“Much of this language appears to be designed to exempt the company from applicable privacy laws, but none of it reflects the reality of how the product operates.”
what’s more, All Trial participants had to agree that their data could be used for machine learning and object detection training. Specifically, the clause of the Global Testing Agreement on “use of research information” requires an acknowledgment that “text, video, images, or audio … may be used by iRobot to analyze statistics and usage data, technology problems can be used to diagnose, enhance product performance, product and product feature innovation, including machine learning and object detection, market research, trade presentations and internal training.
What isn’t made clear here is that iRobot does machine-learning training through human data labelers who teach algorithms to recognize individual elements captured in the raw data, click by click. In other words, the contracts shared with us do not explicitly state that personal images will be viewed and analyzed by other humans.
iRobot spokesman Bosman said the language we highlighted “covers a variety of test scenarios” and is not specific to images sent for data annotation. “For example, sometimes testers are asked to take pictures or videos of the robot’s behavior, such as when it gets stuck on a certain object or won’t fully dock itself, and those pictures or videos sends to iRobot,” he wrote. that “for tests in which images will be captured for annotation purposes, there are specific conditions that are outlined in the agreement relating to that test.”
He also wrote that “we cannot be sure that the people you spoke to were part of the development work related to your article,” although he did not specifically dispute the veracity of the Global Testing Agreement, which ultimately allows All Test users data collected and used for machine learning.
what users really understand
When we asked privacy lawyers and scholars to review the consent agreement and share with them the concerns of trial users, they looked at the documents and privacy breaches that came up as symbols of a broken consent framework, Which affects all of us—whether we’re beta testers or regular users.
Experts say companies are well aware that people rarely read privacy policies closely, if we read them at all. But what iRobot’s global trial settlement proves, says Ben Winters, an attorney at the Electronic Privacy Information Center who focuses on AI and human rights, is that “even if you read this, you still don’t have clarity.” meets.”
Instead, “a lot of this language seems designed to exempt the company from applicable privacy laws, but none of it reflects the reality of how the product operates,” says Cain. Alluding to the mobility and impossibility of control of vacuums where potentially sensitive people or objects—especially children—are in their home at all times.
After all, that “place[s] A lot of the responsibility … on the end user,” said Jessica Wittek, an information scientist at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies who researches and studies best practices in consent policies. Yet it also gives her a sense of “how things can go wrong.” doesn’t give an accurate account of what is happening,” she says—”that would be very valuable information when deciding whether to participate.”