We use AI models processed on-device
If it's opt-in, and the processing is done on-device, then I have no reason to be outraged.
But the skeptic in me asks "what's in it for google?".
this post was submitted on 16 May 2025
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This is common for companies that like to hire PhDs.
PhDs like to work on interesting and challenging projects.
With nobody to reign them in, they do all kinds of cool stuff that makes no money (e.g. Intel Optane and transactional memory).
Designing a realtime scam analysis tool with resource constraints is interesting enough to be greenlit but makes no money.
Once released, they'll move on to the next big challenge, and when nobody is there to maintain their work, it will be silently dropped by Google.
I'm willing to bet more than 70% of the Google graveyard comes from projects like these.
With nobody to reign them in, they do all kinds of cool stuff
And they never ever ask themselves "Is this ethically the right thing to do". And so they create things that do way more harm for society than good. For selfish reasons, just because it is a "fun" project. And I'm sure management figures they will profit one way or another the more they control everything thru their AIs they shove on people.
I may be biased (PhD student here) but I don't fault them for being as such. Ethics is something that 1) requires formal training 2) requires oversight 3) contains to are different to every person. Quite frankly, it's not part of their training, never been emphasized as part of their training, and subjective based on cultural experiences.
What is considered unreasonable risk of harm is going to be different to everybody. To me, if the entire design runs locally and does not collect data for Google's use then it's perfectly ethical. That being said, this does not prevent someone else from adding the data collection features. I think the original design of such a system should put in a reasonable amount of effort in stopping that. But if that is done then there's nothing else to blame them about. The moral responsibility lies with the one who pulled the trigger.
Should the original designer have anticipated this issue thus never took the first step? Maybe. But that depends on a lot of circumstance that we don't know so it's hard to predict anything meaningful.
As for the more "harm than good" analysis, I absolutely detest that sort of reasoning since it attempts to quantify social utility in a pure mathematical sense. If this reasoning holds, an extreme example would be justifying harm to any minority group as long as it maximizes benefit for society. Basically Omelas. I believe a good quantitative reasoning would be checking if harm is introduced to ANY group of people, as long as that's the case the whole is considered unethical.
Like always, google is doing things for free to get training data.
All things are going into an authoritarian direction which needs control of the opposition. Google will have the infrastructure to identify people with opposing mindsets. There won't be a rebellion if the rebel leaders can be locked up in time.
All things are going into an authoritarian direction which needs control of the opposition.
Now that we don't have a real president anymore Google started including white house announcements in Google News. I know every one of these is written by an idiot who is not qualified for their job so I turned them off. But why the fuck didn't they do this back when we actually had a real president and these announcements were legitimate newsworthy information? The announcements of a real president were never considered newsworthy information but the babblings of a traitorapist with the mind of a 13 year old are? Fuck you google!
They get a new feature to boast about
More AI testing...
And? Google’s been listening to you for years and not only in english.
Deciding to install GrapheneOS is constantly validated for me! But I never want to give Google money ever again.
I have graphing OS. I still get a ton of spam phone calls a day.
I'm apparently not enough of a software developer to figure out how to use SpamBlocker app. Anybody have any suggestions?
Híjole
Spam protection is turned on automatically, and you’ll be notified when this happens. You can turn it off anytime in your settings:
Open Google Messages . At the top right, tap your Profile picture or Initials.
Tap Messages settings and then Spam protection. You'll only find "Spam protection" if it's available on your device. Turn Enable spam protection on or off.
I'm not seeing in my message settings. Anyone else?
They said it's rolling out in beta. Spam Protection is already in the Messages app. Scam Protection is coming soon. But to listen to telephone audio that means they want to add it into the native dialer\phone app. Google has a dialer app named "Phone" with a Spam filter feature currently.
I assume that's what is coming -- a.i. into the dialer\phone app.
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is this really official? seems like a fake site
Most people here: Yes, I bought an advertiser’s device, hooked up in a million ways to that advertiser’s services, who’s well known for monitoring every aspect of the life of every person they can, but how dare they monitor this part?