Well how is it un-typical?

Aren’t there a lot of split units in Europe? Here I just needed an IR blaster to make my AC(s) “smart”.

And do what? Sentiment analysis on the conversation you were having?

Remember semantically aware models are still fairly new and even they lack the context for a particular field of text. That’s something even the new fancy LLMs struggle with.

Unnecessary when there’s way better targeted models trained on years of data that people willingly send as part of everyday smartphone use.

If you use android google grabs your GPS data regardless, you have to root and disable it.

Apple does the same thing but they didn’t have their pants occupied by third-party network’s fingers like google did until the pixel came out.

Google maps is basically a beacon for AdMob to target you nearly perfectly.

Also using “fine location” in any app grabs the nearby wifi list and sends it to Google/apple if it’s not cached.

Also most ad providers these days have made deals with major networks that let them tell what tower your IMEI pinged off of.

It’s why google tried to push android/ad IDs, way less info for the networks to advertise over, and it also put the tracking in their hands instead.

I used to work for a mobile advertiser, and we installed hella bloatware on phones.

This idea was floated a couple times but was deemed not very effective cause you’d have to store and process hours and hours of audio data that didn’t tell us much more than just having a week or so of GPS data, your Facebook profile, and your phone IMEI.

It’s pretty easy to see if you’re near a Popeyes and what other IMEIs are connecting to the same tower, extrapolate that to you being near your wife and you and your wife thinking about shit on the Popeyes menu.

Boom targeted ad/video for fried chicken.

The rest is general tech paranoia leading to Apophenia.

There’s no microphones or cameras, it’s just the already gigantic mountain of data anyone who uses a smartphone is constantly broadcasting getting ground through the big data machine that has been the pillar of all tech since the last recession.

The level that waymo operates requires an insane level of digital space mapping.

Considering san Francisco is the most 3d scanned city on the planet I’m not surprised the expansion is happening at the rate it is.

If you enjoy this sort of stuff make sure to support the Kiwix Project which like 90% of these commercial offshoots are based off of.

I’m reminded of that AI-written book that misidentified poisonous mushrooms.

Don’t they charge per token?

So they’re also making money every time somebody says please or thank you…