
Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It? - SREinSF
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/business/media/amazon-google-privacy-digital-assistants.html
======
oulipo
You can't trust the large companies who have a culture of profiting off your
data to protect your privacy.

This is why we need AI at the edge, and not in the clouds, and Privacy-by-
design thinking in our architectures. This is the only way for people to know
their data won't be compromised and misused, because it never leaves their
devices.

Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder of [https://snips.ai](https://snips.ai) and we
are building a 100% on-device and private-by-design platform to build Voice AI
assistants

We would be happy to know what you do with it! You can take a look at what
some people have built with it already [https://github.com/snipsco/awesome-
snips](https://github.com/snipsco/awesome-snips)

We are open-sourcing it over time, starting with the NLU:
[https://medium.com/snips-ai/snips-nlu-is-an-open-source-
priv...](https://medium.com/snips-ai/snips-nlu-is-an-open-source-private-by-
design-alternative-to-dialogflow-amazon-lex-and-other-nlu-a95dbe16f4a1). Snips
is available in English, French, German, and soon Japanese and Korean with
more European languages coming this year.

You can start building your own private-by-design smart speaker on the
platform in under 1h with this tutorial: [https://medium.com/snips-
ai/building-a-voice-controlled-home...](https://medium.com/snips-ai/building-
a-voice-controlled-home-sound-system-using-snips-and-sonos-2aaf16523ce9)

~~~
tzs
A bit OT:

What's up with the animated drawing on your front page of an alien poorly
disguised as a human female at a picnic using voice to control her music
player? It's kind of distracting--I keep staring at it instead of reading the
site.

I infer that she's an alien for three reasons.

First, her head is on backwards compared to human heads.

Second, she appears to have only one upper arm, attached to her left shoulder,
which forks at the elbow into two lower arms, one of which is going behind her
back over to her right side. The forearms are also about twice as long as
human forearms.

Third, the neck is way longer than human necks, but quite consistent with many
the aliens some people have claimed to have seen.

Seriously...is this some recognized art style? I don't know much about art,
but I do recall that around the late 19th/early 20th century there were some
prominent artists and styles that took big liberties with human anatomy.

It's well drawn sufficiently (as are the other drawings on your site) that it
gives the impression that the artist is referencing something known.

~~~
Arkaad
That's a really creepy design.

------
fortythirteen
The things people are willing to give up for the most minimal of conveniences
are only going to get worse in the next decade.

I wouldn't be willing to put an open wiretap in my home, even if it did
something amazing, like extend my lifespan. The quality of my life is not
significantly improved with these devices, and all of their practical uses can
be duplicated with the minimal effort of tapping a screen a couple of times.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
I'm seriously shocked by the number of people that are putting always on
"assistants" in their home - but more so on the number of people that should
know better, like HN people.

~~~
criddell
What's shocking about it? For just the Echo, Amazon claims to have sold 20
million devices so they are probably in at least 10 million homes. How many of
the people that buy an Echo have been harmed so far?

I have an Echo and use it daily for music, weather, timers, home automation
(ie controlling lights and fans), etc...

I also drive a car almost every day and that has a relatively high probability
of killing me. Compared to that, having an Echo in my house seems somewhat
harmless.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
>How many of the people that buy an Echo have been harmed so far?

That entirely depends on your definition of "harm". Those of us who see
intrinsic value in privacy would be grievously harmed.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
I don't think there's any way to tell if there has been concrete harm, which
is the biggest problem. You can't trust the platform.

------
z_open
In past discussions, I was led to believe we were safe from these devices, in
terms of pervasive data collection, because the main processor that was always
running was primitive and was only powerful enough to pick up a key phrase.
This phrase would power the main processor which would then listen to your
query, respond, and then deactivate. But now, as the article mentions, I
realize that this initial processor could be made to listen for many key words
like "love", "hate", or other words that would pick up on sensitive personal
information. I really don't think these devices should exist.

~~~
pdkl95
> because the main processor that was always running was primitive and was
> only powerful enough to pick up a key phrase

That's only true if you're trying to do complex analysis on the device. Cell
phones in the early 1990s had even less computing power, but it was enough to
encode speech down to 13.2 kbit/s[1] (or 5.6 kbit/s[2]). A simple noise
gate[3] would reduce recording duty cycle down to maybe 1% while costing a
trivial amount of CPU load.

Modern hardware - even tiny embedded devices - can probably do a _lot_ more
than simple gat4ed+compressed audio.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Rate)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_Rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_Rate)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_gate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_gate)

~~~
qvrjuec
So let's assume this is technically possible, and only examine the process
under the lens of detectability. Assuming the codec is 8kbps, you'd see
roughly 3MB upload for every hour of audio, and I would say it's not out of
the question for the noise gate to be active from the television being on in
the same room, or music playing. For an utterance, seeing a 3MB upstream would
be super abnormal. It would be impossible to transmit all of this data for
processing without somebody noticing.

~~~
jononor
Why would it record continiously? If I were developing such a device I'd use
random sampling. Don't have use for _all_ the audio in every home, but a
little bit from everywhere can be useful. Can be used to improve the acoustic
model of the room maybe, or improve targetting of ads[1]. Some snippets from
the minutes before and activation could be especially interesting, to
understand the context.

1\. Or more nefarious things, of course.

~~~
soared
Or record audio, do speech to text, some light analysis, and upload the
metadata. Or just upload a basket of words and their frequency, "Toilet Paper,
2, tv, 7, online, 4,"

~~~
jononor
Detecting who speaks is also a (relatively) lightweight analysis. Combined
with bag-of-words can build personality/interest profile. Speech based gender
detection can also be done, probably also detecting kids from adults. Now have
good data about demographics of the household.

------
pdkl95
> including an “algorithmic transparency requirement” that would help people
> understand how their data was being used and what automated decisions were
> then being made about them.

This needs to be required for any type of algorithmic decision making. Without
algorithmic transparency ulterior motives, intentional or unintentional
biases, and unnoticed mistakes are hidden from public review.

A common response is that we _don 't know_ how some types of machine learning
make their decisions. I agree this is occasionally true. Find a way generate
an explanation, or use a different algorithm; transparency is a critical
requirement.

------
sqdbps
Companies use patents defensively and the Times is fully aware of that so this
comes across as cynical clickbait.

What I find interesting is that they keep quoting "consumer watchdog" an anti
google organization turned anti technology (they're against self driving cars
and robots now).

The scary thing is that mainstream respected news outlets casually traffic in
technophobia as evident form articles about automation and AI for example and
how every piece mentioning a tech company is permeated with FUD about their
motivations or their "power".

~~~
brynjolf
That is a lot of buzzwords.

------
amelius
Why don't we have open-source voice-assistants yet? I mean, if we can have an
open-source OS (e.g. Linux), then surely we can have open-source speech
recognition, right?

~~~
oulipo
We are building this at [https://snips.ai](https://snips.ai) (disclaimer: I'm
a co-founder). You can build 100% on-device Voice AI assistants which are
running on a Raspberry Pi 3, and we are open-sourcing the platform

You can take a look at our blog to get started if you want to build your own
assistant: [https://medium.com/snips-ai/building-a-voice-controlled-
home...](https://medium.com/snips-ai/building-a-voice-controlled-home-sound-
system-using-snips-and-sonos-2aaf16523ce9)

~~~
amelius
Interesting!

Under what license are you open-sourcing the platform?

And what is your business model?

How well do you perform in benchmarks? (Assuming there _are_ benchmarks)

~~~
oulipo
It will be mostly GPL, the business model is to sell licenses for industrial
device builders!

------
rb808
With a court order can authorities turn on the microphone and just listen to
everything? Seems easy to do but I haven't heard about it yet. I guess phones
can do the same. Presumably the Russians and Chinese do this already. :)

~~~
pdkl95
A warrant is required only as long as "voice assistant" technology "is not in
general public use"[1]. Kyllo v United States created a bright-line[3] test
that removes the warrant requirement to see "details of a private home that
would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion"[2] when use
of the technology is normalized.

Note that this removes the warrant requirement _in general_ , even if you
personally don't own an Alexa/etc. The test is if the public expects audio in
the home _might_ be recorded and sent to a 3rd party. If the answer is "yes",
then the police can use their _own_ hardware to do the recording.

[1] [http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-
court/533/27.html](http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html)

[2] Ibid.

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright-
line_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright-line_rule)

~~~
shawn-butler
Amazon resisted a warrant from a prosecutor seeking all Alexa recordings from
a house that was the site of murder. Trial in Arkansas I believe.

I don't think it ever went anywhere precedent setting however because the
defendant eventually gave permission to Amazon to turn it over.

Still pretty muddy waters. I would trust Amazon a little more than I would
trust the smart tv makers, but that's just my bias.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
You're right. They publicly resisted. But I have no qualms that they can also
just quietly hand over a DVD to a prosecuted and say " here ya go".

In the end, this is their platform of which we are sharecroppers.

------
r3nrut
If you're not planning to release your own hardware, could you provide a list
of devices that the software is tested with? I looked on the site a bit but
the crazy art thing triggered my ADHD and OCD as well. I imagine the idea is
that you can compile it for whatever device on any platform with some change
but makes it harder for community engagement without a go to for sure platform
to test some builds and POCs.

------
EGreg
_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.”_

This worries me. First the children are watched 24/7, them the adults.

------
peg_leg
I had a dream that Alexa recognized my voice when I was visiting a friend's
house. Won't be long for that one.

~~~
Johnny555
Your phone already knows you visited your friend's house, why are you worried
about Alexa knowing too?

------
akeck
Alexa could enable subtle insider trading by both Amazon employees and Amazon
AIs.

