Leaked Documents Show How Amazon s Astro Robot Tracks Everything You Do
Amazon’s new robot called Astro is designed to track the behavior of everyone in your home to help it perform its surveillance and helper duties, according to leaked internal development documents and video recordings of Astro software development meetings obtained by Motherboard. The system’s person recognition system is heavily flawed, according to two sources who worked on the project.
AdvertisementThe documents, which largely use Astro’s internal codename “Vesta” for the device, give extensive insight into the robot’s design, Amazon’s philosophy, how the device tracks customer behavior as well as flow charts of how it determines who a “stranger” is and whether it should take any sort of “investigation activity” against them.
via www.vice.com
A couple of years ago I had a student in my AI seminar who had worked at Amazon. He told us all stories about Alexa that were downright chilling. The bottom line is, it listens to everything, records everything, and runs its algorithms on everything. You absolutely do not have to say “Alexa” to turn it on. The security around the Alexa building is crazy, even for Amazon. This student made it sound like the NSA. My guess is, if you have an Echo in your house (that’s the name of the product most people have to run Alexa), Amazon knows everything about you — how healthy your diet is, your marital status, whether you’re cheating on your spouse, whether you watch too much Netflix, every little thing.
Do I have an Echo in my house? Of course! It’s not that I have nothing to hide. I’m just lazy. Too lazy to care if Amazon wants my soul. Alexa, what’s the weather today?