Machine Learning: An Essential Guide to Machine Learning for Beginners Who Want to Understand Applications, Artificial Intelligence, Data Mining, Big Data and More by Herbert Jones

Author:Herbert Jones [Jones, Herbert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-06-21T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11 – Personal voice-activated assistants

Alexa and Siri, the two most popular personal assistants, show the capabilities of machine learning that is always on and always listening, springing into action at a moment’s notice with perfect answers. Here’s where we enter the murky waters of data mining and Terms of Service nobody reads, except hapless 3rd world freelancers who get paid peanuts to write them.

Alexa and Siri work by constantly analyzing background noise and waiting to hear keywords. It’s impossible for either of them to work properly without being always on and always listening, but the catch is again that the algorithm is listening, not a human. When things go awry, Alexa can start doing random things that show just what happens when AI has a bad day. In a recent bizarre case of malfunction, Alexa happened to mistake background conversation as a command to record and send it to a contact[33].

The convoluted official explanation is that the Alexa microphones strewn about the house happened to hear a couple words from a distant conversation and interpreted them as a command to start recording, then another couple words to send the recording to a contact. Even when it’s working properly, Alexa reveals all the dirty laundry as her terms of service[34] mention third party services being able to tap into the analyzed voice stream and gather data, which is no surprise – if a company can make money and the users are willing to share their private data, it’s a given they’ll do it. Why not?

In 2017, Amazon made Alexa’s code open source, allowing anyone to make their own version of Alexa and bake it into their product: LG made a fridge with Alexa that can spout recipes, Volkswagen made Alexa a dashboard assistant in some models and Mattel wants to put it in toys. Even the flimsiest excuse is enough to put Alexa in all sorts of random products, all so it can harvest data 24/7 and analyze consumer behavior. The ultimate reason for this unprecedented invasion of our privacy is worthy of a supervillain plot – it’s about making the perfect ad.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.