this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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I'm never putting one of these in my home.

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[–] [email protected] 96 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 93 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Considering I set up one of the content types that relates to wakeword and utterance text analysis for Alexa, I trust it completely.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They literally tell you when you go through setup.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 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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[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I gItz NufIN Ti HIIIDE

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I will be the last person to not have a smart home. There will be a banner over the doorway: "Welcome to Stupid House".

There will be a small cover charge.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (6 children)

You can have a privacy-first smart home. I have. I run Home Assistant in a docker container. No external services/plugins. My smart doorbell streams to my local nvr. If my internet is down, everything keeps working. And it's not even that hard anymore. It's become a lot easier over the last 2-3 years. Still not for non-techie users, but a lot better.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That sounds pretty reasonable.

Edit: Still kind of want to call my place "Stupid House" for myriad other reasons

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not tech illiterate by any means, and everything after "home assistant" in that post is Greek to me

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Docker is a way to run containers. Basically lightweight virtual servers. That makes it easy to run multiple servers on one machine. An NVR is a network video recorder. It's like a video security system like they use in stores where all cameras are viewed and recorded in a single place. I assume you know what a doorbell is 😄

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Have any resources to get started with that? Been looking into security systems but don't fully trust nest/ring/simplisafe etc

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Just start with a local Home Assistant on. Raspberry Pi and go from there: https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'm with you. I hate how they expect me to control everything from my phone or with voice commands. I'm fine walking to a light switch or walking to the thermostat.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There's a middle ground as well. I refuse to put Alexa or OK Google or whatever on any of my stuff, but I run home-assistant with zigbee smart devices. My entire setup runs completely cut off from the internet. I could in theory even air gap it, although that's a little overkill. It's a "smart" house, but one I'm 100% in control of.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Is that self hosted? I'd just about fuck with a FOSS self hosted smart home setup, but even then I could barely be arsed

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Yes. You can host it on a pi if you want

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's badass. I've got one lying around actually.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Be careful running it in a Pi because it's a little heavy for that depending on how you configure it. A Pi model 4 is probably OK, but you wouldn't want to run it on a model 3 or something even older, and you're going to want to use one with at least 4GB of RAM.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

When skynet comes online, I'll die quickly, being mopped to death. You'll have to struggle in the post apocalyptic hellscape where humans fight robots with A-10s for some reason.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

haven't we all known this since product launch ?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I think most people, me included, underestimate the scale of the operation. When you hear "company will use private data to do X", you imagine what a reasonable person would do, like random sample a few conversations here and there. In reality they record everything permanently over months and years, far beyond what would be necessary to run the service.

It's kind of crazy how we get this level of surveillance while still having software that will lose your data if you don't hit Save often enough.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Noooo reaaally?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

So who thinks this conversation here on lemmy isn’t being used to train an AI? Maybe not right now but later?

Sure the relatively small size of lemmy means it might not be scooped up and trained on. But the point still stands. All that is publicly online is food for the big-corp AI builders. And while Alexa invading your home privacy is obviously a shitty thing, I’m not sure we’ve all thought through the new relationship between us, the internet and the big AIs.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Well I know I have no expectation of privacy here, but I'd rather open source LLMs train on my words along with proprietary ones, than some company hoarding information and selling it to each other.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 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!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

"chive crackers with cream cheese"

"honey crackers with peanut butter"

?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

They are listening to you even when you're not talking to alexa, did you know that

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Obviously. How else would it hear you say, "Alexa?"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd love a citation on this, outside of wakeword usage (a local device waiting for "Alexa* to begin recording).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Source: their ass.

Alexa devices use an onboard DSP to detect the wakeword and maintain a rolling audio buffer. On a positive match, the DSP wakes the main CPU which combines the saved buffer and any following speech and uploads it to the cloud where Alexa lives so she can try to figure out what you meant.

No audio is uploaded without being triggered by a wakeword. Also, the "mute" button physically cuts power to the mic, and the indicator LED is hardwired to the power rail as a failsafe indicator.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 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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