1984 meets Jetsons: Is Google Home a Hipster Skynet?

[Daozen]

Why would I want to let Google record my living room 24 hours a day, just so I can order a pizza without dialling?



Google Tries Again

Google failed to tempt consumers into wearing Glass. Despite spending millions on adverts making public surveillance fashionable, the release of Glass coincided with revelations about NSA abuses. The marketplace reacted badly. Shops and pubs said they would ban glass wearers, the public decided they didn't want to become walking spies, the term Glasshole arose, and that was the end of Google Glass.

At Google's recent I/O conference, the Google team rolled out another wave of ultra-cutesey surveillance devices. Not content with recording what goes on in the streets, Google want to entrain users to allow 24 hour audio feeds, location monitoring, and more.

"We already have elements of the assistant working hard for our users. I mentioned earlier that 20% of queries on our mobile app in Android in the US are voice queries. Every single day, people say, “Okay, Google…” and ask us questions that we help them with and we have started becoming truly conversational because of our strengths in natural language processing. For example, you can be in front of this structure in Chicago and ask Google, “Who Designed This?” you don’t need to say “the bean” or “the cloud gate.” We understand your context and we answer that the designer is Anish Kapoor."- Sundar Pichai

OK, very helpful, but consider the surveillance implications of that level of interaction.

Interestingly, comments are banned on all of these Google video uploads. For a company that is so liberal with our personal information, they sure don't like freedom of speech the other way round.

https://youtu.be/862r3XS2YB0?t=929

[Daozen]

Note the mix of Google's folksy "we're here to help your family in your daily routines" advertising patter, and the underlying surveillance technology.

When I walk into my house, I want to be able to continue to have access to the Google Assistant, but I should be able to interact with it in a hands-free way, simply using my voice without having to take out my phone. This is why we’re creating Google Home, a device which will be available later this year.

All of this will be done by speaking with the Assistant. It will let anyone in the family, kids or adults, have a conversation with Google.

Google Home is unmatched in far-field voice recognition since it’s powered by more than 10 years of innovation in natural language processing.

Google Home is a Wi-Fi speaker that streams music directly from the cloud, so you get the highest quality playback.

So when you want to listen to Coldplay in the living room speakers, you can simply say, “play Viva la Vida “ in the living room and it will start playing. Cast support also enables multi-room playback so that you can add one or more Google Home devices to a group of speakers and really blast your favorite tunes.

Let’s say that you want to watch that episode of Jimmy Kimmel or the trending YouTube video on your TV, just tell Google Home, and the content will appear on the biggest, brightest screen in your house.

Next, Google Home will become more and more of a control center for your whole home. Home is where lots of daily tasks just need to get done. Having access to the Google Assistant makes this a lot easier. It’s like having a voice-activated remote control to the real world whenever you need it. You can do the basics like setting alarms and timers or managing to-do lists and shopping lists. We’re also designing Google Home to connect your smart home seamlessly. It will support the most popular home networking systems so that you can easily control your lights, thermostats, switches, and more, including our own Nest devices. Further in the future, we’ll work with developers to make it possible to control things beyond the home, like booking a car, ordering dinner, or sending flowers to mom, and much, much more, all with just your voice.

And the Google Assistant not only knows a lot about the world, but it will stand apart in how it can also get to know you over time. With your permission, of course.

http://www.singjupost.com/google-io-...-transcript/2/

[Daozen]

Here's a few articles showing Google's links to the MIC:

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...ary-industrial

But buried deep in the thousands of pages of planning documents was another disturbing detail. Emails that showed Google — the largest and most powerful corporation in Silicon Valley — was among several other defense contractors vying for a piece of Oakland’s $11 million surveillance contract.

What was Google doing there? What could a company known for superior search and cute doodles offer a controversial surveillance center?

Turns out, a lot.

Most people still think that Google is one of the good guys on the Internet, that it’s a goofy company that aims only to provide the best and coolest tools on the web — from search, to cool maps to endless email space to amazing mobile maps and a powerful replacement for Microsoft Office.

But the free Google services and apps that we interact with on a daily basis aren’t the company’s main product. They are the harvesting machines that dig up and process the stuff that Google really sells: for-profit intelligence.

Google isn’t a traditional Internet service company. It isn’t even an advertising company. Google is a whole new type of beast that runs on a totally new type of tech business model.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/artic...strial-complex

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/g...eKl#.km5AwkgLM

https://medium.com/insurge-intellige...59e#.6fjllwirx