经济学人2019.5.11/How creepy is your smart speaker?
Technology and snooping
科技与窥探
词汇
Snoop/窥探
How creepy is your smart speaker?
你的智能音箱有多恐怖?
Worries about privacy are overstated, but not entirely without merit. Your move, Alexa
对隐私的担忧被夸大了，但并非完全没有道理。你的一举一动,Alexa（在看着）
“Alexa, are you recording everything you hear?” It is a question more people are asking, though Amazon’s voice assistant denies the charges. “I only record and send audio back to the Amazon cloud when you say the wake word,” she insists, before referring questioners to Amazon’s privacy policy. Apple’s voice assistant, Siri, gives a similar answer. But as smart speakers from Amazon, Apple, Google and other technology giants proliferate (global sales more than doubled last year, to 86.2m) concerns that they might be digitally snooping have become more widespread. And now that these devices are acquiring other senses beyond hearing—the latest models have cameras, and future ones may use “lidar” sensors to see shapes and detect human gestures (see Science & technology section)—the scope for infringing privacy is increasing. So how worried should you be that your speaker is spying on you?
“Alexa，你把你听到的都录下来了吗?”越来越多的人在问这个问题，不过亚马逊的语音助手否认了这些指控。她坚持说:“我只在你说‘唤醒’这个词的时候录音，然后把音频发送回亚马逊的云端。”苹果的语音助手Siri给出了类似的答案。但是，随着来自亚马逊、苹果、谷歌和其他科技巨头的智能音箱激增(去年全球销量翻了一番多，达到8620万)，人们对智能音箱可能被数字窃听的担忧变得更加普遍。现在这些设备正在获得听觉之外的其他感官——最新的型号有摄像头，未来的型号可能使用“激光雷达”传感器来观察形状和检测人类的手势(见科学与技术部分)——侵犯隐私的范围正在扩大。那么，你应该担心你的智能音箱在监视你吗?
词汇
Proliferate/增殖；扩散；激增
For years the tech industry has dreamed of computing appliances that are considered unremarkable items of household machinery, like washing machines or fridges. The smart speaker has finally realised this promise. It can sit on a kitchen counter and summon the wonders of the internet without the need for swiping or typing. Using it is like casting a spell. Say the magic words and you can conjure up dodgy Eighties rock while up to your elbows in washing-up, or prove to your mum that Ronaldo has scored more goals than Messi. This hands-free convenience has a cost: the speakers are constantly listening out for commands. As with any advanced and apparently magical technology, however, myths quickly grow up about how they work.
多年来，科技行业一直梦想着在洗衣机或冰箱等家用机械中使用一些被认为不起眼的计算设备。智能音箱终于实现了这一承诺。它可以放在厨房的柜台上，无需刷卡或打字输入，就能召唤互联网的奇迹。使用它就像使用咒语一样。说出一些神奇的话（设备配套口令），你就能在洗碗时想起80年代的摇滚那般，舞动你的双臂（摆脱手工洗碗），或者向你妈妈证明罗纳尔多进的球比梅西还多。这种免提的便利是有代价的:音箱一直在监听命令。然而，就像任何先进的、明显具有魔力的技术一样，关于它们如何工作的神话很快就产生了。
词汇
conjure up/想起，使在脑海中显现
dodgy/狡猾的，逃避的；
So start with some myth-busting. As Alexa herself contends, smart speakers are not sending every utterance into the tech giants’ digital vaults. Despite their name, the devices are simpleminded. They listen out for wake words, and then send what follows to the cloud as an audio clip; when an answer arrives, in the form of another audio clip, they play it back. Putting all the smarts in the cloud means these speakers can be very cheap and acquire new skills as their cloud-based brains are continually upgraded. As part of this improvement, manufacturers (such as Amazon) store sound clips of queries, so they can be assessed by humans if necessary. But Amazon notes that users can delete these clips at any time. There’s always the mute button if you are worried about accidentally triggering your speaker and sending a clip into the cloud during a sensitive conversation. Users, the firm insists, are in control.
所以从打破神话开始吧。正如Alexa自己所主张的那样，智能音箱不会把每一句话都发送到科技巨头的数字金库。尽管这些设备从名称上看似普通。它们会监听唤醒信息，然后将随后的内容以音频剪辑的形式发送到云端;随后设备应得的响应将以另一个音频剪辑形式出现，设备将其再度播放。把所有的花言巧语存放在云端意味着这些话筒可以以非常廉价的成本，并且随着他们基于云的大脑不断升级，他们可以获得新的技能。作为改进的一部分，制造商(如Amazon)存储查询的声音片段，以便在必要时由人类进行评估。但亚马逊指出，用户可以随时删除这些音频片段。如果你担心在一场敏感的谈话中不小心触发音箱并将语音发送到云端，设备的静音案件能够避免这种尴尬。该公司坚称，用户的隐私在管控之中。
词汇
Utterance/表达；说话；说话方式
Simpleminded/纯朴的；率直的；头脑简单的
Query/问题；怀疑；问号
Not everyone is convinced by such assurances, however. What if hackers infiltrate the devices? Could governments require manufacturers to provide back doors? Are their makers using them to snoop on people and then exploiting that information to target online ads or offer them particular products? Some people refuse to let Alexa and Siri into the house.
然而，并非所有人都相信这种保证。如果黑客侵入设备怎么办?如果政府想让开发商门开个后门（获取数据，音频）?它们的制造商是否利用它们窥探用户，然后利用这些信息针对在线广告或向用户提供特定产品?有些人拒绝让Alexa和Siri进屋。
词汇
infiltrate/渗入
If eavesdropping is your problem, eschewing smart speakers does not solve it. Smartphones, which people blithely carry around with them, are even worse. Spy agencies are said to be able to activate the microphone in such devices, which have even more sensors than smart speakers, including location-tracking gps chips and accelerometers than can reveal when and how the phone is moving. And smartphones are, if anything, even more intimate than smart speakers. Few of Alexa’s users, after all, take her into bed with them.
如果窃听是你的问题，避开智能音箱并不能解决问题。而人们随身携带的智能手机还会让情况更糟糕。据称，间谍机构能够激活这些设备中的麦克风，这些设备的传感器甚至比智能音箱还多，包括位置跟踪gps芯片和加速度计，它们可以揭露出在某一时刻手机在以怎样的状态移动。智能手机甚至比智能音箱更亲密。毕竟，Alexa的用户很少带她上床睡觉。
词汇
Eavesdropping/窃听；偷听
Blithely/快活地；无忧无虑地
At the same time as devices are getting cleverer (Amazon makes a microwave oven with built-in voice assistant), the big tech firms are expanding into adjacent areas such as shopping services, finance and entertainment. Over time this may mean their incentives to snoop and misuse data rise. But there will also be a countervailing incentive for manufacturers to differentiate themselves by making more privacy-friendly devices that promise not to store voice commands, or process more on the device rather than in the cloud (though this will be more expensive). The chief thing is that consumers should be able to choose how to balance convenience and privacy. If this magical technology is to reach its full potential, the tech giants need to do more to convince users that Alexa and her friends can be trusted.
与此同时，随着设备变得越来越智能(亚马逊生产了一款内置语音助手的微波炉)，大型科技公司正在向邻近领域扩张，比如购物服务、金融和娱乐。随着时间的推移，这可能意味着他们窥探和滥用数据的诱因会上升。但是，制造商也会有一种与之相抗衡的动机，通过制造更加隐私友好的设备来实现差异化，这些设备承诺不存储语音命令，或者仅在设备上而不是在云中进行更多的处理(尽管这将更加昂贵)。最重要的是，消费者应该能够选择如何在便捷与隐私之间取得平衡。如果这项神奇的技术要充分发挥其潜力，科技巨头们需要做更多的工作，让用户相信Alexa和她的朋友们（类似的智能音箱，像iphone的sir一样）是可以信任的。
词汇
Adjacent/邻近的，毗连的
Incentive/激励；奖励；诱因
