From a piece Zuckerberg has written today detailing his experience creating an AI for his house...
"Speech recognition systems have improved recently, but no AI system is good enough to understand conversational speech just yet. Speech recognition relies on both listening to what you say and predicting what you will say next, so structured speech is still much easier to understand than unstructured conversation."
This is something I (and others) have been saying in this thread for a while. There just isn't the tech out there currently, and certainly not that can fit in your phone and not use it's full processing ability and zap your battery in minutes, which can continuously listen to your conversations AND process them to provide accurate data to target adverts that would be relevant to you.
Well, he ain't going to admit it - and, as much as that is a 'denial', there must be a reason for him to say it.
It is a bit grey and I think what others and I have been saying is that... okay, whilst there mightn't be a system of voice tapping going on (for commercial purposes), there do seem to be an alarming number of instances where adverts (and the like) appear to be targeted toward topics of conversation that may have recently been discussed on or around a phone.
I mean, what is Zuckerberg really saying?
"Speech recognition systems have improved recently, but no AI system is good enough to understand conversational speech just yet. Speech recognition relies on both listening to what you say and predicting what you will say next, so structured speech is still much easier to understand than unstructured conversation."
I don't even get the context - who was he talking to and what was said before/afterward?
In fact, if I'm honest, I don't even get that statement and does not in any way, shape or form explain anything that has been addressed in this thread - it does appear to address AI, but it doesn't really take a Hal 9000 to pick-up on specific 'hotwords' - call centres have been using similar tech for years now. Granted, the scope of technological requirements for any kind of practical commercial 'hotword' honeytrap would not be fathomable. But I often wonder if some massive central AI (Zuckerberg's words, not mine) would be needed. We have high-end, open source, hackable and exploitable computers on us, or around us, 24/7. The market is moving toward voice recognition (siri, Ok Google, etc...), and as Charlie Brooker as it sounds, we will soon be able to control the very basic functions of our houses with voice recognition.
You could say that the infrastructure isn't there to support such a system - I would say that the foundations are there, in place, and in time, people will love them for making their lives easier.