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Amazon Will Use Real User Conversations to Train Alexa’s AI Model
Amazon announced new AI capabilities for its Alexa products last week, based on a model it’s calling AlexaLLM (LLM refers to the “large language model”). The technology will make Alexa “more personalized to your family” and allow it to remember relevant context throughout conversations like a human, Amazon said.
But along with those new capabilities, said Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services, Dave Limp, Amazon would use some user voice interactions with Alexa to train its AI model.
John Davisson, the director of litigation and senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said consumers should question Amazon’s interest in keeping and using voice data.
“I don’t think we should accept that Amazon needs to retain those data for product improvement, and consumers often don’t understand what that means. They need affirmative opt-in confirmation to join these programs instead of being set at default,” he said.
Davisson stressed that both audio and video are important and sensitive forms of biometric data. Moreover, Amazon has a recent track record of data privacy issues involving minors and Alexa devices. In May, the Federal Trade Commission charged Amazon with illegally preventing parents from requesting the deletion of records relating to their children.
Signal’s Meredith Whittaker: AI Is Fundamentally ‘a Surveillance Technology’
Why is it that so many companies that rely on monetizing the data of their users seem to be extremely hot on AI? If you ask Signal president Meredith Whittaker (and I did), she’ll tell you it’s simply because “AI is a surveillance technology.”
Onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, Whittaker explained her perspective that AI is largely inseparable from the big data and targeting industry perpetuated by the likes of Google and Meta, as well as less consumer-focused but equally prominent enterprise and defense companies. (Her remarks were lightly edited for clarity.)
“It requires the surveillance business model; it’s an exacerbation of what we’ve seen since the late ’90s and the development of surveillance advertising. AI is a way, I think, to entrench and expand the surveillance business model,” she said. “The Venn diagram is a circle.”
“And the use of AI is also surveillant, right?” she continued. “You know, you walk past a facial recognition camera that’s instrumented with pseudo-scientific emotion recognition, and it produces data about you, right or wrong, that says ‘you are happy, you are sad, you have a bad character, you’re a liar, whatever.’ These are ultimately surveillance systems that are being marketed to those who have power over us generally: our employers, governments, border control, etc., to make determinations and predictions that will shape our access to resources and opportunities.”
Judge Dismisses Suit Against New York Fed Over COVID Firings
A judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit accusing the Federal Reserve Bank of New York of illegally firing two longtime employees who claimed religious objections in refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan ruled against Lori Gardner-Alfred and Jeanette Diaz, who spent a respective 35 years and 27 years at the New York Fed and had been senior executive specialists before their March 2022 dismissals.
In a 52-page decision, Liman said the plaintiffs did not prove they had sincere religious objections to being vaccinated and instead offered only their “say-so” on the issue.
‘Jeopardy!’ Fans Accuse Show of Promoting ‘COVID Vaccine Propaganda’
Jeopardy! fans have accused the popular quiz show of promoting COVID-19 “vaccine propaganda,” with pharmaceutical giant Moderna as a sponsor.
The long-running syndicated show, which is hosted by Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik, returned to screens for its 40th season on September 11 following its summer break.
And while corporate sponsors for TV shows have long been commonplace, a faction of fans took to X, formerly Twitter, to voice their objections to Moderna’s COVID vaccine messaging being a part of the new season.
After the credits rolled, a message was shown regarding the ongoing dangers of the novel coronavirus. It was also recommended that viewers stay up to date with “the latest COVID-19 vaccines this fall.”
A Tricky New Way to Sneak Past Repressive Internet Censorship
All over the world, walls are going up around the internet.
For years, autocratic regimes have been in a race to heighten those walls, as their citizens develop taller and taller ladders. The more they filter and block, the more their citizens come up with clever technical solutions to access the uncensored truth. There is mounting evidence, however, that repressive regimes are opting to just shut down access to the open internet entirely — and that such blackouts could become permanent.
A team of cybersecurity researchers believe they have come up with a clever new way to fight back: a trojan horse. Specifically, a satellite feed designed to look like a television station, which actually carries a payload of uncensored news and information. It’s a particularly retro solution to a very modern problem.
“Internet shutdowns remain a favored tactic of governments to push back against mass demonstrations, entrench military coups, or cut off conflict areas from the rest of the world,” writes Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow with the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. China’s so-called “Great Firewall,” Iran’s “filternet,” and Russia’s “sovereign internet” all signal a growing shift toward state control of the internet. Governments in Belarus, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Thailand, Myanmar, Gabon, and elsewhere are heading in the same direction.
Even as these shutdowns become more frequent — and sophisticated — “democracies are increasingly frustrated about their seeming inability to help citizens overcome internet controls,” Feldstein writes.
FBI Agents Are Using Face Recognition Without Proper Training
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has done tens of thousands of face recognition searches using software from outside providers in recent years. Yet only 5% of the 200 agents with access to the technology have taken the bureau’s three-day training course on how to use it, a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) this month reveals. The bureau has no policy for face recognition use in place to protect privacy, civil rights, or civil liberties.
Lawmakers and others concerned about face recognition have said that adequate training on the technology and how to interpret its output is needed to reduce improper use or errors, although some experts say training can lull law enforcement and the public into thinking face recognition is low risk.
The lack of face recognition training at the FBI came to light in a GAO report examining the protections in place when federal law enforcement uses the technology. The report was compiled at the request of seven Democratic members of Congress.
On Vaccines, Where’s the Line Between Advising and Censoring?
Since 2020, officials from the White House, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other federal agencies have been in frequent contact with social media companies about stopping public health misinformation on their platforms. This kind of dialogue is not uncommon, but it also raises questions. Chief among them: at what point does government communication veer into government censorship, thereby violating the First Amendment?
An ongoing court battle has been grappling with that question with little clarity, bringing things all the way to the Supreme Court. For context, a website owner, four social media users and the Missouri and Louisiana state attorneys general sued the agencies in question, alleging their First Amendment rights were violated when posts on topics like vaccine side effects and pandemic lockdowns were removed or downgraded by some of the platforms.
For the Supreme Court, the answer will hinge on the exact nature of the government’s communication with the platforms. Consider the CDC example. We know the CDC issued advisories to platforms warning them about misinformation “hot topics.” It also instructed platforms to label disfavored posts with “contextual information,” and asked for “amplification” of approved content. Eventually, the platforms began reaching out to the CDC to find out whether specific health and vaccine claims were accurate. The CDC’s answers to these questions impacted the platforms’ content moderation decisions.
Watch Out — These Popular Finance and Budgeting Apps Might Be Sharing Your Personal Information With Others
New Forbes Advisor research (via Incogni) suggests that some apps designed to help consumers manage their budgets and finances are actually collecting and sharing highly sensitive data.
More alarmingly, some of the most popular apps are responsible for collecting the most amount of data, which can end up in the hands of third parties.
These apps could be collecting other personal information too, with many requesting system permissions to get access to things like contacts and wireless connections.
Understanding precisely how our data is used can be incredibly challenging, and while Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store go some of the way to helping consumers by flagging the sorts of information collected, we can’t be sure what happens to this information.
Tomi Lahren Taylor Swift Remark Goes Viral After Travis Kelce Pfizer Uproar
Tomi Lahren has hit out at Travis Kelce over the football star’s COVID-19 vaccine ad, using rumored girlfriend Taylor Swift in the social media put down. The Kansas City Chiefs tight end is currently starring in a commercial for pharmaceutical company Pfizer, advising people to get their flu shot alongside their next coronavirus booster.
Kelce announced the paid partnership on Instagram on Saturday by sharing a clip of the ad, which shows the 33-year-old doing a series of “two things at once” — such as barbecuing while riding a lawnmower, bench-pressing a reporter at the gym, and hosting a podcast while flying in a hot-air balloon.
“With my schedule, saving time is key,” he wrote alongside the footage. “The CDC says you can get this season’s updated COVID-19 shot when you get your flu shot if you’re due for both. That’s why I got two shots in one stop!”
Seemingly predicting the controversy the campaign could cause, Kelce turned off the comments on the post. However, that didn’t stop social media users from sharing their thoughts on the commercial, including Lahren.
