Robots and Privacy

Apple, fresh off of not building a car now plans to focus on home assistant robots. This is generally the kind of thing that I think would be helpful to people. It would aid folks with disabilities or limited mobility, it could be a real time saver around the house, and it would likely augment home health aides and nurses rather than attempt to replace them. Much better than ugly crypto art and Fancy Clippy. But even with all that, I am worried about the implications.

If you own an iPhone, you are being tracked and there is nothing you can do about it. I know that Apple pretends that it is the great protector of privacy, but what it really is the great protector of privacy if the privacy is being invaded by Apple competitors. Apple tracks your personal data and uses it for its own ad system. There is no way out, and they lied about the fact that you could not opt out.

Now imagine that company has a robot in your home that can “see” and “hear”. It will know what you talk about, the lay out of your home, possible what you read and watch, depending on how tightly it is integrated into your home entertainment systems (which almost certainly will be) and likely know a lot about your general level of health and wellness. The idea that they would not track this material is not believable. Some of it may be required to make such a robot work. Amazon’s vaunted check out-less stores actually had cashiers- — they just worked in India remotely. Don’t think this information is valuable? Roomba tried to capture maps of your home and only stopped when caught. The robots may be coming to help you, but given how capitalism works today, they are almost certain to be spying on you as well.

We need serious data protection laws in this country, and we need to outlaw surveillance capitalism and microtargeted ads. Until we do that, every potential tech advance has the potential to destroy your privacy.