Google’s frightening patent: collect data and interact with others automatically on your behalf

[tezza]

Social Media has grown quite a bit in recent time, with apps readily available at all times to inform users about new posts, photos, and other information at all times.

A lot of what is happening on sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Google+ is based on user reactions. Users visit the site on the web, use one of the clients, or use a third party app or service that offers integration of some form or another.

There are options to post automated messages, and many webmasters use them to promote their latest articles without having to do so manually.

Companies such as Google have started to experiment with automation in recent time. The company's Chrome browser for instance tries to predict the next network actions by pre-loading contents that users may access, while Google Now, Google's personal assistant software, delivers information to the user by predicting what the user wants.

Automated generation of suggestions for personalized reactions in a social network

A recent Google patent goes a step further than that. It describes a system that will generate a personalized reaction on behalf of the user. Initially only in the form of suggestions that are displayed in an interface, but ultimately automatically on the user's behalf.

The system will collect and analyze as many bits of data that it can find about the user and his interaction on social media sites. These information are not only taken from sites such as Google+, but also from emails, visited websites, SMS and other sources available to the various collector modules that the patent describes in detail.

The goal here is to understand how the user interacts on social media sites and other forms of communication, which is done by analyzing prior reactions to content.

A method for generating a personalized reaction, the method comprising:

collecting

, using one or more computing devices, interaction items associated with a first user and accessible to the first user from one or more data sources, the one or more data sources including a social network, the interaction items including an online user post and a user reaction;

processing

, using one or more computing devices, the collected interaction items to produce one or more labels for the collected interaction items;

ranking

, using one or more computing devices, each collected interaction item based on the labels and based on the first user's prior reactions to other interaction items and the respective labels of the first user's prior reactions;

determining

that the online user post satisfies a threshold likelihood of being important or interesting to the first user;

and

automatically generating

, using one or more computing devices, a suggested personalized reaction to the online user post on behalf of the first user, the suggested personalized reaction based on one or more labels associated with the online user post.

While this is certainly impressive from a purely technological point of view, it may raise the alarm bells of some Internet users.

Not only does the system collect information about the user, it also analyzes them for behavioral clues, creates a profile of the user in the process, and may post for the user eventually.

Google seems to be predestined for this, as it can collect information from its social network Google Plus, from its email service Gmail, from its web browser Google Chrome, Google Search, and all the other products it has access to.

http://www.ghacks.net/2013/12/01/googles-frightening-patent-collect-data-interact-others-automatically-behalf/

Edited December 2, 2013 by tezza

[Zigen]

Google will be creating Terminator robots one day.....

[janedoe]

This is just creepy (and so is Google Glass), and sadly just the beginning. I wonder if enough people realize what a slippery slope this is. They stupidly consent to things that Google, Facebook and others are doing today until one fine day they'll wake up and attempt to protest, by which time it may be too late to do so. At least some European countries (also see this thread) have sense enough to call a spade a spade and highlight the illegal practices of these companies. It's not enough to turn a blind eye to such things or simply state that not using their services will magically solve everything. By not protesting or mounting a legal challenge now, we run the risk of ever more widespread privacy violation in future.

Edited December 2, 2013 by janedoe

[tezza]

Google will be creating Terminator robots one day.....

Google Puts Money on Robots

Over the last half-year, Google has quietly acquired seven technology companies in an effort to create a new generation of robots

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/technology/google-puts-money-on-robots-using-the-man-behind-android.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

:D

Edited December 4, 2013 by tezza