Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Yes, your car will be watching you from the inside.

Self-Driving Cars Won’t Just Watch the World—They’ll Watch You.

However, right now the headlines are more hype than they should be. As with all technology the reasons behind it are slightly different than the public reaction.

I've been to a ton of these conferences and they don't really seem to be putting "cameras" but rather sensors. Probably lazer.  The reasons behind it I think stem more from speech recognition issues.

I guess no matter what your dialect, your face makes the same shapes when you talk. In car speech recognition is especially bad with cabin noise and everything. So they are looking for ways to improve that. Sensors that watch your face are one of them.

Now - technology does morph into other stuff. But for right now, they aren't really "trying" to spy on you. But, I'm sure eventually they will. It just isn't their initial motivation. (allegedly)

2 comments:

  1. I'm fairly certain mine's watching anyway.

    I bought a new vehicle with satellite radio installed -- there was simply no way to get this vehicle without satellite radio pre-installed as an option.

    I didn't like the idea of shelling out for satellite radio, so I ignored the feature and didn't turn it on, until one day I switched on the radio which had been set to satellite radio instead of FM, presumably by the manufacturer.

    Within ten minutes I received an E-mail welcoming me to my trial "membership" for satellite radio.

    My trial "membership" started several months after actually purchasing the vehicle.

    One day when I'm more actively repairing things on this vehicle, I'll purchase the repair manual so I can figure out where precisely I need to snip or terminate the connection to the satellite antenna, if in fact I can do this at all ...

    Until then, I'll never fully trust that it's a "private place" for conversations.

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  2. I don't ~think~ that's possible currently. XM isn't really in the cell phone ecosystem. And the satellites are broadcasting to the earth. Not from the earth to satellite. But I completely understand the paranoia. I have ONstar in Mr S.'s commute car. Sometimes I have to whisper in there. Ya know - in case I go crazy one day. But I'm pretty sure I'm not the murdering kind of crazy. I'm more of a steal heavy equipment and go to town on everything in reach, sort of crazy. When I was growing up someone stole a tank and just started running over buildings and I always thought that if I ever went crazy - that was the way I wanted to do it. And I still feel that way.

    Which is also why when you said you wanted to mod your car - I thought - oooh! Lets figure out how to break this car. But really for now I think you are just being paranoid. Don't wreck your new car.

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