If the holidays are over, who’s watching you now? 

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Now that Christmas is over and the people who think Santa watches them have let their guard down, allow me to call your attention to a new source of anxiety: your air fryer is watching you.

Don’t have an air fryer? That’s okay. Your audio speakers are doing the same job. Don’t have either one? Some other household object is ready to fill in. Have you checked the salt shaker lately?

Britain’s oddly named consumer organization, Which?, reports that “data collection [on the products they tested] often went well beyond what was necessary for the functionality of the product – suggesting data could, in some cases, be being shared with third parties for marketing purposes.”

You’re shocked, I know. Me? I’m hard to shock, but the phrase “be being” kind of threw me.

Actually, the air fryer did too, but I guess that’s what you want for a spy–an appliance on one would suspect. 

Which? tested three air fryers, which “wanted permission to record audio on the user’s phone, for no specified reason.” Some asked for the new owner’s gender and date of birth when they set up an account, although Hawley’s Small and Unscientific Survey reports that age and gender don’t often affect cooking times. That’s based on a sample of one: me. I haven’t changed gender but I have gotten older and cooking times have held steady.

The questions aren’t optional. Unless, of course, you don’t bother to set up an account. I don’t have an air fryer myself, so I’m making a wild guess when I say you can probably use the beast without an account. Plug it into the wall. Turn on the heat. Fry air.

Semi-relevant photo: a camellia, blooming away in December. It doesn’t care who you are, how old you are, or even if you have a gender.

Smart watches, on the other hand, aren’t smart unless you agree to the small print. At least one, Huawei’s, wants permissions Which? considers risky, allowing it to bump around inside your phone, record audio, access files, and see what other apps you’ve installed in case it gets lonely and wants to commune with a few like-minded apps. 

It also wants to know your exact location. 

None of that, the company swears, is used for marketing or advertising. And it’s all justified, although how is anyone’s guess. 

Smart speakers are all over the map in terms of what they want to know and I got bored with the details, so if you need to know what your smart speaker’s up to, either assume it’s no good or go read the article. 

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Which? also conducted a survey about the worst holiday presents people were given. The most notable entries were a gravesite and a toilet seat. Probably not to the same recipient or from the same giver, but that’s a guess.

 

On the other hand . . . 

. . . not all technology wants to record our every electronic move. Some wants to help us be better people (as defined by its developers), and in pursuit of that goal Apple and never mind which other firms have created gizmos that can rewrite or summarize our emails before we send them. Presumably with our permission, but don’t count on that being true forever. The goal is to make us sound friendlier and more professional than in fact we are, but AI’s new to the job, so there’ve been a few glitches.

I do love a good glitch.

An email from a woman breaking up with her boyfriend was summarized as, “No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from the apartment.” 

Whatever the original said, we can all agree the improved version’s much friendlier.

The text accompanying a photo of a kid working on a car with his father came out as, “Photo shared of child reaching into car hood; air filter changed.” A series of five emails were summed up as, “Russia launches missile and drone attack; shop early for Black Friday Deals.” And a message from Amazon said,  “Package was delivered tomorrow.”

AI has also been introduced to Ring door cameras. Since it doesn’t have human-generated text to improve, it–

Words fail me, so let’s cut to the example. One sent a message saying, “Dog took boot. Kitten cheese escaped the house.” 

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I don’t think we can blame either AI or a bot for this, but what the hell, it’s vaguely tech related, so I’ll drop it in here: a Swedish government minister’s emails–or possibly her staff’s emails–got loose in the world and informed one and all that she’s terrified of bananas. So much so that her aides sweep rooms before she enters to make sure no bananas can ambush her.

 

What happens when AI cross-pollinates with religion?

A church in Switzerland (full disclosure: that’s not in Britain; neither is Sweden) installed an AI version of Jesus that, unlike the original, can talk to people in 100 different languages. The church was short on space, so they set it up in the confessional, beaming in an image of Jesus as imagined by I have no idea who–my bet is someone northern European and white. Before people used it they were warned not to disclose personal information and had to confirm that, yes, they understood it was an avatar.

Two-thirds of the users said it was a spiritual experience. The other third? One said it was “trite, repetitive, and exuding a wisdom reminiscent of calendar cliches.”

Criticism divided along sectarian lines. Catholics tended to be offended by the use of the confessional and Protestants by the use of imagery. Given the glitches AI’s prone to, the organizers may have had a worry or three about what Mr. J. would say, but disappointingly, he doesn’t seem to have said anything odd. No confabulated Bible quotes. No escaped cheeses. 

No, I’m not going to excavate the joke that’s just under the surface of that last sentence. We’ll move on.

 

Low-tech possibilities

A group called Forest Research has trained a dog to sniff out a disease, Phytophthora ramorum, that’s responsible for thousands of hectares of British trees being felled. It’s spread by rain, and even after 14 years of Conservative government Britain is still rich in rain.

Forest Research hopes to train dogs to spot other pests as well. As for prototype dog–Dog 1.0– he probably thinks he’s just out in the woods having a good time.

52 thoughts on “If the holidays are over, who’s watching you now? ”

  1. Hmm. So far my air fryer has kept its spying credentials under wraps, but I do keep the microphone on the smart speaker switched off now as it does seem to answer questions I haven’t asked which is surprising.But mostly it’s funny when it does that so at least it’s got a sense of humour.

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    • Ah, but a good spy will keep her/his/its/their true activities under wraps. I mean, who knows what it’s really up to under the guise of quietly cooking your food.

      We have (don’t ask me why–I didn’t get it) an Alexa speaker and once or twice it’s piped up, saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that.” To which we said, “We weren’t talking to you.” But it makes me wonder if it understands everything else we say. If I were given to paranoia, I’d lose sleep over that thing.

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  2. There are comical results with the lack of personal information security but it is a serious problem. The new EV VWs are connected to the internet and anyone with limited computer skills can track wherever, whenever, when you charge your VW, and how fast you drive! Is this a good thing? VW executives are not concerned and are dismissing it, but what if the VW owner is a public controversial person like a politician or judge? Then any of their enemies can stalk them and do them harm. How about a stalking ex boyfriend or anyone with criminal intent. Then there is the lawsuit against Apple Siri because conversations picked up by SIRI when the owners did not realize that it was on and the conversations were shared with other companies. All personal information needs more protection from being shared on the net!

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    • My best guess is because no one ever thought to legislate a definition of frying. It must’ve seemed too obvious–like legislating a definition of walking. Who needs it? Hence air fryers.

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  5. The last thing I want is to send friendly emails. If I am emailing some entity, I am usually pissed off (which is almost always, hey, I am an old man).

    Anyways, I use AI on my local machine and when I write an email, I instruct the AI editor to “sound like a hysterical conspiracy nut addressing a city council meeting”.

    And AI responds, “Oh, the usual.”

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  6. I read recently that the scientist who got a Nobel prize for his AI work thinks that the human race has thirty years before AI renders us obsolete ie. extinct. Basically, he says it’s out of our control already and no one is trying to do anything much to sort it, even if they can.

    At my age, anything thirty years hence is unlikely to be much of an issue but I do wonder about some of these scientists and their grasp of reality. They seem to think that everything they investigate and invent is automatically a good thing, when anyone knows that if someone can make a profit by using and misusing these inventions, they will, whether the profit is monetary, personal or political. Tim Berners-Lee has said that he envisaged the internet as a resource for everyone’s good, reducing tensions and increasing international goodwill. Tell that to a child who’s been groomed by a predatory adult online.

    As for our air fryer, I have had to learn how to outwit it as it makes a near-hysterical fuss with high pitched repetitive beeps whenever we use it. (One for on, one for basket choice, one for every degree of temperature change etc). Frankly, if anyone listens to my comments when it’s in use, they should be deeply embarrassed. We haven’t registered it, though, (we don’t register anything we don’t have to, out of inertia), so maybe we’re relatively safe?

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    • A high-pitched beep? I thought that’s what smoke alarms were for. (If our smoke alarm is reporting on us, someone has a deep stash of information about when we turn the oven on.)

      I can easily imagine a scientist–or anyone else, for that matter–getting so caught up in the challenges of what they were working with that they wouldn’t back away to see its dangers. Being smart, I’ve realized, is no guarantee of being wise.

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  7. This is a scary subject, Ellen. I’ve noticed that Siri seems to linger when a question has been answered. I have to tell it to shut off sometimes! My ex whom is the mother of my son and daughter, thought that the speakers for the TV were listening to her – that’s so paranoid! 😂

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  9. I had managed to avoid anything “smart” until last Spring, when a company digging the county’s fiber-optic line cut through the phone cable belonging to the carrier for my landline and internet. It took three weeks to have it fixed, so I gave in and got a low-cost smart phone so I could at least see my emails. It is scarily predictive about what I type or message, although I am such a poor typist I actually kind of welcome it. It is also my first experience with auto-correct, which is hilarious. Whoever is monitoring my phone hears a lot of cussing not necessarily directed at the phone.

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    • Someone who leave comments here calls that auto-corrupt, which is as hilarious as auto-correct itself. My partner sent me a text recently calling me Allen. It took me a while to figure out who she was talking about.

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  10. Thanks, Ellen, this gave me such a lift first thing this morning with my coffee in bed, and now I’ve enjoyed it again. One of your best.

    Replacing the priest with an AI Jesus seems odd. Almost as though the church officials don’t believe congregants can talk to the real one anytime they want.

    Some of these ideas could cross-pollinate further, I feel. Ivor, the tree-disease sniffing dog, might detect bananas more efficiently for the Swedish minister, for instance. AI avatars could stand in for real politicians at their constituency surgeries to see if people like asking them questions and get better answers. What about a smart speaker for the House of Commons instead of one that just goes, “Order!”? Intelligent air-fryers could definitely make a lot better kitten cheese, probably without it escaping.

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    • As a card-carrying (and sometimes cat-carrying) cat love, I was disturbed at the idea of kitten cheese. I’d need to be assured that no kittens are harmed in its making. Other than that, though, I don’t see any problems with this. At this point, AI can promise anything without having to deliver–a bit like politicians there–so it would be a great fit. Thank you for your brilliant insights.

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  11. For some reason, this post made me think of my grandma’s neighbor, Mrs. Burke. She rarely left her house but somehow knew everything that was going on in the neighborhood. My parents had a similar neighbor, Mr. Aldrich. They didn’t have the reach of technology, but they were very good at spreading stories locally.

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  12. I’m looking forward to the day when my fridge detects the identity of the Apple Watch wearer who takes the last scoop of mint chip ice cream from the freezer, then messages my car to not allow said ice cream thief to drive anywhere other than the grocery store until said ice cream is replaced. #FoiledAfterTonightsDinner.

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  13. Thank you for some much-needed chuckles, Ellen!!! As re AI, I stay as far away from it as possible. I have long said it will ultimately be used by evil people for nefarious purposes. Maybe that explains why the air fryer I received as a gift two years ago has never been used!!!

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  14. There’s a part of me that wants to shout from the rooftops, (about ‘smart’ features on everything – probably on someone’s toilet paper telling them how to wipe) that people don’t have to use these things if they don’t want to.

    I don’t because in these degenerate times at least 2 things are true now. One – the amount of new appilances being manufactured that aren’t alt-dumb is vanishingly small, and 2 – to deconstruct this ‘data is god’ mess we find ourselves in would require a degree of critical thinking that is also sadly vanishing in these degenerate times.

    The only spot of good news in the whole damn thing is that there are 8-ish billion people in the world and only a small percentage of them are into this nonsense. (too busy surviving) … the down side of that bit of good news is those who are tend to be the ones who have the power to make it seem as though the whole 8 billion of us want the great ‘dream’ are in the drivers seat. (and you can never find the ejection button when you need it)

    The up-side is …

    … and so on it goes. I’ll stop here with, ‘humans are weird’. :)

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    • I can never tell what people are going to like. I didn’t think it was a particularly good post, although I did laugh at my own joke about frying air. If you can’t laugh at your own jokes, how can you expect anyone else to?

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  17. For this reason, I just bought a low-tech manual transmission car, the last dinosaur in usa (btw less carbon producing that an electric SUV, all told) that promises to last longer than I do. Cats not dogs (always up one’s arse anyway.) Also, no doorbell. When you come to visit, dear, you’ll have to knock.

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    • I’m old enough that I learned how to knock on a door all those many years ago, so I’ll be happy to. I even learned how to drive a stick shift, motivated by a tale of some New Yorkers who robbed an armored truck, discovered it was a stick shift, got caught in traffic, and because they weren’t used to a clutch stalled the thing out and flooded it, disappearing on foot with as much money as they could carry and leaving the truck open. This being New York, everyone (or if not everyone, enough people) helped themselves and also disappeared. The moral of the story seemed to be, learn to drive a stick shift, and I did. Although I admit I never did rob an armored truck.

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  20. I quite honestly don’t know whether to laugh, or quote 1984.
    I am amused by this, but also. . . It is rather disturbing how much we are being spied on, isn’t it?
    Also, thank y’all for making my afternoon so much funnier. I need a good dose of humor every now and again. (Or every day. Every hour. Humor is good.)

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    • It is disturbing. We’re living through dark times, and a mix of humor and anger and a few quotes from 1984 doesn’t seem like an unreasonable way to get through. I used to wonder what it was like for my parents when the Nazis were taking over more and more of the world. (I’m roughly a thousand years old, so for me that’s not so far away.) These days I think I understand how it was. Someone or other recommended optimism of the will and pessimism of the intellect. It doesn’t sound like an unreasonable mix.

      Hang in there.

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