![]() ![]() This attempt to clearly delineate between customers and beta testers-and how those people’s data will be treated-has been confounding to many testers, who say they consider themselves part of iRobot’s broader community and feel that the company’s comments are dismissive. In the LinkedIn post and in statements to MIT Technology Review, Angle and iRobot have repeatedly emphasized that no customer data was shared and that “participants are informed and acknowledge how the data will be collected.” We know about these particular images because the screenshots were subsequently shared with us, but our interviews with data annotators and researchers who study data annotation suggest they are unlikely to be the only ones that made their way online it’s not uncommon for sensitive images, videos, and audio to be shared with labelers. These workers then shared at least 15 images-including shots of a minor and of a woman sitting on the toilet-to social media groups where they gathered to talk shop. We found that in one 2020 project, gig workers in Venezuela were asked to label objects in a series of images of home interiors, some of which included individuals-their faces visible to the data annotators. Last month MIT Technology Review revealed how iRobot collects photos and videos from the homes of test users and employees and shares them with data annotation companies, including San Francisco–based Scale AI, which hire far-flung contractors to label the data that trains the company’s artificial-intelligence algorithms. The blurry line between testers and consumers Now, he wonders, “where is the accountability?” It’s “a failure … also a violation of trust.” The company’s failure to adequately protect test user data feels like “a clear breach of the agreement on their side,” Greg says. “There is a real concern about whether the company is being deceptive if people are signing up for this sort of highly invasive type of surveillance and never fully understand … what they’re agreeing to,” says Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. After all, the agreements go both ways, and whether or not the company legally violated its promises, the participants feel misled. The participants have shared similar concerns about how iRobot handled their data-and whether those practices conform with the company's own data protection promises. Nearly a dozen people who participated in iRobot’s data collection efforts between 20 have come forward in the weeks since MIT Technology Review published an investigation into how the company uses images captured from inside real homes to train its artificial intelligence.
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