Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

Re:Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations by whatshisface on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @12:07PM (#20403288)

It's not wrong for humans to label training data. It's wrong to let humans listen to voice recordings that users believed would be between them and a computer. The solutions are obvious: sell the things with a big sticker that says, "don't say anything private in earshot," revert to old fashioned research methods where you pay people to participate in your studies and get their permission, or ask people for permission to send in mis-heard commands like how Ubuntu asks me if I want to send them my core dumps.

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Re:Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations by JoshTriplett on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @01:13PM (#20404016)

> ask people for permission to send in mis-heard commands

Note that you also want the "correctly" heard commands, because some of them will have been incorrect. It's frustrating when an assistant gives the "I don't know how to do that", but it's even more frustrating to get "OK, doing (the wrong thing)".

Also, another alternative: provide an actual bug reporting channel. "Hey Google, report that as a bug" "Would you like to attach a transcript of the recent interaction? Here's what the transcript looks like." "Yes."

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Re:Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations by Dextro on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @01:52PM (#20404473)

To be fair the system already has something like that. If you complain to the Home it'll ask if you want to provide feedback and give you a few seconds to verbally explain what went wrong.

I'm not sure if humans will then review that feedback of if it goes through a speech to text algorithm first but the mechanism for feedback is there.

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Re:Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations by a3n on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @04:43PM (#20406326)

Yeah, i think I've experienced that. I was driving with Maps directions, and while i was driving Google decided to show me new things Maps can do.

I tried to voice my way back to directions, unsuccessfully. I said "Fuck you Google."

"I see that you're upset," followed by some instructions on how to give feedback. While I was driving. It sounded almost exactly like "I'm sorry Dave, I can't help you."

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Re:Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations by jpswain on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @11:08PM (#20408811)

iOS voicemail transcription has this.

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Re:Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations by inetknght on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @12:29PM (#20403530)

> like how Ubuntu asks me if I want to send them my core dumps

While I like how Ubuntu does it, I actually like better how Fedora does it. Not only do they ask to submit core dumps but gives you the ability to annotate and inspect what gets sent as well as gives you a bug report ID which you can use to follow up on.

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Re:Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations by alias_neo on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @12:34PM (#20403593)

Agreed, I'd like to support Ubuntu development, I often run it on bleeding edge hardware I'd like to submit crash reports for, but the inability to sanitise the data causes me not to unless it's a "fresh" device.

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Re:Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations by kevin_thibedeau on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @01:41PM (#20404352)

Just give participants the choice to opt in for a chance to get early access to new products. Make it invite only to feel exclusive. They will have millions of willing test subjects.

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Re:Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations by jamesmadison66 on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @12:25PM (#20403477)

good point, there's precedent from hospitals wrt IRB and other infrastructure involved w/ data gathering. Hospitals/research institutions self-regulate in this regard, doesn't appear tech does

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