I find the interplay between audio codecs, speech synthesis, and speech recognition fascinating. Advancements in one usually results in advancements in the others.
Opus 1.5 released: Opus gets a machine learning upgrade
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Re: Opus 1.5 released: Opus gets a machine learning upgrade
#52Re: Opus 1.5 released: Opus gets a machine learning upgrade
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is the ethics question important? It is a new feature for an audio codec, not a new material to teach in your kids curriculum.
Imagine you release a codec which optimizes for cis white male voice, every other kind of voice has perceptibly lower fidelity (at low bitrates). That would not go well...
Yeah, imagine a low bitrate situation where only English speaking men can still communicate. That would create quite a power imbalance.
Re: Opus 1.5 released: Opus gets a machine learning upgrade
#54Re: Opus 1.5 released: Opus gets a machine learning upgrade
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Machine Learning is Artificial Intelligence. Just look at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
Many people are annoyed by the recent influx of calling everything "AI". Machine learning, statistical models, procedural generation, literally an usage of heuristics are all being called "AI" nowadays which obfuscates the "boring" nature in favor of "exciting buzzword" Selecting the quality of a video based on your download speed? That's "AI" now.
On the other hand, it means that you can assume anything mentioning AI is overhyped and probably isn't as great as they claim. That can be slightly useful at times.
Re: Opus 1.5 released: Opus gets a machine learning upgrade
#56I wonder: did they address common ML ethics questions? Specifically: Are the ML algorithms better/worse on male than on female speech? How about different languages or dialects? Are they specifically tuned for speech at all, or do they also work well for music or birdsong? That said, the examples are impressive and I can't wait for this level of understandability to become standard in my calls.
Why is the ethics question important? It is a new feature for an audio codec, not a new material to teach in your kids curriculum.
I get your point, but the questioner wasn't being rude or angry, only curious. I think it's a valid question, too. While it isn't as important to be neutral in this instance as, say, a crime prediction model or a hiring model, it should be boilerplate to consider ML inputs for identity neutrality.
Re: Opus 1.5 released: Opus gets a machine learning upgrade
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine you release a codec which optimizes for cis white male voice, every other kind of voice has perceptibly lower fidelity (at low bitrates). That would not go well...
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What people have historically called a "gay lisp" is actually a hyper-articulation of /s/ or /z/, and as you might expect, /s/ and /z/ have a lot of high frequency sounds in them. Weird as it sounds there is a possible scenario where an audio codec does a worse job reproducing the audio content of gay male speech compared to straight male speech.
Re: Opus 1.5 released: Opus gets a machine learning upgrade
#58I wonder: did they address common ML ethics questions? Specifically: Are the ML algorithms better/worse on male than on female speech? How about different languages or dialects? Are they specifically tuned for speech at all, or do they also work well for music or birdsong? That said, the examples are impressive and I can't wait for this level of understandability to become standard in my calls.
This is an important question. However, I'd like to point out that similar biases can easily exist for non-ML, hand-tuned algorithms. Even in the latter case test sets and often even "training" and "validation" sets are used for finding good parameters. Any of these can be a source of bias, as can the ears of evaluators making these decisions. It's true that bias questions often come up in ML context because fundamen…
Usually regular algorithms aren't generating data that pretends to be raw data. That's the significant difference here.
Re: Opus 1.5 released: Opus gets a machine learning upgrade
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is the ethics question important? It is a new feature for an audio codec, not a new material to teach in your kids curriculum.
Imagine you release a codec which optimizes for cis white male voice, every other kind of voice has perceptibly lower fidelity (at low bitrates). That would not go well...
[flagged]
Re: Opus 1.5 released: Opus gets a machine learning upgrade
#60This is game changing. When will H265 get a DL upgrade?