Connect with us

Published

5 months ago

on

In the fall of 2020, gig workers in Venezuela posted a series of images to online forums where they gathered to talk shop. The photos were mundane, if sometimes intimate, household scenes captured from low angles—including some you really wouldn’t want shared on the Internet.

In one particularly revealing shot, a young woman in a lavender T-shirt sits on the toilet, her shorts pulled down to mid-thigh.

The images were not taken by a person, but by development versions of iRobot’s Roomba J7 series robot vacuum. They were then sent to Scale AI, a startup that contracts workers around the world to label audio, photo, and video data used to train artificial intelligence.

They were the sorts of scenes that internet-connected devices regularly capture and send back to the cloud—though usually with stricter storage and access controls. Yet earlier this year, MIT Technology Review obtained 15 screenshots of these private photos, which had been posted to closed social media groups. 

The photos vary in type and in sensitivity. The most intimate image wesaw was the series of video stills featuring the young woman on the toilet, her face blocked in the lead image but unobscured in the grainy scroll of shots below. In another image, a boy who appears to be eight or nine years old, and whose face is clearly visible, is sprawled on his stomach across a hallway floor. A triangular flop of hair spills across his forehead as he stares, with apparent amusement, at the object recording him from just below eye level.

The other shots show rooms from homes around the world, some occupied by humans, one by a dog. Furniture, décor, and objects located high on the walls and ceilings are outlined by rectangular boxes and accompanied by labels like “tv,” “plant_or_flower,” and “ceiling light.”

iRobot—the world’s largest vendor of robotic vacuums, which Amazon recently acquired for $1.7 billion in a pending deal—confirmed that these images were captured by its Roombas in 2020. All of them came from “special development robots with hardware and software modifications that are not and never were present on iRobot consumer products for purchase,” the company said in a statement. They were given to “paid collectors and employees” who signed written agreements acknowledging that they were sending data streams, including video, back to the company for training purposes. According to iRobot, the devices were labeled with a bright green sticker that read “video recording in progress,” and it was up to those paid data collectors to “remove anything they deem sensitive from any space the robot operates in, including children.”

In other words, by iRobot’s estimation, anyone whose photos or video appeared in the streams had agreed to let their Roombas monitor them. iRobot declined to let MIT Technology Review view the consent agreements and did not make any of its paid collectors or employees available to discuss their understanding of the terms.

While the images shared with us did not come from iRobot customers, consumers regularly consent to having our data monitored to varying degrees on devices ranging from iPhones to washing machines. It’s a practice that has only grown more common over the past decade, as data-hungry artificial intelligence has been increasingly integrated into a whole new array of products and services. Much of this technology is based on machine learning, a technique that uses large troves of data—including our voices, faces, homes, and other personal information—to train algorithms to recognize patterns. The most useful data sets are the most realistic, making data sourced from real environments, like homes, especially valuable. Often, we opt in simply by using the product, as noted in privacy policies with vague language that gives companies broad discretion in how they disseminate and analyze consumer information.

Did you participate in iRobot’s data collection efforts? We’d love to hear from you. Please reach out at tips@technologyreview.com

The data collected by robot vacuums can be particularly invasive. They have “powerful hardware, powerful sensors,” says Dennis Giese, a PhD candidate at Northeastern University who studies the security vulnerabilities of Internet of Things devices, including robot vacuums. “And they can drive around in your home—and you have no way to control that.” This is especially true, he adds, of devices with advanced cameras and artificial intelligence—like iRobot’s Roomba J7 series.

This data is then used to build smarter robots whose purpose may one day go far beyond vacuuming. But to make these data sets useful for machine learning, individual humans must first view, categorize, label, and otherwise add context to each bit of data. This process is called data annotation.

There’s always a group of humans sitting somewhere—usually in a windowless room, just doing a

Read More

————

By: Eileen Guo
Title: A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook?
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-irobot-robot-vacuums-artificial-intelligence-training-data-privacy/
Published Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2022 15:00:00 +0000

Did you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/a-new-crop-of-awards/

Total
0
Shares
Share 0
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Share 0
Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Frontier Adventure

Transporter-8 Mission

Published

7 hours ago

on

June 10, 2023

By

hqdefault 10

hqdefault 11

SpaceX is targeting Monday, June 12 for Falcon 9’s launch of the Transporter-8 mission to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The 57-minute launch window opens at 2:19 p.m. PT (21:19 UTC). If needed, there is a backup opportunity Tuesday, June 13 with the same window.

The first stage booster supporting this mission previously launched NROL-87, NROL-85, SARah-1, SWOT, and four Starlink missions. Following stage separation, Falcon 9 will land on Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) at Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Transporter-8 is SpaceX’s eighth dedicated smallsat rideshare mission. There will be 72 payloads on this flight, including CubeSats, MicroSats, a re-entry capsule, and orbital transfer vehicles carrying spacecraft to be deployed at a later time.

A live webcast of this mission will begin about 15 minutes prior to liftoff.

Did you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/triggered-star-birth-in-the-nessie-nebula/

Continue Reading

Fashion

Gothic Style for Men: Goth Aesthetic Fashion Guide

Published

8 hours ago

on

June 10, 2023

By

Gothic Style Men

Gothic Style Men
In a world where fashion trends often come and go in the blink of an eye, the Gothic style has …

Read More

——————-

By: The Fashionisto
Title: Gothic Style for Men: Goth Aesthetic Fashion Guide
Sourced From: www.thefashionisto.com/gothic-style-men/
Published Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2023 21:06:11 +0000

Continue Reading

EDM

&ME And Black Coffee Join Forces For ‘The Rapture Pt.III’

Published

10 hours ago

on

June 10, 2023

By

Snapinsta.app 352617667 1598819543861706 4618955323378922549 n 1080 819x1024 1

The long-awaited ID is finally out there for everyone to enjoy and close their eyes to.

This one is among the sweetest pieces of Electronic music you’ll find this year. It’s nothing new, though: that’s the style of the talented &ME. To my understanding, no one does the pianos quite like him. It’s that blend of soft, emotional piano melodies, and the minimalist Melodic Techno base under it, with just enough elements to make the piano stand out as much as it can. That blend can melt a soul. That very blend can make peace in the world.

It’s that very feeling of peace and unity that comes to me whenever I listen to the song that’s just come out: ‘The Rapture Pt.III‘, by &ME and Black Coffee.

The very eagerly awaited track has been spun by the Keinemusik DJs for a while now, making this piece one of the most requested IDs out there. ‘Pt.III’ marks the end of the The Rapture series, started by &ME around five years ago with ‘The Rapture‘, a defining track for many. Then came ‘Pt.II‘, which also made waves in the industry. This recent ‘Pt.III’ is the first — and allegedly, the only — time &ME has joined forces for the completion of the track. And who better to collaborate with than South African maestro Black Coffee.

Snapinsta.app 352617667 1598819543861706 4618955323378922549 n 1080 819x1024 2
(Left to right) Black Coffee, &ME.

The Rapture Pt.III

As is a staple in the series, ‘Pt.III’ is driven by a very subtle kick, evolving white-noise shakers, groovy percussion, a marching synth, and, of course, PIANO, tons of piano. That’s all there is to it. The elements are few, but don’t be deceived, for masters at work know their craft very well and will make the most out of each and every element. The track as is works flawlessly, giving the piano the starring role of defining this song as unique and separating it from the rest of Melodic Techno.

The track really powers itself on and on when listening, even resorting to some teary eyes if you really feel the melody. It truly is an iconic track, and fans and critics alike know it. Just watch it in action!

Ver esta publicación en Instagram

Una publicación compartida de &ME | Keinemusik (@andmeandyou)

Go ahead and listen to the full version of &ME and Black Coffee’s ‘The Rapture Pt.III’ by heading below for your beloved Spotify play, or rather, click here to be redirected to YouTube. Also, you may click here to support the song any other way you like.

The post &ME And Black Coffee Join Forces For ‘The Rapture Pt.III’ appeared first on EDMTunes.

—————————–

By: Felipe Latorre Cabello
Title: &ME And Black Coffee Join Forces For ‘The Rapture Pt.III’
Sourced From: www.edmtunes.com/2023/06/ame-and-black-coffee-join-forces-for-the-rapture-pt-iii/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ame-and-black-coffee-join-forces-for-the-rapture-pt-iii
Published Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2023 19:17:39 +0000

Read More

Did you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/tistos-all-time-classic-traffic-gets-two-smashing-remixes/

Continue Reading

Trending