Conversations As A Platform: Microsoft’s Vision Of People, Bots And Digital Assistants

[FritzEiv]

Microsoft is expanding its Cortana initiative further into the lands of machine learning and artificial intelligence, announcing new tools for developers and new services within applications like Skype.

Conversations As A Platform: Microsoft’s Vision Of People, Bots And Digital Assistants : Read more

 

[grimfox]

How much will all of these bots cost the users? Will your be billed per recommendation? More likely they will operate the same way Cortana does. They will sell your information to ad agencies both specific and in aggregate which will then target ads at you. You wont pay a dime for these "services," you'll pay in personal information. This is why Windows 10 is "free" they want as many people feeding information into Cortana as possible so they can sell that information. You aren't paying cash for Win10, you're paying in data.

 

[hdmark]

I love the concept of cortana but I wish it would reside fully on my desktop and not interact with Microsoft. It would be so convenient to have it going through all my stuff and helping me out, as long as it kept that information with me and didn't sell it

 

[Ilya__]

How much will all of these bots cost the users? Will your be billed per recommendation? More likely they will operate the same way Cortana does. They will sell your information to ad agencies both specific and in aggregate which will then target ads at you. You wont pay a dime for these "services," you'll pay in personal information. This is why Windows 10 is "free" they want as many people feeding information into Cortana as possible so they can sell that information. You aren't paying cash for Win10, you're paying in data.

Looks like every company out there is switching to this profit model. Although, as far as I know they do not really sell 'your' data, they sell stats they generated off your data.

 

[warezme]

I'm not a jet setting metropolitan hipster. 99% of these features are junk to me. I disable it all.

 

[FritzEiv]

The question/theories about what Microsoft is really up to is also on my mind. I've been trying to get some answers to questions around this. For example: What happens when/if there are thousands of Bots vying for my attention via Cortana (and Cortana in Skype and Cortana in Outlook and dozens of other Cortana infused apps)? Will they (the Bot companies) eventually pay (like they do in a search query) for access to my eyeballs, now based on knowing a bunch of things about me that Cortana is tracking, seemingly for my own benefit but now for the benefit of paying advertisers (er, Bot makers)? Beyond the conspiracy theories, how can I arbitrate these services/Bots -- sure they are being served to me based on my favorite things, behavior, preferences, but do things start to get suggested to me? On the flip side, what about discovery? I may not want to do the things I've always done or use the things I've always used, but instead be offered some other ideas. (Microsoft did tell me they would have a "more" function that would let you do this.) Ultimately I think the lack of answers about this could just mean Microsoft hasn't figured it all out yet; on the other hand, they may have and don't want to talk about it. I don't necessarily want to stir the conspiracies here, but these are the questions I'm trying to get answered. Personally I'm excited about the intelligence this will bake into my experiences, but in light of our recent history of companies exploiting our personal data, I do start to wonder if I'll just end up opting out of this. Anyway, if folks want to submit (here) a list of questions for Microsoft, I'll keep working on this . . .

 

[wifiburger]

strange, the more articles coming from Microsoft the more I ignore them, all this talk about visions, future and their take on technology is pure non-sense, It's really annoying people and makes Microsoft look bad by ignoring current markets or trowing something in the market that doesn't sell

 

[grimfox]

IIRC The Cortana EULA states that your data can be used by Microsoft and by subsidiaries and can be sold to third parties. Here's an article the talks about Windows 10 privacy settings: http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2015/07/29/wind-nos/#gref

The way everything is written you can shut off those features and Microsoft wont have that information to sell, but if you activate them your data is not secured or limited to use by Microsoft. The text about what is collected is quite vague and they make a note about it in the linked article.

I understand a lot of companies are switching to this model, and some are only using "aggregated data" but in this instance and probably many others that is not true. I'm saying it's wrong, potentially very dangerous, and we need to be aware of exactly what is going on. Privacy should be the default. If I want to release my data from Microsoft to amazon or any other specific third party, I should have to explicitly agree for that to happen. It shouldn't be a catchall "I agree" check box on the EULA.