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The WEek: Is Big Brother Listening to You?

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This week, the news broke that a Samsung ‘smart’ television has the ability to ‘listen’ to what is said in its presence, and the company may share what it ‘hears’ with a third party.

Of course, this is Orwellian and gives us all that creepy ‘Big Brother is Watching Listening to You’ feeling. But for those working in the technology industry, it’s hardly brand new information. We all want smarter technology, because it makes our lives easier, right? And if we’re able to communicate with our technology in the same or a similar way to the way we communicate with humans, surely we can make it work for us more efficiently.

So everywhere, technology is being developed to ‘listen’ and in some cases, talk back! But what’s the trade-off here? In opting for the ‘easier’ route, are we sleepwalking into a world controlled by machines, rather than their human masters? And of course there is concern around what the information we give up could potentially be used for – government surveillance, personalised marketing to a massively granular level?

Yes, it’s shocking that Samsung’s TVs have the power to listen to us. But realistically, lots of ‘smart’ technology does too. And with the ‘Internet of Things’ beginning to touch all of our lives  – one of the aims of which is to ‘listen to’ and then improve services – this phenomenon is likely to become even more common.

Samsung has been honest about what its technology is doing, giving clear instructions on how to disable this feature. How many other technology companies are doing the same? The point is, we can’t stop technology becoming smarter, but we can be smarter about how we choose to use it.  


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