Ethical AI Can Help to Stop Smart Devices from Spying on Your Conversations

“For many of us in the research community, ethical concerns of AI technology are an essential issue, but it seems to belong to a separate thought process. It is like we are so happy that we finally made a driving car but forgot to design a steering wheel and a brake,” said Jianbo Shi, professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading researcher in machine learning.

We are all being spied on by our smart devices. Microphones are secretly installed in almost everything that we use in everyday life out of want to enjoy a higher level of comfort and to experience pleasures coming from the fruits of today’s technology.

It is either we lack knowledge of what big-time corporations are doing or we want to simply overlook this matter of data privacy breach to avoid adding it to our headaches and problems.

Yet, regardless if we are naive about it or we just want to forgo how our privacy is being violated, the reality remains that somebody out there — multitudes of businesses out there — are prying on our private lives through rogue microphones in our smartphones, watches, computers, and televisions including those voice assistants with lovely names such as Siri and Alexa.

The breadth and depth of this espionage show just how precious we have become as a commodity to our fellow human beings who just happen to sit on top corporate chairs, who value profit more than ethics and humanity.

But, for those who want to stop or prevent this unethical spying, researchers at Columbia University have offered a way to do so with the help of what they call “ethical AI”.

“Our algorithm, which manages to block a rogue microphone from correctly hearing your words 80% of the time, is the fastest and the most accurate on our testbed,” said Carl Vondrick, assistant professor of computer science and former research scientist at Google AI. “It works even when we don’t know anything about the rogue microphone, such as the location of it, or even the computer software running on it.”

The system produces sounds as soft as a whisper to block smart devices from tuning into people’s voices and secretly recording information from private conversations. These sounds are played over-the-air, with real-time performance and a volume that mimics normal background noise,

“Our algorithm is able to keep up by predicting the characteristics of what a person will say next, giving it enough time to generate the right whisper to make,” added Mia Chiquier, lead author of the study and a PhD student in Vondrick’s lab. The researchers said that they plan to apply the algorithm to other languages and to make the whispers imperceptible to people but powerful enough to block “listening” smart devices.

Provide Mammograms

Support those fighting Breast Cancer at The Breast Cancer Site for free! →