BBC Science Focus - 03.2020

INNOVATIONS

Alexa how often

do you listen in?

Everwondered how many times

your smart speaker accidently

activates in a day? Researchers

from Northeastern University did

too, and here’s what they found...

Voice assistants like

Amazon Alexa, Google

Assistant, Apple’s Siri

and Microsoft’s Cortana

accidentally wake up

and start recording

what they hear up to

19 times a day.

Anyone who’s used a

digital assistant knows

they have a habit of

‘waking up’ – making

a sound or lighting

up to indicate they’re

listening – when they shouldn’t. The

systems are listening out for key phrases,

or ‘wake words’ like “Hey Google” or “Siri”,

before they turn on and start recording

in anticipation of a voice query. But these

digital eager beavers often jump the gun

mistaking the word “seriously” for “Siri”,

for example, as an invitation to listen in.

The Mon(IoT)r research group at

Northeastern University in Boston, USA,

are dedicated to investigating what privacy

risks might arise from inviting more and

more connected devices into our homes.

They wondered how many times a day

these misfires happened. To find out,

they put a bunch of smart home speakers

in a room together to watch 125 hours of

dialogue-heavy Netflix content, including

Gilmore Girls,Grey’s Anatomyand theWest

Wing. Some people get all the good jobs.

They discovered that the average rate

of activations per device was between 1.5

and 19 times per day. No smart speaker

was found to be consistently recording

conversations, but they did wake up for

short intervals at inconsistent times. In

other words, when the experiment was

repeated (12 times) the same phrases didn’t

always wake up the speaker. Once on, the

devices would typically record at least the

next six seconds of conversation, though

some assistants record more.

So the good news is that the assistants

seem to be making honest mistakes, but

the bad news is that in some cases they

can be recording up to 19 times per day,

without meaning to. In further research

the team wants to investigate how much

of this data is being sent to the cloud,

whether these accidental recordings are

reported accurately, and whether there

are any other factors at play.

Smartspeakers have

been found to wake up

and accidentally record

up to 19 times per day

“ONCEON, THE

DEVICESWOULD

TYPICALLY RECORD

ATLEAST THE NEXT

SIXSECONDS OF

CONVERSATION”

SWEDENGOES

CASHLESS

The e-krona is coming. It’s

something of a landmark

moment. Sweden’s

Riksbank says it’s begun

testing what could become

the world’s first central

bank digital currency. It will

be a year-long pilot using

technology inspired by the

blockchains that power

cryptocurrencies.

Sweden is nearly cashless.

If you ever visit the country,

the first thing you ought to

do is download Swish. It’s a

mobile app that facilitates

payments between people

and vendors, and its wide

adoption has left the

country’s central bank

playing catch up. They fear

that if left to the private

sector, payment

infrastructure might not be

built with the best interests

of the public in mind.

The one-year pilot will run

in an ‘isolated test

environment’. If successful,

the bank will follow up with

a public consultation to

address any concerns

around a cashless future.

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