Machine learning has been an evolution in AI technology. The mere fact that a device would recognize certain data and get better at it overtime has been a dream of humanity for centuries.
AI has for sure helped healthcare section by detecting illnesses, developing vaccines. It helped with predicting the weather every day, helped sport teams learn new strategies, and even made driving an automatic task that doesn’t require much human involvement.
These technologies and more are being used daily by people. Things like facial print, finger print, and autocorrect are all further examples of AI.
But this can make us worry as our smart devices (and their developing companies) are learning more about us every day. Your interests, politics, personal opinions, health, and status are all being shared with AI companies.
In short, you are being watched.
The Different Ways Your Smart Devices Are Tracking You Through
1. Facial Print
Your smartphone can now detect your face print even when your face is half hidden with a mask or sunglasses. That it due to the current advanced AI-powered facial recognition.
While this sounds like a great plus point for users of smart devices, it can be a little worrisome. A lot of people are concerned that this mass-surveillance by smart phones is being used for all the wrong purposes.
For example, China’s Skynet mass surveillance program, which started out as a mobile tracking program to detect traffic flow throughout the city, is now one of the biggest public surveillance programs in the world—if not the biggest. In 2020, police officers wore ‘smart helmets’ that detected pedestrians’ temperature—that would sound great until you know that these helmets were paired with facial recognition capabilities.
Another example of facial recognition projects is the American facial recognition company, Clearview. In 2020, this company has gathered over 3 billion images, collected from different social media platforms, to develop a facial-recognition app. The cofounder of the company indicated that this tool was strictly for law enforcement purposes.
That can make us wonder if we’re safe at all! If AI tools can detect our faces, then they can definitely be used by malicious people for wicked purposes. That’s why we use antiviruses to keep our data and devices guarded and protected.
Luckily enough, Several.com answered one of our most frequent questions about antiviruses; Is Combo Cleaner safe?
2. Auto correction
Auto correction makes our lives easier while using social media, texting, and typing on our phones. It must have been noticeable that the more you use your phone the more accurate auto correct becomes.
That is, of course, linked to data tracking done by developing companies to ‘better user experience.’ While this can be true, it is also condemned by many as invasion of privacy.
Since the release of iOS 13, auto correct has become less and less accurate. People estimated that this can be due to Apple’s new laws that include not tracking user’s activity unless they agree to it.
However, as Google gathers and analyzes more online activity, its auto correction services are becoming more accurate every day.
Keep your data private while using the internet by installing a VPN software that would protect all your online activity.
While we can recommend you a couple reliable VPNs, there has been a discussion over which VPN is the best, more people are making the ZenMate VPN VS Hola comparisons to decide on the better VPN.
3. Virtual assistants
While virtual assistants are a great tool for the convenience of many, it is a little creepy how much they have come to resemble humans nowadays.
The more they resemble humans, the more people trust them, the more people use them.
It can be a piece of cake for companies to record and track your voice while interacting with your virtual assistant. But you didn’t hear that from me.
4. Social media
Whether you were discussing your new favorite tea with your friend, or were looking it up on search engines, Instagram or Facebook have at least once given you relevant ads.
Social media platforms use AI tools for many marketing purposes including collecting your activity to provide you with more relative ads. But we take this with a grain of salt because there isn’t a clear question on whether we agree or not to have our data analyzed and used for advertisement purposes.
If you’re using social media on your browser, make sure that you’re using a secure browser. While Chrome is the most popular browser right now, internet users expressed different opinions in this comparison article about Avast Secure Browser VS Chrome.
