Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/29/researchers-create-ai-headphones-that-let-you-hear-a-single-person-in-noisy-crowds.html
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How much if I want a pair of headphones that allow me to stop hearing one particular person’s voice no matter how often they are on TV?
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i am with you on that! [take_my_money,gif]
but with regard to AI earphones singling out a voice in a crowd, how do i know it is not “hallucinating” and i am hearing the person across the room making death threats or other harmful things that were never actually uttered?
nope… not trusting the “word” of any AI enhanced hearing aid!
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They’re probably not using a hallucinatory LLM type AI for this. That said I’m sure whoever “commercializes” this will still find a way to turn it into a data slurping privacy nightmare so it’ll still be a big “no fuckin’ way” from me as well.
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I need these. On the other hand I cannot use headphones due to tinnitus, which gets louder after I do use them (I experimented again recently, not doing that again).
(The tinnitus is, of course one part of the reason I need these to start with.)
Sigh.
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With the implant, you won’t be able to hear anyone but Musk.
Talk about hellscapes.
It probably has some utility for people with auditory discrimination problems.
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I can see where such a thing might have utility on a factory floor if it could let you hear your co-worker better over the rumble of machinery or for roadies/security working a loud concert. If they can only filter out other voices, meh. If I’m at a party struggling to have a conversation over other people speaking I tend to move locations.
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The speech and hearing research company I worked at in the 90s had a similar device that didn’t use AI. It used an array of microphones on the headband of a pair of headphones and some special hardware/software that filtered out (nearly) everything except what you were looking at. It was pretty impressive.
The idea was for people with hearing problems to use them, since background noise is a big problem when you’re hard of hearing. But every hearing aid company we pitched it to turned us down because people with hearing problems didn’t want to wear devices that called attention to their hearing problems. Hearing aids had to be invisible.
Edit: I found the patent! https://ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/5764778
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I was expecting it’d have a camera, and lipread to help guess what noises were coming from the desired hearee.
That… might not go so well:
(given the current state of our AI underlords…)
Yeah, I suppose that’s why these cost-effective devices fell out of favor:
If you actually have trouble focussing on one sound at a time, you could also use the passive mini ear trumpets instead:
I was unconvinced, but they got Stephen Fry to talk about how much he liked them (video on their page), so they might be interesting for someone who needs them.
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I haven’t used noise-cancelling headphones for a while, because I wasn’t impressed. I borrowed a pair from a friend for a flight and found out all they did was reduce the roar of the engines, making all the speech much more audible, since whatever DSP the phones were using wasn’t enough to handle impulsive noise. Now I just use simple ear plugs - everything gets attenuated.
Based on my knowledge of how sound works (I’m an acoustician), I am skeptical about being able to pinpoint one voice among a loud background noise scape, but I am confident that headphones can help voices in general become more audible, because they can already do that.
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Seems like this could be more useful if it included several voices so you can hear a discussion rather than a single voice. Negatively (or positively) the chances of hearing that person’s views as you walk away, or more negative could you follow the single voice post-conversation around a room or even listen into someone you were never in a conversation with?
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