Annals of helpful surveillance

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Early one evening last week, I was feeling sleepy, and said so. And a little later, I said "OK, I'm cashing in my threat to take a nap", and went into my bedroom to do so.

As usual, I took my cell phone out of my pocket and plugged it in to charge, which made the screen light up. On it I saw this:

Apparently Helpful Google understood "OK I'm cashing in" as the "OK Google" magic keyphrase that unlocks Google Voice.

This has made me think twice — though usually in retrospect — about using the word "OK".

Update — see also "Two tons of creamed corn", 3/6/2017,  featuring this illustration:

 



15 Comments

  1. Kaspar Pflugshaupt said,

    May 9, 2017 @ 7:56 am

    This would make me think twice about using always-on voice-activated AI "helpers".
    What brave new world we live in! Do we really need to be careful with our language to prevent our "intelligent" ""helpers"" misunderstanding us? (I need stronger quotes) :-/

  2. Dick Margulis said,

    May 9, 2017 @ 8:32 am

    Stand-up comic: "OK, I killed in Philly. Well, truth be told, folks, I bombed."

  3. Jeffrey Percival said,

    May 9, 2017 @ 8:55 am

    Cashing in a threat? I haven't heard that one before!

    [(myl) Thank you, Siri.]

  4. stephen said,

    May 9, 2017 @ 11:24 am

    why did it not interpret "cashing in" somehow?

    [(myl) No idea — presumably "OK I'm cashing in" got interpreted as "OK Google". Not all that plausible as a human mishearing, but … ]

  5. Norman Smith said,

    May 9, 2017 @ 12:40 pm

    Can these devices be retrained to respond to a different cue? If so, perhaps we should use a different phrase to activate an always-on assistant, like "Hear me, O Siri, I prithee!"

  6. D.O. said,

    May 9, 2017 @ 12:43 pm

    This can make for an interesting legal problem in a 2 party concent rule states.

  7. Smut Clyde said,

    May 9, 2017 @ 3:52 pm

    Can these devices be retrained to respond to a different cue?

    IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROPHECY.

  8. leoboiko said,

    May 9, 2017 @ 11:44 pm

    Google is infamous for requiring you to say their brand name for this, and not providing an option to change the keyword. Capitalistic dystopianism at its worst.

    > always-on voice-activated AI “helpers”.

    Always-on on your cellphone? Won't that be a huge battery drain, since the device is now doing speech processing for literally every sound?

  9. maidhc said,

    May 10, 2017 @ 1:17 am

    Always-on on your cellphone? Won’t that be a huge battery drain, since the device is now doing speech processing for literally every sound?

    I'm guessing it doesn't do full speech recognition, it just scans every input string for "Google". This could be done with much less battery power than full speech processing. However, it's true that it would use a certain amount of battery power.

    It's an extension of devices that are controlled with a remote control. They're never truly off, they just sit there in a low-power mode waiting for you to hit the remote. I wanted to get an FM tuner that I could turn on and off with a programmable timer. I actually found a nice little stereo amplifier that does the trick (PYLEPRO), but to get an FM tuner that could handle being unplugged I had to go to an antique store (one specializing in stereo gear).

  10. ajay said,

    May 10, 2017 @ 4:31 am

    Can these devices be retrained to respond to a different cue? If so, perhaps we should use a different phrase to activate an always-on assistant, like “Hear me, O Siri, I prithee!”

    I am fond of IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROPHECY, as suggested above. Perhaps a touch of the Qing dynasty: TREMBLE AND OBEY!

    But surely the best solution for readers of this blog is simply to set Siri up so that she only responds to commands in one specific (ideally unusual) language. No chance of accidentally giving her a command in casual conversation if your Siri only speaks !Kung, or Samaritan, or Lao.

  11. unekdoud said,

    May 10, 2017 @ 6:21 am

    This isn't just limited to Google. I've heard of Amazon's Echo activating on the word "likes", which seems unsurprising considering how much that word occurs next to "uh" and "um" in speech.

    I like the idea of basically making up a safe word for voice assistants (except that it turns them on). But all your friends might wonder why you call your phone Dry Chicken Bits.

  12. Ralph Hickok said,

    May 10, 2017 @ 6:53 am

    I edit posts for a blog about information security and just a few days ago one of the posts was about this very subject. The writer advised people to make sure that Amazon Echo, Google Home, and similar devices are turned off when not in use.

  13. Collin said,

    May 10, 2017 @ 10:55 am

    As I recall, Inspector Gadget used to have the same problem with his voice-activated hardware. I bet "Go Go Google" would be less susceptible to mishearing, though.

  14. Juliana said,

    May 11, 2017 @ 9:37 pm

    My phone is a Droid Turbo, which does let you train the voice-recognition feature to respond to a phrase other than "OK Google." (I taught mine to answer to a longer phrase that is much less common in my idiolect than "okay." Also named it "Vera," and included that name in my activation phrase. I don't know anyone named Vera, nor anyone whose name sounds much like Vera, so the chances that I'd say anything that sounds much like that phrase to anyone else are about as minimal as I can get.)

  15. Kenny Easwaran said,

    May 18, 2017 @ 5:02 pm

    Slightly creepily, our Amazon device this morning heard a conversation about the "election" as talking to Alexa, and then denied whatever it was we were saying (or denied understanding it, at least).

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