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Our Devices May Listen More Attentively, Patents Filed By Google and Amazon Suggest (nytimes.com)
Amazon and Google, the leading sellers of smart speakers, say their AI-powered assistants record and process audio only after users trigger them by pushing a button or uttering a phrase like "Hey, Alexaâ or âoeO.K., Google." But each company has filed patent applications, many of them still under consideration, that outline an array of possibilities for how devices like these could monitor more of what users say and do (the link may be paywalled), The New York Times reports. From the report: That information could then be used to identify a person's desires or interests, which could be mined for ads and product recommendations. In one set of patent applications, Amazon describes how a "voice sniffer algorithm" could be used on an array of devices, like tablets and e-book readers, to analyze audio almost in real time when it hears words like "love," "bought" or "dislike." A diagram included with the application illustrated how a phone call between two friends could result in one receiving an offer for the San Diego Zoo and the other seeing an ad for a Wine of the Month Club membership.
Some patent applications from Google, which also owns the smart home product maker Nest Labs, describe how audio and visual signals could be used in the context of elaborate smart home setups. One application details how audio monitoring could help detect that a child is engaging in "mischief" at home by first using speech patterns and pitch to identify a child's presence, one filing said. A device could then try to sense movement while listening for whispers or silence, and even program a smart speaker to "provide a verbal warning." A separate application regarding personalizing content for people while respecting their privacy noted that voices could be used to determine a speaker's mood using the "volume of the user's voice, detected breathing rate, crying and so forth," and medical condition "based on detected coughing, sneezing and so forth."
Some patent applications from Google, which also owns the smart home product maker Nest Labs, describe how audio and visual signals could be used in the context of elaborate smart home setups. One application details how audio monitoring could help detect that a child is engaging in "mischief" at home by first using speech patterns and pitch to identify a child's presence, one filing said. A device could then try to sense movement while listening for whispers or silence, and even program a smart speaker to "provide a verbal warning." A separate application regarding personalizing content for people while respecting their privacy noted that voices could be used to determine a speaker's mood using the "volume of the user's voice, detected breathing rate, crying and so forth," and medical condition "based on detected coughing, sneezing and so forth."
The industry is out of control.
Just stay out of my life!
One application details how audio monitoring could help detect that a subject is engaging in "wrong speak" in their district by first using speech patterns and pitch to identify a malcontent's presence, one filing said. A device could then try to sense movement while listening for whispers or silence, and even program a smart speaker to "provide a verbal warning."
FTFY.
This was a story last year,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5182577/How-Google-Amazon-SPYING-you.html
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
with "NOT OK Google"
From the no shit Sherlock department?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
If it's going to detect mischief, the neural network is going to have to learn how to detect when it's "quiet...too quiet".
That's a difficult phrase, but does it work both Alexa and Google?
...is that anybody could possibly be surprised.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
"A device could then try to sense movement while listening for whispers or silence, and even program a smart speaker to "provide a verbal warning."
Or it could listen for political heresy and provide a warning, like "Shut up and support Big Brother."
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
This stuff needs to be disabled by every end-user until there is some oversight or regulation on what information companies can gather.
...surveillance creep creeps towards more creepiness. Are Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft to become our thought police? You know, now that they're censoring our documents on the cloud. What will they make of ideologically deviant utterances made by us proles? Will irony and sarcasm be effectively suppressed and censored? (Machines aren't very good at interpreting intent so things like irony and sarcasm are mostly imperceptible to them).
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
Fuck off google. Fuck off amazon.
How can children learn if they don't get into mischief? More helicoptering is the last thing that we need.
And the people living under Orwell's 1984 only suffered the indignity of being spied on directly, by the state - instead of having the intimate details of their lives auctioned off between mega-corporations AND being spied on by the state.
Disgusting.
ALEXA HAS DETECTED:
* Mischievous tittering
* The sound of 1 or more TIDE PODS® being ingested
CALL POLICE? (YES/Remind me later)
--Max Headroom was a WARNING, *not* a HOWTO...
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
It is kinda obvious, but those devices obviously have to listen to everything in order to acknowledge being referenced. Otherwise, it will have to involve magic.
Oh, wait..... "could help detect that a child is engaging in "mischief" at home".
I was coughing and began to see strangely appropriate cough medicine ads on tv. And other such strange events make me suspicious that I'm already being listened to for advertisement reasons. I have amazon echo and an iphone and ipad.
E Proelio Veritas.
If they listen to your phone calls without consent of one or both parties to call depending on State isn't that a felony? Can't they go to jail and rot in Prison with DJT and HRC?
Or will they bury some EULA crap that puts the end user in legal jeopardy for failure to notify everyone they talk to in 2-party consent state that they are being stalked by a third party?
I'm tired of people submitting patent apps for "ideas" that have not actually been demonstrated. These patents are all about "let's patent this idea, in case it actually works, so we can collect royalties". It's like the nuclear powered airplane patents for Feynman.
Today, the required "reduction to practice" is just "can you describe how you would do it in the application", rather than "do you have actual test data that shows you did it".
So you wind up with a bunch of people in a room thinking of "what things can we think of that we *might* do with voice processing". I'm surprised there isn't a patent application out there (maybe there is) to identify singing range for recruiting potential pop singers (and choral performers). Hey, if you need to find rare voices like counter-tenors...
Or look for promising kids practicing their musical instruments - ooh, that 8yr old has impressive vibrato and pitch control on their violin playing.
Not more fu*&^%$ ways to get ads thrown in my face. They are going too far as it is, The hell with their devices .. they can shove em up ..
Bet they don't know that word.
[($)]
I bet the police are drooling at the possibilities. Once the tech is in place, they just need to plug in.
Several months ago, I was reading news on my computer and let go an F-bomb. Siri on my iPhone chimed in, "I"ll pretend I didn't hear that." I immediately disabled Siri on all my Apple devices. These devices are listening to you. Whether they are storing anything we say, who can say?
Is Google going to notify the parents that the child has started masturbating?
Can't we get someone to start patenting all the ways to collect people's personal data and conversations and then sue Google/Facebook/etc. when they try to actually do it?
The Pacifists think that if nobody works on Military AI, that we won't have Killbots, so fewer people will die. History doesn't agree with this point of view. During WW2 allied bombing accidentally started a firestorm in a german city, destroying most of the city with massive civilian casualties. The Allies spent a lot of time and money attempting to reproduce that effect, so they could do the same to other German cities. Lack of a good targeting system won't stop the military from pulling the trigger, they'll just carpet bomb the targets and blow up wedding parties and schools.