Would've been newsworthy if it wasn't the case
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Of course they are. If you are surprised by this, then you are an idiot.
I work for Amazon.
This has been the case for many years. Amazon has used AI in Alexa and other services for many years as primary providers, and has told it's users it's used it's data for as long. We're talking from close to inception here, so 6-7 years, at least. Hell, LLM's aren't even new to most big tech companies!
I'm all for privacy, but if you want privacy then you probably shouldn't have a fucking tin can in your house that actions every conversation to a cloud service!
Not every conversation, just statements following a detected wake word.
You trust that?
Considering I set up one of the content types that relates to wakeword and utterance text analysis for Alexa, I trust it completely.
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There's this study for those interested in knowing more about how often these devices mistakenly record conversations:
https://moniotrlab.khoury.northeastern.edu/publications/smart-speakers-study-pets20/
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They literally tell you when you go through setup.
Harsh but true. We need some tough love in our relationship with tech.
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Yeah, that's kinda the point. They literally tell you that your voice interactions are used to improve the service.
I gItz NufIN Ti HIIIDE
I will be the last person to not have a smart home. There will be a banner over the doorway: "Welcome to Stupid House".
There will be a small cover charge.
I'm with you. I hate how they expect me to control everything from my phone or with voice commands. I'm fine walking to a light switch or walking to the thermostat.
The last thing I want is to talk to a computer. Buttons are fine. The roboto phone customer service is bad enough.
I’m fine walking to a light switch or walking to the thermostat.
When the hallway light was left on again it's really damn nice to simply say "Turn Off Hallway Light" while staying under my nice warm covers. It's also pretty swank to have the garage lights turn on when the garage door opens then turn themselves back off 5 minutes after the garage door closes. Someone left their closet light on? No problemo, my automation catches that and shuts it off.
Window coverings like blinds and drapes? Yeah, those are opening and closing automatically based on the position of the sun, even when I'm not home to do it. Did it rain while I was at work? Automation keeps my sprinklers from running tonight.
All of that is being done by Home Assistant and absolutely no Internet is required to make it work.
it's really damn nice to simply say "Turn Off Hallway Light"
Can you use a custom wake word? The only reason why I'm still using Alexa is for the "computer" wake word.
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When skynet comes online, I'll die quickly, being mopped to death. You'll have to struggle in the post apocalyptic hellscape where humans fight robots with A-10s for some reason.
haven't we all known this since product launch ?
I think most people, me included, underestimate the scale of the operation. When you hear "company will use private data to do X", you imagine what a reasonable person would do, like random sample a few conversations here and there. In reality they record everything permanently over months and years, far beyond what would be necessary to run the service.
It's kind of crazy how we get this level of surveillance while still having software that will lose your data if you don't hit Save often enough.
What's fucked up is if you try to regulate it and make these companies have data retention policies. It creates a giant moat around them where no newcomer can have a chance to compete.
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not sure how much they’ll learn from me screaming “you dumb bitch” at it
Yep, most of my interactions lately that are non trivial are just sigh-inducing. Smart assistant my ass.
Noooo reaaally?
The new Amazon AI is going to be remarkably foul-mouthed. Every time it screws up (and it screws up a lot) I have to curse at it to make it shut up so it can hear the command again.
So who thinks this conversation here on lemmy isn’t being used to train an AI? Maybe not right now but later?
Sure the relatively small size of lemmy means it might not be scooped up and trained on. But the point still stands. All that is publicly online is food for the big-corp AI builders. And while Alexa invading your home privacy is obviously a shitty thing, I’m not sure we’ve all thought through the new relationship between us, the internet and the big AIs.
Well I know I have no expectation of privacy here, but I'd rather open source LLMs train on my words along with proprietary ones, than some company hoarding information and selling it to each other.
The only thing an AI trained on Lemmy will ever be able to do is discuss the merits of socialism and talk about Linux lol
We always knew that. What they don't tell you is your phone is also secretly listening. "Ok Google" <- turn that thing off too
An always on microphone connected to a company that is mostly known to exploit their customers and employees! Say it ain't so!
And none of it has paid off because Alexa is still super trash
I love being able to dictate a grocery list but god damn is she stupid.
Good luck asking for cream cheese and chive crackers without ending up with cream cheese as one item and chive crackers as another. Or worse peanut butter and honey crackers as peanut butter and then honey crackers
"chive crackers with cream cheese"
"honey crackers with peanut butter"
?
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Yeah, I realized these things are terrible about a year ago. So, I hacked them into computer speakers using some cheap amps and a 12 volt power supply.
It’ll be really good at telling people to shut the fuck up if it’s using my data for training.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but maybe you could tell me why?
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These types of projects are driven by metrics, and teams have some kind of quota/goal that they need to reach by a certain date to keep the project on schedule. Bonuses or job security may be on the line here, and so you may see some desperate employees "going the extra mile" to reach their goals.
Relatedly, Alexa's voice activation sensitivity is essentially a tunable number. It can be changed to be more sensitive, so that it will activate more easily (e.g. maybe you say "Alex" instead of "Alexa"). The people who control this are likely on the team with that deadline, so the incentives are there to lower this value in order to collect more data by recording personal conversations "accidentally". Maybe a bad update goes out that causes Alexa to activate randomly, and they quickly fix it after a few days when they collected all the non-Alexa personal conversations they need for their AI.
That's maybe a bit too deep into the paranoia/tinfoil hat spectrum for some, but history has shown that you can't give big tech the benefit of the doubt. Especially when you see some of the documents from the Google trial, where executives discuss rolling back new features to improve arbitrary metrics in the short term so that they can get their bonuses for the quarter, even if it hurts consumers.
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