From the dawn of time to the release of Her and beyond, man has dreamed of the day they could bone a sex machine. Friends, that day is now upon us... if you’re fine with Amazon recording it.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg Businessweek tweeted out a copy of their latest cover, linking to a feature article on the Orwellian nightmare of armies of Silicon Valley temps listening in on smart speaker conversations to improve speech recognition technology. Said cover features the caption “Alexa, What’s Privacy?” next to a hand reaching down to unscrew an Amazon Echo Plus, unveiling what someone apparently believed was recognizably an ear.
An ear is not the first body part that comes to mind.
In fact, it looks exactly like a certain other tech product that sometimes also comes shaped like the wrong body part.
It doesn’t help that the linked Businessweek article (which is worth a read) cites sources as saying that GlobeTech contractors working on speech recognition for Apple’s Siri had “no specific mechanism to report or delete offensive or inappropriate audio, such as drunk-sounding users slurring demands into the mics or people dictating sexts.” The article further added that workers “who asked managers whether they could skip overly private clips were told no clips were too private.”
But this is belaboring the question, which is Alexa: would you? And more specifically, would you knowing an intern might listen in? Let us know in the comments below.