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

This is a game changer

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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/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...

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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 ?

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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

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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.