I personally like the idea of smart home things and everything connected. It feels like it opens up so many possibilities or ideas.
Do I need it for survival? No. But I do like the idea and how it triggers my imagination.
What is missing and what I should buy are different things. If my fridge has yogurt, bacon and some hamburgers, you might say "well, you are missing eggs". Except maybe I don't want eggs. I may be even allergic. Or maybe I like eggs but I'm in some low-protein diet for whatever reason.
The goal of a fridge is not to have literally everything, is to store everything you think you need for some days.
As for recipes, yes, that's more creative, but I guess I would just actively Google that (or even use an old fashioned recipe book!) if I were looking for original recipes. Of course, you can also ChatGPT it, but the direct fridge -> ChatGPT interaction is a bit weird because maybe I don't want original recipes or maybe I'm going to eat out.
So a hypothetical (?) app that sends me notifications about what recipes ChatGPT suggests by looking at my fridge wouldn't be very appealing unless you're always looking for new recipes. If you're mostly cooking ordinary things, continuous "You could cook X" would count as spam, much like a lot of people skip (or try to skip) ads on Youtube and ignore random "buy this at 70% discount" emails. And if you're that passionate about new recipes I guess you're probably interested in cooking and don't need the fridge to tell you what's missing.
Any potential benefit from such a device would be destroyed by the cancerous advertising industry.
If it's a huge problem psychologically for you, maybe you can just take the following 5 years or whatever time you estimate you will be using the product and calculate that into the base price to make your decision.
Adding advertising into the mix almost always makes the incentives align more poorly with the customer's interest. For example, the refrigerator manufacturer now has an incentive to increase food spoilage to increase ad conversions.
>Having a subscription can actually be beneficial in terms of incentive to keep up supporting the product in my view
So you want to pay them to show you ads in the hopes that that means they don't stop supporting your refrigerator? What does that even mean? They're not going to extend your warranty.
Because if the product stops working, I also stop paying subscription.
Right now there's an incentive to make short lasting products to have customer buy a new one, but with subscription the incentive changes.
Think of it like working conditions getting increasingly poor and abusive year over year, while your salary stays fixed.
It matters not because the deals are increasingly shit and abusive, but also because them being much better is within most of our's living memories, and there's no actual reason for things to go this shit, except a supplier-driven market fucking customers over because they can, and race-to-the-bottom mechanics preventing any single vendor from reversing course.
If they can just keep increasing prices unfairly, then it means something is wrong with free market, not with subscriptions.
And yes, there's plenty of wrong with the free market, starting with that it's a hypothetical construct that doesn't exist, and even if it did, it's gameable and would have been gamed by the vendors the same way the real market is.
E.g. you start interaction by asking the fridge - I am a bit tired, what is an easy thing to cook based on what I have in the fridge and I am stopping by the store, is there anything I should buy to have a few more options.
So GPT vision takes image of what is in the fridge and then tries to solve for that question. If user is allergic to something that would be in GPT's prompt.
You would need a smart fridge if you wanted to directly connect the fridge with ChatGPT. Which is what I assumed in the previous comment.
It would be directly connected to GPT and you can either use it as mobile app or with other devices or fridge itself directly.
So for example you are at work, about to leave home, store is on the way and then you ask this question from the app. Fridge takes photo, forwards it with certain prompts to OpenAI APIs and then gives you the response.
Now, if this was an explicit user-GPT interaction, you could prompt the GPT with "hey, I'm Muslim, what can I cook with this stuff?" or "hey, I'm lactose intolerant, what else could I buy?". You do need to trust the OpenAI provider, but not the fridge.
Instead, the fridge automatically talks to GPT. So if you want to avoid "dumb" suggestions you wouldn't be able to follow, you would have to tell your fridge you're Jew or Muslim or lactose intolerant or diabetic. Don't you see an issue with this?
I'm not "tinfoil hat" paranoid, I don't think people are out there to get me. But a certain dose of skepticism when it comes to data usage should be healthy, especially when many companies have been known to mess up this aspect (from Cambridge Analytica to Roomba employers sending pictures of a woman on the toilet to Facebook, and much more). You cannot avoid this 100% unless you go to extreme lengths, but if you can avoid sending data to one more company, why not?
If you don't like certain foods, you can just customise the prompt that fridge sends to OpenAI. You can customise it through a web app or mobile app.
> you would have to tell your fridge you're Jew or Muslim or lactose intolerant or diabetic. Don't you see an issue with this?
What's the problem with storing your food preferences somewhere? People use dieting apps all the time on mobile.
> You cannot avoid this 100% unless you go to extreme lengths, but if you can avoid sending data to one more company, why not?
You are already sending your data in thousands of different ways and exposing yourself at any moment. I'm not saying you should do more of it, but food preferences seems like a very minor drop in the bucket of all that you are already exposing.
Most people store their images in a cloud, which already indicate amazing amount about them. Just using a smartphone is 1000x worse than having food preferences stored somewhere.
I accept that when I Google something Google and maybe other companies know what I searched, because Googling things is useful. I cannot bring an encyclopaedia and a detailed map of the whole world with me all the time, so it's a tradeoff I can accept.
I accept that, on the rare occasions I turn geolocation, someone will know where I am, because if I do turn it on, it's probably because I got lost. Then I turn it off and off we go.
Divulging food preferences for... an AI that suggests me what I should buy doesn't look like it's worth it. And it's not just food preferences. Remember people store medications in their fridge. A fridge so advanced it can recognize any food is probably capable of reading labels and knowing I bought medication for X,Y and Z. Which is definitely something I'm not explicitly telling people (or things) without a reason.
And don't forget the power of correlating data. Correlating food preferences with other data you could easily understand if someone is ill, pregnant, whether they follow a certain religion (think Ramadan, or not eating meat on Friday,...), whether they are living with someone else (buying twice the amount of stuff they usually buy?) and so on.
This is all stuff I try to avoid telling everyone. Yes, my doctor could be hacked and people could know I'm on medication anyway (hypothetically), but why divulge that voluntarily for essentially no reason?
yes it’s an “exciting feature” if your AI fridge can know that you’re pregnant and not recommend recipes that contain certain ingredients. what the other person is alluding to is that the data it has about you specifically will not stay contained between you and your fridge. what if you’re not married and your employer is like dave ramsey and fires women for being pregnant out of wedlock? or you live in a state with much more grim conditions currently around women and miscarriages? what if the meds in your fridge are related to HRT and there are orgs actively buying data to find these people to target them for bullying online (or worse)?
all of your data will inevitably end up in the hands of people that aren’t at all interested in improving your health. they’re interested in extracting value from you and your data or they have ill will towards you.
what starts as “exciting features” leads to your fridge tracking what groceries you purchase and what you consume. then it (or a third party that gets this data) makes determinations about your religion, your lifestyle, if you’re pregnant or not, etc without you knowing.
when every device in your house is collecting and selling off your data as a business model, there’s a significant mental overhead that needs to be expelled to ensure that you are able to keep your life private if you choose to. you may say: “don’t buy the appliances with the feature, then!” once a company can integrate these features effectively and subsidize hardware costs by selling the data, they’ll have other companies competing to offer the same so they can hit those target features and prices. eventually the market is flooded with appliances with these “exciting features” that are just gathering and selling data. in the end, we’ve traded our option to _choose_ privacy for a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist. personally, i don’t believe the public is currently aware enough to understand the consequences.
We live in this World for a very limited time. If things can be automated, they should so we can choose exactly what we want to do with this time.
the problem is that “the market” doesn’t care what you believe in or what you “opt out” of.
there are devices that have programmed in alternate ways to phone home even if you choose to intentionally not connect it to wifi.
> If things can be automated, they should so we can choose exactly what we want to do with this time.
there’s very likely a CSA in your area that you can pay to deliver you fresh meats, eggs, fruits, and vegetables. some also provide recipes alongside.
it’s a much simpler solution in lieu of shoehorning tech into an appliance that will likely stop receiving bug fixes or security updates in 3-5 years when the company releases a new version.
like most of the tech industry, this is a “solution” looking for a problem.
Do current smart fridges even get security updates at all?
The thing about data, unlike many common objects (ignoring 3d printers), is that you can easily copy data you control. So the fact that the fridge tells you "as an additional comfort in your pregnancy, I would add X" (if it even says that clearly) does not mean it also don't send data to other people.
Again, this is not a science fiction example. Many companies have successfully sent personal data to other companies or leaked that somehow to the Internet.
Personally this still makes me uncomfortable, even if I know this cannot be 100% avoided in today's world. So if I can avoid volunteering additional data to some company in exchange for voice activated lights, I'm happier. Maybe it's just me, though... but probably not.
It should not trigger just your imagination, but your paranoia.
I'm not. My phone, laptop and computers all run software that I get to install down to the OS (Linux, /e/OS), and I would never install something like the ChatGPT app on my phone.
> it should be possible to build those smart devices with similar security
It should be possible, but they are not. Don't forget: the "S" in IoT stands for "Security".
In any case, this is not even what I am talking about. What I am talking about is the "attack" being done by corporations into your house. It pains me to hear that people are willing to give so much of their privacy in the name of "convenience" and don't even show any slight concern over the thought of having so much data going to Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and (now) OpenAI.
If you went to someone's home and they told you "by the way, my home is full of microphones and video cameras which are always on and used to power my digital assistant", how would you feel?
Everyone are already walking around with smart phones that are perfectly able to do all of that.
> I'm not. My phone, laptop and computers all run software that I get to install down to the OS (Linux, /e/OS), and I would never install something like the ChatGPT app on my phone.
Fine if you do that.
> What I am talking about is the "attack" being done by corporations into your house. It pains me to hear that people are willing to give so much of their privacy in the name of "convenience" and don't even show any slight concern over the thought of having so much data going to Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and (now) OpenAI.
I personally am not concerned about this, although I understand how people can be. I don't want to go my whole life avoiding things, concerned about what is being done with my data, and then I die. I have long dated option calls really out of money in all those companies (except OpenAI of course), in case one of them gets a massive data advantage and happens to discover singularity from this, so I would benefit from it anyway. Before that happens, they just use it to optimise ads for you, and I prefer optimised ads over random ads. Otherwise I'll do my best to block them, but if they get through, I prefer something I might actually be interested in and that might help me.
I prefer to see inventions and technology. At certain point humans will be outlived by technology anyway, and that's bound to happen. New inventions and tech are what is exciting and why I like living, seeing those things coming together.
Being able to do it is not the same as actually doing it.
The rest of your argument, sorry but I can not respond without feeling angry. It just feels like the rationalizations of a selfish, too-clever-by-half neomaniac.
You could have smart devices similarly only react or go to active mode when you press a button on your watch etc.
> The rest of your argument, sorry but I can not respond without feeling angry. It just feels like the rationalizations of a selfish, too-clever-by-half neomaniac.
Okay, I agree that your words can describe me well, but what do you think the end game for humans or tech is? Why do we exist here? Are we just here to reproduce over and over again with no change? And if there's always change, aren't you curious what will happen in the future?
"Tech" is a means, not an end. What problems are we solving with this tech, and what problems are we creating with the introduction of new technology? These are the only questions that I have when talking about technology, and I really don't see much sense in trying to turn into an existential question.
> aren't you curious what will happen in the future?
Not really, no. When facing a moral dilemma, I look to the past to see what mistakes can be avoided. I try to live in the present and take things as they are. I might look at the "current instant" to see where things are headed and if there are new opportunities being presented, but "the future" is something so out of reach and so out of control that I really give as little thought as possible.
Or even in a more mundane situation, do you think that someone volunteering on a hospital to entertain sick kids do not find meaning in what they do because they are not effectively helping to cure cancer?
There is another thread where you say you are not religious. I don't want to tell you how to live your life, but if you are bowing down to the Altar of Technology to find meaning for your life, maybe religion is not so bad after all?
But now that we do, I do think we should figure out what is going on here. I don't knownif you can call it religion or whatever, but the point is completing this puzzle and tech is necessary to do that.
You don't care about what is behind all this?
Please, stop falling for the Kurzweil and Singularity crap. It's just the nerd version of the coming of the Messiah, with an extra dose of hubris on top.
I don't know who you are talking about. It's my own thoughts. I'm not falling for at least anyone else's crap. If it's crap, then it's my own crap that I'm falling for.
> I don't care enough to sacrifice my present to pursue some crazy Singularity and I certainly am not interested in sacrificing myself to give so much power to any single corporation, no matter how "good" their promises are.
I think there should then be initiative to include everyone in the World in the top tech companies. E.g. similarly you give everyone in the World a right to buy in to an ownership in limited amount given such a thing should occur. But every individual in the World can only buy one, equal unit.
This is why I buy those call options myself, but I think everyone in the World should have such call options.
I'm trying to problem solve here, because I want to see this tech.
Change simply means that something becomes something else. It isn't inherently good.
For example, now I walk with both legs, but if a car hits me, I might stay on a wheelchair for some time, which is change, but not a welcome one. Before you say "this is a strawman argument", think about technologies like "cloud seeding", which are supposed to enforce specific weather conditions by spraying certain substances in the air (not clear on the details). This sounds like a cool idea, but is it, when some studies suggest this is dangerous for the environment? Shouldn't we (as humans) think about the effects before embracing change?
So, to me, change can be good or bad (or, often, a combination). If the goal of human life was change, it should probably be "change for good". Which is complicated - what is good and what is bad? Who gets to decide? Can I know in advance? What if something is eventually to be bad, can we get back? But that's how life is, no matter the end goal: complicated.
What do you think the goal is?
I just think that at some point we will find out anyway and why not quicker then? Why let 5 or 10 more generations of humans go on if at some point we might reach an answer or an endpoint of some sort.
Because you and the corporations you support are making the lives of people worse now, and you are trading their wellbeing for your very minimal, personal comfort, and rationalizing it away with Pascal Wager-style of technocracy where "tech" could save you from dying.
So...
do you upgrade your fridge OS? Maybe, maybe not. What happens if you do and an upgrade fails?
does it talk to the Internet? If it has to (by design), then all bets are off. You could try to mirror traffic and take a packet capture, but a fridge OS could easily use HTTPS over a "smart.myfridge.com" domain and you wouldn't know what's going on.
How does it even authenticate to whatever remote server they have? If it uses tokens or client certificates, what happens when they expire?
I'm a sysadmin, I know things fail. Even laptops and phones. But, while I can see valid use cases for laptops and phones, I still fail to see the actual appeal of most "smart home" appliances, outside of security systems. And I don't want to have nightmares about my fridge certificate expiration or not being able to turn your light on because my fiber connection went down.
You could install open sourced things to that fridge. E.g. the fridge could either come with sensors immediately available or just have convenient mounts to place your own cameras.
Maybe the fridge could have a simple linux box, raspberry PI or whatever set up. There could be a market where you can flexibly pick how immediately available solution you want or if you want to put in everything yourself and control, depending on how concerned you are about privacy and how technical you are.
If you want to have full control, you can just do that.
> do you upgrade your fridge OS? Maybe, maybe not. What happens if you do and an upgrade fails?
Most smart home devices in my experience update through a mobile app connected to your WiFi.
> What happens if you do and an upgrade fails
Fridge itself would still work, just the picture taking and ai guidance wouldn't.
> How does it even authenticate to whatever remote server they have? If it uses tokens or client certificates, what happens when they expire?
Through mobile app can update, reset everything.
> And I don't want to have nightmares about my fridge certificate expiration or not being able to turn your light on because my fiber connection went down.
These basic things like light and other base features you make sure can work even if smart software fails.
Even ignoring the potential privacy concerns, you're assuming too much in terms of reliability.
When an AWS region went down a couple of years ago, a lot of smart fridges and lights didn't work properly (https://financialpost.com/technology/personal-tech/pitfalls-...).