谷歌董事长呼吁叫停亚马逊无人机计划

    去年四月，谷歌（Google）执行董事长埃里克•施密特在接受《卫报》（Guardian）采访时表示：“如果你的邻居买了架商用无人侦查机，从他们后院起飞，整天在你房顶飞来飞去。你会怎么看？”

    这个问题非常有现实意义。特别是亚马逊（Amazon）首席执行官杰夫•贝佐斯日前在《60分钟》（60 Minutes）节目上表示，他的公司计划打造并在全美部署一个人工智能无人运输机群。

    对于可能窥探我个人隐私的无人机，我会有何看法？要我说，无人机与谷歌公司的所作所为可谓是半斤八两。要知道，谷歌公司监控着用户的所有线上活动，包括用户收发的电子邮件、访问了哪些网站、去过哪些地方、购买了哪些产品，观看了哪些YouTube视频，等等等等，还把上面这些信息出售给了广告客户。

    两年前，施密特曾表示，谷歌在这类问题上的指导方针是绝不做出格的事。

    当时，施密特在阿斯彭研究所举办的华盛顿思想论坛上向与会者表示：“谷歌的公司政策在很多事情上都是尽量挑战极限，但绝不过火。”

    不过，令人毛骨悚然的隐私问题并不是施密特反对亚马逊部署无人运输机的主要原因。

    施密特警告称，无人机技术可能使得作战能力大众化，还有可能落入恐怖分子之手。

    《卫报》的这篇报道日前由Daring Fireball网站的约翰•格鲁伯挖出。格鲁伯冷冷地说：“不过，（谷歌开发）无人驾驶汽车就没问题。”

    与此同时，苹果（Apple）正努力利用自身与谷歌在商业模式上的差异，使之为己所用，甚至把这种差异性作为一个卖点。上个月，苹果公司在《政府信息公布要求报告》中表示：

    “我们的业务并不依赖于收集个人信息。我们无意积累客户的个人信息。我们在iMessage和FaceTime上提供点对点加密，以此保护私人谈话。我们没有以任何可识别的形式存储位置数据、地图搜索或Siri语音请求。（财富中文网）

    译者：项航

    "How would you feel," Google (GOOG) chairman Eric Schmidt asked in the Guardian last April, "if your neighbour went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their back yard. It just flies over your house all day. How would you feel about it?"

    Good question. Especially after Jeff Bezos' announcement on 60 Minutes Sunday that Amazon (AMZN) plans to build and deploy across the U.S. a fleet of artificially intelligent delivery drones.

    How would I feel about a drone that could snoop on me? Probably the same way I'd feel about a company that monitored all my online activities -- the e-mail I send and receive, the websites I visit, the places I visit, the products I buy, the YouTubes I watch, etc. etc. -- and sold that information to advertisers.

    Google's corporate guidelines on such matters were delineated two years ago by what Schmidt calls "the creepy line."

    "The Google policy on a lot of things," he told attendees at the Aspen Institute'sWashington Ideas Forum, "is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it."

    Creepy privacy issues, however, were not Schmidt's primary objections to Amazon's little delivery choppers.

    Drone technology, Schmidt warned, could "democratise the ability to fight war" and fall into the hands of terrorists.

    "Self-driving cars, though," deadpans Daring Fireball's John Gruber, who dug up the Guardian piece on Friday. "Those are OK."

    Apple (AAPL), meanwhile, is trying to make a virtue -- if not a marketable feature -- out of the difference between its business model and Google's. From the Report on Government Information Requests Apple released last month:

    "Our business does not depend on collecting personal data. We have no interest in amassing personal information about our customers. We protect personal conversations by providing end-to-end encryption over iMessage and FaceTime. We do not store location data, Maps searches, or Siri requests in any identifiable form."