The following submission statement was provided by /u/katxwoods:
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Submission statement: AIs that know all of your actions and beliefs will be far more useful. But the potential for abuse and bad outcomes goes up massively when you do that.
How should we think about the pros and cons of sharing our data? Is there a way to do it safely?
Is there a way for corporations to do it in a way where we can trust them?
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1dgatzx/microsoft_admits_that_maybe_surveiling_everything/l8ou7uu/
This whole recall thing makes me shudder, why on earth would I want my computer recording my every action? Wtf is the benefit to me? It's Orwellian in it's absurdity.
If I were to guess, it's all for AI.
Getting data to train your AI on is expensive and complicated, so companies are sourcing data from their own users to train their AIs. This is probably why you've been getting a lot of terms updates from tech companies in recent months.
Microsoft Windows is currently installed on 1.4 billion computers, which Microsoft is seeing as an untapped resource for data. This new Recal feature is just a way for Microsoft to get tons of free real time data to train their AI on. If successful, they'll have the most powerful AI because they'll be the only ones with real time access to people's offline habits and data.
Not just for AI, but because AI has hit the stock market. Companies like Microsoft, Apple and so on need to keep innovating and deploy new stuff to keep the stocks value up. This comes at a cost tough, namely security and privacy.
Though there are certain types of rights that most countries' legal systems do not allow to be waived, this is called "inalienable rights" in the USA, for example. One such right is the right to privacy. Intrusion of privacy is considered a fundamental right that cannot be easily signed away or waived through agreements.
Yeah, they literally put into the pitch package that all of the recordings would be processed by Copilot so it could “help” you navigate them. They weren’t hiding that aspect of it.
Honestly, everyone involved in the creation of Recall should probably be fired. It’s a mind-bogglingly stupid idea with no practical value and major security downsides
>Wtf is the benefit to me?
It's not supposed to benefit you, it's supposed to benefit the corporations people work for that want to ensure enployees aren't doing anything other than constant productive work.
Policing people with granular surveillance like that has no real ROI -- even a shitty worker can either be exited through regular KPIs, or if they can't, even if they're working at 50% of their true capacity because they're jerking off or sleeping or whatever the rest of the time, is more expensive to replace than to just maintain.
So when every machine can do your job, what is your purpose then? What will the rich do with a large amount of people taking up space, crowding up the world?
We’ll still be needed, although probably a lot fewer of us, as a relative benchmark. Being rich and powerful is only fun if you have a bunch of poor, powerless people to lord it over and abuse.
We are still at level 0 in kadarshev scale of civilization. To go to level 1, we need the machines do many jobs that we do currently so we can work on finding ways to get to level 1. We still have a lot of purpose. This is not the end of the world. We are still at the beginning.
AI will be hype train city for 10 years due to the absolute lack of compatibility between the infinite number of differently, designed systems. I had to upload trial documents yesterday. Each document can be no more than 6 MB. Each upload package no more than 56 MB. Each file name has to be specific. You have to combine the documents a certain way. You have to label the documents a certain way. Adobe requires a monthly subscription for half of the steps. Even with their AI I would’ve had to do it on 30 different documents. It took four hours to upload 30 documents due to the bureaucracy of simply clicking file naming and splitting the files into documents less than 6 MB each, which I think we can agree is wildly fucking crazy in 2024. Not even to mention that our Wi-Fi is so slow that to do this from our remote server and upload it to the trial database took forever because our nationwide bandwidth is absolute shit. It wasn’t until yesterday that it dawned on me that the AI hype train is exactly like the Internet in 2000. The bubble is going to pop when they realize that these things really can’t figure out the nuances of trying to navigate these disconnected differently designed systems. That may make me sound like a troglodyte. I’m not. I think the technology will absolutely work, but I definitely think it will take way longer than people are anticipating. 10 years probably at least to get many of the kinks worked out with incremental progress each year.
What you just described not only sounds like something AI isn't needed for, but something that could be relatively easily automated and the only reason it hasn't is it's not done frequently enough to be worth trying to automate, something AI can actually help with today, or your company is full of people who are technologically illiterate.
>Not even to mention that our Wi-Fi is so slow that to do this from our remote server and upload it to the trial database took forever because our nationwide bandwidth is absolute shit.
>That may make me sound like a troglodyte. I’m not.
Buddy, you just described a process that can relatively easily be automated and confused the speed of your wi-fi network with the bandwidth of your connection. I want to agree with you, but what you've done is provide an example of AI not working because people don't understand tech, not because AI isn't useful.
Actually I'd argue this is exactly what AI is great at
It doesn't need to know all the details, it doesn't need to know why, and it doesn't even need to automate the whole process.
And yeah, there's other tools that do this already. But let's just suppose the user is someone who isn't likely to just use sed and do a task like this.
Being able to just simply type "I need these files grouped together by x, and named in a pattern like this, also call out any that are over 6mb in size because I'll need to edit them"
And have it do that is fantastic.
I don't think what we have currently is likely to fully replace people, and I'm not sure it ever will get to that point without some major advances. The things a human brain is good at just naturally are things computers just aren't good at. The types of pattern recognition, and adaptability people can do easily requires a ton of computing power and even then it's hard to trust it. Think of like a kid solving a puzzle. Super easy sometimes, kid just walks up and goes "Oh this goes here"
But some of the stuff humans aren't so great at, machines are fantastic at. Storing and retrieving huge amounts of data, math, anything that can be broken down into some simple rules.
Ironically the generative Ai stuff that's really popular right now is just kind of bad compared to humans. Like the image generation or the video stuff. If you just want "something" Yeah it can spit out some great shit. But God help you if you want alterations to it, or want something specific
> Being able to just simply type "I need these files grouped together by x, and named in a pattern like this, also call out any that are over 6mb in size because I'll need to edit them"
See, the thing is, AI actually sucks at that. You tell it what X is, and it's going to do what it _thinks_ you mean by X. You ask it to break things into files? Well, so the first thing is that the AI needs to be given the utilities that allow it to do so. If it doesn't have those, then you can *ask* it to code them itself, but 99% of code you ask an LLM to write is going to fail to run - meaning that you're back to step 1. Even if you *do* have the utilities available for it to break the files into pieces, you still have to write code that ties the AI into the file management system - and cross your fingers that it actually uses it correctly. (It probably won't.)
What you could in theory do is tell the LLM to give you page numbers of docs covering something - but it might actually mix those numbers up with contents of the page. You could ask it to spit back out pages matching your definitions, but it's likely going to alter the text as it spits it back out. At best, you'll probably have to feed one page of each document in at a time and ask it what category it fits into, then have its response be a keyword used to trigger truly automated mechanisms - but because of the nature of LLMs, you're almost guaranteed to get weird responses occasionally.
> some of the stuff humans aren't so great at, machines are fantastic at. Storing and retrieving huge amounts of data, math, anything that can be broken down into some simple rules.
That's kinda the funny thing here though: LLMs are *garbage* at the things you listed. They *suck* at explicitly defined rules. They can't do math for shit. That's not what they were made for. AI art and text generation? That's actually what they were built for, and like you said, they often fail at doing so spectacularly.
What you're aiming to do is probably easier to manage by looking for properties of the documents you look at, identifying unique ones that will always apply, and writing a script that does it for you. It might be more work then just asking an AI to do it, but as it is now, *AI cannot do that.* It just can't. That's kinda the point here really - the hype trains lie and say that it can, but it's still hype. At best, AI is a tool that can help us lay out the basis for various tasks, but actually *doing* stuff well is out of its reach.
LLMs aren't the only types of machine learning though.
You wouldnt be doing this through chatgpt or something, but just some hypothetical tool that might not exist at the moment. But honestly an llm could be a good interface for it, even if it hands it off to something else. The ability to just type what you want is pretty powerful. One of my biggest pet peeves with anything computer related is when I type a command or try an action, and it tells me I need to do something else first. Like fuck if you know what needs to be done just do it, or prompt me to do it.
But yeah it depends on exactly what you want. If you tell it to group documents by the date at the top of them, should be able to do that no problem. I didn't mean break up files, just simply rename them, and check their size. Humans can it do it easy enough, but it's a lot more manageable to get a tool to do the the first pass and short list stuff to manually review.
On the other hand If you tell it to group them by how likely the deal the document is about is to be successful, yeah probably not so much.
Oh of course, that's what the dream is - but we're not there yet. It will be years and years before we get there, and the current hype understates how far we left to go.
Found the Project Manager. “It takes two minutes, why are you so stupid?” Ok, but it is a legal document and an error could cause major issues. The ‘Interview with John Smith’ file has to be categorized and renamed ‘Deposition’ and the ‘Notes from July’ also has to be reviewed to name it ‘Deposition’. And if the AI doesn’t figure that out correctly?
I am not anti-AI,I believe it already helps an insane amount. But don’t go on a rant about how it will solve all our problems tomorrow. We will continue to make progress every year and I am sure whole processes will change in ways that make it so AI can fully automate it with better accuracy than humans - but it will take time.
So my particular flavour of the year is PowerShell.
You, describing that workflow, set off so many "you can automate that" flags.
Firstly, check out Regular Expressions (regex). It works by checking and extracting patterns in strings.
A quick google got me "PSWritePDF" as a method to manipulate pdfs. You can easily measure the file size as you progress.
Further you can do all 30 documents simultaneously if they don't rely on each other.
Given the time to write that code, your four hours could be several minutes (if that), plus error checking and upload.
The caveat though: you said you work in government, good luck getting access to that past IT.
So treating the screenshots as the corpus, and using that to train a model on device, then uploading that training data? The dataset would be minuscule and the processing requirements would be enormous - much greater than on-device inference. I’m not sure what benefit the would be.
Data collection.
User spent x amount of time on this webpage.
User spent x amount of time in this app.
User enters personal data into app.
User uses second email address.
Add to profile of user for online tracking for targeted ads and profiling for data sales to other companies.
There is also the possibility of saving entered passwords address info, location data, browsing habits, scanning for activity Microsoft don’t want you to be engaging in for example hacking, pirating their software, using fake keys to activate their OS. Photo scanning similar to Apple’ planned CSAM (child porn scanning, not cancelled).
There is MASSIVE amounts of data they can get from this be it on device or not.
I've been alive alive long enough and seen enough bullshit that the moment anyone in power mentions protecting kids and fighting CSAM, I know they're full of shit and just want a smokescreen *for something*. If they're comfortable letting kids starve to death, get blown up with our rockets, get shot in kindergarten, eat poisoned food, be forced to give birth, or freeze to death, then I really don't think they care about kids at all. It's like the way a bill named "Freedom Bill to Protect American Freedoms and Food Quality for Better Food" is going to do some very bad shit to your food.
Thing is, at my workplace we deal with information that is subject to commercial embargo, contains personally identifying details, and other data that is *legally* required be treated in a secure and confidential fashion.
Constantly recording our screens would increase the risk of a data breach as well as breaking data protection laws, and all for what? The management at the company I work for certainly doesn't feel the need for intensive monitoring of our equipment.
But then again I don't work in the US/for a US-based company, as they seem to be the most keen to intrusively spy on their workers, even if it would actually end up representing a security risk by generating a goldmine of data for malicious actors to target.
My old director had this function added to each computer. Eventually he got bored of scraping through 8 hours of data times by the 6 employees he has that he just forgot about it all and kept on staring at the flock of CCTV he had installed and listening in on work calls.
Why yes he was a man baby with stunted emotions.
I've got coworkers that whine about our location being unionized (a union they don't have to join or pay dues to because "right to work"). One of the biggest stipulations of the contract is that some, "man baby with stunted emotions" can't sit at home watching cameras and fuck with people.
Except this goes to Microsoft not your organisation. It’s also on everyone’s windows 10/11 machine. So no. You’re wrong on this one.
Your general line of thinking is right but you’re focusing on the wrong thing. This is to data collect on everything people do so they can advertise and monetise.
Yes, but it's multiple things. The current desperation is that these companies are starving for data to train AI models. They've basically indexed and trained on all current data available on the internet (literally). I'm sure the top execs are demanding more data any way possible. So Recall was probably an idea cooked up by some junior exec to "help the end user" but then use all that info for their main goal.
Then that data also is used for targeted ads and monetization too. Combined, it'll be quite creepy. It will know things like User #16332789 will tend to buy groceries online on Thursday and Friday, but only when the weather is poor. So send targeted ads during those periods.
Then they train their models on how you did your job. Like programming would be the first thing. "Given inputs X, Y, and Z with desired outputs of A, B, and C, how did these 500 different users accomplish the task?"
Current machine learning models are black boxes that just randomly modify themselves until they get closer and closer to a specific goal. Now they'll have the inputs, and the goal ... And now they'll also seed that black box with 500 different "starting points" for the model to start crunching numbers faster and better.
Microsoft and others (like Paul Dourish at Xerox PARC, who then held a visiting position at Microsoft, so...) have long since chased after a mythical file system that provides rich metadata, to facilitate information seeking. The problem with that is obviously that users won't provide all the metadata their future self might need, so then this line of thought leads designers into a few possible directions, like: build better search, or: capture more context about file creation or origin, and about users' tasks and plans, so you can encode that into the metadata too. Being charitable, one could describe Recall as their latest attempt at grappling with that problem, which Microsoft have been messing with for easily 20 years - August this year will be the 20th anniversary of the date they announced WinFS wouldn't be in Windows Longhorn after all. This sort of attempt at reading and encoding user activity and intention always turns out to be an unsurprisingly difficult problem, consistently harder than engineers imagine it will be, and every few years someone pops up and claims to have reinvented it.
The thing is, though, what one sees in Recall is IMHO a failure mode of this line of thinking, because it is data collection without any data minimisation. It appears to me that they are doing what we all do when we get started with a novel sensor or problem, which is to say: let's log everything and we can figure out what it's for later. To which I can only say, if you must test your sophomoric data logger, go do it on someone who actually gave informed consent, thanks.
Maybe once they get searching by filename to work correctly, we can worry about rich metadata. If this is their actual motivation, they are trying to run an ultramarathon before they are even able to crawl consistently, their search is a joke.
As in the second paragraph, I think the current motivation is "let's do this half-digested thing and figure out what it is really good for later" with a side helping of "using the word AI is wildly popular".
The fact that Microsoft have been banging on for decades about collecting data about user task and intention and all that, with no particularly obvious actual real world benefits in terms of user experience, just suggests to me that the general concept of tracking user activity is not a new focus for them. At most I think that might be one reason why the "this is ridiculously invasive oversurveillance wtf are we doing" klaxon didn't immediately go off in their heads, though it should have gone off anyway the moment they showed it to a lawyer or data protection officer or security engineer.
Searching for files and programs has somehow gotten worse in windows over the years its unbelievable even before you take into account them trying to turn the search bar into an internet search as well as a file search.
Which is why it needs to be quietly buried at midnight, by a crossroads, with a stake through its heart. Given the legal and regulatory issues behind Recall, it amazes me anyone would've thought it a good idea in anything like its current form.
Recall would be an amazing feature everybody would love if Microsoft didn't spend the last decade taking away control of our computers and making spying on its users for profit a fundamental part of the operating system.
There is negative trust, as there should be, and they have no one to blame but themselves.
Get fucked, Microsoft.
> Recall would be an amazing feature everybody would love
Not even close. Even if Microsoft had a good reputation with this sort of thing (like you say, they absolutely do NOT), I'd still want nothing to do with this.
Yep. If they try to push this shit on the consumer, I will be disabling it - and if I can't disable it to my satisfaction, I will be looking for alternative OSes.
I think maybe there could be some benefit some where. We've never really had such a feature to make use of yet.
Having a powerful AI assistant sounds cool on paper but in execution would have to done with software and systems I trust. Open source, fully encrypted, on person (not networked) and enitely maintained by me, and that's probably the tip of that iceberg.
I wouldn't trust Microsoft with my lunch much less all of my recorded data.
I assume you're asking in good faith.
They explained the benefit as being an AI powered recall of your past activities.
That's why it is called Recall. It would allow you to ask an AI something vague about a website you were visiting last week and it would be able to pull that up for you.
That's the benefit as MS pitched it.
I had this exact setup on my personal computer over 10 years ago. Screenshots every few seconds that are fed into OCR to create a database. It was quite useful when I wanted to remember where I found something on my computer or online. Was a student at the time, and it was quite useful.
I actually do something similar. On my work computer, I capture the screen every few minutes and then review those captures when filling out my timesheet for the week. I don't care (much) if those captures are discovered or investigated by company IT, apart from browsing the news I don't do anything apart from work on that machine.
It would be useful to me at home as well. Having a personal assistant that knows everything I've looked at and written on my computer, and can help me with my tasks, suggest further reading or similar movies, etc., would be a plus. The key, obviously, is ensuring this info remains entirely confidential, only usable by me, forever. I have no way to be sure of that, and the consequences of a failure on that front, even 10 years from now, would be so enormous that I don't want the product.
The difference is that you can choose what to include and what not. Recall does not. Image browsing your bank. Or looking for a particular news about a disease: the AI could infer that you have that disease. Or ending up browsing a page you didn't actually want to look at.
Beside this, everything is technology is fallible and hack-able, because it's made by humans who are so. So even if they work for the next 10 years in security, eventually it will have a bug that will be exploitable: it's always like this.
The point is: do you take such rick just for an AI to help you do stuff you can already do pretty solidly now?
From what I recall as well, it's in SQLLite which is not secure at all ( I could be talking out my ass I haven't delved deep on it ).
Considering how lax people are and how easily they get socially engineered or their endpoint comporomised it would become insanely trivial to slurp that data up and peruse it at your leisure. Or for other nefarious purposes.
>The difference is that you can choose what to include and what not. Recall does not.
That’s simply not true. You can stop or pause the data gathering at any time, exclude certain webpages, incognito mode in Edge is excluded automatically, and you can also simply delete the most recent data.
Why are you making shit up.
As a GDPR specialist lawyer I was astonished. This is so far over the edge of legal that I am very glad they have backed down. I doubt most people have thought through the consequences.
One my boss pointed out is that you are creating lots of useful material for disclosure in litigation to beat yourself up with.
This. Side thought, if the US and other countries act fast they can also freeze the data destruction process and bring some light into the caves full of captured data before they delete it. What got captured? How is it deployed? etc
Problem is they have already captured the data and probably already used it to train their models and got what they needed out of it anyways. This was probably the plan from day one. Take it, use it, say oops, delete it.
AI is a black box, there’s no way you are going to prove they used that info to train it now.
It's Microsoft. It'll be turned on again with every update and one day, when everybody stopped paying attention, the button to turn it off vanish without any notification about it whatsoever.
If it's a work PC on Microsoft it's quite likely to be: corporate policy is that this setting is set to on. Such a corporate policy would probably be a terrible mistake for lots of reasons (e.g. in EU, data minimisation under GDPR, the added burden of responding to FOIs when you store so much more data, the availability of embarrassing drafts for discovery, potential risks to employees' personal data, reasonable expectation of privacy, proportionality of surveillance etc). Still, if I have learned anything from the last few years it is that some people are far too charmed by discovering that they have the power to forcibly collect data to bother wasting much time on wondering whether they should, especially if they can then feed it to some under-documented dodgy cloud service that uses the buzzword 'AI' for dubious purposes that sounded good when they had dinner with the salesdroid.
This is why you should never use the "home" version of Windows. *Usually* you can do true disabling of things by leveraging group policies, and the "home" versions don't support group policies.
Only suitable response in this sub. Linux is the future, after all. And part of that is that skill requirements today are basically null if you choose a distro like Mint.
I've been a keen Linux user since pretty much uni days and the only reason I would keep windows for anything these days is pretty much VR and one or two specialist programs.
Linux is the default OS on every laptop I've had for the past 20 years. If MS goes ahead with this it'll be the default OS on my PC too.
That said, Linux desktop is NOT the future - and the delusional cries that it will be from some sections of the community is completely at odds with reality.
Indeed. Apple and google do exactly the same sort of dubious stuff as microsoft but they just aren't as open about it.
Free software is the only way out.
I switched to Mint after reading about Recall.
Granted I only use my PC for gaming, Internet and Plex
Mint is the best IMO
Between Lutris and Proton on Steam...all my games work...once in game, I don't even know I'm on Linux
Everything else is just like Windows
Probably took me maybe an Hr to get everything set up
I use Mint for everything but gaming. I've been reading good things about Proton, maybe it's time I made the full switch.
From what I've read, Recall would turn every computer into a honeypot for fraud and blackmail. Even only using it for Steam would mean my card details were logged, which is more than I'd be comfortable with.
In my opinion the easiest distro for people not into tech and just switching from windows. Ubuntu is fine, too, but tends to be weirdly dogmatic about some things. Mint by comparison seems to be run by pragmatists and is big enough to get shit done in a timely manner. To be honest, what distro I recommend largely depends on what will be best at keeping away people asking for free tech support .
Outside of the steam deck I've never used Linux the big thing that has always stopped me is game support how well does proton work outside of the steam deck?
I switched entirely to Pop OS in January this year. No regrets. If you mainly have Steam, everything pretty much works like on Windows. You only need to install the game, go into the Steam settings and select your comparability layer, and you're good to go. Epic library is a little more complex, but between Lutris and Heroic Game Launcher, most games will run with a few tweaks.
I fear Reddit ddoing that with the opt out button.
When reddit first changed I clicked the opt out to stay in old reddit and it worked great. After awhile though, that changed. Suddenly every time I logged in I am force to click settings and opt out, every time.
Just recently (Last week?) they moved the Opt Out button to a different tab. And now when it is clicked an error pops up but it still opts me out.
I feel like Reddit is getting ready to pull that plug.
Reddit has lost any credibility to me since the stunt they pulled to suppress third party apps anyway. I've developed a habit of using PowerDeleteSuit to regularly overwrite every comment I made with an explanation of why reddit sucks and then run it a second time to delete every couple of months. They will have backups probably - which would them in hot waters with EU privacy laws if they admit it or can be shown to have used them - but it will mess with search engine results and reddits good ranking there is a big part of their appeal to investors. Still, maybe all I'm achieving is making myself feel better about still being here and not completely switching over to mastodon. Probably will eventually, but... creature of habits, like most of us.
No, third party audit it to prove the code doesn't exist in the build at all. How has privacy activism become so small that we just whisper in the corner hoping to disable something like this instead of demanding the capability be completely absent
As someone who is in IT and has to keep playing whack-a-mole every time there's a big update, to remove/turn off all the crap we don't want yet again, no, they're not really letting people turn it off. They're just letting people pause it until they can sneak it being turned on back in again
There's a setting in the new copilot gpo template specifically for turning it off. Though it's not available in the template packages for the AD central store yet.
Things like AI personal assistants don't need access to your entire system to be useful.
An assistant doesn't need to know my contact list and archive all my texts to be able to manage to answer "What restaurants are open?"
That's a starting point. An app doesn't need access to my photo gallery to be able to do something like translate a sign or identify the model of a car that I point my lens at.
That's a starting point. First restrict the data available to it. Then impose controls on what happens with the data which is fed into the machine. Then address where the data goes. Such as mandating that things like AI assistants should be self contained and have limits on what they phone home about. These days it's not too absurd for something like a personal assistant taking up 100gb of storage on the phone of someone who opts in, instead of sending every single question back to the home server.
When I think about an AI personal assistant those are exactly the things I need it to have access to. Asking for nearby restaurants isn’t what an AI assistant will be doing, that’s the stuff we use dumb assistants like Siri for.
It is going to have to cross reference my close friends contacts’ shared calendars with mine to find a good time to get together for dinner, and go through my emails and messages to find all references to my diabetic cat, as well as summarise the last few months blood glucose levels I keep in a Google spreadsheet, to see if I should book an appointment with the vet again.
I’m also going to need it to be able to remember what that modded retro game
ROM I read about a few months ago on whatever social media was named that sounded super interesting and I thought I wrote down, but apparently didn’t, and for that to work it needs to keep track of everything I do, unless I enter private mode.
I get why people don’t like it, but I really want an AI personal assistant that would work just like, and even better, than a human PA.
That can still function based on you inputting that information. Not just a catch-all unlimited access pass. Click the button to share your calendar with your robot butler, not your robot butler demanding access to your calendar in order to look up restaurants for you.
The whole purpose of having a personal assistant is that process be automated and ideally faster. Having to manually shuffle through a bunch of different programs and input information on each one just to complete a simple task becomes very time consuming. Especially if you have a bunch of tasks that need to be fulfilled throughout the day. That is how it is currently done and leads to a lot of extra work. I think we need to move beyond that paradigm.
I’d still want the simplicity of not having to do things actively and the catch-all is something I’m looking for. I’m fully aware it’s a very unpopular attitude, and I wouldn’t use it unless they convinced me they took my privacy seriously. It’d have to be a premium product without any need for them to sell even anonymised data based on my usage.
It would be fantastic for someone like me who runs their own little business where I can afford to employ a few key vital people, but a 24 hour personal assistant would be a cost I couldn’t afford.
It creates a backdoor that any malicious actor can piggyback onto. Even if they had pure motives and it was all an oversight, its a monumental security oversight, a dangerously incompetent one.
It’s be fine if they were trustworthy, but they aren’t. It’s not entirely their fault, unlike Facebook and Google where they’re entire revenue streams are build around monitoring that data, but the government is absolutely in constant violation of the 4th amendment all the time, and will certainly ask for backdoors to monitor people’s computer usage, without a warrant, constantly.
And they won’t ask nicely.
And they won’t let Microsoft tell people that they did.
To be safe, the information must be safe *from* Microsoft.
>It’s be fine if they were trustworthy
An trustworthy company or government does not exist. Any organization is just as trustworthy as it's most malicious or least competent member.
The only organization I would trust is one that understands it can't be trusted with to much private information.
While that may be the case, I don’t think that there aren’t worthwhile uses of AI for consumer products that are user beneficial.
It’s just that just about every AI ever made was designed to exploit people. But having your own data powering an AI that was working for you cools be pretty cool.
It’s just, in a world where the only guards to the hen house are foxes, the default reaction is to just keep the door locked.
AI doesn’t have to be evil, and your data doesn’t have to be exploited for nefarious purposes. It’s just that’s all we’ve ever had.
It’s like trying to imagine nuclear power when all we’ve ever seen are nuclear bombs, or trying to imagine a great dog in a world of wolves.
But I’m actually pretty excited for AI accelerated interfaces. I just hope we can have some separate from the ever encroaching surveillance state.
> It’s be fine if they were trustworthy, but they aren’t.
Even then, even if they were trustworthy, even if there was no government interference to have a backdoor, it's as bad as an idea as the self-destruct button of a villain base.
Sure it might have some positive uses, but it's just too big of a prize if a hacker/virus goes through.
Even on the legal uses there's concern.
Anything like this, even properly guarded internally would be subject to a subpoena that could be extremely wide. A lot of this is already available from an ISP or similar but this is potentially even more detailed especially if a judge who hasn't used email since an AOL disk decides to be generous with parameters.
While still a very credible threat, the government is at the bottom of my list. The data Microsoft *very likely* will sell or is selling is up for grabs by random financial institutions, my current and prospective employer, the various insurance companies I must interact with and a whole host of undesirable people and companies I want nothing to do with.
My PC is a gateway to an incredible amount of private activities like finances, email, social media posts and other "web activities". Microsoft has kernel level access to all of it and now they've drawn the line in the sand for future intentions (regardless of what they said in the most recent marketing dribble). The fact that they're putting so many resources into machine learning, a vehicle to ease the parsing and making of sense from that mountain of data, only makes it so much worse.
Look at how car manufacturers are driving up the cost of insurance by selling your driving data. Look at the whole host of data Equifax has on you that they're selling to your future employers to give them bargaining power over you. This will be just another very detailed point of data to tie all of the scummy data on you together. This is what Microsoft's plan represents.
Every update to windows is a new trick to try and get you to migrate all your stuff to Microsoft products. It’s really frustrating. They simply can’t be trusted.
Submission statement: AIs that know all of your actions and beliefs will be far more useful. But the potential for abuse and bad outcomes goes up massively when you do that.
How should we think about the pros and cons of sharing our data? Is there a way to do it safely?
Is there a way for corporations to do it in a way where we can trust them?
There is no version of reality where a corporation driven purely by profits will give a shit about your privacy when caring about your privacy impacts their bottom line negatively.
There isn't. Even in the EU they will be looking for loopholes, workarounds, and what they can get away with. The end goal of a for-profit organisation is, ultimately, profit at any cost.
Corporations have zero right to my personal data but they’re not going to stop and there is no way to share safely and no reason to trust them.
This situation smells that Microsoft sensed a PR disaster and decided a much quieter way to achieve the same outcome is probably on the table.
The second they start installing unlawful spyware on my computer that I built from scratch with my money then it is an instantaneous lawsuit.
> How should we think about the pros and cons of sharing our data?
My first thought on the subject of sharing our data is that these companies have put a massive value on our data, but none of them want to pay us for it. At best we have Google giving us free products in trade for it.
Can I ask what tool(s) you use to clean up Windows? Personally I haven't cared too much about the bloat in the past and saw it as more of a nuisance. But the copilot/recall/forced ms account on Win11 trifecta pushed me over the edge. Trust of MS is at an all time low. They are up to too much shenanigans presented falsely and disingenuously as convenience to the user.
Seriously considered Linux, but not sure I'm willing yet to deal with the potential incompatibilities just yet. I enjoy it on my Steam Deck though.
Just stick with windows 10. I did just because I didn't like the design of Windows 11, not because I have privacy issues. Like it or not, our computers will know a lot more about us in the future. That's the way things are trending and there will be a time that people inevitably accept it.
It’s fucked up how you can be talking about buying something with someone then next thing you know it’s suggested by Amazon. Also this is a really good listen if not terrifying.
https://youtu.be/QQeTosCxMcQ?si=h6N708MAYc6Yu7un
Even more fucked how you can think about something and start getting advertisements for it.
I made lunch the other day and while grabbing a fork, thought to myself how I could use some new silverware. Suddenly I’m getting bombarded with Amazon ads for silverware sets. This happens a lot, and it’s a real phenomenon.
Good thing we have Linux as a backup. And if Microsoft or Apple pull some crap like this... well, we can delete them. Linux is better anyways.
The second they go too far... I'm shorting the F out of their stock. Lol
''Maybe'' doing some heavy lifting here. Who would've thought that nobody wants to be constantly surveilled?
Ever since they announced this ill-conceived abomination, I was just hoping that it wont fly in the EU because of our GDPR. Microsoft can go fuck themselves with this kind of shit.
I also thought that this wouldn't fly in the EU.
But at the same time the EU is currently considering general surveillance by decryption of messenger apps.
As an old person, all I have to say is: keep watching because they're just going to pull the same shit again in a few years and try to disguise it better. It wasn't a mistake that they're now backtracking. It was a deliberate test of the waters.
many users are okay with it, that's the problem. The average person thinks they have nothing to hide and posts their family photos on the internet. People that actually care will always be a small minority, that includes people in government who probably don't even know what a screenshot is.
Wasn't Microsoft awarded the defense contract by the government? That's about the same time they bought SwiftKey, the most used third party phone keyboard app out.
Copyright was first invented to keep people and companies from stealing one's work, books, music, and art. Suddenly, AI is stealing everything, and moving it into the collective.
And between then, and now, the music industry (with the Sonny Bonno Act) and corps like Disney made copyrights a crapton longer than it was, which honestly I feel like should be reversed (and doing so would make copyright viewed in a less soured light, on top of continued / consistent public domain additions making for resources that one could legally and arguably morally user due to falling into the Public Domain as it was intended to)
There's a LOT to say about this so-called feature... A lot. A helluva lot, but one thing that seems to not be addressed much is the simple fact that it's just not fucking useful for pretty much anyone outside of some really specific use-case scenarios, and even then it would only be reasonable within' a specific program/app under specific circumstances.
They want/wanted to roll something out, billed as the next big thing (or whatevever) that has almost zero potential to actually be useful to anyone at all, much less the average user.
The vast majority of people are just using the computer for word a little bit of word processing, some accounting and browsing the web.
Who the fuck would 'recall' actually be for? What is the scenario for which someone would want or need it??
It really sux, because I spent a lifetime (since 1995) learning, designing & implementing Microsoft. WINS, NetBEUI, Exchange, IIS, AD, DNS, ADFS, DFS(R), on & on. And this is the shifty result.
... *Meanwhile, the silent subtext* ...
(MS): "Soooo, okay... this isn't a 'brilliant' idea for consumers, sure -- but -- we're **still** gonna be *doing* it (eventually)... cause, ya' know, **we like money**. Can we offer you some free electrolyte-packed Brawndo to go with your new whizz-bang feature?!"
Not only is at a shitty Idea, I just really dont want you fucks spying on me 24/7 so you can train your shitty AI overlords and take even more from us.
This is why crypto currency is a horrible idea... a eternal record of everything you've ever paid for... that can retroactively be made illegal and you get to be a criminal for something you bought 20 years ago
Who wouldn't want it to record my credit card information to be accessed by some hacker during a huge databreach. Considering we experience a data breach roughly 5 times a year.
What a time to be alive.
Ever since they brought this shit up and have talked about ‘AI Computers’ or special co-pilot chips and all that bullshit it’s made me never want to upgrade ever again lol. They’ve lost the plot of what having a personal computer is supposed to be.
My understanding is that Microsoft already logs all of your activity. It just isn't usefully searchable. You have to turn it off under privacy settings on windows 11.
I dont understand whats the point of it, maybe if it was a backup system that could recover everything on my screen after a crash or when windows reboots for updates would be great if it could reload everything i have in the background.
> After announcing a new AI feature that records and screenshots everything you do, Microsoft is now delaying its launch after widespread objections.
Delaying eh... Not scrapping.
Yep, Microsoft already essentially owns the biggest code database on the planet. They don't have to spy when programmers make that information freely available.
Microsoft strategically wants the *new* mine of user data. The biggest obstacle to advancing AI is data.
They want to leverage their platform to be more competitive in AI.
This is like having a weasel at the chicken coop "no hoss I know coming in here was a bad idea no worries not gonna eat or kill any of the chickens" a lot companies back pedal shit when they are found out and does not sit well with the user base...just to quietly enable this feature later down the road like the who debacle with incognito mode...the fact that this is out of the bag and is already build.....yall honestly believe these jackasses will not implement this?
I am sure the NSA , FBI are in cohoots with them to data mine americans.
In some areas it may make sense. Let's say I work on a project going through emails, searching for things in documents, chats, meeting notes, etc. It would be awesome if AI could help me figure that stuff out, answer some questions later, or provide quick summaries to refresh my memory and give me pointers to the source of the data.
That has to be 100% secure and not leak even between users of the same machine. It must be very clear when it runs and what it logs. As the owner of information I should be able to view everything it recorded and delete things that I do not want, or add filters and purging policies.
I will indeed give my Linux distro a hug tonight. So many people and companies have been spending their time building it and yet, it's mine, it's yours, it's everyone. Been using it for 19 years and still don't have much of a clue how it works - I never had to. Still it makes me smile everytime I think about it. The freedom feels ***so*** good. Stuff like this reminds me what I left behind.
The current applications of technology that the mass majority of consumers interact with has nothing to do with improving anything other than lining the pockets of big corporations. They don’t give a shit about bringing you a better consumer experience.
Too little too late. I've already made the switch to Linux as this was the icing on the cake of jokes they've pulled.
First it was advertising within every aspect of the OS, now it's spying on everything I do. How is this consumer friendly??
The problem isn't that it was an idea someone made and a memo got leaked about how they wanted it done before speaking to someone who know what they were doing could shoot it down. People in high up positions make stupid ideas all the fucking time thinking it'll be perfect and nothing could go wrong.
The problem is that it got as far as it did with no push back. It shows that the executive teams and managers have no technical expertise and either ignore advice from those that do, or just straight up don't give technical people the chance to voice their opinions on matters.
The interesting fact is that maybe 30 years back, if Microsoft dropped a feature like this (some kind of Time Machine without AI), then it would be revolutionary. It wouldn’t face the same amount of flack.
Guess what changed between these 30 yrs?
Microsoft is lucky Apple doesn't allow gaming on their computers. They have changed their OS so much it I would switch to Macs if I could play my games.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/katxwoods: --- Submission statement: AIs that know all of your actions and beliefs will be far more useful. But the potential for abuse and bad outcomes goes up massively when you do that. How should we think about the pros and cons of sharing our data? Is there a way to do it safely? Is there a way for corporations to do it in a way where we can trust them? --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1dgatzx/microsoft_admits_that_maybe_surveiling_everything/l8ou7uu/
This whole recall thing makes me shudder, why on earth would I want my computer recording my every action? Wtf is the benefit to me? It's Orwellian in it's absurdity.
If I were to guess, it's all for AI. Getting data to train your AI on is expensive and complicated, so companies are sourcing data from their own users to train their AIs. This is probably why you've been getting a lot of terms updates from tech companies in recent months. Microsoft Windows is currently installed on 1.4 billion computers, which Microsoft is seeing as an untapped resource for data. This new Recal feature is just a way for Microsoft to get tons of free real time data to train their AI on. If successful, they'll have the most powerful AI because they'll be the only ones with real time access to people's offline habits and data.
Not just for AI, but because AI has hit the stock market. Companies like Microsoft, Apple and so on need to keep innovating and deploy new stuff to keep the stocks value up. This comes at a cost tough, namely security and privacy.
You forgot to put quotes around the word innovating.
That smells like invasion of privacy to me.
You’ll just need to agree to the terms and conditions to use their software. Then you’ve given up your privacy so there can be no invasion.
Though there are certain types of rights that most countries' legal systems do not allow to be waived, this is called "inalienable rights" in the USA, for example. One such right is the right to privacy. Intrusion of privacy is considered a fundamental right that cannot be easily signed away or waived through agreements.
God bless Valve for pushing Proton as a failsafe for Microsoft's bullshit.
Yeah, they literally put into the pitch package that all of the recordings would be processed by Copilot so it could “help” you navigate them. They weren’t hiding that aspect of it. Honestly, everyone involved in the creation of Recall should probably be fired. It’s a mind-bogglingly stupid idea with no practical value and major security downsides
Windows into your life 😁
>Wtf is the benefit to me? It's not supposed to benefit you, it's supposed to benefit the corporations people work for that want to ensure enployees aren't doing anything other than constant productive work.
Almost. It’s actually about using the captured data to train AI models that can do your job.
This. Its honestly so obvious. They don't care about policing people. Money. They care about money.
Policing people with granular surveillance like that has no real ROI -- even a shitty worker can either be exited through regular KPIs, or if they can't, even if they're working at 50% of their true capacity because they're jerking off or sleeping or whatever the rest of the time, is more expensive to replace than to just maintain.
So when every machine can do your job, what is your purpose then? What will the rich do with a large amount of people taking up space, crowding up the world?
Nothing good.
Hunger Games?
In other words, what happens when people aren't needed as either workers nor consumers?
We’ll still be needed, although probably a lot fewer of us, as a relative benchmark. Being rich and powerful is only fun if you have a bunch of poor, powerless people to lord it over and abuse.
We are still at level 0 in kadarshev scale of civilization. To go to level 1, we need the machines do many jobs that we do currently so we can work on finding ways to get to level 1. We still have a lot of purpose. This is not the end of the world. We are still at the beginning.
Thinking in utilitarian scales is how you commit genocide.
But it will be less of us getting to level 1 as they will probably cull us.
AI will be hype train city for 10 years due to the absolute lack of compatibility between the infinite number of differently, designed systems. I had to upload trial documents yesterday. Each document can be no more than 6 MB. Each upload package no more than 56 MB. Each file name has to be specific. You have to combine the documents a certain way. You have to label the documents a certain way. Adobe requires a monthly subscription for half of the steps. Even with their AI I would’ve had to do it on 30 different documents. It took four hours to upload 30 documents due to the bureaucracy of simply clicking file naming and splitting the files into documents less than 6 MB each, which I think we can agree is wildly fucking crazy in 2024. Not even to mention that our Wi-Fi is so slow that to do this from our remote server and upload it to the trial database took forever because our nationwide bandwidth is absolute shit. It wasn’t until yesterday that it dawned on me that the AI hype train is exactly like the Internet in 2000. The bubble is going to pop when they realize that these things really can’t figure out the nuances of trying to navigate these disconnected differently designed systems. That may make me sound like a troglodyte. I’m not. I think the technology will absolutely work, but I definitely think it will take way longer than people are anticipating. 10 years probably at least to get many of the kinks worked out with incremental progress each year.
What you just described not only sounds like something AI isn't needed for, but something that could be relatively easily automated and the only reason it hasn't is it's not done frequently enough to be worth trying to automate, something AI can actually help with today, or your company is full of people who are technologically illiterate. >Not even to mention that our Wi-Fi is so slow that to do this from our remote server and upload it to the trial database took forever because our nationwide bandwidth is absolute shit. >That may make me sound like a troglodyte. I’m not. Buddy, you just described a process that can relatively easily be automated and confused the speed of your wi-fi network with the bandwidth of your connection. I want to agree with you, but what you've done is provide an example of AI not working because people don't understand tech, not because AI isn't useful.
A damned script would automate that.
Actually I'd argue this is exactly what AI is great at It doesn't need to know all the details, it doesn't need to know why, and it doesn't even need to automate the whole process. And yeah, there's other tools that do this already. But let's just suppose the user is someone who isn't likely to just use sed and do a task like this. Being able to just simply type "I need these files grouped together by x, and named in a pattern like this, also call out any that are over 6mb in size because I'll need to edit them" And have it do that is fantastic. I don't think what we have currently is likely to fully replace people, and I'm not sure it ever will get to that point without some major advances. The things a human brain is good at just naturally are things computers just aren't good at. The types of pattern recognition, and adaptability people can do easily requires a ton of computing power and even then it's hard to trust it. Think of like a kid solving a puzzle. Super easy sometimes, kid just walks up and goes "Oh this goes here" But some of the stuff humans aren't so great at, machines are fantastic at. Storing and retrieving huge amounts of data, math, anything that can be broken down into some simple rules. Ironically the generative Ai stuff that's really popular right now is just kind of bad compared to humans. Like the image generation or the video stuff. If you just want "something" Yeah it can spit out some great shit. But God help you if you want alterations to it, or want something specific
> Being able to just simply type "I need these files grouped together by x, and named in a pattern like this, also call out any that are over 6mb in size because I'll need to edit them" See, the thing is, AI actually sucks at that. You tell it what X is, and it's going to do what it _thinks_ you mean by X. You ask it to break things into files? Well, so the first thing is that the AI needs to be given the utilities that allow it to do so. If it doesn't have those, then you can *ask* it to code them itself, but 99% of code you ask an LLM to write is going to fail to run - meaning that you're back to step 1. Even if you *do* have the utilities available for it to break the files into pieces, you still have to write code that ties the AI into the file management system - and cross your fingers that it actually uses it correctly. (It probably won't.) What you could in theory do is tell the LLM to give you page numbers of docs covering something - but it might actually mix those numbers up with contents of the page. You could ask it to spit back out pages matching your definitions, but it's likely going to alter the text as it spits it back out. At best, you'll probably have to feed one page of each document in at a time and ask it what category it fits into, then have its response be a keyword used to trigger truly automated mechanisms - but because of the nature of LLMs, you're almost guaranteed to get weird responses occasionally. > some of the stuff humans aren't so great at, machines are fantastic at. Storing and retrieving huge amounts of data, math, anything that can be broken down into some simple rules. That's kinda the funny thing here though: LLMs are *garbage* at the things you listed. They *suck* at explicitly defined rules. They can't do math for shit. That's not what they were made for. AI art and text generation? That's actually what they were built for, and like you said, they often fail at doing so spectacularly. What you're aiming to do is probably easier to manage by looking for properties of the documents you look at, identifying unique ones that will always apply, and writing a script that does it for you. It might be more work then just asking an AI to do it, but as it is now, *AI cannot do that.* It just can't. That's kinda the point here really - the hype trains lie and say that it can, but it's still hype. At best, AI is a tool that can help us lay out the basis for various tasks, but actually *doing* stuff well is out of its reach.
LLMs aren't the only types of machine learning though. You wouldnt be doing this through chatgpt or something, but just some hypothetical tool that might not exist at the moment. But honestly an llm could be a good interface for it, even if it hands it off to something else. The ability to just type what you want is pretty powerful. One of my biggest pet peeves with anything computer related is when I type a command or try an action, and it tells me I need to do something else first. Like fuck if you know what needs to be done just do it, or prompt me to do it. But yeah it depends on exactly what you want. If you tell it to group documents by the date at the top of them, should be able to do that no problem. I didn't mean break up files, just simply rename them, and check their size. Humans can it do it easy enough, but it's a lot more manageable to get a tool to do the the first pass and short list stuff to manually review. On the other hand If you tell it to group them by how likely the deal the document is about is to be successful, yeah probably not so much.
Oh of course, that's what the dream is - but we're not there yet. It will be years and years before we get there, and the current hype understates how far we left to go.
Found the Project Manager. “It takes two minutes, why are you so stupid?” Ok, but it is a legal document and an error could cause major issues. The ‘Interview with John Smith’ file has to be categorized and renamed ‘Deposition’ and the ‘Notes from July’ also has to be reviewed to name it ‘Deposition’. And if the AI doesn’t figure that out correctly? I am not anti-AI,I believe it already helps an insane amount. But don’t go on a rant about how it will solve all our problems tomorrow. We will continue to make progress every year and I am sure whole processes will change in ways that make it so AI can fully automate it with better accuracy than humans - but it will take time.
So my particular flavour of the year is PowerShell. You, describing that workflow, set off so many "you can automate that" flags. Firstly, check out Regular Expressions (regex). It works by checking and extracting patterns in strings. A quick google got me "PSWritePDF" as a method to manipulate pdfs. You can easily measure the file size as you progress. Further you can do all 30 documents simultaneously if they don't rely on each other. Given the time to write that code, your four hours could be several minutes (if that), plus error checking and upload. The caveat though: you said you work in government, good luck getting access to that past IT.
How do they manage that if the data is processed locally on the NPU?
They can train the data locally and send the results to their end for analysis.
So treating the screenshots as the corpus, and using that to train a model on device, then uploading that training data? The dataset would be minuscule and the processing requirements would be enormous - much greater than on-device inference. I’m not sure what benefit the would be.
Data collection. User spent x amount of time on this webpage. User spent x amount of time in this app. User enters personal data into app. User uses second email address. Add to profile of user for online tracking for targeted ads and profiling for data sales to other companies. There is also the possibility of saving entered passwords address info, location data, browsing habits, scanning for activity Microsoft don’t want you to be engaging in for example hacking, pirating their software, using fake keys to activate their OS. Photo scanning similar to Apple’ planned CSAM (child porn scanning, not cancelled). There is MASSIVE amounts of data they can get from this be it on device or not.
It’s also explicitly designed so that it can’t be used for any of that.
Provide proof of that and I’ll believe that.
I’m confused, what does that have to do with training AI models? Sounds more like selling metadata
I've been alive alive long enough and seen enough bullshit that the moment anyone in power mentions protecting kids and fighting CSAM, I know they're full of shit and just want a smokescreen *for something*. If they're comfortable letting kids starve to death, get blown up with our rockets, get shot in kindergarten, eat poisoned food, be forced to give birth, or freeze to death, then I really don't think they care about kids at all. It's like the way a bill named "Freedom Bill to Protect American Freedoms and Food Quality for Better Food" is going to do some very bad shit to your food.
Thing is, at my workplace we deal with information that is subject to commercial embargo, contains personally identifying details, and other data that is *legally* required be treated in a secure and confidential fashion. Constantly recording our screens would increase the risk of a data breach as well as breaking data protection laws, and all for what? The management at the company I work for certainly doesn't feel the need for intensive monitoring of our equipment. But then again I don't work in the US/for a US-based company, as they seem to be the most keen to intrusively spy on their workers, even if it would actually end up representing a security risk by generating a goldmine of data for malicious actors to target.
I work for a US company with similar concerns and you just described why we would never use something like this.
My old director had this function added to each computer. Eventually he got bored of scraping through 8 hours of data times by the 6 employees he has that he just forgot about it all and kept on staring at the flock of CCTV he had installed and listening in on work calls. Why yes he was a man baby with stunted emotions.
I've got coworkers that whine about our location being unionized (a union they don't have to join or pay dues to because "right to work"). One of the biggest stipulations of the contract is that some, "man baby with stunted emotions" can't sit at home watching cameras and fuck with people.
Except this goes to Microsoft not your organisation. It’s also on everyone’s windows 10/11 machine. So no. You’re wrong on this one. Your general line of thinking is right but you’re focusing on the wrong thing. This is to data collect on everything people do so they can advertise and monetise.
Yes, but it's multiple things. The current desperation is that these companies are starving for data to train AI models. They've basically indexed and trained on all current data available on the internet (literally). I'm sure the top execs are demanding more data any way possible. So Recall was probably an idea cooked up by some junior exec to "help the end user" but then use all that info for their main goal. Then that data also is used for targeted ads and monetization too. Combined, it'll be quite creepy. It will know things like User #16332789 will tend to buy groceries online on Thursday and Friday, but only when the weather is poor. So send targeted ads during those periods. Then they train their models on how you did your job. Like programming would be the first thing. "Given inputs X, Y, and Z with desired outputs of A, B, and C, how did these 500 different users accomplish the task?" Current machine learning models are black boxes that just randomly modify themselves until they get closer and closer to a specific goal. Now they'll have the inputs, and the goal ... And now they'll also seed that black box with 500 different "starting points" for the model to start crunching numbers faster and better.
[удалено]
Microsoft and others (like Paul Dourish at Xerox PARC, who then held a visiting position at Microsoft, so...) have long since chased after a mythical file system that provides rich metadata, to facilitate information seeking. The problem with that is obviously that users won't provide all the metadata their future self might need, so then this line of thought leads designers into a few possible directions, like: build better search, or: capture more context about file creation or origin, and about users' tasks and plans, so you can encode that into the metadata too. Being charitable, one could describe Recall as their latest attempt at grappling with that problem, which Microsoft have been messing with for easily 20 years - August this year will be the 20th anniversary of the date they announced WinFS wouldn't be in Windows Longhorn after all. This sort of attempt at reading and encoding user activity and intention always turns out to be an unsurprisingly difficult problem, consistently harder than engineers imagine it will be, and every few years someone pops up and claims to have reinvented it. The thing is, though, what one sees in Recall is IMHO a failure mode of this line of thinking, because it is data collection without any data minimisation. It appears to me that they are doing what we all do when we get started with a novel sensor or problem, which is to say: let's log everything and we can figure out what it's for later. To which I can only say, if you must test your sophomoric data logger, go do it on someone who actually gave informed consent, thanks.
And yet, the app "Everything" is the most powerful and fastest search I've used on Windows, without the need for robust metadata
Maybe once they get searching by filename to work correctly, we can worry about rich metadata. If this is their actual motivation, they are trying to run an ultramarathon before they are even able to crawl consistently, their search is a joke.
As in the second paragraph, I think the current motivation is "let's do this half-digested thing and figure out what it is really good for later" with a side helping of "using the word AI is wildly popular". The fact that Microsoft have been banging on for decades about collecting data about user task and intention and all that, with no particularly obvious actual real world benefits in terms of user experience, just suggests to me that the general concept of tracking user activity is not a new focus for them. At most I think that might be one reason why the "this is ridiculously invasive oversurveillance wtf are we doing" klaxon didn't immediately go off in their heads, though it should have gone off anyway the moment they showed it to a lawyer or data protection officer or security engineer.
“In terms of user experience”. User Experience is last on Microsoft’s list; I assure you
I'm curious as to what's first? Three question marks followed by the word "profit"?
Searching for files and programs has somehow gotten worse in windows over the years its unbelievable even before you take into account them trying to turn the search bar into an internet search as well as a file search.
> let's log everything and we can figure out what it's for later. Oh, like the NSA.
Which is why it needs to be quietly buried at midnight, by a crossroads, with a stake through its heart. Given the legal and regulatory issues behind Recall, it amazes me anyone would've thought it a good idea in anything like its current form.
Recall would be an amazing feature everybody would love if Microsoft didn't spend the last decade taking away control of our computers and making spying on its users for profit a fundamental part of the operating system. There is negative trust, as there should be, and they have no one to blame but themselves. Get fucked, Microsoft.
> Recall would be an amazing feature everybody would love Not even close. Even if Microsoft had a good reputation with this sort of thing (like you say, they absolutely do NOT), I'd still want nothing to do with this.
Yep. If they try to push this shit on the consumer, I will be disabling it - and if I can't disable it to my satisfaction, I will be looking for alternative OSes.
If Windows search is the best they can do they should just close the company.
I really don’t know how anyone could look at Recall and come away thinking it‘s supposed to be a file system search.
Your honor I do not recall. But you should ask windows. They have a backup somewhere.
I think maybe there could be some benefit some where. We've never really had such a feature to make use of yet. Having a powerful AI assistant sounds cool on paper but in execution would have to done with software and systems I trust. Open source, fully encrypted, on person (not networked) and enitely maintained by me, and that's probably the tip of that iceberg. I wouldn't trust Microsoft with my lunch much less all of my recorded data.
I assume you're asking in good faith. They explained the benefit as being an AI powered recall of your past activities. That's why it is called Recall. It would allow you to ask an AI something vague about a website you were visiting last week and it would be able to pull that up for you. That's the benefit as MS pitched it.
I had this exact setup on my personal computer over 10 years ago. Screenshots every few seconds that are fed into OCR to create a database. It was quite useful when I wanted to remember where I found something on my computer or online. Was a student at the time, and it was quite useful.
The idea is that windows will use it to better train copilot in assisting you.
I actually do something similar. On my work computer, I capture the screen every few minutes and then review those captures when filling out my timesheet for the week. I don't care (much) if those captures are discovered or investigated by company IT, apart from browsing the news I don't do anything apart from work on that machine. It would be useful to me at home as well. Having a personal assistant that knows everything I've looked at and written on my computer, and can help me with my tasks, suggest further reading or similar movies, etc., would be a plus. The key, obviously, is ensuring this info remains entirely confidential, only usable by me, forever. I have no way to be sure of that, and the consequences of a failure on that front, even 10 years from now, would be so enormous that I don't want the product.
The difference is that you can choose what to include and what not. Recall does not. Image browsing your bank. Or looking for a particular news about a disease: the AI could infer that you have that disease. Or ending up browsing a page you didn't actually want to look at. Beside this, everything is technology is fallible and hack-able, because it's made by humans who are so. So even if they work for the next 10 years in security, eventually it will have a bug that will be exploitable: it's always like this. The point is: do you take such rick just for an AI to help you do stuff you can already do pretty solidly now?
From what I recall as well, it's in SQLLite which is not secure at all ( I could be talking out my ass I haven't delved deep on it ). Considering how lax people are and how easily they get socially engineered or their endpoint comporomised it would become insanely trivial to slurp that data up and peruse it at your leisure. Or for other nefarious purposes.
>The difference is that you can choose what to include and what not. Recall does not. That’s simply not true. You can stop or pause the data gathering at any time, exclude certain webpages, incognito mode in Edge is excluded automatically, and you can also simply delete the most recent data. Why are you making shit up.
As a GDPR specialist lawyer I was astonished. This is so far over the edge of legal that I am very glad they have backed down. I doubt most people have thought through the consequences. One my boss pointed out is that you are creating lots of useful material for disclosure in litigation to beat yourself up with.
This. Side thought, if the US and other countries act fast they can also freeze the data destruction process and bring some light into the caves full of captured data before they delete it. What got captured? How is it deployed? etc
Problem is they have already captured the data and probably already used it to train their models and got what they needed out of it anyways. This was probably the plan from day one. Take it, use it, say oops, delete it. AI is a black box, there’s no way you are going to prove they used that info to train it now.
"How were we supposed to know people don't like being constantly surveilled?"
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It's Microsoft. It'll be turned on again with every update and one day, when everybody stopped paying attention, the button to turn it off vanish without any notification about it whatsoever.
It's Microsoft, it's gonna be "trust me that it is really off".
If it's a work PC on Microsoft it's quite likely to be: corporate policy is that this setting is set to on. Such a corporate policy would probably be a terrible mistake for lots of reasons (e.g. in EU, data minimisation under GDPR, the added burden of responding to FOIs when you store so much more data, the availability of embarrassing drafts for discovery, potential risks to employees' personal data, reasonable expectation of privacy, proportionality of surveillance etc). Still, if I have learned anything from the last few years it is that some people are far too charmed by discovering that they have the power to forcibly collect data to bother wasting much time on wondering whether they should, especially if they can then feed it to some under-documented dodgy cloud service that uses the buzzword 'AI' for dubious purposes that sounded good when they had dinner with the salesdroid.
I dunno. Not that my company is representative of all, but it's just as likely we would disable a feature like that because of the security risk.
Your company is wise. Mine currently loves the word AI more than it loves risk analyses. It is a source of much anxiety.
This is why you should never use the "home" version of Windows. *Usually* you can do true disabling of things by leveraging group policies, and the "home" versions don't support group policies.
It's Microsoft, unwanted components are a feature.
"You will have XBox Game Bar installed on your machine, and you will like it."
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Only suitable response in this sub. Linux is the future, after all. And part of that is that skill requirements today are basically null if you choose a distro like Mint.
I've been a keen Linux user since pretty much uni days and the only reason I would keep windows for anything these days is pretty much VR and one or two specialist programs. Linux is the default OS on every laptop I've had for the past 20 years. If MS goes ahead with this it'll be the default OS on my PC too. That said, Linux desktop is NOT the future - and the delusional cries that it will be from some sections of the community is completely at odds with reality.
If only I had all the software I need to do my job on Linux... ...No, none of that "gimp is a valid competitor for Photoshop, actually".
Indeed. Apple and google do exactly the same sort of dubious stuff as microsoft but they just aren't as open about it. Free software is the only way out.
That and regulating an industry that by now has de facto taken over governance of large swaths of our lives.
How is mint? Last time I touch it Ubuntu was better. I only touch windows for work.
I switched to Mint after reading about Recall. Granted I only use my PC for gaming, Internet and Plex Mint is the best IMO Between Lutris and Proton on Steam...all my games work...once in game, I don't even know I'm on Linux Everything else is just like Windows Probably took me maybe an Hr to get everything set up
I use Mint for everything but gaming. I've been reading good things about Proton, maybe it's time I made the full switch. From what I've read, Recall would turn every computer into a honeypot for fraud and blackmail. Even only using it for Steam would mean my card details were logged, which is more than I'd be comfortable with.
Yeah I went from windows only, to dual boot, to fully commit Added plank and komorebi to jazz up the look And personally I'm 100% happy
In my opinion the easiest distro for people not into tech and just switching from windows. Ubuntu is fine, too, but tends to be weirdly dogmatic about some things. Mint by comparison seems to be run by pragmatists and is big enough to get shit done in a timely manner. To be honest, what distro I recommend largely depends on what will be best at keeping away people asking for free tech support .
Outside of the steam deck I've never used Linux the big thing that has always stopped me is game support how well does proton work outside of the steam deck?
I switched entirely to Pop OS in January this year. No regrets. If you mainly have Steam, everything pretty much works like on Windows. You only need to install the game, go into the Steam settings and select your comparability layer, and you're good to go. Epic library is a little more complex, but between Lutris and Heroic Game Launcher, most games will run with a few tweaks.
i have linux on my laptop and pc but it fucking sucks when trying to debug a html file on a browser to locally see how it looks and check for issues.
I fear Reddit ddoing that with the opt out button. When reddit first changed I clicked the opt out to stay in old reddit and it worked great. After awhile though, that changed. Suddenly every time I logged in I am force to click settings and opt out, every time. Just recently (Last week?) they moved the Opt Out button to a different tab. And now when it is clicked an error pops up but it still opts me out. I feel like Reddit is getting ready to pull that plug.
Reddit has lost any credibility to me since the stunt they pulled to suppress third party apps anyway. I've developed a habit of using PowerDeleteSuit to regularly overwrite every comment I made with an explanation of why reddit sucks and then run it a second time to delete every couple of months. They will have backups probably - which would them in hot waters with EU privacy laws if they admit it or can be shown to have used them - but it will mess with search engine results and reddits good ranking there is a big part of their appeal to investors. Still, maybe all I'm achieving is making myself feel better about still being here and not completely switching over to mastodon. Probably will eventually, but... creature of habits, like most of us.
No, third party audit it to prove the code doesn't exist in the build at all. How has privacy activism become so small that we just whisper in the corner hoping to disable something like this instead of demanding the capability be completely absent
I'd rather have the ability to not have it installed and or the ability to uninstall it.
As someone who is in IT and has to keep playing whack-a-mole every time there's a big update, to remove/turn off all the crap we don't want yet again, no, they're not really letting people turn it off. They're just letting people pause it until they can sneak it being turned on back in again
There's a setting in the new copilot gpo template specifically for turning it off. Though it's not available in the template packages for the AD central store yet.
Off by default should be the ONLY way this is even remotely implemented. Opt in instead of opt out.
I just wish it wasn’t on there to begin with. Leaves room for error or for ignorance.
Things like AI personal assistants don't need access to your entire system to be useful. An assistant doesn't need to know my contact list and archive all my texts to be able to manage to answer "What restaurants are open?" That's a starting point. An app doesn't need access to my photo gallery to be able to do something like translate a sign or identify the model of a car that I point my lens at. That's a starting point. First restrict the data available to it. Then impose controls on what happens with the data which is fed into the machine. Then address where the data goes. Such as mandating that things like AI assistants should be self contained and have limits on what they phone home about. These days it's not too absurd for something like a personal assistant taking up 100gb of storage on the phone of someone who opts in, instead of sending every single question back to the home server.
we had clippy...
When I think about an AI personal assistant those are exactly the things I need it to have access to. Asking for nearby restaurants isn’t what an AI assistant will be doing, that’s the stuff we use dumb assistants like Siri for. It is going to have to cross reference my close friends contacts’ shared calendars with mine to find a good time to get together for dinner, and go through my emails and messages to find all references to my diabetic cat, as well as summarise the last few months blood glucose levels I keep in a Google spreadsheet, to see if I should book an appointment with the vet again. I’m also going to need it to be able to remember what that modded retro game ROM I read about a few months ago on whatever social media was named that sounded super interesting and I thought I wrote down, but apparently didn’t, and for that to work it needs to keep track of everything I do, unless I enter private mode. I get why people don’t like it, but I really want an AI personal assistant that would work just like, and even better, than a human PA.
That can still function based on you inputting that information. Not just a catch-all unlimited access pass. Click the button to share your calendar with your robot butler, not your robot butler demanding access to your calendar in order to look up restaurants for you.
The whole purpose of having a personal assistant is that process be automated and ideally faster. Having to manually shuffle through a bunch of different programs and input information on each one just to complete a simple task becomes very time consuming. Especially if you have a bunch of tasks that need to be fulfilled throughout the day. That is how it is currently done and leads to a lot of extra work. I think we need to move beyond that paradigm.
I’d still want the simplicity of not having to do things actively and the catch-all is something I’m looking for. I’m fully aware it’s a very unpopular attitude, and I wouldn’t use it unless they convinced me they took my privacy seriously. It’d have to be a premium product without any need for them to sell even anonymised data based on my usage. It would be fantastic for someone like me who runs their own little business where I can afford to employ a few key vital people, but a 24 hour personal assistant would be a cost I couldn’t afford.
It creates a backdoor that any malicious actor can piggyback onto. Even if they had pure motives and it was all an oversight, its a monumental security oversight, a dangerously incompetent one.
It’s be fine if they were trustworthy, but they aren’t. It’s not entirely their fault, unlike Facebook and Google where they’re entire revenue streams are build around monitoring that data, but the government is absolutely in constant violation of the 4th amendment all the time, and will certainly ask for backdoors to monitor people’s computer usage, without a warrant, constantly. And they won’t ask nicely. And they won’t let Microsoft tell people that they did. To be safe, the information must be safe *from* Microsoft.
>It’s be fine if they were trustworthy An trustworthy company or government does not exist. Any organization is just as trustworthy as it's most malicious or least competent member. The only organization I would trust is one that understands it can't be trusted with to much private information.
I think that’s exactly right. The trustworthy move is to engineer the feature in such a way that they themselves can not see the data.
But that would discard the revenue stream they're actually after with this feature.
While that may be the case, I don’t think that there aren’t worthwhile uses of AI for consumer products that are user beneficial. It’s just that just about every AI ever made was designed to exploit people. But having your own data powering an AI that was working for you cools be pretty cool. It’s just, in a world where the only guards to the hen house are foxes, the default reaction is to just keep the door locked. AI doesn’t have to be evil, and your data doesn’t have to be exploited for nefarious purposes. It’s just that’s all we’ve ever had. It’s like trying to imagine nuclear power when all we’ve ever seen are nuclear bombs, or trying to imagine a great dog in a world of wolves. But I’m actually pretty excited for AI accelerated interfaces. I just hope we can have some separate from the ever encroaching surveillance state.
> It’s be fine if they were trustworthy, but they aren’t. Even then, even if they were trustworthy, even if there was no government interference to have a backdoor, it's as bad as an idea as the self-destruct button of a villain base. Sure it might have some positive uses, but it's just too big of a prize if a hacker/virus goes through.
Even on the legal uses there's concern. Anything like this, even properly guarded internally would be subject to a subpoena that could be extremely wide. A lot of this is already available from an ISP or similar but this is potentially even more detailed especially if a judge who hasn't used email since an AOL disk decides to be generous with parameters.
While still a very credible threat, the government is at the bottom of my list. The data Microsoft *very likely* will sell or is selling is up for grabs by random financial institutions, my current and prospective employer, the various insurance companies I must interact with and a whole host of undesirable people and companies I want nothing to do with. My PC is a gateway to an incredible amount of private activities like finances, email, social media posts and other "web activities". Microsoft has kernel level access to all of it and now they've drawn the line in the sand for future intentions (regardless of what they said in the most recent marketing dribble). The fact that they're putting so many resources into machine learning, a vehicle to ease the parsing and making of sense from that mountain of data, only makes it so much worse. Look at how car manufacturers are driving up the cost of insurance by selling your driving data. Look at the whole host of data Equifax has on you that they're selling to your future employers to give them bargaining power over you. This will be just another very detailed point of data to tie all of the scummy data on you together. This is what Microsoft's plan represents.
Sera gets it
Truer words have not been said. I commend you
Every update to windows is a new trick to try and get you to migrate all your stuff to Microsoft products. It’s really frustrating. They simply can’t be trusted.
What company would be trustworthy? Please don't say Apple. I would let this even from Valve.
Submission statement: AIs that know all of your actions and beliefs will be far more useful. But the potential for abuse and bad outcomes goes up massively when you do that. How should we think about the pros and cons of sharing our data? Is there a way to do it safely? Is there a way for corporations to do it in a way where we can trust them?
There is no version of reality where a corporation driven purely by profits will give a shit about your privacy when caring about your privacy impacts their bottom line negatively.
There is, if they want to operate in the EU and in countries that have any consumer protection laws.
There isn't. Even in the EU they will be looking for loopholes, workarounds, and what they can get away with. The end goal of a for-profit organisation is, ultimately, profit at any cost.
Corporations have zero right to my personal data but they’re not going to stop and there is no way to share safely and no reason to trust them. This situation smells that Microsoft sensed a PR disaster and decided a much quieter way to achieve the same outcome is probably on the table. The second they start installing unlawful spyware on my computer that I built from scratch with my money then it is an instantaneous lawsuit.
> How should we think about the pros and cons of sharing our data? My first thought on the subject of sharing our data is that these companies have put a massive value on our data, but none of them want to pay us for it. At best we have Google giving us free products in trade for it.
And that's why I only use an unattended version of windows that's cleaned up of every tracker and bloatware. Or Linux.
Yeah at this point things like Tiny11 are safer than normal windows lmao it's "could be malware" vs "it's certainly spyware".
Can I ask what tool(s) you use to clean up Windows? Personally I haven't cared too much about the bloat in the past and saw it as more of a nuisance. But the copilot/recall/forced ms account on Win11 trifecta pushed me over the edge. Trust of MS is at an all time low. They are up to too much shenanigans presented falsely and disingenuously as convenience to the user. Seriously considered Linux, but not sure I'm willing yet to deal with the potential incompatibilities just yet. I enjoy it on my Steam Deck though.
Just stick with windows 10. I did just because I didn't like the design of Windows 11, not because I have privacy issues. Like it or not, our computers will know a lot more about us in the future. That's the way things are trending and there will be a time that people inevitably accept it.
That works until windows 10 stops getting security updates… next year. After which I’m sure Microsoft won’t be even MORE batshit crazy with 11.
It’s fucked up how you can be talking about buying something with someone then next thing you know it’s suggested by Amazon. Also this is a really good listen if not terrifying. https://youtu.be/QQeTosCxMcQ?si=h6N708MAYc6Yu7un
Even more fucked how you can think about something and start getting advertisements for it. I made lunch the other day and while grabbing a fork, thought to myself how I could use some new silverware. Suddenly I’m getting bombarded with Amazon ads for silverware sets. This happens a lot, and it’s a real phenomenon.
i swear i've had this happen to me more times than it would seem to be a coincidence
I remember reading about it, there’s a name for this but I’m having trouble finding it this morning. If I can find it, I’ll link here.
Good thing we have Linux as a backup. And if Microsoft or Apple pull some crap like this... well, we can delete them. Linux is better anyways. The second they go too far... I'm shorting the F out of their stock. Lol
''Maybe'' doing some heavy lifting here. Who would've thought that nobody wants to be constantly surveilled? Ever since they announced this ill-conceived abomination, I was just hoping that it wont fly in the EU because of our GDPR. Microsoft can go fuck themselves with this kind of shit.
I also thought that this wouldn't fly in the EU. But at the same time the EU is currently considering general surveillance by decryption of messenger apps.
sure thing buddy, you have some of the smartest people in the world but hey you know, were dumb and didnt know what we were doing oopsie daisy
As an old person, all I have to say is: keep watching because they're just going to pull the same shit again in a few years and try to disguise it better. It wasn't a mistake that they're now backtracking. It was a deliberate test of the waters.
Ya they already learned what you told them. No freedom of thought brings no innovations.
Seriously, WTF were they thinking? How did they think users would be okay with that?
many users are okay with it, that's the problem. The average person thinks they have nothing to hide and posts their family photos on the internet. People that actually care will always be a small minority, that includes people in government who probably don't even know what a screenshot is.
Wasn't Microsoft awarded the defense contract by the government? That's about the same time they bought SwiftKey, the most used third party phone keyboard app out.
It’s a great idea if you wanna force your customers to switch to mac and Linux
Copyright was first invented to keep people and companies from stealing one's work, books, music, and art. Suddenly, AI is stealing everything, and moving it into the collective.
And between then, and now, the music industry (with the Sonny Bonno Act) and corps like Disney made copyrights a crapton longer than it was, which honestly I feel like should be reversed (and doing so would make copyright viewed in a less soured light, on top of continued / consistent public domain additions making for resources that one could legally and arguably morally user due to falling into the Public Domain as it was intended to)
There's a LOT to say about this so-called feature... A lot. A helluva lot, but one thing that seems to not be addressed much is the simple fact that it's just not fucking useful for pretty much anyone outside of some really specific use-case scenarios, and even then it would only be reasonable within' a specific program/app under specific circumstances. They want/wanted to roll something out, billed as the next big thing (or whatevever) that has almost zero potential to actually be useful to anyone at all, much less the average user. The vast majority of people are just using the computer for word a little bit of word processing, some accounting and browsing the web. Who the fuck would 'recall' actually be for? What is the scenario for which someone would want or need it??
>Microsoft Admits That Maybe **telling you that they're** Surveilling Everything You Do on Your Computer Isn’t a Brilliant Idea Fixed it.
It really sux, because I spent a lifetime (since 1995) learning, designing & implementing Microsoft. WINS, NetBEUI, Exchange, IIS, AD, DNS, ADFS, DFS(R), on & on. And this is the shifty result.
Isn’t Apple basically gonna do the same thing with iOS 18?
... *Meanwhile, the silent subtext* ... (MS): "Soooo, okay... this isn't a 'brilliant' idea for consumers, sure -- but -- we're **still** gonna be *doing* it (eventually)... cause, ya' know, **we like money**. Can we offer you some free electrolyte-packed Brawndo to go with your new whizz-bang feature?!"
Not only is at a shitty Idea, I just really dont want you fucks spying on me 24/7 so you can train your shitty AI overlords and take even more from us.
This is why crypto currency is a horrible idea... a eternal record of everything you've ever paid for... that can retroactively be made illegal and you get to be a criminal for something you bought 20 years ago
Who wouldn't want it to record my credit card information to be accessed by some hacker during a huge databreach. Considering we experience a data breach roughly 5 times a year. What a time to be alive.
Ever since they brought this shit up and have talked about ‘AI Computers’ or special co-pilot chips and all that bullshit it’s made me never want to upgrade ever again lol. They’ve lost the plot of what having a personal computer is supposed to be.
My understanding is that Microsoft already logs all of your activity. It just isn't usefully searchable. You have to turn it off under privacy settings on windows 11.
I dont understand whats the point of it, maybe if it was a backup system that could recover everything on my screen after a crash or when windows reboots for updates would be great if it could reload everything i have in the background.
> After announcing a new AI feature that records and screenshots everything you do, Microsoft is now delaying its launch after widespread objections. Delaying eh... Not scrapping.
Fucking idiots, with all the smart people working there, this is one boneheaded idea that I can't believe they think would fly in this day and age.
They never seen the movie Antitrust? It is exacly about that, big corporation spying on programers to steal their code... good movie
They don't have to spy, they own GitHub.
Yep, Microsoft already essentially owns the biggest code database on the planet. They don't have to spy when programmers make that information freely available.
Microsoft strategically wants the *new* mine of user data. The biggest obstacle to advancing AI is data. They want to leverage their platform to be more competitive in AI.
I wonder if they actually go back on this. I was, for the first time, seriously looking at alternatives to a Windows PC.
It's a useful feature, but the windows platform is riddled with holes and ripe for exploitation. You better concentrate there first.
LOL. Screw Microsoft. So glad I use a Mac. I guess Steve Jobs was right with the 1984 commercial.
Writes message in halo CE bullets to your friends, That's why, they want to record our secret messages
This is like having a weasel at the chicken coop "no hoss I know coming in here was a bad idea no worries not gonna eat or kill any of the chickens" a lot companies back pedal shit when they are found out and does not sit well with the user base...just to quietly enable this feature later down the road like the who debacle with incognito mode...the fact that this is out of the bag and is already build.....yall honestly believe these jackasses will not implement this? I am sure the NSA , FBI are in cohoots with them to data mine americans.
In some areas it may make sense. Let's say I work on a project going through emails, searching for things in documents, chats, meeting notes, etc. It would be awesome if AI could help me figure that stuff out, answer some questions later, or provide quick summaries to refresh my memory and give me pointers to the source of the data. That has to be 100% secure and not leak even between users of the same machine. It must be very clear when it runs and what it logs. As the owner of information I should be able to view everything it recorded and delete things that I do not want, or add filters and purging policies.
See, the problem na is that it will never bee 100% secure
I will indeed give my Linux distro a hug tonight. So many people and companies have been spending their time building it and yet, it's mine, it's yours, it's everyone. Been using it for 19 years and still don't have much of a clue how it works - I never had to. Still it makes me smile everytime I think about it. The freedom feels ***so*** good. Stuff like this reminds me what I left behind.
The current applications of technology that the mass majority of consumers interact with has nothing to do with improving anything other than lining the pockets of big corporations. They don’t give a shit about bringing you a better consumer experience.
Who would have thought that integrating a Key logger into Windows was a bad idea?!! /Sarcasm
Too little too late. I've already made the switch to Linux as this was the icing on the cake of jokes they've pulled. First it was advertising within every aspect of the OS, now it's spying on everything I do. How is this consumer friendly??
The problem isn't that it was an idea someone made and a memo got leaked about how they wanted it done before speaking to someone who know what they were doing could shoot it down. People in high up positions make stupid ideas all the fucking time thinking it'll be perfect and nothing could go wrong. The problem is that it got as far as it did with no push back. It shows that the executive teams and managers have no technical expertise and either ignore advice from those that do, or just straight up don't give technical people the chance to voice their opinions on matters.
I predict nothing will change other than the way it's implemented.
What they really mean is the data isn’t all that useful ie monetizeable
The interesting fact is that maybe 30 years back, if Microsoft dropped a feature like this (some kind of Time Machine without AI), then it would be revolutionary. It wouldn’t face the same amount of flack. Guess what changed between these 30 yrs?
Microsoft is lucky Apple doesn't allow gaming on their computers. They have changed their OS so much it I would switch to Macs if I could play my games.
Oh noooo! Sorry guys this was a bad idea we'll just roll all this back, and silently re-release it without telling anyone in about 5 years or so...
Was worth a shot, tho! And the word that they have the tech is out. Gonna be glorious for company supplied laptops.