Google might just have built the internet of tyranny [Google Home]
At Google’s most recent glitzy presentation, at it’s “I/O” developers conference, the company showed off new apps and features for many of its products, but what was most striking was the technology underlying it. Building on what it has shown previously, it demonstrated how advanced its machine learning techniques were, specifically their ability to understand and process natural language. And as Google Photos ably demonstrates, the technology is already increasingly good at recognising objects in photos. Moments after demonstrating this level of intelligence, the company revealed a new product called *Google Home*. This is a speaker that sits in your home and will respond to voice commands. In other words, it will listen to everything you say – using those advanced language processing abilities to figure out what you’re requesting. Google isn’t the only company working on this – Amazon, Facebook and others are all working on similar technology. Whether the company realises it or not, it is building the tools for perfect surveillance. Thanks to Google and the rest of the modern tech industry, the Internet of Things could easily become the Internet of Tyranny. You don’t have to think too hard to imagine how this same technology could be used for surveillance, especially when considering the technologies that we know governments are already employing in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations. If there’s a microphone in every home, listening to everything we do, and some intelligent algorithms at work picking up on keywords and phrases, it would be easily for an aspiring totalitarian government to use such technologies to prevent legitimate political opposition, and not just crime. If a sufficiently malevolent government wanted to employ such surveillance it would make the East German secret police look like amateurs. [...] <http://www.alphr.com/technology/1003552/google-might-just-have-built-the-int...>
There is already a microphone in all our pockets... 2016-05-26 15:13 GMT+02:00 Alberto Cammozzo <ac+nexa@zeromx.net>:
At Google’s most recent glitzy presentation, at it’s “I/O” developers conference, the company showed off new apps and features for many of its products, but what was most striking was the technology underlying it. Building on what it has shown previously, it demonstrated how advanced its machine learning techniques were, specifically their ability to understand and process natural language. And as Google Photos ably demonstrates, the technology is already increasingly good at recognising objects in photos.
Moments after demonstrating this level of intelligence, the company revealed a new product called *Google Home*. This is a speaker that sits in your home and will respond to voice commands. In other words, it will listen to everything you say – using those advanced language processing abilities to figure out what you’re requesting. Google isn’t the only company working on this – Amazon, Facebook and others are all working on similar technology.
Whether the company realises it or not, it is building the tools for perfect surveillance. Thanks to Google and the rest of the modern tech industry, the Internet of Things could easily become the Internet of Tyranny.
You don’t have to think too hard to imagine how this same technology could be used for surveillance, especially when considering the technologies that we know governments are already employing in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations.
If there’s a microphone in every home, listening to everything we do, and some intelligent algorithms at work picking up on keywords and phrases, it would be easily for an aspiring totalitarian government to use such technologies to prevent legitimate political opposition, and not just crime. If a sufficiently malevolent government wanted to employ such surveillance it would make the East German secret police look like amateurs. [...]
< http://www.alphr.com/technology/1003552/google-might-just-have-built-the-int...
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participants (2)
-
Alberto Cammozzo -
Pier Paolo Franco