According to a recent Bloomberg report, Amazon.com Inc. employs a team of people to help fill in the gaps that the software algorithms, used by their range of Echo speakers, can’t figure out on their own. The software learns by experience, but humans are weird, and sometimes it takes one to know one didn’t mean to add “nipple syrup” to one’s shopping list.
The collection of contractors and Amazon employees, from around the world, work nine hours a day, reviewing thousands of audio clips. Yes, they hear you singing in the shower, they know how often you search for Taylor Swift, and they share their most amusing clips in an internal chat room; they’re only human.
Mostly, they’re transcribing the audio to figure out what went wrong, like when the speaker mishears the wake word and starts recording your musings on which anthropomorphic fox was hotter; Robin Hood or Nick Wilde (it’s Robin Hood). Also, funny stuff like your banking details and passwords. Don’t worry, though, according to an Amazon spokesperson, their employees aren’t given any information that can identify you, so there’s that.
Basically, AI isn’t as smart as we all think it is (yet), it still needs our help understanding our mess of a species, and, yes, someone else is listening.