Good afternoon and welcome back to another post from ToBeSecured. I hope you all enjoyed your Labor day weekend and accomplished all your tasks you set out to do. It is now September and the perfect time to set new goals for this month whether it's planning to enable your location less, deleting old social media accounts, reading more ways to be secured, etc. I wanted to incorporate this new concept within ToBeSecured because the whole purpose of this platform is to get my readers to live a more secured life and protect every aspect of our lives. We can accomplish this by taking small steps each day practicing solutions to bad habits. My goal for this month is to go through the list of all my online accounts and update my passwords. What is yours?
A coworker of mine recommended a new space where I could find blog posts or articles that range from a mass amount of categories whether it is general technology, privacy, security, cloud computing, social media, marketing, politics, etc. Lately, this website is where I have been getting my inspiration and after today I am thinking about uploading my own content as well. The name of it is Medium.com.
On today's topic of ToBeSecured, we will be discussing how artificial intelligence is killing privacy within our lives. If you own an Alexa or a Google home or use Siri, you know exactly where I am going with this conversation, but if not read further to find out what has caught my attention lately.
How would you feel walking into someones home and everything inside has been reinvented using artificial intelligence - you can communicate with every device with a simple command and each device can communicate with one another? Well I'll take it a little further.... what if you were over at a friend's home and they referred to their devices as family or a friend? Sounds completely weird and crazy right? WRONG! We are currently living in an era where we treat our technological devices as our buddy, because technically it is right? The first thing we do when we wake up in the morning isn't brush our teeth or use the bathroom, it's check our phones - whether it's for the weather, text messages, or social media. And now we don't even have to touch our phones to check because Siri (or whatever you use) is on standby waiting for our voice commands.
Imagine the future where everything in our homes can perform requests by a simple voice command. For example, in movies we've seen people clap their hands to turn off the lights. There are new technologies that allow you to turn off your lights without moving anything but your mouth. You can play, pause, and even skip songs with a simple voice command. You can even order food with a simple voice command. Imagine using this advanced technology 20 years ago. Who's to say what the future has in store and how advanced it will become after today? Our homes are under-exploited platforms. Google, Amazon, and other major companies want to claim it. In addition, they want all the data.
Our homes are already loaded with devices that connect to WiFi - from the refrigerator in our kitchens to the locks on doors and windows. But soon everything will be connected and we'll be able to talk to everything too. This is where IoT (Internet of things) and Artificial intelligence comes into the world. We're already talking to televisions, phones, and speakers, but soon we'll be talking to light bulbs, mirrors, beds, toasters, and everything else within our homes. All will be powered by a voice command system that, chances are, will have been created by either Google or Amazon.
And while tech companies assure customers their devices will only engage after “hearing” a command or wake word (“Hey, Google!” or “Alexa!”), these devices have a disapproving flaw: To work properly, they must be listening for that wake word all the time. I have numerous testimonies from friends and coworkers about how their devices were listening to conversations they've had and within minutes an advertisement or recommendation appears on their timeline about it. I don't know about you, but I find that to be very invasive and creepy. Programs have also been written and tested that allow devices to pick up on whispers and background noises as well. In October of last year, Amazon showcased Alexa’s newest features, including the ability to detect when someone is whispering and respond at a quieter volume. According to Wired, Amazon also has plans to introduce a home security feature, Alexa Guard, giving the program the ability to listen “for trouble such as broken glass or a smoke alarm when you’re away from home.” A month later, the Telegraph reported that Amazon had patented Alexa software that could one day analyze someone’s voice for signs of illness (like a cough or a sneeze) and respond by offering to order cough drops.
There have been many of cases of recordings being sent to the wrong person and in a previous post, I discussed how these devices are listening, recording conversations, and are being analyzed by developers and analysts. When we’re fully surrounded by all-listening ears, the privacy breaches we’re witnessing now — the random recordings sent to the wrong people — will not only increase in frequency but in magnitude.
Just like we once assumed everything Facebook collected was the information we willingly gave it, we’re unsuspecting the countless ways smart speakers tuned into our surroundings could someday be leveraged, whether a convenience or not.
“We envision a world where the consumer devices around us are more helpful, more intelligent, more… human,” says Audio Analytic, a company that has created software capable of recognizing a range of sounds. Manufacturers want us to feel connected to this technology, not just practically but emotionally. Alexa and Siri can’t just be computer programs, they need to be trusted. They need to be close ones we welcome into our homes, or that we allow to sleep onside us.
But when voice-activated computer assistants eventually become a obligatory feature of our lives, we may notice a keen irony. When every noise in our lives is a search prompt, the sounds of our homes, the synchronous of life — laughing, crying, talking, shouting, sitting in silence — will no longer be known as memories, but data.
The more we humanize technology, the more life will become less human. If you haven't already, check out this Netflix show - Black mirror - a British science fiction anthology television series that examines modern society, particularly with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies. There are episodes that cover a deep dive into topics I have and will discuss along with the evolution of technology.
If you would like to discuss further, please leave a comment or ask a question. I'd love to chat with my readers and hear your thoughts. Thank you for dropping in and remember ToBeSecured!
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