— Here’s a reason why I can’t get myself to add any “smart” devices to my home:
The most intimate image we saw was the series of video stills featuring the young woman on the toilet, her face blocked in the lead image but unobscured in the grainy scroll of shots below. In another image, a boy who appears to be eight or nine years old, and whose face is clearly visible, is sprawled on his stomach across a hallway floor. A triangular flop of hair spills across his forehead as he stares, with apparent amusement, at the object recording him from just below eye level.
Vacuum cleaners, doorbells, personal assistants — all these devices collect personal, often sensitive information. It’s hard to comprehend how much data they collect, and in whose hands this data ends up.
Roomba says the images came from special development machines, and standard devices don’t possess the same video capabilities. What are they working on that they need to label machine-learning training data to identify TVs, fridges or ceiling lamps? A little drone that cleans the dust off your TV screen?