Google Wants to Put Microphones in Your Ceiling and Microchips in Your Head

Google envisions a future where your computer is always listening to you, instead of just the NSA doing it. The computer would then assist you in your daily life by offering up pertinent information without you even having to go through the bother of searching Google on your smartphone.

The current idea is that as technology prices continue to decrease, we’ll constantly be in contact with devices that can all work together to meet our needs. Scott Huffman, Google’s engineering director, imagines that, within five years, a network of listening devices will be able to understand and relay the information that we’re looking for much better than a simple text search can hope to, and the system will be able to alert you to things like upcoming appointments as intuitively as an actual personal assistant.

Right now, their main concern is making sure that their Knowledge Graph knows about enough subjects to understand the context of anything a user might ask it. That way, you can ask your ceiling-microphone-overlord where you should go for dinner, and your car will automatically be ready to handle the navigation when you get into it.

People concerned over privacy might be confused by Google’s desire to monitor their every conversation after Google recently joined forces with other tech companies to demand an overhaul in US surveillance laws. Why? To protect the public’s trust in the Internet, of course. What better way to reassure people than to place them under constant surveillance?

Fear not, Google still cares about your privacy. For the immediate future, Huffman explains that trusting Google with your information is a leap of faith you make due to the value of the results. Of course, in the future, the brain-microchips would deliver your information pretty privately and directly into your brain, because sure, there’s no way that could possibly go wrong, either.

(via Business Insider, image via Larry Darling)

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