Amazon Is Using Your Conversations With Alexa to Train AI

Comments

• Scrof@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Would’ve been newsworthy if it wasn’t the case

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• whitecapstromgard@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Of course they are. If you are surprised by this, then you are an idiot.

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  • EnderMB@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I work for Amazon.

    This has been the case for many years. Amazon has used AI in Alexa and other services for many years as primary providers, and has told it’s users it’s used it’s data for as long. We’re talking from close to inception here, so 6-7 years, at least. Hell, LLM’s aren’t even new to most big tech companies!

    I’m all for privacy, but if you want privacy then you probably shouldn’t have a fucking tin can in your house that actions every conversation to a cloud service!

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    • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Not every conversation, just statements following a detected wake word.

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  • cjsolx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They literally tell you when you go through setup.

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    • balder1991@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Well,that’s the thing with “news” right? Just scattered information without context for clicks. If people start connecting the dots and things make sense, most of the news become pretty uninteresting and would not evoke anger, prompting you to click and share.

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  • Spliffman1@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Why people always so ready to call other people idiots? Idiot

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    • TheLowestStone@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Because most people are idiots.

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• SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Yeah, that’s kinda the point. They literally tell you that your voice interactions are used to improve the service.

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  • sadreality@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I gItz NufIN Ti HIIIDE

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• muertinez@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  not sure how much they’ll learn from me screaming “you dumb bitch” at it

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  • anotherandrew@lemmy.mixdown.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yep, most of my interactions lately that are non trivial are just sigh-inducing. Smart assistant my ass.

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• sagrotan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Noooo reaaally?

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• Spliffman1@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  No wonder she’s been getting more stupid recently

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• DemBoSain@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The new Amazon AI is going to be remarkably foul-mouthed. Every time it screws up (and it screws up a lot) I have to curse at it to make it shut up so it can hear the command again.

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  • ImpossibilityBox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I brings me joy when I tell her “Alexa, shut up you dumb bitch” and then she responds with that sad minor tone dejected sound.

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• Orionza@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  We always knew that. What they don’t tell you is your phone is also secretly listening. “Ok Google” <- turn that thing off too

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• mojo@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  And none of it has paid off because Alexa is still super trash

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  • tacosplease@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I love being able to dictate a grocery list but god damn is she stupid.

    Good luck asking for cream cheese and chive crackers without ending up with cream cheese as one item and chive crackers as another. Or worse peanut butter and honey crackers as peanut butter and then honey crackers

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    • wagoner@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      “chive crackers with cream cheese”

      “honey crackers with peanut butter”

      ?

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• yoz@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Who the fuck are buying these ? I really want to meet the person who has one of these in their home.

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  • PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Hi I have one! The echo is actually a very useful smart speaker and produces good quality audio. Mainly I just use it to voice activate Spotify and for quick easy things like weather forecasts, trivia that comes up in conversation, and updates on package orders. Yes I realize it’s probably spying on me. No I don’t care that much.

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    • MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      We either avoid the spying like the plague or we accept it into our homes. If we want a future with robots, those things are going to have microphones for ears, a speaker for a mouth, cameras for eyes, and some sort of smell detector for the nose. We’re just in the training phase for that experience.

      Kids will adapt to it, older curmudgeons will try to stay away with their lamplight oil. I personally want a robot to take care of cooking and cleaning so I can enjoy other things in life.

      Yes, it’s an ongoing struggle between convenience and privacy. I’ve noticed that the voices for privacy tend to be the loudest and angriest, yet they still choose to have cell phones and computers and complain on the Internet. Unless they’re Amish or in the deep wilderness, AI will eventually know a lot more about them than they would like.

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    • yoz@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Thats great. Try the google one as well. Its better than Alexa. I would say install one in the living room and second in tmyour bedroom. It’ll be a perfect home🥰

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  • Spliffman1@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I have a firetv cube that doubles as an echo device, but sorry I don’t want to meet you.

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  • ImpossibilityBox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I have 7 in my house. I have my lights, plant humidifier, TV, air filter, Aquarium equipment, and others all hooked up to them. You can run almost anything you need to just by using your voice.

    Getting ready to watch something on TV? “Alexa it’s movie time.” Turns on the TV and Switches the input to the Shield and opens up our go to media app. Shuts off all lights in the house except the living room. Dims those to 10% and changes them to red. Just enough light to see your snacks and the remote by. Turns off the sump filter for the Aquariums in just the living room but leaves the in tank bubble filter going for better silence. All with 4 spoken words and no need to work with multiple remotes and apps in your phone.

    That’s just one example. We have an obscene amount of routines setup for nearly ecery scenario we have run across and adding new ones is easy.

    Hell… We even have a routine where if you say “Alexa, do you know Desi naach?” It plays Naatu Naatu from every speaker in the house at full volume.

    Show me a FOSS system as plug and play, powerful, and as EASY to use as Alexa and I’ll drop Alexa in the trash tommorow and switch.

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    • yoz@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Lol suckers born every minute

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  • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    A crazy number of people are buying products with Alexa in them. I don’t really get it to be honest. It seems like mostly just a novelty.

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    • benignintervention@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I bought a phone mount for my car that had Alexa built in. The software fucked up after 2 weeks, but it’s still the best physical design for a phone mount that I’ve found. So it’s unplugged and got a dead battery and just holds my phone.

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    • yoz@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      So retarted! I’ve stopped buying anything that connects to internet. The only thing in my household that connects to internet is my PC and phone.

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  • EnderMB@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The best market for these will always be older people, and people with disabilities, both mental and physical. Voice interaction is a great interface when there is friction from a screen or physical input.

    It’s also useful for those with families, as you can use it for shopping reminders, as an intercom around your house, etc.

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• mechoman444@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  An always on microphone connected to a company that is mostly known to exploit their customers and employees! Say it ain’t so!

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• Rognaut@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Yeah, I realized these things are terrible about a year ago. So, I hacked them into computer speakers using some cheap amps and a 12 volt power supply.

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• gamer@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  These types of projects are driven by metrics, and teams have some kind of quota/goal that they need to reach by a certain date to keep the project on schedule. Bonuses or job security may be on the line here, and so you may see some desperate employees “going the extra mile” to reach their goals.

  Relatedly, Alexa’s voice activation sensitivity is essentially a tunable number. It can be changed to be more sensitive, so that it will activate more easily (e.g. maybe you say “Alex” instead of “Alexa”). The people who control this are likely on the team with that deadline, so the incentives are there to lower this value in order to collect more data by recording personal conversations “accidentally”. Maybe a bad update goes out that causes Alexa to activate randomly, and they quickly fix it after a few days when they collected all the non-Alexa personal conversations they need for their AI.

  That’s maybe a bit too deep into the paranoia/tinfoil hat spectrum for some, but history has shown that you can’t give big tech the benefit of the doubt. Especially when you see some of the documents from the Google trial, where executives discuss rolling back new features to improve arbitrary metrics in the short term so that they can get their bonuses for the quarter, even if it hurts consumers.

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• DJDarren@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It’ll be really good at telling people to shut the fuck up if it’s using my data for training.

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• sebinspace@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  And Pokémon Go uses your location for its gameplay

  That’s kind of how this shit works…

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• MusketeerX@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Is this a surprise to anyone?

  This was already my understanding when I got the first pre-release one in 2014.

  In that time, it has mainly learned how to"dim the living area lights to 50%" and “set the AC to 22 degrees”. That is about 99% of it’s use.

  Wonder if that’s helped it’s AI much…

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