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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."
your phone heard that. just sayin.
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
...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.
--Max Headroom was a WARNING, *not* a HOWTO...
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
OK, I'll remind you in
* 2 WEEKS
Would you like to place an order for replacement TIDE PODS® at this time?
This stuff needs to be disabled by every end-user until there is some oversight or regulation on what information companies can gather.
No, every end user needs to feed audio into "this stuff" from movies, TV, radio stations, and loud public locations. They need to do this until the data is hopelessly poisoned and the advertards end up chasing their tails and wasting billions on advertising to movie characters, popular songs, and random strangers.
Of course, we know this will never happen, just as we know that Facebook is only taking a temporary hit and will be back to business as usual within a year. 'Cause the average citizen just doesn't get it.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
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.
"i never once used the computer but i told my wife i wanted something and now all the ads online are for that one thing" â" half my twitter every day. then i am over here wishing they would be relevant but instead i only get ads for the thing i just bought and nobody buys multiple of. like an xbox game or something stupid. you bought this so you must want to see this one thing everywhere you look for two weeks. super smrt aderptising.
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.
The assumption has been that the "OK Google" recognition is done locally, and captured audio is discarded and not transmitted when it hasn't recognized its keyphrase. And thus far it's proven to be true, as can be verified by watching tcpdump.
Is Google going to notify the parents that the child has started masturbating?
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.
Will one of you self-aggrandizing psuedo-hackers PLEASE shut this racist POS up once and for all?
I like the home-router-switch attack myself.