And Facebook makes five. Which is to say, this isn’t so much a series of “scandals” surrounding human review as the results of a user base becoming minimally aware of how voice-assistant technology actually works. Our listening devices did what they were designed to do. We just didn’t realize who was listening.

The AI sausage that voice technology relies on gets made in a feedback loop: The products perform well enough, voice data from customers are collected and used to improve the service, more people buy in to the product as it improves, and then more data are collected, improving it further. This loop requires a large customer base to sustain itself, which raises the question: Would as many people have bought these products if they knew that Romanian contract workers would listen to them, even if they didn’t deliberately trigger their devices? A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that contractors only transcribed audio from users who opted in to having the voice chats transcribed, but it’s not clear whether users could’ve used the voice-transcription feature at all without opting in to potential human review.

The New Yorker on intellectual debt: the phenomenon by which we readily accept new technology into our lives, only bothering to learn how it works after the fact. Essentially, buy first, ask questions later. This is the second feedback loop grinding onward alongside the first, a sort of automation-procrastination complex. As voice assistants become an integral part of health care and law enforcement, we accrue more intellectual debt in more aspects of life. As technology gets smarter, we will know less about it. The effect is that our tools will know more and more about us as we know less and less about them. In a recent article foron the risks of automation , the Harvard professor Jonathan Zittrain coined the phrase: the phenomenon by which we readily accept new technology into our lives, only bothering to learn how it works after the fact. Essentially, buy first, ask questions later. This is the second feedback loop grinding onward alongside the first, a sort of automation-procrastination complex. As voice assistants become an integral part of health care and law enforcement, we accrue more intellectual debt in more aspects of life. As technology gets smarter, we will know less about it.





