谷歌董事長呼吁叫停亞馬遜無人機計劃

????去年四月，谷歌（Google）執行董事長埃里克?施密特在接受《衛報》（Guardian）采訪時表示：“如果你的鄰居買了架商用無人偵查機，從他們后院起飛，整天在你房頂飛來飛去。你會怎么看？”

????這個問題非常有現實意義。特別是亞馬遜（Amazon）首席執行官杰夫?貝佐斯日前在《60分鐘》（60 Minutes）節目上表示，他的公司計劃打造并在全美部署一個人工智能無人運輸機群。

????對于可能窺探我個人隱私的無人機，我會有何看法？要我說，無人機與谷歌公司的所作所為可謂是半斤八兩。要知道，谷歌公司監控著用戶的所有線上活動，包括用戶收發的電子郵件、訪問了哪些網站、去過哪些地方、購買了哪些產品，觀看了哪些YouTube視頻，等等等等，還把上面這些信息出售給了廣告客戶。

????兩年前，施密特曾表示，谷歌在這類問題上的指導方針是絕不做出格的事。

????當時，施密特在阿斯彭研究所舉辦的華盛頓思想論壇上向與會者表示：“谷歌的公司政策在很多事情上都是盡量挑戰極限，但絕不過火。”

????不過，令人毛骨悚然的隱私問題并不是施密特反對亞馬遜部署無人運輸機的主要原因。

????施密特警告稱，無人機技術可能使得作戰能力大眾化，還有可能落入恐怖分子之手。

????《衛報》的這篇報道日前由Daring Fireball網站的約翰?格魯伯挖出。格魯伯冷冷地說：“不過，（谷歌開發）無人駕駛汽車就沒問題。”

????與此同時，蘋果（Apple）正努力利用自身與谷歌在商業模式上的差異，使之為己所用，甚至把這種差異性作為一個賣點。上個月，蘋果公司在《政府信息公布要求報告》中表示：

????“我們的業務并不依賴于收集個人信息。我們無意積累客戶的個人信息。我們在iMessage和FaceTime上提供點對點加密，以此保護私人談話。我們沒有以任何可識別的形式存儲位置數據、地圖搜索或Siri語音請求。（財富中文網）

????譯者：項航

????"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."