Google may Watch Users Closely With Context-Aware Digital Assistants
Google is seeking to patent what it calls “contextual triggering” of assistive functions. Google filing for a context-driven digital assistant raises the question of privacy versus usefulness in consumer tech.
Patents like this show how badly big consumer tech firms want to know their users intimately by offering tools for convenience, said Brian P. Green, director of technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
“This is kind of a natural outgrowth of what’s already happening in the tech industry,” said Green. “I think there’s a general trend there: Collect more information in order to be more useful, in order (for the tech) to get used more, which of course then drives revenue.”
Brian Green, director, technology ethics, quoted by Daily Upside.