I also missed all the bad things that happened because of Cambridge Analytica. Even if we take their extremely dubious claims about their effectiveness at face value them running amok resulted in politicians being better able to target ads. That's not exactly the stuff of nightmares.
Based on what he was caught saying on camera, in addition to his deputies, and the reporting around their political campaigns in Africa using propaganda that claimed AIDS would come back if so-and-so were elected, it's not a stretch to imagine those people doing everything the can, legally and illegally, to sway an election.
... never underestimate the impact of “just optimizing” something
Sure, they may not be able to deliver super effective results today, few startups in their early days do.
What they’ve identified, though, is that there is a vast market of incredible wealth willing to pay for services like this. CA may have shut down, but Nix turned around and founded another company that does the exact same thing[0].
Keep in mind that these guys also have access to incredible investment money, they don’t have to go out and raise seed rounds, series rounds, etc. These companies are being built in secret, and it’s incredibly short-sighted to write them off for their capabilities today, because if they succeed tomorrow, we’re in really big trouble.
0: https://www.newsweek.com/what-emerdata-scl-group-executives-...
Indeed. There are plenty of companies that would pay a LOT of money to use that data in any meaningful way. It doesn't happen, but people will convince themselves it's important data, enabling a host of dying properties to fool a handful of market actors into getting a profitable exit. The amount of user data leveraged from most acquisitions is basically 0, excepting a few mailings. Conversely, consumer reach (active users) matters a great deal.
Using a microphone, even with an offline ML model, to do things like play music at the right times and (almost certainly) show you ads or ask if you want to buy Amazon product is pretty off-putting. Google Maps and Siri Suggestions uses your phone's behavioral data and location history to figure out when you usually leave for work, but if you said "i need to get to work an hour earlier tomorrow" to someone, it would be weird if your phone or Alexa instantly said "do you want me to remind you to leave earlier?" I don't think it's as off-putting as the article makes it out to be, but it's still pretty creepy; we're almost certainly going to have boomer facebook groups boycotting Alexa for "always listening".
Then again I'm not likely to by a "smart"-speaker anytime soon.
Maybe I'm missing something, but what does the Cambridge Analytica scandal have to do with AI?
> Rohit Prasad, the scientist in charge of Alexa‘s development, recently gave MIT Technology Review’s Karen Hao one of the most terrifying interviews in modern journalism
Is the hyperbole really necessary?
> Rohit Prasad, Alexa’s head scientist, has now revealed further details about where Alexa is headed next. The crux of the plan is for the voice assistant to move from passive to proactive interactions.
So Alexa will make suggestions or remind you that you need to order toilet paper. Much like Google's Android greets me with the time it would take me to get to work every morning without any prompt.
Its really sad that the state of tech reporting is full of this hyperbole and fear mongering. You can have a real discussion about the dangerous of technology and erosion of privacy, but this isn't it.