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Microsoft admitted to eavesdropping on users
In the list of companies that admitted that they give the processing of user voice messages to human contractors, the addition. Microsoft decided not to give rise to a scandal like Amazon and Facebook and included the right to transfer voice data to the side in the user agreement for Cortana and Skype Translator, reported . Reuters
about Microsoft giving away voice data to contractors wrote A week ago, Vice.com . This is primarily about the records of the real-time translator in the Skype messenger for Android, and the fragments are almost always shorter than 10 seconds, the resource specified. The main complaints against Microsoft were insufficient data protection and the fact that the agreement did not imply that people could listen to the fragments.
Quote. "Given the concerns recently raised, we've decided to make it clear that other people may occasionally listen to this content," a Microsoft spokesperson said.
Who else. In recent months, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Google have admitted to eavesdropping on user messages and also giving some messages to contractors for people to decipher. In the terms of use of the digital assistant "Alice" from "Yandex" there is already a clause on the processing of audio recordings.
Apple (which has already filed a class-action lawsuit) and Google have said they will stop using contractors to process messages from Siri and Google Assistant for the time being.
Read also Apple sued over Siri wiretapping
Why is it needed. Artificial intelligence, on which all speech recognition systems are now based, still cannot cope with complex cases and requires human assistance for learning, reminds Buzzfeed. Specialized contractors often do the rough work of marking up raw data for AI better and cheaper than the development companies themselves, so it’s simply more profitable to work with them.
We talked about the latest Silicon Valley unicorn startup Scale AI, which rose just on cheap and high-quality image markup, here .
Why is it important. When you install a smart speaker from Amazon or Google in your home, you need to be aware that it is always listening to you and that companies at the current stage of AI development simply cannot help but involve other people to process messages. Amazon and Google, having built the option to opt out of human viewing into their products, have safely hidden it from most users for this very reason, notes Buzzfeed. It is when the AI becomes so perfect that it understands human speech better than people that it is worth starting to really worry.