I've been meaning to write something about the new Apple Watch iListen features.
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I've been meaning to write something about the new Apple Watch iListen features.
I'm not too concerned about the rolling 15-second playback buffer, although the main reason for that is, if they're truly constantly flushing that buffer, and if that buffer can not be saved anywhere, there's not much utility to it. So honestly, my main concern for that feature is that it's kind of useless.
The transcription and daily summary features are a bit of a different story, though.
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I've been meaning to write something about the new Apple Watch iListen features.
I'm not too concerned about the rolling 15-second playback buffer, although the main reason for that is, if they're truly constantly flushing that buffer, and if that buffer can not be saved anywhere, there's not much utility to it. So honestly, my main concern for that feature is that it's kind of useless.
The transcription and daily summary features are a bit of a different story, though.
These are the kind of features that could cause people to lose trust in a company and its products. "Hey Siri" has had problems, but my impression is that they've mostly addressed them, while issues have also come up with Amazon's Alexa, and even more so with Meta's goggles.
I see so many ads where Meta is trying to rehabilitate the perception of the goggles' privacy features. No company wants to fight that battle. It's a waste of resources.
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These are the kind of features that could cause people to lose trust in a company and its products. "Hey Siri" has had problems, but my impression is that they've mostly addressed them, while issues have also come up with Amazon's Alexa, and even more so with Meta's goggles.
I see so many ads where Meta is trying to rehabilitate the perception of the goggles' privacy features. No company wants to fight that battle. It's a waste of resources.
Honestly, my first thought on the transcript / daily summary feature was that this is the kind of thing that'll break up relationships.
So many people will try to settle an argument with their spouse or significant other by asking Siri. These are people who haven't learned yet that in a lifelong relationship, sometimes who's right and who's wrong is the least important aspect of a disagreement.
I mean, who knows? Maybe that'll be a good thing for people who shouldn't be in relationships.
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Honestly, my first thought on the transcript / daily summary feature was that this is the kind of thing that'll break up relationships.
So many people will try to settle an argument with their spouse or significant other by asking Siri. These are people who haven't learned yet that in a lifelong relationship, sometimes who's right and who's wrong is the least important aspect of a disagreement.
I mean, who knows? Maybe that'll be a good thing for people who shouldn't be in relationships.
Literally my most charitable read on the iListen feature of WatchOS is that they're trying to kill the market for whatever device OpenAI is trying to create.
Like, "Oh, you want to make a wearable that's always listening? We're going to poison that well."
But that's a really charitable read. It's probably more like, "They're going to get into this market. For once, let's beat someone to the punch!"
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Literally my most charitable read on the iListen feature of WatchOS is that they're trying to kill the market for whatever device OpenAI is trying to create.
Like, "Oh, you want to make a wearable that's always listening? We're going to poison that well."
But that's a really charitable read. It's probably more like, "They're going to get into this market. For once, let's beat someone to the punch!"
In summary, the truth is we've already given up on a lot of our privacy because we use social networks, posting things that can be read and indexed and used for training and archived.
So the landscape has changed over the years.
But I still think that iListen is a creepy surveillance feature, and it's my hope that Apple publicly backs away from it, in a way that's a warning to all the companies trying to sell products that do the same thing.
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In summary, the truth is we've already given up on a lot of our privacy because we use social networks, posting things that can be read and indexed and used for training and archived.
So the landscape has changed over the years.
But I still think that iListen is a creepy surveillance feature, and it's my hope that Apple publicly backs away from it, in a way that's a warning to all the companies trying to sell products that do the same thing.
One last thought for the folks who say, "This is only bad for people who do bad things and are afraid of being caught."
Learn your history. Look up Cardinal Richelieu, who famously said:
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
Everything can be taken out of context. In a surveillance society--even if the surveillance is nominally consensual--nobody is truly free.
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One last thought for the folks who say, "This is only bad for people who do bad things and are afraid of being caught."
Learn your history. Look up Cardinal Richelieu, who famously said:
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
Everything can be taken out of context. In a surveillance society--even if the surveillance is nominally consensual--nobody is truly free.
They somehow still believe that the government acts in good faith and equally enforces all its laws despite all the evidence to the contrary.
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