And that's why I didn't agree with your long post of that stuff, because it didn't seem as invasive as something Google would put out. I've read Google's privacy policies. They're open about collecting more than your address, emails etc. They build an entire profile of you and store it on their servers, and sell it out to 3rd parties (aka ads). Apple doesn't do this. There's a huge difference.
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Apple's Concern With User Privacy Reportedly Stifling Siri Development
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How can you not be sure what's being done with the data? They tell you explicitly what they do with it. So does Apple.
Neither Apple nor Google sell data to 3rd parties. As far as I'm aware, none of the other big boys do either. Could you perhaps mean use the data to sell targeted ads? If so, they all do targeted ads. They all tell you they do targeted ads.
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I guess it's my time for a correction. Google doesn't sell out data to 3rd parties. I think you know that. They sell targeted ad space. Not sure why you think Apple doesn't sell targeted ads. Why do you think you have to opt out to not see them?
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It's all very well feeling smug because Apple says it doesn't collect personnel data but that's not the whole story is it. Ever do a Siri search? Does the holier than thou Apple perform that search? No, Apple doesn't have a search engine. That data is passed to their partner Microsoft to do a Bing search. Has Microsoft promised not to data mine your data? No, they haven't. If you think your data is not being mined by proxy, well then you're naive. But hey at least Apple doesn't do it "directly".
Yep.. I'd much rather have my privacy maintained than to rely heavily on a service that basically makes people lazy.
Perhaps I could have been more concise, but it's largely semantics. There's really no difference between 'selling your information' and 'selling access to your information' the latter of which is the 'targeted ad space' you refer to.
It's true that Google doesn't sell or share your real name, but they absolutely do sell access to your unique personal ID, which is why 3rd parties give companies like Google (the middle man) lots of money to place their ads in front of your eyeballs.
If you opt out of Google's ads, Google still collects your data. So your data is just collected and sits there on its servers? Who knows. Personally, I don't believe it does. Companies like Google are in the business of monetizing your data, and data that doesn't bring in money isn't useful. So this is where we'll have to agree to disagree on the 'you know what's happening to your data' argument.
Great way to put it.
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You're right and wrong. It's a matter of semantics. Google sells your data for profit. Apple has no such business. That's actually a quote from Tim Cook, put in my words. Essentially Google's entire way of business is maintained by people googling things, using Android phones, Google Maps, etc. It then has an entire profile on YOU. They they target ads for you, go through your email to give you more ads, etc. They are also much more willing to give your info up to the gov't than Apple is. You can read the stats. I don't know why we are going back and forth on this, as we're almost saying the same thing.
Apple values privacy more than Google. That is the fact of this statement.
I think it would be just fine to default to off, then if it is turned on, then off, to just stop recording new information and erase the information on file. That doesn't really seem like any challenge to do. Now, the stuff that was recorded will, of course, be in the backup logs and at the NSA, but if you turned it on, then you already decided that was OK.
This article is sort of screwed up in a couple of different ways.
Touting AI is fine, but really people want the "I".
I mean, Siri can do the search and pull up random stuff on the web, but I still have to read it. Why can't she pull information out of the page for me? That's what an assistant is supposed to do. They've taken a step towards that buy buying the unstructured data firm, but really, that's not AI, that's really more NLP with some advanced entity processing.
- Alexa isn't really AI. If there's AI in Alexa is in its speech recognition. The back-end receives the text and then does whatever it does with it; it can use AI, or not. Alexa skills don't really need to implement AI.
- Being smart doesn't need user data, it needs to do semantic processing on the queries to figure out what the user wants to know.
Touting AI is fine, but really people want the "I".
I mean, Siri can do the search and pull up random stuff on the web, but I still have to read it. Why can't she pull information out of the page for me? That's what an assistant is supposed to do. They've taken a step towards that buy buying the unstructured data firm, but really, that's not AI, that's really more NLP with some advanced entity processing.
But that's not the way it works on Android or most computers. You turn it on, data is gathered, and then crossed with 10,000 other databases to try and pinpoint other entries made by you, or someone with a similar name and profile to you.
This isn't some future threat, it's been going on for decades. That's the type of database information junk mailers used in the past-probably still do- to target people most likely to respond. Use a voice command to order a pizza? The voice pattern is stored so future requests like this have an increasing chance of being successful. But the fact that you order brand x pizza is stored as well, and is put up for sale. Not just to restaurant chains but anyone who wants to buy it. And once its in this form it's not your information. It belongs to whoever stored it. Turn off your permission and maybe no new data is collected but the old data is still there. And you can't legally do anything about it. Including correcting any mistakes you eventually find out about. Someone may WANT to correct the information for their records, but you've just created a new you. But the old one is still there. Now it depends on where a new company buys its user data from as to whether it's accurate or not. Or at least more accurate.
Once again, this isn't a possible future it's the present reality. Look at products online, then do a Google search. Frequently, actually predictably, the items you specifically looked at AND the web site you searched are both very high in the search order. Do the Google search first then go to a web site and surprise! There is that item (or something very similar) in the items for you.
What I have noticed a lot lately is that Siri starts out hearing what I said perfectly and then for some strange reason, I see her backspace over what she had and replace it with ridiculous phrases.
I assume that my phone sent it to a server and it was reinterpreted. So, I know that it's not a matter of my poor elocution, as she had it right, but then "fixed" it.
/rant
That quote from Cook. I absolutely hate it and I generally like Cook and his stewardship of Apple. But that quote, paraphrasing here: "We value your privacy. We do not sell your data" <-- That one there. It is disingenuous and deceptive BS. It's marketing/PR and forgive me, it's not a matter of semantics. There's no equivalency between "sell your data" and "use anonymized data to sell ad space". None.
/rant over
Google's primary source of revenue being ads has never been up for debate. It's also never been a part of our discussion. Honestly, I'm not sure how it's germane to the topic. Again, both companies target ads for you. This is a proven fact. Google doing it more and more successfully doesn't change the fact that both companies do it. They do.
I gotta ask, have you read the stats? I ask because the facts that I read (both Apple's and Google's transparency reports) say you are indeed right, but may not be as emphatic as you think. TL;DR for 2016. Apple had 63K requests and gave some info on 72% of those requests for approx 45K where data was provided. Google had 90K requests and gave some info on 62% of those requests for approx 55K where data was provided. Considering Google's reach, I'd say they are on par with each other.
We're going back and forth because we disagree on who actually collects what. You seem to want to interject the topic of what they do with the information. That was never the topic which started with AustinIllini's assertion that both companies collect the same data. They do.
Academic exercise: Point to something Google is doing with data that you think Apple isn't. Dollars to doughnuts, I can definitively show that they are doing it.
BTW, thanks for the discussion.
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Bluntly put, there isn't a single thing in your quote that is remotely true except the part about opting out of ads and still having your data collected. They also still serve you ads, just not targeted. That is true of Google and Apple.
In fact, if you could provide any supporting fact regarding your claims, I'd be extremely surprised. Just to help, don't waste time looking for anything to support the portion of your comment I bolded. That is so wrong that I'm not even sure where you could have gotten that info. Your quote is short on actual facts and long on misinformation. Prolly wanna work on that. If not for your sake, for the sake of our fellow forum members.
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Apple's CONCERN with privacy lol. The spinmeisters are spinning!!!
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ees-selling-customers’-personal-data.2049735/
Whilst I commend privacy stance & all that, I don't mind using Siri, even with a broad scottish accent, 90% of the time it picks me up ok. The issue that Siri has is that it's not localised or doesn't seem that way: If I ask the next Celtic or Rangers game, I'm not asking about baseball or whatever the feck it is, it can't even recognise given my location I must be asking about football/soccer. Equally if I ask for directions to a particular place it should be smart enough to recognise where I am & the most likely place I'm asking for, be it my town, Scotland or even the UK, not the US.
These are basic things.
These are basic things.
Former Apple employees who worked on Siri believe the virtual assistant is struggling to catch up with its rivals because of a lack of ambitious goals stemming from the company's overarching concern with user privacy, a report by The Wall Street Journal revealed on Thursday.
Unlike Amazon and Google, which leverage and retain user data off-device to inform and enhance queries put to their respective smart speakers, Apple is said to work within a culture that prioritizes user privacy, "making it difficult to personalize and improve" Siri, according to ex-Apple employees. The project has also reportedly suffered from the departures of key members as a result, some of whom went to competitors.
Former staff reportedly offered this loss as the main reason behind the departure of Siri co-founders Adam Cheyer and Dag Kittlaus, who left to found Viv, which was acquired by Samsung and is now working closely with Samsung's Bixby assistant team. Apple finally started opening up Siri to third-party developers last year, but many former Siri engineers believe it didn't come soon enough, while developers still remain unhappy at the lack of openness behind the scenes.
According to the article, the first inkling Apple got that it was falling behind its rivals came when members of the Siri team arrived at an Amazon event in 2014.
WSJ notes that Siri's performance still doesn't match Amazon's Echo or Google Home because of the collective weight of Apple's self-imposed limitations. For example, in tests across 5,000 different questions, Siri answered accurately 62 percent of the time, lagging the roughly 90 percent accuracy rate of Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa, according to Stone Temple, a digital marketing firm.
It remains to be seen whether Apple feels it needs to compete on these specific AI metrics, or if it sees a future for Siri in other areas, such as linguistics - Siri works across 21 language, while Alexa and Google Assistant only speak English and German.
During this week's Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced a number of forthcoming enhancements to Siri with iOS 11, including live language translation, contextual query comprehension, and an ability to learn a user's interests. It also unveiled its own Siri-powered premium smart speaker, HomePod, but emphasized sound quality and music enjoyment over the general intelligence of its virtual assistant, which some might say speaks volumes as to Apple's future ambitions in the AI space.
Article Link: Apple's Concern With User Privacy Reportedly Stifling Siri Development
Now.... what I'm going to say is really a big deal. This article would be true, if it weren't for Apples latest purchase. Lattice, is literally one of Apple's most important purchases in there existence, & there most important AI prechase. Lattice, is a company that knows how to take Dark data (unused data) & turn it into usable data to train AI. The data Google & Amazon uses are usable data, but usable data only accounts for 20 - 30% of the data used throughout the entire world. Unused data, account for the other 70 - 80%. So this means Apple will be able to use the 80% of Dark data convert it and use it to train Siri. This is a big frekin deal.
I think there should be two modes: one that favors privacy, one that favors functionality. Why not let the customer choose?
It doesn't have to do any such thing. I'm tired of this lack of privacy protection these days. The USA was founded with privacy in the Constitution (no unreasonable search or seizures). People are SO ready to let THIEVES (and that means corporations more than anybody) STEAL their data and monetize it while you get NOTHING.
WTF would ANY company need to keep your data on THEIR servers anyway? Why isn't Siri handling meta data locally? Why don't they make Siri actually run on your computer instead of sending everything to Apple to handle? A computer in 2017 can't handle voice recognition? REALLY? Why not? I find the whole thing to be a stinking pile of horse manure. The only reason all these companies want that crap done on their servers is so they can store and steal your data and make money off you while you slave away to make jack squat at some horrible job. The 1% want ALL the money. They'll start paying you in company store shares soon again like a 100 years ago. Just wait and see.
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People don't even THINK about it like that. They don't even consider the ramifications. To quote Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, "You know, people like blood sausage too. People are morons."
Are you sure you follow technology at all? Machine learning is not as simple as collecting data on your iPhone. Your iPhone's ability to learn is limited. You want to use it for other things. There are HUGE servers across the world that machine learn.
And don't get me started with the naïveté of your "USA blah blah blah" crap. The founding fathers have been dead for 2 centuries. They had no idea what was coming. Take your right wing nonsense and put it in PRSI.
Call me old fashion but I can respect Apple's stance on privacy. Frankly, I don't really use Siri and I'm not sure my usage would increase if she was smarter. I can send/receive texts, check the weather, check sports scores or input calendar appointments just fine using standard typing. I just can't seem to get use to speaking to my phone or computer to perform these basic functional tasks. With that said, I'll take improved privacy over an improve voice interface which might compromise that privacy.
Folks.
Did you even read the TOS on Siri.
This is the first 2 paragraphs (on my laptop):
When you use Siri the things you say will be recorded and sent to Apple to process your requests. Your device will also send Apple other information, such as your name and nickname; the names, nicknames, and relationships (e.g., “my dad”) found in your contacts, song names in your collection, the names of your photo albums, and the names of apps installed on your device (collectively, your “User Data”). All of this data is used to help Siri understand you better and recognize what you say. It is not linked to other data that Apple may have from your use of other Apple services. When you use Siri to search for your documents, the Siri request is sent to Apple, but the names and the content of your documents are not sent to Apple. The search is performed locally on the Mac.
If you have Location Services turned on, the location of your device at the time you make a request will also be sent to Apple to help Siri improve the accuracy of its response to your requests. You may choose to turn off Location Services for Siri. To do so, open System Preferences on your Mac, click Security & Privacy, click Location Services, deselect the checkbox for Siri.
So we are sending Apple names, nicknames, relationships, contacts, the songs we like, photo tags, apps, etc.
Even worse, we are sending Apple our exact location. (I thought Siri used this locally - and did not report this back to Apple).
How does Apple consider this better privacy than Facebook or Google?
Apple's defense of customer privacy is probably not effective anyways. It should just drop it completely. Just drop the focus on privacy, it's a losing battle, just as Chinese distributors/insiders have proven in China recently that privacy of Apple customers can still be compromised by corrupt insiders (distributors, contractors, suppliers, etc).
Officials arrest Apple distributors who sold private data
Forget the focus on user privacy, it's a lost battle, and just go forward and cut loose with technological progress if Apple ever wants to catch up with Google and Amazon and Microsoft. Apple is supposed to be a technology company. And issues like this simply keeps its hands tied, hinders technical progress.
Why do you consistently post such sane and rational things? That's not the MR Forums way, you know.
The iPhone is one of the most successful products ever, of all time, in terms of sales revenue. Apple will be lucky if they ever have another product that successful.
In terms of a product being enjoyed by it's users Apple have had products under Tim Cook that are better than anything under Steve Jobs
And then the AirPods went even higher:
https://9to5mac.com/2017/05/01/airpods-customer-satisfaction/
All "this talk" is by ex-employees. Apple haven't said anything, except a huge Keynote a few days ago where they explained Siri is more contextually aware (and having used iOS 11 I can agree - it's improved).
You're posting nonsense I'm afraid.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!! You are saying that the Apple Watch is more successful than the Iphone because it has higher enjoyment? Steve brought down blackberry, pushed the boundaries if smart phones and really made smart phones ubiquitous, oversaw the development of OSX and iOS, and you cite the pathetic apple watch as a true success story?
Is that what is making their stocks sky rocket? And I thought it was because of the sales increase due to their expansion into China.. Guess i'm wrong. I was all these happy apple watch users...
Are you kidding me? My mouth is still open.. The apple watch is a freakin iphone companion. And you cite Wristly? A company that makes it's money on Apple watch research? I would take Trump's word over Wristly!
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As far as the SDK docs, Core ML is *not* for training ML models but for *running* pre-existing models on the device. Yes, user data stays on the device – but it does not make the model "smarter" per se.
A key differentiator for Apple is privacy.
Apple was first to market with Siri.
Followers have been able to improve quicker by exploiting a lack of privacy.
Unimaginative people think Apple should abandon a key differentiator to follow them and improve Siri.
Or, maybe Apple could find another way.
I hope Apple does that instead.
Apple was first to market with Siri.
Followers have been able to improve quicker by exploiting a lack of privacy.
Unimaginative people think Apple should abandon a key differentiator to follow them and improve Siri.
Or, maybe Apple could find another way.
I hope Apple does that instead.