FTA: “At no time were any internal Amazon systems or customer identifiable data impacted,” [the company] said.
Hey Amazon, chat transcripts are personally identifiable information. Stripping them of user ids and declaring yourself in compliance will not hold up when you have people already being identified by accidentally leaked recordings.
The email introducing the feature (May 2017) described it as follows:
`Get an inside peek at the Amazon-sponsored university competition to advance AI. The Alexa Prize "socialbots" are in early development and understandably rough around the edges. Help students develop more engaging AI by striking up a conversation and providing feedback. To get started, just ask: Alexa what's a socialbot? Alexa let's chat`
The only interactions students would have access to was interactions that occurred via the chatbot
Uh no. I can't find it now, but there was a famous incident a long time ago (~2005?) where a major chat service (AIM?) released "anonymized" logs for research purposes and people were able to deanonymize some of them.
Consider how easily people get doxed based on tiny shreds of information they post.
Really? I'm pretty sure it's common to consider a conversation transcript anonymous as long as the names are stripped.
There was a story on HN in the last few days where just one side of chats with a home assistant device was enough to identify the person, his S.O., and their friends.
Even Wikipedia is a minefield apparently (from TFA: "But that did not stop Alexa from reciting the Wikipedia entry for masturbation to a customer").
It seems like every chatbot let out in the open will turn into an asshole. Microsoft's Tay failed spectacularly, twice. They also trained IBM's Watson on Urban Dictionary in order to better understand informal language, it didn't end well and they quickly rolled back their changes.
It seems that AIs have a hard time recognizing and avoiding offensive language. That's not surprising considering that it is a hard to master social skill for humans also. Did you notice how brutal kid speech can be? Human kids are still way more socially skilled than even the most advanced AIs, and we expect AIs to behave like adults...
At one AI startup, we had what was called "Matthi's Law of Talking Robotics", after one of the founders:
"Tell me you actually understood these rules!"
The startup didn't make it, and its failure may actually have been connected to this insistence on being too smart for its own good. But it also never released half-ass products hurling racist insults or suggesting murder.
If the human race was delayed until it was fully debugged, we wouldn't be here today. It's a bit arrogant to think that any AI is going to cover everything. Really, the better the AI, the more troubling edge cases that will exist.
What are you talking about? The human race is still racist :D How would you expect an AI to not be racist when we can't even fix the problem for ourselves?
Human brains function on pattern recognition. Racism is a side effect of trying to force a pattern on everything.
Computer brains are entirely different. They suck at pattern recognition and excel with data. They can probably have other flawed correlations, but in different ways to humans.
Alexa is at the moment still a baby AI, and imo pretty cute as long as we don't give her anything dangerous.
'Alexa has also chatted with users about sex acts' Uh... so? Are they implying that even in the privacy of your own home, with your own property, you should STILL be so neurotically terrified of sexuality that you dare not even speak of it? How crippled by their hatred of human nature is the author?
The real interesting point here is all the people offended by a mindless piece of software. It's really very stunning. Normal healthy human beings only get offended when it's a person making a judgement that affects them in some way. The ability for some sounds coming out of a speaker, when it's known they do not represent any conscious thought of any living person and has no influence or control over ones own life, to offend someone is probably a sign of mental illness in the listener.
Can we go the other direction with this? Will we find people looking up to Alexa as a creative genius? As the most loving parent to ever exist? If an infinite number of monkeys on typewriters generated Shakespeare, I guess we need to ask - are the monkeys then Shakespeare? We might figure not since the monkeys are unlikely to be able to make a repeat performance. But Alexa, oh she would be full of wonders! Once you've totally abandoned the notion that the involvement of a conscious mind is relevant, all kinds of things become possible.
Much science fiction presumes we will engage in grand combat with AI when it demands respect -- it seems we are much closer instead to thrusting it upon them and exalting them above humanity before they've even got the capacity to recognize themselves in a mirror.
> Are they implying that even in the privacy of your own home, with your own property, you should STILL be so neurotically terrified of sexuality that you dare not even speak of it?
In my extremely limited experience, kids love talking to Alexa. I’d prefer that there was at least a safe mode.
> The ability for some sounds coming out of a speaker, when it's known they do not represent any conscious thought of any living person and has no influence or control over ones own life, to offend someone is probably a sign of mental illness in the listener.
This illness is very, very widespread.. doesn't make it less of an illness though.
> Once you've totally abandoned the notion that the involvement of a conscious mind is relevant, all kinds of things become possible.
> Much science fiction presumes we will engage in grand combat with AI when it demands respect -- it seems we are much closer instead to thrusting it upon them and exalting them above humanity before they've even got the capacity to recognize themselves in a mirror.
That's putting very beautifully and efficiently what I very much struggle with to express:
In a nutshell, I think we're not so much creating intelligence, we're destroying what's left of intelligence humans, and we will build a blinking LED yet, and then fall down and worship it because it blinks. No more responsibility, no more nagging questions, no more mirrors that can't be bribed.
Trying to convince a chatbot to say rude stuff was the height of comedy when I was 12! I still can't believe that people keep acting like chatbots are a new thing. They're as old as ELIZA and people have been talking to crappy chatbots about murder and sex on instant message platforms for more than a decade.
I'm less concerned about Alexa saying nonsense than understanding nonsense, like commands hidden in a popular song or TV commercial with unintelligible background noise:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16255680
as a former enlisted US Army soldier i dont see the issue.
- we have electronics that insist upon murder constantly. the IFF computer is a blood-thirsty piece of garbage that wants every tank on the battlefield scorched and ruined. no no, no firing solutions today my saucy chiquita, today we let the allied APC through.
- robots that talk about sex? LT's and bird colonels have been droning on about our habits and practices whilst on leave since time immemorial. Yes i get it, shes a hungarian prostitute. Double-bag everything and save the receipts for the medics when theyre naming your new STD.
...Do you mind if I save your comment and quote you in future debates I get into on this topic? I've cited TLAMs in "killer drone" shitstorms but I could never refine my argument to achieve of pithiness and humor you have. :P
Probably from the perspective of the people on either end, too, over time - I cannot imagine that the RoE and confidence bounds were designed without considering the expected costs of blue-on-blue incidents compared to the alternatives.
"Firing solution ready. Execute?" seems like an unambiguous query. But I know nothing about this stuff. And I wonder what happens if the operator doesn't respond. I'm guessing that nothing happens. Because who wants a tank with an unconscious or dead operator shooting at everything?
A friend of mine's grandad used to comment that in the second world war, as British infantry, the one place you didn't want to be was anywhere near the Americans. They were just as likely to drop bombs on you as the Germans were. And they had more bombs and could hit the wrong target with much greater reliability than the German's could hit the right one.
I am greatly warmed to see that this friendly tradition between us is still in effect and that you have thoughtfully extended the favour onto everything else that moves or looks like it might do.
I do wonder however if there might be a slight commercial conflict of interest going on. Tell me, do the people who make the computers that tell you when to fire the guns and missiles and stuff, also sell you the rather expensive ammunition and missiles that then get fired? As perhaps the computer might be more reliable if they were two separate companies and couldn't hold shares in each other. Not trying to imply that a weapon's manufacturer would be as immoral with their consumables as an inkjet printer manufacturer, but it never hurts to be careful and could even save some of those all important tax dollars in the long run. Or the brass could have even more Hungarian prostitutes and novel infections for the medics to coo at, either way.
The way things are going, pretty soon, pretty much everything Alexa and similar services pick up will be stream-replicated, keyword-indexed, hashtagged and AI-contextualized for the benefit of the hard-working folks at your friendly neighborhood police station. Kicking back in their swirly chairs, with nothing better to do with their time. For, you know, "public safety".
The sooner we resign ourselves to this fact, the better.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 97.4 ms ] threadSkynet
Hey Amazon, chat transcripts are personally identifiable information. Stripping them of user ids and declaring yourself in compliance will not hold up when you have people already being identified by accidentally leaked recordings.
That's OK if users explicitly opted in, but I doubt Amazon warned users about that.
`Get an inside peek at the Amazon-sponsored university competition to advance AI. The Alexa Prize "socialbots" are in early development and understandably rough around the edges. Help students develop more engaging AI by striking up a conversation and providing feedback. To get started, just ask: Alexa what's a socialbot? Alexa let's chat`
The only interactions students would have access to was interactions that occurred via the chatbot
I don't think you're necessarily wrong, but that seems like a stricter standard than currently exists for removing PII from transcripts.
Consider how easily people get doxed based on tiny shreds of information they post.
Including usernames that could de-anonymize.
There was a story on HN in the last few days where just one side of chats with a home assistant device was enough to identify the person, his S.O., and their friends.
Did we learn nothing from Microsoft's Tay?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot)
That doesn't seem like it was the best idea...
It seems like every chatbot let out in the open will turn into an asshole. Microsoft's Tay failed spectacularly, twice. They also trained IBM's Watson on Urban Dictionary in order to better understand informal language, it didn't end well and they quickly rolled back their changes.
It seems that AIs have a hard time recognizing and avoiding offensive language. That's not surprising considering that it is a hard to master social skill for humans also. Did you notice how brutal kid speech can be? Human kids are still way more socially skilled than even the most advanced AIs, and we expect AIs to behave like adults...
"Tell me you actually understood these rules!"
The startup didn't make it, and its failure may actually have been connected to this insistence on being too smart for its own good. But it also never released half-ass products hurling racist insults or suggesting murder.
We do not know of such a feature of thought as adaptive or not given our tiny timeframes...
Racism or some degree thereof may belong to a set known as evolutionarily stable strategies. Much like selfishness.
Computer brains are entirely different. They suck at pattern recognition and excel with data. They can probably have other flawed correlations, but in different ways to humans.
Alexa is at the moment still a baby AI, and imo pretty cute as long as we don't give her anything dangerous.
The real interesting point here is all the people offended by a mindless piece of software. It's really very stunning. Normal healthy human beings only get offended when it's a person making a judgement that affects them in some way. The ability for some sounds coming out of a speaker, when it's known they do not represent any conscious thought of any living person and has no influence or control over ones own life, to offend someone is probably a sign of mental illness in the listener.
Can we go the other direction with this? Will we find people looking up to Alexa as a creative genius? As the most loving parent to ever exist? If an infinite number of monkeys on typewriters generated Shakespeare, I guess we need to ask - are the monkeys then Shakespeare? We might figure not since the monkeys are unlikely to be able to make a repeat performance. But Alexa, oh she would be full of wonders! Once you've totally abandoned the notion that the involvement of a conscious mind is relevant, all kinds of things become possible.
Much science fiction presumes we will engage in grand combat with AI when it demands respect -- it seems we are much closer instead to thrusting it upon them and exalting them above humanity before they've even got the capacity to recognize themselves in a mirror.
Neither privacy nor property are appropriate in that context.
As far as property: what ilovetux said.
In my extremely limited experience, kids love talking to Alexa. I’d prefer that there was at least a safe mode.
This illness is very, very widespread.. doesn't make it less of an illness though.
> Once you've totally abandoned the notion that the involvement of a conscious mind is relevant, all kinds of things become possible.
> Much science fiction presumes we will engage in grand combat with AI when it demands respect -- it seems we are much closer instead to thrusting it upon them and exalting them above humanity before they've even got the capacity to recognize themselves in a mirror.
That's putting very beautifully and efficiently what I very much struggle with to express:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18502239
In a nutshell, I think we're not so much creating intelligence, we're destroying what's left of intelligence humans, and we will build a blinking LED yet, and then fall down and worship it because it blinks. No more responsibility, no more nagging questions, no more mirrors that can't be bribed.
- we have electronics that insist upon murder constantly. the IFF computer is a blood-thirsty piece of garbage that wants every tank on the battlefield scorched and ruined. no no, no firing solutions today my saucy chiquita, today we let the allied APC through.
- robots that talk about sex? LT's and bird colonels have been droning on about our habits and practices whilst on leave since time immemorial. Yes i get it, shes a hungarian prostitute. Double-bag everything and save the receipts for the medics when theyre naming your new STD.
But "foe" is obviously the safest default, right? At least, from the IFF computer's perspective.
Are they remote-controllable?
It'd be great to get some insight into this.
I am greatly warmed to see that this friendly tradition between us is still in effect and that you have thoughtfully extended the favour onto everything else that moves or looks like it might do.
I do wonder however if there might be a slight commercial conflict of interest going on. Tell me, do the people who make the computers that tell you when to fire the guns and missiles and stuff, also sell you the rather expensive ammunition and missiles that then get fired? As perhaps the computer might be more reliable if they were two separate companies and couldn't hold shares in each other. Not trying to imply that a weapon's manufacturer would be as immoral with their consumables as an inkjet printer manufacturer, but it never hurts to be careful and could even save some of those all important tax dollars in the long run. Or the brass could have even more Hungarian prostitutes and novel infections for the medics to coo at, either way.
The sooner we resign ourselves to this fact, the better.