I just asked a non-tech person behind me if they thought that when you asked Google Assistant a question it was sent to Google to answer, and they shrugged and said yes like it was a stupid question.
What ordinary person doesn't understand that when you asked Google a question that Google knows the question you asked? It doesn't make sense.
They don't need to understand "computer memory or how computation works" to grasp that the person/entity you ask a question to, has to know that question in order to provide an answer. In fact you could have never used a computer and grasp that concept.
You're trying to make this more complex to mask the fact it is a logically flawed premise.
Better questions:
"Do you understand that when you ask Google Assistant a question, a human might listen to it and not just an AI?"
"Do you understand that the human might not be a direct employee sitting in a Google office -- that they might work for 3rd-pary company that Google just contracts out to?"
The product's tagline/marketing lead is literally: "Get answers from Google." Why would ordinary people who purchased a product to "Get answers from Google" be surprised when it sends the questions to Google to get answers from Google..?
You don't need to be an ML expert to read the product's marketing and use basic reasoning to conduce that in order to get answers from X then X will need to know the questions. That has nothing to do with ML/AI/speech recognition. It is just basic common sense.
> However, the fact that articles like this get traction shows that a substantial portion of ordinary people don't understand what privacy they're giving up when they use Google Home.
They gain traction in niche tech circles, where people pretend that the general public doesn't grasp that Google/Amazon/Apple is on the other end and claim they're defending other's privacy.
The traction isn't proof of anything, except a handful of people really dislike these conveniences (and use other's purported ignorance as justification for their whole argument).