tin foil hat but its not conspiracy theories where there is massive amounts of documented proof (snowden, wiki leaks,etc.) of shenanigans by governments and corporations.
My question is, so what? So what if the NSA is listening to everything? Let's assume the worst...that when I buy a Skylake PC, it can and does record everything that is said in my home and sends it to the NSA for storage and analysis. So what? For one thing, it'll be boring as shit, hours of me snoring, that sort of thing. Continuing the worst case, let's assume they can mine all this voice data perfectly, and can detect any time I talk about committing a crime or otherwise anti-government act. I'm a normal, boring, law abiding person. They won't find anything. I strongly suspect that 99% of the world is like me in this respect, too boring for the NSA to give a shit about.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.