This presentation presents overview of IVA and three important aspects of IVA, they are:
Good = Comfort/Convenience/Capability
Bad = Security
Ugly = Privacy
Intelligent Virtual Assistants - The Good, Bad, and Ugly
1. ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC for the US Department of Energy
Intelligent Virtual Assistants
The Good, Bad, and Ugly
Olivera Kotevska*, Ph.D.
April 11, 2019
*Work partly performed while author was at NIST
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Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs)
• An IVA is a system that
“emulates human interaction to accomplish task(s).”
Voice chatText – online chat
Purpose: “To help get the things done” – CEO Google
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Stats
47 million Americans today have a smart speaker in their home1
Based on the poll results2 - by 2021 there would be more then 7.5
billion IVA devices which is more than a world population according to
the US Census Bureau on May 1, 2017.
1 https://voicebot.ai/2018/03/07/new-voicebot-report-says-nearly-20-u-s-adults-smart-speakers/
2 https://ovum.informa.com/resources/product-content/virtual-digital-assistants-to-overtake-world-population-by-2021
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IVAs are here to stay
Trends show they are becoming more popular day by
day
“Hey, Google” ”Hey, Alexa”
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Comfort,
Convenience,
Capability
Security Privacy
Good Gain None None
Bad
Interactions
across
heterogeneous
devices
Outsiders can
also control
Personal data
are collected
Ugly
Undesirable
action
Data is shared
across devices
Lack of
Robustness
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What IVAs can do?
Work as standalone and integrate with other IoT devices
Can be simple activities
Make online orders
Make coffee, play TV, change temperature
Open the garage
Or, fairly complex and sensitive activities
Assistant connected to baby camera
Help older adults in assisted living
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Successful implementations and work in progress
Advanced IVA robot –
family companion
Ask Mars Rover for his mission
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IVA Ecosystem
Fairly complex processing workflow
Almost all intelligence is processed on vendor’s cloud
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Comfort,
Convenience,
Capability
Security Privacy
Good Gain None None
Bad
Interactions
across
heterogeneous
devices
Outsiders can
also control
Personal data
are collected
Ugly
Undesirable
action
Data is shared
across devices
Lack of
Robustness
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Interaction with IVA
Intentional communication
• Detect deviations of actual IVAs’
behavior from the declared
• No distinction between human and
synthetic voice
• No recognition of children voice
Unintentional communication
• Often mistaken with a person named
Alexa
• Conversations where is mentioned
Google
• Other not known triggers
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Privacy
Inference Notification
Preferences
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Muted vs Idle – Devices seams to communicating even when
while muted or idle
EchoDotEchoPlus
GoogleHomeGoogleMini
Muted IdleMuted Idle
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Security
Data distribution Data access
Access control
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Behavior
• Will they impact the
conversations
people are willing to
have?
• Can we program an
IVA to notify the
users and guests
when their security
and privacy are
breached?
Trust
• Will the integration
of always listening
devices impact the
management of
sensitive
information?
Research questions?
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Thank you
• Computer Science and
Mathematics Division
• Job opportunities
– https://jobs.ornl.gov
Editor's Notes
An IVA is a system that “emulates human interaction to accomplish task(s).”
Purpose: “To help get the things done” – CEO Google
Anticipate user’s needs and requests.
What other things IVA can do? They opened their voice services to third-party entities and now they can be integrated to
Efforts to make assistants more human like and bigger involvement in private and professional activities.
- Ask Mars Rover (Alexa enabled) for his mission
Uses speech recognition techniques to carry on conversations with kids
She connects organizational data, systems and customer engagement channels to deliver high performance throughout the value chain
Lynx
Companion at home
Face recognition
Response to touch
Light and motion detection
Children – fun, playful, tutoring
Opened their voice services to third-party entities
An IVA is a system that “emulates human interaction to accomplish task(s).”
Google assistant was activated when we call it with Lulu, Dudu, Fufu, Echo
Risks for identify thief
Inference
Data is collected from the IVA and other connected IoT devices
What data has been collected?
User use IVA to search for medical advice, schooling, jobs. Reveal their habits, views, and preferences by interacting with the apps. They store photos, emails, videos, data from the smart appliances, fitness trackers.
Notification
Push notifications on tablet and phone devices only when we communicate with IVA
Preferences
No option for the user to choice privacy preferences such as not saving the data to the cloud, not selling the data to third parties, or only allowed interaction with the certain users
Is it good the traffic for muted and idle to look the same?
Why there are picks when the device was muted?
Your data seams to be distributed in many locations
Data is saved on few locations such as vendor cloud, mobile app, device file system, cache memory
Data access
To history data with username and password
To purchase with 4 digit PIN code
Access control (IVA can be proactive) – push service from vendor, visitors, children
Give recommendations
Choose the advertisements
Dynamic pricing based on user
Possibility to affect citizens’, moods, behavior, and views.
Risk of bias, censorship, manipulation
Possibility of building IVA at home is increasing the security risk and the need of efficient device fingerprint
Recap – you decide there is much to think about.
We have openings and if you are interested to know more information please contact me afterwards.
