Is AI going to be lethal to our privacy?
Millions across the globe use voice-based software to interact with digital assistants on their smartphones. Aman, Founding Member at Javis Technologies, affirms that AI is a powerful technology with many applications in business and the social sector. “Be it Siri, Google Assistant or Alexa, our dependency on these digital assistants is quite noticeable”, he says. With rising concerns around privacy risks impersonated by voice AI technologies, it is inevitable but to question how AI is trained as it becomes an obvious part our daily lives. He wants people to embrace it and give it some time to fully understand it. Aman believes that if people have concerns in the interim, government may regulate to address the concerns. Vaibhav Mittal, Director – Panoramic Solutions, agrees that every technology has its pros and cons. According to him, “Digital voice assistants have in fact made life easier as it allows you to call people and even plays your favorite song at any time of the day.”
What’s Going Wrong, Really?
The hidden problem here is not that the audio is being recorded, but the fact that the company doesn’t inform the users about the recordings, and even if it does, it is somewhere lost in the terms & conditions sections, which we honestly don’t have the time to read. The tricky part is that we have been habituated to think that these cloud-based machines have magic wands that will attend to all our commands, but we do forget that these do require manual processing to serve us better. Although the company states that only a selected group of people have access to the audio clips stored in the smart devices, it’s nevertheless important for users to be cautious of the presence of an AI-powered device listening to everything that is being said around them.
