Does Google know us better than we know ourselves?

[WayNeacTia]

So the other day, my wife and me were sitting around the house. We had just finished smoking a nicely rolled REDACTED. After a while this puts up both in a certain mood.... My wife asked our Google home to play music and we have a quite a large collection of numerous different genres, and lo and behold Google plays the exact right music. While this was awesome and such, it posed an interesting question in my mind. How did Google know what we were up to? Has Google become so intelligent that it was able to determine based on the time of day what our activity was at the time, and was able to pick out the exact right music for the setting? While it worked out perfectly, it was also kind of eerie.

So what say you General. Does Google know us better than we know ourselves?

[Uiiop]

Bruh, Google doesn't even know what it knows.

[The Alma Mater]

Ask google if it knows where you left your carkeys.
If it knows, it has surpassed humanity.

[Infected Mushroom]

You’ll have to ask my brother

He works for them in the States

Apparently goes to work at 10-11 every day and spends many afternoons at the company gym

He’s been there for... five years now?

[Kowani]

You probably have certain trends in your genres that Google picked up on. We are creatures of habit, after all. Machines are good with patterns.

[-Ocelot-]

I've heard of this before. The theory goes like this: Your phone's microphone is always watching, some AI is always processing what you are saying, which is why something you say or think suddenly manifests online as an ad.

This is the confirmation bias fallacy. Google services are being used by billions of people simultaneously. It's not surprising when coincidences like yours happen. Even if it's 1 in a million chance, that's still 2000-3000 people daily.

How about all the times Google did not predict your mood?

[The Alma Mater]

I've heard of this before. The theory goes like this: Your phone's microphone is always watching, some AI is always processing what you are saying, which is why something you say or think suddenly manifests online as an ad.

This is the confirmation bias fallacy.

Then again, it is also how Google makes money.

[-Ocelot-]

I've heard of this before. The theory goes like this: Your phone's microphone is always watching, some AI is always processing what you are saying, which is why something you say or think suddenly manifests online as an ad.

This is the confirmation bias fallacy.

Then again, it is also how Google makes money.

The idea that someone is constantly watching you, always taking note of what you say is completely false, though.

As Uiiop said

Bruh, Google doesn't even know what it knows.

[The Alma Mater]

Then again, it is also how Google makes money.

The idea that someone is constantly watching you, always taking note of what you say is completely false, though.

Well, technically it is not. Google does in fact record every thing your say (it is how google now knows you said "ok google"). They just do not analyse that yet and usually (not always) remove the recording after a few minutes.

They do save all your searches. tracks what websites you visit, store you contacts, your youtube activity etc. and do in fact analyse and combine that data, as stated in their privacy policy.

Happily, their motto is "don't be evil".

And google does combine all that. As stated in their own policies.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Nobody and nothing knows me better than I know myself. The very concept strikes me as being as close to impossible as anything can be.

That said, YouTube - a Google company - is very good at predicting which automatically-generated music mix I want to hear when I go to the site. It has, however, stopped at "very good" instead of perfect. While it completely nails it sometimes, there are other times when it is not only wrong, but so obstinate about it that it doesn't even display my desired mix as an option.

The phone thing isn't relevant to me since I don't say anything before I fire up the jams. Typically, I'm about to do some writing, so I'm sitting silently at the computer and want to get some background music going.

[-Ocelot-]

The idea that someone is constantly watching you, always taking note of what you say is completely false, though.

Well, technically it is not. Google does in fact record every thing your say (it is how google now knows you said "ok google"). They just do not analyse that yet and usually (not always) remove the recording after a few minutes.

They do save all your searches. tracks what websites you visit, store you contacts, your youtube activity etc. and do in fact analyse and combine that data, as stated in their privacy policy.

Happily, their motto is "don't be evil".

And google does combine all that. As stated in their own policies.

Yeah, and this is how the theory about Google being the big brother goes out of the window. It's not a grand conspiracy to control people, it's just corporations making money through advertisement.

But don't call them evil just yet. In general, people don't like Google tracking them but they also want to use their services for free. People basically don't know what they want. Seems to me Google simply knows what people want, even if they say otherwise.

So maybe they do read our minds idk

[Thepeopl]

I assume you are a creature of habit, and that you have done this before. They track these habits.

So if you normally smoke at the same time and want to have mood music, they will have this on record.

[UniversalCommons]

I only put up the nice things so they must think I am a saint...

[Forsher]

The short answer is no.

The long answer is that the capacity of statistical techniques (the basis of machine learning and so forth) are capable of discerning patterns and associations that humans aren't as well equipped to do. However, data mining is basically a really good way of cold reading. What Google's methods find are best thought of as "things someone who looks like you should like". They don't "know" in any meaningful sense of the word because "knowing" is not something their methods are about. It's basically an iterative process of "read", "guess" and "react".

What this does mean, though, is that Google can spot aspects of a person's character that the person might not have any conscious awareness of. It's a bit like worrying that your friends notice you doing things you don't particularly give heed to. Or fussing about how people you commute with most days remember your face and notice days you're not there. The difference is that Google's more systematic and looks at more things, but the acts involved and the kinds of insights are the same.

Ultimately, people have entirely the wrong notion of what privacy is to get along in the data world. Privacy is all about control. There's data you can control the release of and then there's data that was never in your hands to start with and never really belonged to you (like the friends or train). But it's not just a data world: it's a data economy... and very people walk around leaking money out of their wallets like some kind of oil spill.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Having a lot of data isn't the same thing as knowing something. A lot of information about you is in the data, but they would need to query it correctly to know a lot about you. Though who knows what they have learned they can learn from a large amount of data. They will be outstripped in the future by the Chinese though, simply because they will have a larger data set and fewer restrictions. When our countries start buying in techniques from the Chinese we should really see that as a warning sign.

[The New California Republic]

Nope. Not in my case. I proxy the fuck out of everything.

[Marxist Germany]

I only use 2 Google services (YT and Gmail), so no.

[Cannot think of a name]

First, for all that google and facebook et al is supposed to know about me, it also keeps trying to sell me million dollar plus houses and at one point a purple Rolls Royce...so google don't know I'm broke.

Also, you were high. The Barney theme would have been the exact right song at a certain point.

[Luna Amore]

First, for all that google and facebook et al is supposed to know about me, it also keeps trying to sell me million dollar plus houses and at one point a purple Rolls Royce...so google don't know I'm broke.

Also, you were high. The Barney theme would have been the exact right song at a certain point.

Hey hey, he was [redacted] not high.

Google knows what you let it know. If you think it knows too much, let it know less.

[Scomagia]

Nah. Google barely knows shit about me because I give them as little data as possible. No location data, for one, or as little as possible, anyway. Consequently, my Google searches often give me irrelevant results. It's a trade off.

[Pacomia]

Nah. Google barely knows shit about me because I give them as little data as possible. No location data, for one, or as little as possible, anyway. Consequently, my Google searches often give me irrelevant results. It's a trade off.

It knows a LOT about me, yet I often get irrelevant ads- by often, I mean all the time. Can’t remember the last time Google gave me an ad that was important to me.

[The New California Republic]

Nah. Google barely knows shit about me because I give them as little data as possible. No location data, for one, or as little as possible, anyway. Consequently, my Google searches often give me irrelevant results. It's a trade off.

It knows a LOT about me, yet I often get irrelevant ads- by often, I mean all the time. Can’t remember the last time Google gave me an ad that was important to me.

If you visit a very diverse range of sites then the ad algorithms have a hard time slotting you into one particular category in order to feed "relevant" ads to you.

[LiberNovusAmericae]

With all of their methods they use to track people, I would say yes.

[Scomagia]

Nah. Google barely knows shit about me because I give them as little data as possible. No location data, for one, or as little as possible, anyway. Consequently, my Google searches often give me irrelevant results. It's a trade off.

It knows a LOT about me, yet I often get irrelevant ads- by often, I mean all the time. Can’t remember the last time Google gave me an ad that was important to me.

I imagine I'm hard to advertise to because I virtually never do online shopping, block location data, and don't click ads. Maybe you're the same?

[The New California Republic]

It knows a LOT about me, yet I often get irrelevant ads- by often, I mean all the time. Can’t remember the last time Google gave me an ad that was important to me.

I imagine I'm hard to advertise to because I virtually never do online shopping, block location data, and don't click ads. Maybe you're the same?

I on the other hand just block ads.