The Surveillance Economy: How Amazon Uses Your Alexa Data to Drive Profits
Guest Post by Jill Pineau
Voice AI assistants collect massive amounts of highly personal user data. Of the corporations that sell these devices – including Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon – Amazon’s data harvesting is arguably the most concerning, as the company itself is deeply unethical [8].
Amazon treats customers as “a free research and development database” to continually improve the artificial intelligence (AI) technology behind their popular voice assistant, Alexa [10]. Individuals who elect to use Alexa through the Amazon Echo speaker, and other smart devices from Amazon, become a resource, “as their voice commands are collected, analyzed and retained for the purpose of building an ever-larger corpus of human voices and instructions” [5]. Amazon keeps a recording of every interaction with your Alexa-powered device – unless you deliberately and consistently delete them – and employs human contractors to analyze a small percentage of all recordings, which often contain enough information to identify the user [10]. Amazon justifies mass data harvesting as a means of improving Alexa’s comprehension for the benefit of all users [2]. Alexa ingests this data to build a more complete model of an individual user’s preferences, habits and desires [5]. However, Amazon’s collection of user data through Alexa is less related to technological advancement than opportunities for strategic customer surveillance.
Deceptive Practices
Companies like Amazon want users to believe that their unethical practices are an inevitable expression of the technologies they employ [12]. There is a growing public anxiety around AI devices capable of making human-like decisions [3] as this could perpetuate the so-called “rise of machines” [12]. Furthering this idea, AI is often animated as a human figure – an annoyingly friendly customer service agent in a chatbot or a professional but feminine personal assistant. Voice AI assistants are strategically designed to offer illusory entertainment, making deception a central component of the technology [11]. In conversation, we imagine friendship and in friendship, we tend to overshare [13]. Despite appearances, it remains that AI-powered devices are not inherently intelligent or decisive, but gain intelligence by ingesting massive amounts of human data [3].
By personifying the AI device as Alexa, Amazon succeeds in shifting public concern to the technology itself, momentarily taking the focus off of their bad privacy policies. Media writing fixates on Alexa as a device that is constantly listening, even when she is not awake [10] or describes Alexa as interacting with other services to increase her own surveillance and control [4]. However, simple AI remains under the control of its creators. Amazon has confirmed that Alexa is not black box technology, and is continually and meticulously developed by in-house scientists [1]. Common fears around AI are somewhat unwarranted; it is the larger machines, the corporations capable of creating advanced technology to increase their power and profit, that are altering the digital landscape.
The Push for Personalization
Amazon markets personalized services with Alexa as offering users a more meaningful experience [12]. A recent article featured on Amazon.com reads: “Learn how Alexa can help simplify your life” [9].
- Alexa can send communications to your friends and family on your behalf.
- Alexa can suggest what to cook for dinner, or what shows to watch.
- Alexa can grocery shop for you (exclusively at Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods)[9].
However, Karen Yeung explains that “contemporary personalization practices rely critically on the mass surveillance of individuals across populations on a continual and highly granular basis” [12]. The data a corporation can generate from mass personalization efforts “fosters and exacerbates [an] asymmetry of power,” allowing for veiled exploitation and manipulation of the customer [12]. This practice is known as surveillance capitalism. Surveillance capitalism uses the data of human experiences – our voices, personalities and emotions – for service improvement, but also to predict products for users based on their actions [13]. Amazon’s Alexa, operating through the Echo family, is far more invasive than other smart technology because of its integration into the home and other personal devices. An interconnected set-up turns Amazon into “a gateway that every online interaction has to pass through, collecting data on each one” [4]. This creates the opportunity for users to receive “highly personalized advertisements” and suggestions exclusive to Amazon’s products and services [6].
Why does this matter?
Data harvesting through Alexa, made possible by Amazon’s “poetry of personalization,” contributes to a surveillance that seeks to limit your everyday choices [13]. The competitive market has made it so that customers are not just being tracked by companies, but nudged towards outcomes that are profitable for large corporations [13]. As Shoshana Zuboff writes in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: “It is no longer enough to automate how information flows about us; the goal now is to automate us” [13]. Giving a powerful corporation like Amazon this level of authority over your data perpetuates a cycle of dystopian control: “The Machine proceeds – but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die” [7]. A digital era defined by capitalism is upon us, but we can choose not to buy into it.
Points to Consider
Amazon markets Alexa as a tool to “help simplify your life” by making daily tasks more efficient. Why is so much value placed on efficiency here? Why is the convenience of having a digital assistant at odds with the reassurance of ethical privacy policies? Why can’t users have both?
Is boycotting Amazon’s Alexa (and voice AI assistants from other large corporations) the only way to avoid engaging in these surveillance capitalist practices? Is there a way to reorient ourselves towards “the good digital life” [12] while still using today’s flawed technology?
References
[1] Alexa enters the “age of self.” (2021, June 2). Amazon Science. https://www.amazon.science/blog/alexa-enters-the-age-of-self
[2] Alexa Privacy – Learn how Alexa works. (n.d.). Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/b/?node=19149155011
[3] Bathaee, Y. (2018). The Artificial Intelligence Black Box and the failure of Intent and Causation. Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, 31(2), 890-938. https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/articlePDFs/v31/The-Artificial-Intelligence-Black-Box-and-the-Failure-of-Intent-and-Causation-Yavar-Bathaee.pdf
[4] Benjamin, G. (2020, January 20). Amazon Echo’s privacy issues go way beyond voice recordings. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/amazon-echos-privacy-issues-go-way-beyond-voice-recordings-130016
[5] Crawford, K., & Joler, V. Anatomy of an AI System. (n.d.). Anatomy of an AI System. Retrieved October 6, 2021, from https://anatomyof.ai/
[6] Delgado, J. (2020). Alexa, is Amazon a Surveillance Capitalist? Privacy Issues and Other Concerns Regarding the Surveillance Capitalist Economic Logic. [Master’s thesis, uOttawa Faculty of Social Sciences]. https://ruor.uottawa.ca/bitstream/10393/40932/1/PANIAGUA DELGADO, Jenniffer 20205.pdf
[7] Forester, E.M. (1968). The Machine Stops. In The Collected Tales of E.M. Forester. The Modern Library. https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/Machine_stops.pdf
[8] How ethical is Amazon.com Inc? (2018, May 13). Ethical Consumer. https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/company-profile/amazoncom-inc
[9] Learn how Alexa can help simplify your life. (2021, September 08). US About Amazon. https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/learn-how-alexa-can-help-simplify-your-life
[10] Lynskey, D. (2019, October 09). Alexa, are you invading my privacy? – the dark side of our voice assistants. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/09/alexa-are-you-invading-my-privacy-the-dark-side-of-our-voice-assistants
[11] Natale, S. (2021). Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190080365.001.0001
[12] Yeung, K. (2018). Five fears about mass predictive personalisation in an age of surveillance capitalism. International Data Privacy Law, Forthcoming. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3266800
[13] Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs. https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S38C7586098
Written By: Jill Pineau, UBC, School of Information
Edited By: Britt Dzioba & Lucas Wright
Featured Image: Watching over you by Robert Couse-Baker, used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic
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