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this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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NGL this is driving me crazy. Without searching for things, just talking about them, they start showing up in ads. Even in places that don't have google/alexa speakers.
At this point, I'm reaching full-tinfoil and think they have a voice chip installed under my skinl...
One time I was in a car with some people, and the clouds looked really nice, and out loud I said "I wonder what kind of clouds those are? Are they like cumulus? I don't even know all the types of clouds" or something along those lines. About a minute later, I take my phone out to look it up and I type "What kind of" and the google auto-fill was "clouds are those" and I was like "There's absolutely no way that my phone is not listening to me at all times. I do not believe for one second that the most popular search is "What kind of clouds are those". That was very very specific to what I had just said out loud.
I'm usually not one for tinfoil hats, but this is very difficult to explain.
I remember somewhere, I believe it was the congressional hearings where they called all the heads of the biggest companies to testify for something...a couple years ago...when Bozos refused to show.
Well, anyways, a congressman asked Zuckerberg why this happens because he doesn't appreciate them listening, through his phone microphone, to conversations hes having. Zuck replies that the algorithm knows you so well, that it pretty much predicts what your going to say at the exact time you say it...were definitely not listening to you from your phone speaker, he says, thats technology we just dont have.
Or something to that effect. 🤨
There are always a lot of reasons to see what we see on ads and suggestions without them having to listen to us. Try to do the test and talk about something completely random to you around your phone. Chances are you'll never get ads about it.
The algorithms are based on so many criterias and are so freaking good that it seems like the simplest answer is to listen to us. But with GPS, relationships, history, habits, emails/sms/messages, etc. it can be freaky how good the predictions can be. They are already "listening" in so many ways that are cheap to do, constant audio streaming is absolutely not cheap and not required.
Way too many people in this thread need to read up on cognitive biases. Frequency illusion would be a good place to start.
I once stopped in a gas station to get coffee, and instead of using brand names to refer to the sweetener, they used the colors: "yellow sweetener" for splenda, "blue sweetener" for equal, etc. It was weird to me, so I noticed. Later that day, I was on my flight and ordered coffee, and the flight attendant offered the sweetener using the same color coding instead of brand names. Weird, right? Then after I got to my destination, at the hotel, same thing!
The only logical conclusion isn't that our brains are wierd and stuff like this happens as a result of the way we categorize and remember information, but instead that I am in a Meta simulation and Zuckerberg is reading my thoughts.
Yeah. Only a Senator would be dumb enough to realize individualized predictive AI is harder tech than voice recognition.
Is it though?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/
And that was over ten years ago. This stuff has only got better since then. I don't believe they need to listen in to get scary levels of information from you. More than enough to make people convinced they're listening like some kind of Batman shit.
Oh I followed that one, too.
The thing is, unless there's a great breakthrough, individual behavior is dramatically less predictable than mob behavior. The Target algorithm was a great case study, but they sent those ads/coupons to EVERYONE who fit the algorithm, and much of the time they were EITHER right OR wrong. Target dropped that particular style of campaign because it had too low a match rate (hitting too many non-pregnant folks and missing too many pregnant ones). When it had that "shocking success", was it truly a great moment for predictive AI's, or just the chips falling right with the AI simply adjusting odds a bit?
But no, the predictive technology is harder; I say that as someone who has worked in a predictive data science division. The tuning required to make a model work better than control is hard. Ultimately, if you get ads for something you've never searched for before the same day you SAY you want that something, it's the voice recognition. I'll be clear, most models we'd work on would fail to prove themselves, get thrown out, and be picked up again. If we'd had the abililty to buy voice matches for the word "insurance" from Amazon/Google, we have been in bloody paradise.
"Oh, you wanted me to make a soda fizz, right? We should get St. Germain because that's good in it." .... starts getting St. Germain commercials every 5 minutes. Didn't even know they had commercials. Fucking St. Germain.
EDIT: And I have tested it. Came up with stupid things to say in front of speakers a few times, and some have definitely shown up in really bizarre TV ads. I get it, I know why Chewy is advertising to me. But what about the Plant Based Burger commercials I got in a sudden storm for a month? I'm a meat-lover, but decided to talk about plant-based burgers in my living room where the speaker is.