From a computer science perspective, what should Google do to train its models in a privacy conscious way?
Operationally, though, here are a few thoughts:
- Ensure that the persons doing this review do not have physical access to the systems outside of a secured environment (one in which outside audio and video recording devices are not allowed, and for whose presence is monitored, with physical access controls, etc.) Basically, not remote workers or a typical office environment. Most finserv call centers do this, so it's not particularly crazy to think they can do the same.
- Mask the voices such that they are intelligible but not identifiable. Maintain a limited set of "high access" taggers who can hear the raw clips if there is an issue with the masking.
- Limit the length of the clips (sounds like they already do this).
- Have pre-filters for anything personally identifiable in the audio. The metadata for the audio might already be de-identified, but what if the audio clip consists of the person reading out a phone number, credit card number, username, etc.? They should have their "high access" team building detectors for that and flag those portions of the audio or whole clips and route them to a limited access team.
- Make it more clear to customers that their audio, including accidental captures, can and will be sent to their servers. Make this very explicit, rather than burying it in TOS and using terms like "audio data". "The device may accidentally interpret your bondage safe word as a trigger and send your private conversations to our real-live human tagging team for review."
- Provide a physical switch that can temporarily disable the audio recording capability.
- Pay money, like cigarette companies do, to help fund a public education campaign that informs the general public about these listening bugs and mass surveillance issues so that people are aware of industry practices and how it affects them.
Edit:
I like what others are saying about explicit opt-in, as well as paid end-users. For quality/safety control, I don't know that they can exclusively use paid end-users. They probably need to sample some amount of their real live data. For that, explicit opt-in makes sense.
full stop.
They've very likely already done this.
I suppose it's no coincidence that this article is written about the Flemish community... there may not be as much closed caption options there.
Install these devices in the homes of google employees, executives and offices and allow the public to listen in. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander and all.
Maybe when google has trained the systems enough to not need to train them by collecting and listening to customers conversations, then they enter them into the stream of commerce.
"Google would like to use the last 15 minutes of voice data to improve Google Home. This may contain sensitive information. Do you approve?"
The main downside is an extra question during an onboarding flow.
A. Bhowmick et al. Protection Against Reconstruction and Its Application in Private Federated Learning, 2018.
Don’t just dismissively say “oh that’s different and doesn’t apply” until you read it and understand the range of problems Apple is tackling with this and similar approaches. A lot can be done when the organization makes privacy a priority.
Let’s not forget I am replying to a person who has chosen to use a throwaway account for this topic. Why did they do that? Hmmm.