Amazon's Ring can now use AI to 'learn the routines of your residence' Ring doorbells and cameras are using AI to "learn the routines of your residence," via a new feature called Video Descriptions. It's part of Amazon's — really, all of the tech giants are doing this — ongoing effort to stuff AI into everything it makes. This particular feature will use generative AI to write text descriptions …
>Re: "Two people are peering into a white car in the driveway."
I read that one as "Two people peeing into a car....". Time to go to bed.
As for 'learning the rhythms of your house', I'm reading old Nancy Drew (girl detective of 1930s America) and that's just what the bad man does when he want to kidnap an innocent victim.
I dunno man. If you throw a bunch of basil leaves, a clove of garlic, some pine nuts and a chunk of Parmesan with some olive oil in a sealed bag and ship it to yourself through Evri, they bring you some amazing pesto.
For me Evri is like the horadric cube of shipping. You put a few base ingredients in, ship it to yourself and see what you get when it comes back.
Its the best cloud based blending service Ive ever used.
The only drawback is sometimes the package gets delayed which seems to upset my dinner guests. Last time it was late it was about 2 hours later than the delivery window. By the time I was cutting the corner off and squeezing out the second course bag (shepherds pie I believe) my guests couldn't hold in the emotions anymore, they all started crying. One guest was so upset he went and hid in the toilets, I could hesr him sobbing, while I was piping out the trifle from the third bag.
Other than that though. Its the finest, freshest door to van to warehouse to van to door cuisine out there. Just use strong bags. I use heavy duty black binliners. You know, the ones you use in the garden.
I actually like the idea, at least the part about only notifying you if something *actually* happens. I don't own the devices in my house but I do have access to them, and I completely turned off Ring notifications because I became completely fed up with it constantly annoying me about family members routinely going in and out of doors, it ended up simply not being worth the trouble for that 1% of the time when a visitor actually came up to the door. As the product stands now, it's a primitive gimmick of a toy, it *needs* some kind of intelligence to it. I'm not joking, I have a pet Sun Conure that "barks" when someone arrives, and it's infinitely more informative and intelligent than the stupid camera that has to notify me when a breeze occurs. If I owned our Ring cameras I probably would have just thrown them out by now in favor of my current Flintstones solution, and I am by no means some kind of luddite.
It's gotten to the point where I no longer really care that the rich are screwing the poor. The poor are so goddamn stupid, how could the rich NOT take advantage of them?
The poor literally beg TO PAY the rich to screw them, then complain about it, THEN beg for more.
You can't fix that kind of stupid. You just can't.
I immediately get images from '1984', the nightmares from the book (that was more horrifying than the movies).
An important role in the book is played by home screens, camera's and microphones that listen and watch in. It wasn't called Ring, but for the rest, it was Rings inside and out.
Amazon has a deep spiritual link with that book 1984.
"No, no, no Amazon aren't the Stasi, they're the middleman enabling global surveillance capabilities to the Stasi while providing plausible deniability. There's a world of difference!"
A very small world without much of an atmosphere.
If I wasn't so lazy I could likely dig out a commentard I made about this some time ago. With all of the self-installed surveillance gear people are inflicting on themselves, it was only a matter of time before it became cheap and easy to amass a whole lot of intel on a household automatically. When the analysis files get hacked (not "if") it will be an awesome tool for burglars. They'll know within tight parameters when people are at home and which ones with a high degree of accuracy. When their Nest HVAC control is set to holiday mode and it's a bank holiday weekend, the house has a high percentage of being vacant until Monday. Of course people will want to buy all of the devices that will coordinate each other which leads to an even richer data set. The sales pitch will lean into convenience and financial savings and veer away from encroachment into privacy and key information a criminal can use.
A little bit of lobbying and Police will be buying packaged household habit data.
Then it will be compulsory to have Ring camera.
At my street 90% of homes have doorbell camera and about 70% is Ring.
Police is not doing their job and so people flock to these services to have some sense of security.
If only these big corporations paid taxes to fund the proper policing.
But as always, there is always going to be a brown envelope in the way of doing something about it.
"Police is not doing their job and so people flock to these services to have some sense of security."
An impression that police aren't doing their jobs. Having a video doorbell doesn't really add to security in a meaningful way. Sure, the idiots get caught stealing the package you thought would be fine to have left on your doorstep vs buying the imported tat in a store, in person. That's just created loads of excess work that the police are going to shove to the bottom of the list from people being lazy. I mostly buy things at local shops when I can, but at the moment I know there are some camera batteries in my PO box that were delivered today and I'll pick up in the morning on my way out to a job first thing. Nothing gets delivered to the house with an upcoming exception of some building materials for which I will be here when they do.
My best defense are my neighbors. We all know our usual routines and if one of us will be off somewhere for a few days, we'll let one know. A neighbor calling the police will hold more weight than yet another alarm company phoning in about an alarm being tripped. There was one neighbor that has since moved that I'd not mention to that I was going to be gone. Bad vibe about that one and their friends.
"Not entirely convinced that a country being awash with guns is the best possible recipe for a safe and peaceful society."
It's a big deterrent if somebody thinks they might get shot breaking into a house. The problem is that the owner can't be at home with a gun holstered on their hip 24/7. I believe the bigger problem is when somebody perforates an intruder at 2am inside their home and gets held on charges. Heaven forbid they just wing them as that's a big lawsuit just waiting to be filed. My attorney recommended half the mag on the first one and hold back some spares in case they brought help and to "be sure". It's a much easier case to defend.
In Australia, Victoria cops want to be able to log in to people's home CCTV (currently it would be an opt-in but I can easily see it becoming a requirement)
https://tanea.com.au/en/victoria-pushes-bold-policing-reform-remote-cctv-access-plan-could-save-200m-a-year/
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1007675657862800
I didn't downvote, in fact I agree with the "don't have a video doorbell" sentiment. But some downvotes might be from people thinking that the villain here isn't the video doorbell, rather it's the company slurping up all the data collected from it.
You could have a video doorbell, that just relays video and audio in real time between you and your doorbell purely for functionality, with no additional data slurping, processing or privacy issues. Unlikely in this day and age unless you make one yourself though.
I didn't downvote either, because I am older than 12.
But I find a video doorbell incredibly useful, especially as I work in an outbuilding that is 40 metres from my back door. And I care little if anyone sees its video stream, if they want to bore themselves to death then let them.
If the people didn't have those doorbells, she couldn't have left them any threats via them. She could have written them down and shoved them under the door, but that's an immediate arrest and at least a trip to a padded room.
I don't/shouldn't have random people visiting my house anyway. I have all of my friends, family and neighbors trained to call me first. If nobody is supposed to be coming by, my attire is probably not suitable for receiving guests (and nobody wants to see that).
How long??? That's insane, for words. Or was there a whole series of warnings, orders and lesser sentences first?
Oh having followed the link, it seems it was the end of an escalation path. The woman probably needs committing. Didn't see it say why she was harrassing them?
"That's insane, for words"
Words can form a very serious offence depending on their meaning. The UK has a specific offence of making threats to kill, which it sounds like this woman was doing. It carries a sentence of up to 10 years. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/24-25/100/section/16
"They are just words" is no defence for offensive, threatening or harassing behaviour. We have freedom of speech, but not freedom from consequences of speech.
"Words can form a very serious offence depending on their meaning."
Yes but, if somebody has gone to the effort of writing a threat down, a judge will find that more of an offense over a he said/she said case or even a recording from a door cam. A person could just say they were angry and frustrated and said things they would like to retract now that they've cooled odd. Fetching paper and a pen takes more effort than most people put into anything these days.
You are right, context is important, including the effort and forethought that might have gone into something. However, for "threats to kill" the recipient needs to have a reasonable belief that the threats will be carried out, or some similar wording, irrespective of any "spur of the moment" defence. I guess that balance is for a judge and the lawyers to work out.
It looks like the woman in the door cam case above had no such defence though, as she engaged in repeated threatening activity over a period of time including physical damage, even after a court order telling her to stop. Sounds like she had some problems of her own, but such a shame that any situation between neighbours can escalate to that, but that's [some] people for you.
"it seems it was the end of an escalation path"
Definitely. A bit like this case, which in some bits of the press was reported as a bloke fined £100k because his security camera had a view of his neighbour's property - which sounds excessive. But it was much more than that. He repeatedly lied about the security system that he claimed was solely to predict his driveway and parking area. He willingly failed to protect his neighbour's privacy and follow the GDPR, after repeatedly being asked to and him saying (lying) that he had done so. It escalated so much that his neighbour had to move out.
https://whitestonechambers.com/articles/fairhurst-v-woodard-neighbour-wins-security-camera-data-protection-case/
"A bit like this case, which in some bits of the press was reported as a bloke fined £100k because his security camera had a view of his neighbour's property - which sounds excessive."
In the US it would be very excessive. If the camera was not mounted someplace that would view the neighbors property in a way that could be seen by anybody on the street, there would be no expectation of privacy. If the camera was aimed in a way that looked into a bedroom window from a height, that's where things would get problematic. The referenced story is somebody being a dick and there's always at least one on a block. The bit about a Ring door cam being able to "hear" for up to 40ft is silly. It can hear for hundreds of feet around and possibly further. If the sound is good enough a discern the words in a conversation, that's down to signal/noise. One could be 5ft away and not be intelligible if a loud vehicle were passing by or a neighbor was using garden equipment with an engine. On a quiet night and a person whose voice carries well, it might pick that up from quite a way off. Intent becomes a bigger factor. If the intent is to spy on the neighbors, that's an offense. If the intent is to record audio of burglars while making a video recording, that's different. I just read a story today about a burglary and they caught one person as his accomplice said his name and that nailed the ID for the detectives, they knew the person from previous crimes.
The whole Amazon Alexa / Ring IoT thing is famously losing Amazon a lot of money. I struggle to see how adding this kind of thing in is going to make a difference.
Google has had Nest thermostats in millions of homes globally all with the capability to determine the rhythms and patterns of life in the household. Yet, they're abandoning Nest thermostats across a large portion of the world. It's evidently not worth their while. I'm not sure why it'd be worth Amazon's while.
The cynical part of me is that things like Alexa / Ring continue live whilst the developers can say "hang on, we've a great idea that'll help turn things round". As soon as they say they're done, they've developed these things as far as their imaginations can get them, if Amazon are still losing billions on the business they're going to close it down and those developers are out of a job.
"Google has had Nest thermostats in millions of homes globally all with the capability to determine the rhythms and patterns of life in the household. Yet, they're abandoning Nest thermostats across a large portion of the world. It's evidently not worth their while. I'm not sure why it'd be worth Amazon's while."
It might take a long think on the sorts of intel that might be able to be inferred from a home thermostat. Not just that data by itself, but in combination with other things that Google/Amazon have insight into. If AI does lead to much faster and cheaper mapping of somebody, those companies need points to feed into the machine. J. Edgar Hoover (FBI) was said to be keeping files on Hollywood elites, suspecting them of being foreign agents. At the time, that took enormous amounts of manpower, accounting, paper, filing cabinets, etc. If it's $0.05/person for everybody physically inside the US, why not? That's couch cushion change for a TLA or a large private spy firm (Google/Amazon). They can then sell that info at a low starting price of $4.95/dossier (less with subscription) and up depending on the sorts of data. Pay the least, get basic info. Pay top tier and find out how often they go to confession annually if they are Catholic, who they dated in high school and if their wedding had to be planned in a big hurry so the bridal dress would still fit properly on the day.
"Sheeple will sheeple until it is too late."
I don't think it was until college that I had a course in critical thinking. Advertisers don't want people to look at all sides, just the ones they are spoon feeding to the marks. Oh yes, look how convenient Zelle is. Just don't mention its had a high incidence of fraud and it has zero protections. Perfect for the banks to duck any liability. Nice ads showing people just whipping out their phone and making yet another ill-considered purchase with an insecure payment method. Shhhhhhh.
Because they "trust" the company that sells said tat.
Salesweasels will gladly lie just to make sales.
I very much prefer to have my cameras on a separate VLAN that's cut off from internet access, and use local storage for recording only.
---> getting ready to exit out of this digital tomfoolery.
""Security by Smith & Wesson. Insurance by Winchester. Funeral Services by Kubota""
That's like the words given to his daughter's date:
"I have a shotgun, a shovel and ten acres of land". "The correct answer to when you will be bringing her home is "early""
"They must log something. How else will the AI "learn the routines of your residence"?"
The unit is "cloud" mediated. Somebody pushes the button and data is sent via the intertubes. If the owner isn't present at the place, they'll know that if they answer the bell. The visitor is photographed and he owner might be a victim of their phone's selfie cam as well.
Be very afraid when these systems will tell you through some sort of recognition who the person is at the door. "John Smith is at your door. Answer: Y/N?"
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