Yahoo FinanceTech investor John Borthwick doesn’t mince words when it comes to how he perceives smart speakers from the likes of Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN). The founder of venture capital firm Betaworks and former Time Warner (T) and AOL (VZ) executive believes the information-gathering performed by such devices is tantamount to surveillance.
“I would say that there's two or three layers sort of problematic layers with these new smart speakers, smart earphones that are in market now,” Borthwick told Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer during an interview for his series “Influencers.”
“And so the first is, from a consumer standpoint, user standpoint, is that these, these devices are being used for what's — it's hard to call it anything but surveillance,” Borthwick said.
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The way forward? Some form of regulation that gives users more control over their own data.
“I personally believe that you, as a user and as somebody who likes technology, who wants to use technology, that you should have far more rights about your data usage than we have today,” Borthwick said.
Smart assistants face a reckoning
The venture capitalist’s comments follow a string of controversies surrounding smart assistants including Google’s Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, and Apple’s (AAPL) Siri, in which each company admitted that human workers listen to users’ queries as a means of improving their digital assistants’ voice recognition capabilities.
“They've gone to those devices and they've said, ‘Give us data when people passively act upon the device.’ So in other words, I walk over to that light switch,” Borthwick said. “I turn it off, turn it on, it's now giving data back to the smart speaker.”It’s important to note that smart speakers from every major company are only activated when you use their appropriate wake word. To activate your Echo speaker, for instance, you need to say “Alexa” followed by your command. The same thing goes for Google’s Assistant and Apple’s Siri.
The uproar surrounding smart speakers and their assistants began when Bloomberg reported in April that Amazon used a global team of employees and contractors to listen to users’ voice commands to Alexa to improve its speech recognition.
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That was followed by a similar report by Belgian-based VRT News about Google employees listening to users’ voice commands for Google Assistant. The Guardian then published a third piece about Apple employees listening to users’ Siri commands. Facebook was also pulled into the controversy when Bloomberg reported it had employees listen to users’ voice commands made through its Messenger app.
Google and Apple have since apologized, with Google halting the practice, and Apple announcing that it will automatically opt users out of voice sample collection. Users instead will have to opt in if they want to provide voice samples to improve Siri’s voice recognition.
Amazon, for its part, has allowed users to opt out of having their voice samples shared with employees, while Facebook said it has paused the practice.
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The use of voice samples has helped improved the voice recognition features of digital assistants, ensuring they are better able to understand what users say and the context in which they say it.
At issue is whether users were aware that employees of these companies were listening. There’s also the matter of accidental activations, which can result in employees hearing conversations or snippets of conversations they might otherwise not have been meant to hear.
As for how such issues can be dealt with in the future, Borthwick points to some form of tech regulation. Though he doesn’t offer specifics, the VC says that users need to be able to understand how their data is being used, and be able to take control of it.
“I think generally, it's about giving the users a lot more power over the decisions that are being made. I think that's one piece of it,” he said.
Editor’s note: AOL is owned by Verizon Media, Yahoo Finance’s parent company.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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