Notices by Sean O'Brien (profdiggity@privacysafe.social)

@wordshaper @simon @cwebber I really try not to have this effect on people. But the problem is real and growing.

Try the products yourself - LLM voice transcription is amazingly good and currently offered cost-free or as a software addon in many cases. The energy cost is being shoved elsewhere, as it has been for "the cloud" for decades. But now it's amplified and accelerating. This is great for microphone spying, bad for a free society.

@simon @wordshaper @cwebber We're soon going to be in a deregulation cycle in the US, and trends seem to be pulling that way even in the EU. It's going to be "great" for me since there will be lots of spy tech to dig into and shout about. It will be awful in general for civil liberties and just day-to-day life in a technocratic society.

@wordshaper @cwebber @simon Yes, exactly. There are a few known cases where people got caught doing this with smart TVs and toys as well back then. *However* things have changed dramatically with cloud-based AI / LLMs. That goes for power issues as well. The transcription is fast + cheap and the energy consumption is an externality for the company - it's not a cost incurred by the ad brokers / spies or the mobile device and, if Microsoft gets their way, the servers will run on US-based nuclear.

@cwebber @wordshaper @simon My expertise in this area were so-called "ultrasonic trackers" and there are plenty of known cases of that, with the most notable being Fidzup which faced legal troubles in the EU because of it. I'd like to think we @yaleprivacylab and @exodus had something to do with that for calling attention to it. (shoutout to @nursecherise for the literal hand in this video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xweq1eF_eP4