[HN Gopher] Screenpipe: 24/7 local AI screen and mic recording
___________________________________________________________________
Screenpipe: 24/7 local AI screen and mic recording
Author : thunderbong
Score : 174 points
Date : 2024-09-30 11:15 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| jumploops wrote:
| Love the focus on just recording your system, and then using that
| as a building block for more advanced apps.
|
| When I prototyped doing this for a sub-problem (terminal agent),
| it was nice to have a tight feedback loop between read/write.
|
| Curious how difficult it would be to add "actions" on top of
| this, or if it's mostly geared towards a read-only/replay
| mindset.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| With such technology, we are becoming less and less like human
| beings and more like technological beings augmented with a
| biological base. I think it's a bad thing because at least the
| average human being in modern society is not brought up with
| wisdom, but only the drive to advance technology and operate in a
| highly capitalistic world.
|
| The augmentation of human beings with tech like this is a proto-
| type for a dismal world where wisdom is lacking and the pure
| pursuit of knowledge is becoming a more and more seductive path
| to destruction.
| esafak wrote:
| If it's all done locally, this is just a more efficient way of
| taking notes.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| It's an efficient way, but I vehemently disagree with "just".
| No technology is "just" anything. All of these little
| "improvements" constitute a very advanced modification of
| human beings to become more mechanical and less empathetic
| towards life.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Cyber augmentation (hearing aids, cochlear implants, etc.)
| are often a means to become more empathetic, because it
| allows deeper connections.
|
| As someone who suffers from ADD, I simply won't be able to
| recall forever everything someone and I said, so I use
| technological augmentation in the form of writing down
| birthdays, for example. When I'm at meetups, when a
| conversation huddle ends, I'll write down notes, or more
| likely, send a custom linkedin connection request
| mentioning what we talked about.
|
| The result is that we have the same, empathetic, human
| conversation as before, and also next time we talk, I can
| ask them about their startup or hobby, and also I wish them
| a happy birthday every year, which I think is a net
| positive without any downsides.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| A common rebuttal, but I don't think the tradeoff (on
| average) is worth it when the technology becomes
| sufficiently advanced. (Of course, it's worth it for some
| people, but the resulting technology makes society worse
| on average.)
|
| And you are forgetting all the destructive technology
| required to get to the "benign" ones.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| What do you think the negative trade-offs (the less
| empathetic you speak of) of the aforementioned examples
| would be?
|
| From my experience, society is better on average as a
| result of my using notes and calendar entries in the ways
| I described.
| iterateoften wrote:
| Its hard for me to see how you could think it is "just"
| taking notes.
|
| Objectively the notes are being constructed and filtered by
| an external 3rd party (even if it is run on device locally,
| someone external is still training and choosing the agent).
|
| It is the homogenization of thought and note taking of
| everyone using AI to record their lives that is the potential
| problem.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| > _the pure pursuit of knowledge is becoming a more and more
| seductive path to destruction._
|
| How so?
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| As knowledge becomes more powerful in the sense of enabling
| us to do more things, it becomes more tempting to use it to
| gain short-term advantages that typically have long-term
| detrimental consequences. Such as AI for example, which is
| too quick at disrupting employment or cheap energy to
| generate bitcoin but is problematic for local energy grids.
| The more powerful the knowledge, the easier it is for people
| to ignore the downsides at the expense of fellow human
| beings.
|
| That is especially true because we have an economic system
| that rewards short-term improvements in the efficiency of the
| system, regardless of the long-term costs. Fossil fuel use,
| cutting down local forests (has relatively litle short-term
| impact, but adds up).
|
| And, as we pursue knowledge and technology more vigorously,
| we slowly lose other forms of gaining knowledge such as a
| relationship with nature.
|
| Human society is advanced with regard to its knowledge
| capability, but exceptionally primitive with regard to basic
| wisdom about community, love, nature, and friendship. We
| continually donwgrade these things to make way for new
| technology, and the prisoner's dilemma (tech gives some
| people advantages, so everyone is pressured to use it), makes
| it hard to make decisions for the long-run like the Amish do.
| XorNot wrote:
| What a bizzare attitude to take on a site fundamentally based
| on the advancement and refinement of information handling
| technology
|
| Like what do you think everyone who posts here does?
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I understand exactly what everyone else does here. And
| nothing intrinsically wrong with that -- technology is
| unquestionably fun and interesting. I like programming
| myself. BUT, and this is a huge BUT, I think we as people who
| are well versed in technology should take a little more
| responsibility for what we create.
|
| So, not bizarre at all.
| dylan604 wrote:
| i guarantee you not everyone here has benevolent intent. for
| example, we know people from FB,TikTok,Snap,Twit...er,X are
| here.
|
| what do _you_ think everyone does?
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Do you want an echo chamber? Perhaps just being fed with
| opinions you agree with?
|
| We should celebrate opinions that go against local
| conventions
| 7952 wrote:
| Arguably this kind of viewpoint can be particuarly
| interesting to this group. People are well placed to see some
| of the more worrying aspects of technology.
| CaptainFever wrote:
| > we are becoming less and less like human beings and more like
| technological beings augmented with a biological base
|
| I would actually love to be a technological being. This is
| transhumanism, isn't it?
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Yes and I think it's a horrible thing.
| cparish wrote:
| I resonate with your concerns, but I believe the best way to
| secure a human-centric future is fully diving in to technology
| and our constant surveillance realities. My goal is to empower
| people to collect their own data to help them objectively
| understand the impact technology has on themselves:
| https://hindsight.life/
| darknavi wrote:
| How is the data stored? Isn't this the feature Windows got
| royally roasted for because it stored the data in something like
| a SQLite db?
|
| How are you protecting the data locally? Sorry if it's in the
| README, I didn't see it when skimming.
| bertman wrote:
| They store everything in an SQLite db :)
|
| https://github.com/mediar-ai/screenpipe/blob/4f2391c6dfd8775...
| botanical76 wrote:
| What is the recommended approach for this? I feel as though the
| specific database should be irrelevant. All OSes are equipped
| with permissions models that can restrict a SQLite file to use
| by a single application.
| g_p wrote:
| The issue so far seems to be that most OSs don't really have
| an effective way to restrict that file to a single
| application. User-oriented filesystem permissions don't work,
| as all software runs "as" the user.
|
| If you assume there's a way to restrict permissions by
| application (a bit like TCC on Mac for certain folders), you
| need to then go down a rabbit-hole of what matcher you use to
| decide what is a "single application" - Mac OS can use
| developer Team ID (i.e. app signature identity), or similar.
| You wouldn't want to rely on path or binary name, as those
| could be spoofed or modified by a rogue app.
|
| So in short, in a multi-user OS, generally the filesystem
| (asides from Mac OS, under certain circumstances) is fairly
| widely readable by other software running as the current
| user. At least in my experience, Mac OS is the desktop OS
| that is closest to having some level of effective protections
| against apps accessing "everything" owned by the user (but
| belonging to other apps).
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Admittedly I have little knowledge on the Windows feature's
| functionality but my problem with that is that I want to choose
| whether or not something like this is happening on my computer
| and have control over it. I barely trust Microsoft and Windows
| anymore as it is but it's a somewhat-necessary evil in my case.
| I don't trust them to record my data and actually keep it local
| to me and I want to actively find software to do it not have
| them auto install something and have full control over the
| data.
| vid wrote:
| I tried it a week or so ago, it didn't really go well.
| Transcription was terrible, even though using the same model
| (whisper-large) on its own works well. The UI messages were
| trying to make it sound like a straightforward app, they should
| have been much more helpful as many things went wrong with a "try
| again later" type message. I also wish they'd bundled more
| functionality in the service, so the app could be a simple web
| front end that uses its API.
|
| At a greater level, I've always wanted something like this, but
| we shouldn't be able to collect info on other people without
| their permission. The dangers of breaches or abuse are too great.
|
| Since corporations are holding back the greatest benefits, we
| should be able to remember commercial works we've accessed, and
| collect and organize info on corporations, and some info on
| governments, but by their nature corporations will be better at
| getting the upper hand and the resulting attacks on government
| might not be for the better for society at large.
|
| Yes, some parts of some governments conduct abuses which should
| be called out, but that is specific departments, other
| departments work to other principles, sometimes pushing back
| against the abuse. Otherwise comparing governments to business or
| computers is a downward spiral. This[1] is an interesting series
| on this topic.
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...
| m-louis030195 wrote:
| hey sorry about this, we improved voice activity detection
| since then, also you can use deepgram if you want higher
| quality
| layoric wrote:
| What's the power consumption like for running this 24/7? Is it
| event based to reduce the need to process data when pc is idle?
| It's an interesting idea for sure, but seems like a lot for an
| alternative of providing specific context.
| inhumantsar wrote:
| screen recording isn't generally that hard on a system,
| depending on display config of course. video compression would
| be piped thru the GPU's media encoders, which are extremely
| efficient these days.
| layoric wrote:
| Yeah but tokenising all of it regardless of if it is ever
| used would be a lot more intensive yes?
| elif wrote:
| Hmm this might unintentionally be the glue that brings us
| actually smart Star Trek computer assistants.
|
| Think about it, you can access every single kind of automation
| through a desktop app or android emulator. Screenpipe becomes a
| working memory that the LLM develops to have context of its
| previous actions AND their results.
|
| "Computer, lights" can not only send out a signal like a TV
| remote, it can check a camera to make sure that the light for the
| room the user is looking at actually turned on at an appropriate
| light level for the situation.
| ericd wrote:
| I've dabbled with building something like this for myself, I'm
| guessing it's not totally unintentional, it's the first step.
| After getting it to interpret what it sees on your computer,
| give it the ability to use mouse/keyboard, maybe in a sandbox
| vm, and trying to do some basic tasks, working up from there.
|
| No way I'd use something like this that wasn't local-only,
| though.
| cloudking wrote:
| https://www.rewind.ai/ tries to do this also. Ultimately I found
| over the course of a work week, there was way too much noise vs
| signal for it be useful.
| replwoacause wrote:
| I heard some not so great things about the CEO of that company
| on Reddit. Now sure how true it was but I recall it putting me
| off the product at the time, considering the sensitivity of the
| data they would have on me and my company. Reputation matters
| in this space and his seemed questionable.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I can no doubt see the value in this, even being a big skeptic of
| AI the ability for a computer to just pull up details from
| throughout the day or interject is genuinely a powerful idea (if
| it works in practice is another question).
|
| However, I find it very frustrating that all of the tools that
| just record your mic or sell a pin or whatever never think about
| privacy. They seem to take the Google approach that the person
| who owns the device is allows to consent for everyone else around
| them (or any data they share with certain people) when that is
| not ok.
|
| That is before talking about the major concern of people doing
| this at work without their company knowing, bringing it into a
| meeting and potentially leaking sensitive information.
|
| I realize that unfortunately there is nothing that can be done at
| this point to stop this technology from being used by people, but
| I just wish the people that were making these tools thought about
| the fact that you are not asking for the consent of people around
| you.
| amelius wrote:
| From the readme: "Open. Secure. You own your data."
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| That's not what they were saying. What comes across your
| screen and can be picked up by your device's mic includes
| other people's data. This is a nightmare for anyone in the EU
| or two-party consent state. If we are on a Zoom call, this is
| recording both sides of the conversation without notice or
| consent. If we are meeting in person, and I leave my device
| on the table with this installed, same problem.
| piltdownman wrote:
| Why would it be a 'nightmare' for anyone in the EU?
|
| Only single party consent is required for recording
| conversations whether on a phone or in person - Ireland,
| Italy, Czechia, Latvia, Poland, The Netherlands... in fact
| the only prominent country that comes to mind re: two party
| consent is Germany.
| nerdjon wrote:
| Correction, you own my (if we are talking near your device)
| data if you are using this.
|
| That is the problem here.
| bbqfog wrote:
| That's not really an AI problem, it's an analog hole
| problem and the very nature of communication. If you give
| someone your thoughts, they now have them.
| fwip wrote:
| Well, the difference is that solutions like this automate
| the hoovering-up of everybody's data.
|
| I know that some things that people share with me are
| more or less sensitive, and I use my knowledge and
| empathy to decide what I should and shouldn't repeat. I
| would tell my friend "Oh yeah, Carl said he can't make it
| to the party tonight," but I wouldn't tell them "Carl is
| absent from the party due to an IBS flare-up."
|
| A well-meaning friend or coworker might never consider
| telling another person these personal details, but not
| think twice about it when enabling a service like this.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Neither I nor you would tell people about Carl's IBS if
| he told us.
|
| How would writing down what we are told change things,
| versus remembering it, considering what we write down
| wouldn't be shared with anyone but ourselves?
|
| How about recording, considering what we record wouldn't
| be shared with anyone but ourselves?
|
| How would somebody suffering from a disability such as
| hearing loss, vision loss, memory loss, or IBS change
| that? Should people with disabilities be forced to
| disclose them whenever they have a conversation? Does
| that include Carl with IBS? Or would some people with
| disabilities have to disclose while others are allowed to
| keep theirs private?
| bbqfog wrote:
| It is inevitable that this is the direction we're headed.
| It's already been happening, Google, browser plug-ins...
| can all read both sides of an email conversation. Your
| phone can (if it wants) listen to you and those around
| you. Cameras are everywhere... at least this is self-
| hosted and open source. Since there will never be an
| option for pre-electronics privacy again, it seems like
| this is the direction we should push to balance out the
| power of corporations and governments.
| drdaeman wrote:
| > Since there will never be an option for pre-electronics
| privacy again
|
| Why do you think so?
|
| You still can have a private conversation to which no
| third parties are privy, you just have to use the right
| tools and avoid using the tools that don't match your
| requirements. Which is getting harder as most tools don't
| seem to have real privacy in mind (everyone loves the
| word and boasts about it, but few actually mean or
| practice it), but there's still plenty of tools that do
| and no signs this niche is dying or anything.
|
| Even the big tech seem to respect this to some extent,
| because there is a genuine demand for explicitly end-to-
| end private conversations, and because it allows
| companies to avoid liability and keep certain cans of
| worms closed. I'd say the trends aren't looking strictly
| antiutopian in this regard, and it's still uncertain how
| everything is going to turn out.
| CaptainFever wrote:
| Please don't use words like "hoover" in relation to data,
| it makes no sense.
|
| This reasoning goes against the Right to Delegate [1]. It
| doesn't matter if you're remembering it using your brain,
| a notebook, an assistive tool, or Screenpipe. You're just
| remembering it.
|
| Whether or not you would tell another person these
| details is another matter altogether, and has no relation
| to Screenpipe, which does not, from my knowledge,
| republish your information anywhere else automatically.
|
| In summary: we're talking about an auto-remembering tool
| here. Your example talks about repeating certain
| sensitive details. There is no relation between your
| example and the topic on hand.
|
| "But isn't it the same? You're repeating the information
| to Screenpipe!"
|
| In the context of your example, I consider "repeating" to
| be "repeating to a person". See:
|
| > A well-meaning friend or coworker might never consider
| telling another person these personal details, but not
| think twice about it when enabling a service like this.
|
| "Another person". Just as you would not think twice about
| repeating such data to a notebook (e.g. maybe you have
| bad memory), you also would not think twice about
| repeating such data to Screenpipe.
|
| There are some exceptions, such as confidential
| information, where you would not be allowed to write
| things down on a notebook. In those cases, yes, you
| should not use Screenpipe. But the IBS example does not
| cover that; a friend, in my experience, generally does
| not expect such levels of secrecy unless they explicitly
| request so (e.g. "Hey, turn off your computer for a
| while/Hey, don't bring any phones to my house. We need to
| talk.").
|
| "What about phone recording laws?"
|
| Yeah, you're right. That throws a wrench in my argument
| that automated remembering has no difference to manual
| remembering. I could say that there _ought_ to be no
| difference, but you 're right that this isn't necessarily
| the case.
|
| I could then argue that this only applies to phone calls,
| and perhaps video calls. For example, there's no need to
| get the consent of the people around you in public when
| you record or take photos, as long as you're not
| harassing someone.
|
| But then this just becomes a legal question (what _is_ )
| rather than a moral one (what _ought to be_ ).
|
| [1] https://anewdigitalmanifesto.com/#right-to-delegate
| drdaeman wrote:
| But service like this doesn't have agency to disclose
| anything to anyone, does it?
|
| As I get it, it's meant for personal use, not for
| automatically sharing with anyone - although those Notion
| plugins are a potentially gray area, simply because
| Notion is a third party.
|
| The idea is that if you forgot if Carl can make it or
| not, you can look in up on your private computer (which
| is assumed to be reasonably secure against unauthorized
| access), not that it should somehow act as a virtual
| secretary and automatically respond to others if Carl can
| make to a party or not. Doing the former does not create
| any issues wrt privacy (privacy is about _not sharing_
| sensitive data - and there is no data sharing), doing the
| latter is questionable at best.
|
| Recordings increase risks, and it's concerning that I
| don't see a single word about even the existence of
| retention policies (and whenever Screenpipe can "realize"
| and go off the record when it detects something
| sensitive, pausing recording until it notices the topic
| changes), but besides that I'm not sure how it harms any
| reasonable privacy. IMHO, trying to prohibit making notes
| is not really reasonable, but not sharing such notes with
| anyone without consent is very reasonable (YMMV, of
| course).
| KolmogorovComp wrote:
| > I realize that unfortunately there is nothing that can be
| done at this point to stop this technology from being used by
| people
|
| Seems like you answered your own question? Since there's
| nothing they can do, what would you want them to do?
| nerdjon wrote:
| Acknowledge the problem?
|
| Build in functionality so it only recognizes your voice and
| everything else is removed?
|
| Don't hide behind "privacy" promises or "your data is secure"
| when that doesn't fix the issue.
|
| Just because we can admit that the reality is the problem is
| not going away doesn't mean that we just give up and not talk
| about it.
| financetechbro wrote:
| Come up with a solution, most likely. Since when has this
| crowd bowed down to a challenge because "there is nothing you
| can do"?
| mihaaly wrote:
| Maybe not arguing for the acceptance of a bad situation just
| because it is ubiquitous?! I have a strong dislike against
| people knowing perfectly well that something is bad but still
| they raise their voice for the acceptance of that bad thing
| on the basis of size, of giving up and doing absolutely
| nothing against it, not even trying.
|
| ... or ... if I see it from a different standpoint then doing
| nothing is not that a bad idea actully. In my case I make it
| very hard sharing (accessing) pictures of my kids with
| relatives. Knowing how the big tech hijacking the
| communication that is used by average folk and how ignorant
| most are towards privacy implications on others I rather not
| share pictures except with those few being able to handle
| secure channel and private thing the way supposed to. Or they
| can come over in person. So I have to agree now, doing
| nothing, not using contemporary technology is a great idea!
| And ban it from (your own) children too.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Plenty of signs in the 20m radius, something along this:
|
| https://www.thesignshed.co.uk/cdn/shop/products/24-hour-
| cctv...
|
| Possibly change the usual 'hi' greating to the more
| appropriate 'sign this release form before coming close or
| talk!' one.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >They seem to take the Google approach that the person who owns
| the device is allows to consent for everyone else around them
| (or any data they share with certain people) when that is not
| ok.
|
| This is what's often overlooked (intentionally so?) in
| discussions about privacy. Too much of privacy is framed as "
| _I_ am OK with sharing this data. " But too often the data you
| hold is actually about other people: contact lists,
| conversations, associations. When you let a third party sift
| through your information, you're also making that decision for
| everyone else you interact with. I think the right way to think
| about privacy is: even if I have nothing to hide, I respect the
| agency of those I communicate with, so I won't make that
| decision to disclose unilaterally.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I flat out refuse to let an app go through my contacts, there
| is just no reason for it. Photos is always what I select and
| never full access. etc.
|
| So when one of the social media sites recommends someone I
| may know, have no other contacts with this person and I
| recently shared my number with them. I get angry.
|
| I will never understand how we got to the point that someone
| else can consent to a company gathering up _my_ data just
| because it happens to be on their phone.
|
| I don't think it's overlooked, some people talk about it. But
| a lot of companies try to push it away because they take
| "privacy" seriously while ignoring the consent problem.
| caseyy wrote:
| When I lived in a shared house, Facebook learned about my
| relation to my housemates without my consent. I didn't use
| a single Facebook product at the time and used a VPN on my
| devices. A few years later, when I signed up to Facebook,
| my ex-housemates were all "people I may know".
|
| I was wondering for a long time how it knew. I think it was
| because some of my ex-housemates shared their contacts with
| FB and it discovered us as a social group.
|
| It is really an eye-opening experience to sign up to
| Facebook for the first time in recent years. It already
| knows so much about you and your interests. It's as if
| there was already a profile with your name on it that they
| were building, without even approaching to ask for consent.
| techjamie wrote:
| Facebook has done this for a long time. They're commonly
| referred to as shadow profiles. Profiles built up purely
| on information provided by other people's
| devices/tracking measures where the person in question
| doesn't directly have a Facebook account themselves.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I had an Android phone with Facebook integration in the
| camera app. It would ping Facebook every time you started
| it up. No doubt with all the permissions of the camera
| app, including GPS access. From there it's trivial to
| infer your associations.
| caseyy wrote:
| That is devious. I'm not sure if my phone did anything
| like that as it was an iPhone 6 at the time.
| userbinator wrote:
| _I will never understand how we got to the point that
| someone else can consent to a company gathering up my data
| just because it happens to be on their phone._
|
| It's no longer "your" data if you gave it to someone else.
| thelastparadise wrote:
| > or interject
|
| Clippy?
| nerdjon wrote:
| TBH I think the problem with Clippy was more a problem with
| its implementation than the core idea.
|
| It just wasn't helpful and we lacked the tech at the time to
| really make it helpful. My impression was that it was
| basically a glorified AIM Chatbot with some hooks into Office
| to get some context.
| 627467 wrote:
| what do you think will happen faster? some "social" agreement
| that technology CANNOT be used to its full extent (ie. I can't
| use my tech to its fullest extend, like augmenting my own
| personal recording keeping) or just society to learn how to
| behave in this new environment - where anyone anywhere can be
| recording?
|
| Remember when cameras started appearing on phones and
| supposedly phones had to make noises when photos were taken, or
| when special phone models were made WITHOUT cameras? what
| happened to those conservative restrictions?
|
| Obviously, some personal responsibility on how this personally
| recorded data is handled, stored and shared must be upheld but
| I'm skeptical of attempts at banning these new capabilities -
| specially, as you say, organizations have long been able to do
| this, just not individuals (not easily at least)
| dbspin wrote:
| I share your skepticism that rules can contain these
| technologies. But "society to learn how to behave in this new
| environment" underplays how continuous souveillance [1]
| limits our individual liberty. So much of our freedom in
| public (which has declined enormously in my lifetime) comes
| from our relative anonymity in public spaces. Sure we are
| being monitored by CCTV and so on, but until very recently we
| had a basic assurance of freedom to speak and act without
| being individually identified and monitored.
|
| The normalisation of AI + continual recording from audio or
| video recording devices (say future smart glasses) would
| create an entirely different order of self consciousness.
|
| The chilling effect of a subconscious awareness of being
| continually observed and recorded precludes many kinds of
| practical freedom. Political protest, 'controversial' speech,
| spontaneous performance etc. Just as paradoxically, being
| able to share our thoughts at any time reduces their value
| and their capacity to amuse entertain or instate change. Have
| you ever tried to have a conversation with someone who's
| filming you with their phone? Or tried to completely forget
| the 'hot' mic in an interview? There's a basic
| disingenuousness to performance, and if we're all forced to
| perform all the time - the healthy space for self is
| diminished to the interior. A place our technology will no
| doubt force into the light in due course.
|
| 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance
| goldfeld wrote:
| Potentially.. I'd say absolutely leaking sensitive information.
| m-louis030195 wrote:
| to easily take advantage of all these recordings, we're making
| it easy to extend them and, as the LLM context grows every day
| and video/image/audio LLMs arrive, we'll be able to ingest a
| week or a lifetime of 24/7 human recordings
| oriettaxx wrote:
| my point of view is different
|
| 1. I would submit data only to a private (in house and even on
| premises) LLM setup (think of ollama, for example)
|
| 2. By using this (especially experimenting with it in a contest
| as close as possible to your king of professional 'circle of
| trust'), users become conscious on power and risks
|
| It's not easy, but take a stupid example I've read about:
|
| Nothing better than having a colors printer in your office to
| show your workers that any document can be reproduced
| indefinitely (think of an 100$ bill)
| sdenton4 wrote:
| One year later:
|
| "To interact with our support bot, please enable screen
| recording and keyboard logging."
|
| "Thanks! Now go to the settings and enter your password."
|
| "Thanks! All your Bitcoin are belong to us!"
| deegles wrote:
| We just have to look at the recent news about 23andMe planning
| to sell all of its user's data to whoever buys it. Sure, they
| can have a privacy policy and all that, but does it really
| matter when the company can be sold and they say "all previous
| agreements are null and void, your data is ours now"?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > the tools that just record your mic or sell a pin or whatever
| never think about privacy
|
| That's not the tool's job.
|
| Fundamentally this _has_ to be the operator's job to take
| consent and deal with the legal repercussions of how the tool
| they run on their own device for their benefit works.
|
| This is exactly how a physical microphones works: you don't
| have ethical safeguards that prevent you from pushing the
| record button if you're not using it according to your state's
| law.
|
| We had your approach for phone calls on smartphones, especially
| on iOS, and as a result the vast majority of people effectively
| can't record phone calls even when they have full right to do
| so. In the current situation companies will record the call
| while you won't, which sucks.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| This is a nightmare and illegal for anyone in the EU or two-party
| consent state OR anyone who interacts with others in the EU or
| any two-party consent state. What comes across your screen and
| what can be picked up by your device's mic includes other
| people's data. If we are on a Zoom call, this is recording both
| sides of the conversation without notice or consent. If we are
| meeting in person, and I leave my device on the table with this
| installed, same problem.
|
| I can't find anything in the docs about how to pause or
| temporarily stop data collection. People don't like others
| recording every interaction they have, which is what killed
| Google Glass.
| xd1936 wrote:
| Are you sure Google Glass looking absurd wasn't what killed
| Google Glass?
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| It looking absurd was a key element in the creepiness factor,
| because it drew attention to how you knew someone else was
| recording you.
| spookie wrote:
| A good thing! But we are everyday nearing more and more AR
| glasses that look like glasses.
| brokencomb wrote:
| Not all EU countries are two-party consent.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| No it's not what killed google glass lol.
| ls612 wrote:
| On the other hand it's my system and I don't care what the
| Euros or anyone else thinks about the software I run on it.
| Maybe if you are a big business with compliance departments and
| whatnot this would be an issue but this product seems more
| geared towards tech savvy individuals.
| lagniappe wrote:
| I miss BonziBuddy :/
| neilv wrote:
| Before things like this become widespread, can we get some
| etiquette (and legal awareness)?
|
| On one recent videoconf with a startup founder, it turned out
| that they were using some random AI product with access to video
| and audio on the call, without my knowledge or consent.
|
| (Thanks a lot; now some AI gold rush company has video and audio
| recording of me, as well as ingested the non-public information
| on the call.)
|
| Their response to me asking about that made me sure I wanted
| nothing to do with that startup.
|
| But some AI company probably still has that private data, and if
| so, presumably will go on to leak it various ways.
|
| And it seems the only way to get an AI goldrush company to
| actually remove all trace of data it's obtained
| sketchily/illegally, might be to go legal scorched-earth on the
| company and its executives, as well as to any affiliates to whom
| they've leaked.
|
| We shouldn't need random people undertaking filing lawsuits and
| criminal complaints, just because some random other person was
| oblivious/indifferent about "consenting" on their behalf. Which
| "consent" I don't think is legal consent (especially not in "two-
| party" states), but AI goldrush companies don't care, yet.
| goldfeld wrote:
| If really it is to become widespread it means we as society
| really got completely lost in the fold. It would be an act of
| defeat of the human element. But the magnates gonna love it.
| grendelt wrote:
| A number of states have laws where you must disclose if the
| call is being recorded. I pointed this out to a former
| supervisor that was using otter.ai to record and transcribe
| calls he would make with potential leads and conference
| contacts. He said that law didn't apply in the state of our
| home-office. I told him it applies on calls made to subjects in
| other states. He disagreed. Not a lawyer, but I don't think
| that's how it works.
|
| And something like this... yikes. Sure, boss, you're not doing
| eyeball tracking, but all they would have to do is install this
| on a work computer and just ask AI for a percentage of time not
| directly spent hammering out code and pay you piecemeal per
| keystroke or something truly awful. (and the webcam module is
| coming later, I'm sure.) The future is dystopian.
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| IANAL. I asked a lawyer about this and they said that
| recording a phone call from a one-party consent state to
| someone in any other state is typically legal without
| consent, as long as the the person recording is on the call.
|
| Personally, I think it's courteous to at least inform that
| it's being recorded, legality aside.
|
| > typically the law applies to the state where the recording
| is made.
|
| https://recordinglaw.com/united-states-recording-laws/one-
| pa...
| eightysixfour wrote:
| These are called one-party vs two(/all)-party consent states,
| states that are one-party only require a single party in the
| conversation to consent to being recorded. When the call is
| across state lines, the ECPA is the federal law, which only
| requires the consent of one-party, although in theory you
| could take them to court in the state which had an all-party
| rule. In general it is considered "nice" to ask, but the
| court case across state lines probably isn't going to go in
| favor of the person with the complaint.
|
| There are far more one-party states, 37, then two-party.
| simonw wrote:
| "But some AI company probably still has that private data, and
| if so, presumably will go on to leak it various ways."
|
| Both OpenAI and Anthropic don't train on data sent to them via
| their API. If they leak that private data it was from a
| security breach, not because they piped it into their training
| run.
|
| (Cue a dozen comments saying "if you believe them about that
| you're naive", to which I have no useful response.)
| roywiggins wrote:
| I moderately trust them not to egregiously lie, but what
| about every AI startup that's just a thin layer around an
| OpenAI API- what are their privacy policies, has it changed
| in the last 12 hours, and what happens when they go bust and
| sell their assets off?
| simonw wrote:
| Yeah, I agree - if you're sending data to some OpenAI
| wrapping company you have much less insight into whether or
| not they are permanently logging the data that you send
| them.
| cj wrote:
| > Before things like this become widespread, can we get some
| etiquette (and legal awareness)?
|
| I was watching CNBC interview last week with the founder of
| https://mercor.com/ (backed by Benchmark, $250m valuation).
|
| The founder was pitching that their company would take every
| employee's employment and payroll history (even from prior
| roles) and use that to make AI recommendations to employers on
| things like compensation, employee retention, employee
| performance, etc.
|
| The majority of what the founder was describing would clearly
| be illegal if any human did it by hand. But somehow because a
| LLM is doing it, it becomes legal.
|
| Specific example: In most states it's illegal for a company to
| ask job candidates what their salary was in prior roles. But
| suddenly it's no longer illegal if a big company like ADP feeds
| all the data into a LLM and query against the LLM instead of
| the raw dataset.
|
| Copyright issues wasn't enough to regulate LLMs. But I suspect
| once we start seeing LLMs used in HR, performance reviews, pay
| raise decisions, hiring decisions, etc, people will start to
| care.
|
| [0] https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/09/27/streamlining-hiring-
| wi...
| roywiggins wrote:
| You don't need AI to get this data, Equifax already hoovers
| it all up and offers it as a service.
|
| https://theworknumber.com/solutions/products/income-
| employme...
| drdaeman wrote:
| > But somehow because a LLM is doing it, it becomes legal.
|
| IANAL, but I believe it does not. As it was famously said way
| back in the day, a computer can never be held accountable,
| therefore a computer must never make a management decision.
|
| There is always a human in the loop who makes the actual
| decision (even if that's just a formality), and if this
| decision is based on a flawed computer's recommendation, the
| flaws still apply. I think it was repeatedly proven that
| "company's computer says so" is not a legal defense.
| sterlind wrote:
| aren't credit score checks literally this? credit scores
| are assigned to you based on feeding your personal data
| into some proprietary model. that score determines whether
| you get a loan, or a job, or a security clearance. there
| are policies that use hard cut-offs. how is that not
| exactly this?
| consteval wrote:
| It is exactly that (basically), and there's numerous
| ethical arguments around credit score. But credit score
| was in a somewhat unique position, because what predated
| it was obvious racism, sexism, and other types of
| discrimination.
|
| For both companies and consumers, it was a step up. Now,
| I'm not sure if that's the case.
|
| Today there's still many legal and moral qualms about
| using credit score for job applicants. It's illegal in
| many areas and highly scrutinized if a company does this.
| drdaeman wrote:
| Well, I haven't really kept track on this, but I believe
| some states (at least California and Illinois, I believe)
| prohibit use of credit scores for employment decisions,
| and I think there was some legislation banning this
| approved by the House but haven't passed Senate or
| something like that...
|
| So, yeah, you're right that it's an issue - and chances
| are we'll see a wider bans on this (governments are
| extremely slow).
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > take every employee's employment and payroll history (even
| from prior roles)
|
| Selling and purchasing employment history is thankfully
| banned in a growing number of states. Their business
| prospects in the US will eventually shrink to zero.
| BrouteMinou wrote:
| Microsoft is doing Recall, encrypted and what not with the TPM =>
| Microsoft BAD!
|
| A random dude is doing the same thing, but _in rust_ (super
| important to mention right), storing the data in sqlite = >
| Magnificent project, we want more!
|
| You guys are fucking weird.
| ekianjo wrote:
| You understand that the data stays on the computer right? With
| Microsoft you never do what they do down the road even if they
| start local
| mldbk wrote:
| Random dude making the same thing is not the same thing what MS
| does.
|
| 1. You have a choice. With MS you don't. You can't opt-out, at
| least for now.
|
| 2. And as prev buddy said, you never know what MS will do with
| your data.
|
| 3. Recall will be heavily targeted and from day-1 some malware
| will target it. Random dude's pet project doesn't (even though
| it is a security through obscurity).
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > Microsoft is doing Recall, encrypted and what not with the
| TPM => Microsoft BAD!
|
| 1) It was not in fact encrypted and any user could mess with
| it. AND the data was stored in SQLite too. Microsoft only
| started fixing this after their totally negligent security was
| brought to light.
|
| 2) Recall is maintained and auto updated by Microsoft which can
| change the rules at any point (e.g. add datamining at a later
| point). At least with Screenpipe the end user decides. This
| solution is open-source so you know what's happening.
| beefnugs wrote:
| There is such a big difference between this being shoved down
| the throat of every single windows user in the world, vs
| someone choosing to download and run it themselves
| elintknower wrote:
| An intelligence agency's dream :)
| wkat4242 wrote:
| True, though those will probably install loggers on their
| targets' computers anyway.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| So, basically this is Windows Recall for Mac.
|
| I'm still very iffy about this. It opens a huge can of worms in
| terms of privacy. However at least in this case it's not managed
| by a big company but installed and maintained by the users
| themselves.
| qntmfred wrote:
| I've been playing around with this concept this year as well. Not
| surprised to see the negativity in the comments. But there is
| value in this concept, and some of us are going to explore it and
| find out how to make it work without the dystopian weirdness some
| of y'all immediately jump to.
|
| I've recorded roughly ~1000 hours of livestream of myself this
| year. 90%+ of it is boring nothingness, but it is not intended
| for public consumption anyways. I have and will continue to chop
| up and post on youtube/twitter the interesting moments I do end
| up capturing, but it's mostly for myself anyways.
|
| I haven't quite gotten to the point where I've been able to
| articulate the benefits of this practice in a way that might
| sufficiently pique the interest or at least acceptance of others
| in the tech community or otherwise, but that's ok. I did make one
| video where I started to touch on this idea
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zqXkNhaJx0 and I will keep
| working on it and hopefully demonstrate the personal value (and
| perhaps societal at scale) as time goes on.
|
| The future is going to get pretty weird. Keep an open mind.
| varispeed wrote:
| Hopefully one day we will reach the place where such AI
| contraption after watching us for hours, days and months will be
| able to just do stuff we do and we could switch off the
| computers.
|
| Check email, respond to some, see some news, pull up tasks, do
| some code, ship some code, read some more news, watch a tutorial,
| do some more code, check mails, respond to some etc etc.
|
| At the end of the day send you a summary, some highlights,
| occasionally call you for manual intervention.
| Scea91 wrote:
| How do you as a user validate the security of tools like this? I
| am avoiding many potentially useful tools (e.g. Some Obsidian or
| Chrome plugins) out of paranoia.
|
| Is there a better way than going through the code or running
| Wireshark myself? Even these are not bulletproof...
|
| For now, I am resorting to building the simple things for my use
| myself. The benefit is that its often quite fun.
| buffer1337 wrote:
| This could turn into a market changing app. When they finish the
| desktop interaction API, you chain it together with babyagi et
| al, and you get an ai agent that operates on a variety of simple
| tasks, in many different software applications.
| liendolucas wrote:
| I can't understand why we have to inject AI in every piece of
| technology be hardware or software. Few days ago another thread
| about HP printers having an AI feature (yes, WTF?). It feels like
| tomorrow we will be taking a s*t on AI featured toilettes.
| Madness.
| zild3d wrote:
| doesn't sound unlike the IoT craze, where companies were
| liberally "enabling" various household items with internet
| connectivity. We're in the "lets see what sticks" phase here
|
| https://staceyoniot.com/connected-toilets-have-a-lesson-for-...
| signatoremo wrote:
| > about HP printers having an AI feature (yes, WTF?)
|
| Sounds like you are talking about a new feature that allows
| content to fit pages better --- saving paper, saving ink. Not
| sure if the same can be achieved without AI, but it's a useful
| feature, not gimmick.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/in-rare-move-from-pr...
| m-louis030195 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing screenpipe :) (author here)
| tomComb wrote:
| I was liking what I was seeing, and I appreciate you making
| your business model very clear.
|
| But then I saw that users can get it free by posting "about
| screenpipe 10 times on social media".
|
| If you want ads, pay for proper ads! Don't pay people to turn
| user content into sneaky ads.
|
| I understand why people hate regular ads, but IMO affiliate
| promotion (when done without disclosure) and stuff like what
| you are doing is much worse.
| spullara wrote:
| I tried using this during a meeting and my CPU was hitting 700%
| and my fans started blasting on a MacBook M3 Max... ctrl-c'd and
| moved on.
| maxglute wrote:
| Undetermined legalities aside, is there any doubt this is how
| personal digital assistance will trend going forward? It's just
| like messaging read reciepts, I want to be privy to others info,
| but not vice versa. Maybe that's the eventual legal compromise,
| these are going to be networked database, if you want to retain
| others info, you need to opt in yourself. If one opts out,
| recordings will turn into placeholder image and written
| transcripts.
|
| Also, if you transcribe a conversation, but do not record the
| audio, is that still relevant to recording consent laws? Even if
| it conversation exists temperarily in some hardware buffer?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-09-30 23:01 UTC)