The unsung heroes of AI

In the latest video, I introduce the unsung heroes behind the AI tech that drives those popular smart home assistants, like Alexa and Google Home. These are the minimum-wage workers in India, China, and other places with cheap labor who are tasked with listening to the recordings from your home conversations.

This practice is raising a lot of concern and controversy. Amazon, Apple and Google have all announced that they are suspending the listening programs. Nevertheless, this hiatus is likely temporary because the machine learning methods behind such tech are extremely data-greedy, and must be trained with human input.

For more, watch the clip.

 

For further reading:

Apple contractors hear confidential details on Siri

Amazon holds on to the data even when you delete audio files

Google angry after contractor leaked recordings

Apple and Google temporarily stop listening

Amazon allows opt-out of human review