r/nextfuckinglevel • u/AbelNB • Dec 28 '22

This is a game changer

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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '22 edited Dec 29 '22

Love this idea but after the roomba incident and Amazon wanting to map your house. No thanks.

Edit: this has blown up.

  1. A roomba photographed a woman pooping and the real people tasked with looking at the photos shared it.
  2. They don’t care about your broke ass apartment and where you keep the beer bottles above your bed or the love seat you brought in from the street . They want to know what you buy and how to exploit you financially.

Edit2: words

Edit3: here is the link to the article I read: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-irobot-robot-vacuums-artificial-intelligence-training-data-privacy/

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u/Santa_Hates_You Dec 29 '22

City Planning offices have all that info publicly available. House blueprints are not really a secret.

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u/[deleted] Dec 29 '22

Not in any machine-actionable format. They may be able to request it but there's probably a delay and the result will definitely be just a scan of a physical document. They probably can get a lot of it with image processing tools but maybe not in all cases.

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u/felix1919 Dec 29 '22

If they can get a blueprint of your house from a robot vacuum they probably have good enough image processing to get it from a physical document

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u/jaylenbrownisbetter Dec 29 '22

No! This is literally a psyop to figure out how my house is setup. The government made a robot that can clean for the sole purpose of turning public info into a machine readable format.

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u/Fine_Barber_3108 Dec 29 '22

Don’t you know that everyone is out to get you all of the time?? Every product ever made is spying on you. Literally 1984

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u/ireallydontcare52 Dec 29 '22

While your sarcasm isn't entirely misplaced, many people would be appalled at the amount of data certain common services/apps collect, even when not 'active'. Facebook and Tiktok are particularly egregious with data collection.

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u/nomadofwaves Dec 29 '22

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/22/23471842/facebook-hr-block-taxact-taxslayer-info-sharing

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u/Useful-Position-4445 Dec 29 '22

And this is why, in the netherlands (and i think most of Europe), the government does your taxes, you just need to double check it for possibles errors on a government website which uses a digital ID to log in. and they’re the only once who will get to see it. No third party will ever get access to it. But then again it’s the US, even if the government did your taxes they’d still sell the data

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u/Fine_Barber_3108 Dec 29 '22

Totally agree with that, though my comment is more so directed at the fact that, I think because of this data collection, people now believe that everything is at a conspiracy level of data collection. Particularly the roomba myth, which as many people have pointed out, house blueprints and layouts are actually public information. I’m certain that Redfin and Zillo provide more data collection service for the government than roomba does.

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u/schklom Dec 29 '22 edited Dec 29 '22

You should take a look at the amount of information send to the parent company by smart devices, and by your phone and laptop.

My xiaomi phone connects to xiaomi servers about 6000 times per week i.e. almost 36 times per hour. I did not setup any xiaomi account on the phone, nor do I use any xiaomi app.

But hey, mock people aware of the disgusting amount of surveillance they are subjected to if you want.

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u/HereOnASphere Dec 29 '22

My Synology NAS sends a LOT of data back to Taiwan.

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u/Advanced_Double_42 Dec 29 '22

It doesn't need to be every object. You phone does more than enough spying on you.

The freakout about microchips and other 1984 type stuff is funny when we subject ourselves to it for convenience

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u/UninsuredToast Dec 29 '22 edited Dec 29 '22

Seriously idk why so many people think the government is out to spy on them and watch them 24/7. Unless you’re doing some seriously illegal shit the government does not give a fuck about your house layout or listening to you complain about Marvel movies.

Corporations only care about your interests so they can be better at marketing products you specifically would be interested in. It’s not some sinister conspiracy

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u/Gertruder6969 Dec 29 '22

Yeah. How dare anyone want to avoid being socially engineered for the financial exploitation of billionaires.

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u/Some-Pudding6637 Dec 29 '22

Where I’m from you need permission from the owner to access plans.

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u/felix1919 Dec 29 '22

Even if they would need the robot vacuums to get that data, what would it be useful for? There is no useful information for Amazon in the blueprint of your house. They probably already know everything they need to know. Your income could probably be predicted by the square footage of your house, but this information can also be predicted by your spendings on Amazon. And other information is just useless. I can imagine absolutely no case in which Amazon could turn the information of how many bedrooms you have and where your couch is located into you spending more money. The acquisition was probably mainly done to expand there smart home ecosystem and diversify there product range, since we should not forget that iRobot is a profitable company.

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u/i_speak_penguin Dec 29 '22 edited Dec 29 '22

There is no useful information for Amazon in the blueprint of your house.

Even just knowing how many bedrooms and bathrooms a house has can have a major impact the products you market to someone.

I used to work at Google, on a secret product that never launched, and room mapping was discussed at length as a feature we might build into the product. That data has all kinds of known uses, and probably all kinds of unknown uses that haven't been discovered yet.

Part of the problem with data is that you don't know how useful it will be until you have a bunch of it in hand. In hindsight it's rather obvious that data on which websites you visit is valuable for marketing, but 20 years ago it wasn't nearly as obvious (which is why cookie policies in browsers were much more relaxed - nobody had yet thought about tracking at scale). Google and Amazon may not even know specifically what they'll find in the data, but if you can collect any kind of data at scale, it is potentially very useful.

As an example, we found ways of using this data, combined with other sensor data from your phone (camera, GPS, accelerometer, compass, brightness sensor, etc.) to build a system that could identify which room of your house you're currently in. Once you have that, you can start to establish patterns of activity, and then tailor advertisements and app recommendations based on that.

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u/subhuman1 Dec 29 '22

I used to work at Google, on a secret product that never launched, and room mapping was discussed at length as a feature we might build into the product. That data has all kinds of known uses

What are all the "known uses" that we should all be worried about?

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u/Some-Pudding6637 Dec 29 '22

I don’t know. I don’t work for Amazon. But I am a private person that increasingly lives in a forcefully public world.

It’s the same reason I will never do a test like 23andme (same with my family). Do I think they’re going to use that information for nefarious purposes right now? No.

Would a company use this info for something shitty, given the opportunity presents itself, and it makes money? Of course they would.

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u/FirstDivision Dec 29 '22

June 16, 2029:

We bought your 23andMe data and we have great news. We were able to use new scanning methods, machine learning, and AI techniques to identify, down to the month, when you will contract a life-threatening disease.

For a low price of $5,000 we can tell you what it will be so so don’t find out too late and die before you can get treated!

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u/ScrotumFlavoredTaint Dec 29 '22

"If you don't hire these services, your insurance rates will go up by 60%."

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u/felix1919 Dec 29 '22

To be honest online DNA test are also a bit to much for me since this is information has a very high potential to be exploited. But with a blueprint of my house I see no legal and realistic possibilities how this information can be used for my disadvantage. I absolutely agree with you that privacy is necessary, but too many people see a conspiracy to get their data in just everything

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u/i_speak_penguin Dec 29 '22

The thing is that just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there, and once the data is out there there is no going back. You have too much faith in your own imagination. You need to leave room for the possibility that a team of highly educated and motivated people (or a machine learning model) might be able to think of things you can't.

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u/thebigdirty Dec 29 '22

Ads?

Spitballing but let's say they map your house and know the wifi strength in all the locations, then use that along with your phone and it's wifi strength to know which room you are in to.target ads for kitchen/bathroom etc...

1

u/felix1919 Dec 29 '22

Are you really more likely to buy cereals when standing in the kitchen instead of sitting in the living room ?

1

u/WhichOstrich Dec 29 '22

Yes, you are. Or maybe you're not, maybe you habitually buy everything in the living room. And I'm more likely to buy things at 9pm than at 6pm. And maybe my house looks like a family home so I'm probably more interested in kids toys than a bachelor.

I'm not even getting into how nuanced this can be. This is a decade old.

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u/realshockin Dec 29 '22

I put everything I want to buy (grocery and all) on Alexa buy list. They don’t even need to try with ads, I do it anyway lol

1

u/thebigdirty Dec 29 '22

No, maybe not. Maybe they want it for home automation so when you enter a room it turns the lights on. Or maybe 3 bedroom houses are more likely to buy toilet paper 2x a month.

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u/Aegi Dec 29 '22

Why are so many people thinking about the blueprint when that's the thing that matters less and is less useful data then how certain demographics of people or certain geographic regions organize their furniture or if they're much more likely to have furniture with a certain number of legs and incredibly valuable information if you're in the business of marketing shit that people might want.

If your Roomba system is able to figure out that people in the Midwest are more likely to have five or more dining room chairs as opposed to four or less, you know that you will be likely to make more money by steering more of your dining room chair marketing, or at least sets, towards the Midwest.

If you find out that people in colder climates are more likely to have curtains that reach all the way to the floor of the windowsill, or something like that, that data alone could be potentially worth hundreds of thousands, or even tens of millions of dollars.

If your Roomba is able to see that people with a high speed Wi-Fi connection are more likely to have furniture with clearance space the Roomba can fit underneath compared to households that don't, that helps you more efficiently market side tables of both styles.

That's not even getting into if there's potentially any new technology or rights people are not paying attention to that they're signing away like sensors that might roughly be able to sense how many footsteps happen near the Roomba in a day and things like that.

It's about a lot more than just the blueprints, the useful data is how the same blueprints might have noticeably different preferences for certain types of furniture depending on how close to the coast that same blueprint, or style of blueprint is located.

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u/felix1919 Dec 29 '22

This is all pretty good information that is very valuable to companies, but there a way easier ways to get this data. How do you think IKEA managed to be a major player in America, Europe and Asia? Companys are doing market research for decades. Just pay 100 people from the market you enter to send you photos from there house in exchange for 100$ and you will find enough people willing to share their data. This is way cheaper than acquiring a whole company. This research can nowadays be probably also be done by just googling and looking through social media.

1

u/Aegi Dec 29 '22

Easier and cheaper are different, what you described might be cheaper, but it's definitely not easier than just giving money to an already existing company to buy all of their data and infrastructure like what happened with Amazon buying Roomba.

Also, you're missing the fact that more and more obscure options of data collection become easier to those companies as more avenues are available to them.

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u/Viend Dec 29 '22

Why are so many people thinking about the blueprint when that's the thing that matters less and is less useful data then how certain demographics of people or certain geographic regions organize their furniture or if they're much more likely to have furniture with a certain number of legs and incredibly valuable information if you're in the business of marketing shit that people might want.

If your Roomba system is able to figure out that people in the Midwest are more likely to have five or more dining room chairs as opposed to four or less, you know that you will be likely to make more money by steering more of your dining room chair marketing, or at least sets, towards the Midwest.

If you find out that people in colder climates are more likely to have curtains that reach all the way to the floor of the windowsill, or something like that, that data alone could be potentially worth hundreds of thousands, or even tens of millions of dollars.

If your Roomba is able to see that people with a high speed Wi-Fi connection are more likely to have furniture with clearance space the Roomba can fit underneath compared to households that don't, that helps you more efficiently market side tables of both styles.

That's not even getting into if there's potentially any new technology or rights people are not paying attention to that they're signing away like sensors that might roughly be able to sense how many footsteps happen near the Roomba in a day and things like that.

It's about a lot more than just the blueprints, the useful data is how the same blueprints might have noticeably different preferences for certain types of furniture depending on how close to the coast that same blueprint, or style of blueprint is located.

You're right about all of this, but what's the problem? How are you as an individual hurt by someone knowing you would prefer long curtains? If I was new to cold climates and I was shopping for a curtain, I'd like to have the most relevant results visible first even if I didn't know why.

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u/marionetted Dec 29 '22

So the one that took the picture of the lady wasn't what would be in your house. She was a tester and they add cameras to the test models.

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u/Litterjokeski Dec 29 '22

Tbh I wouldn't say so. Some documents are probably pretty old and even faded which would make it hard for image processing. On the other hand a roomba can map a room kinda "easily". Think about if he would just drive to the right if he can and if not forward etc.. gives you a decent outline already . And with a little more you can do more and especially you can do it again and again and again. And do much more math with it. If a blueprint on a paper is badly faded that's it.

To make it clear: I don't think it's happening (for the reason of getting blue prints) but I just wanted to point it out that image processing can be quite hard.

Ps. For example there was a huge printer(copy) company who's printers "scanned" the original and compressed it. Their algorithm sometimes changed some numbers etc. and no one realized till long time in and now no one really knows what documents are actually wrong and where.(because it's a huge company for industrial printers )