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AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

washington.edu

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Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#141

Post by nickjj »

nolok wrote: post #115
foreigner wrote: post #77

I'll bet they achieve commercial success with the reverse application. Imagine being able to mute that one obnoxiously loud person with an annoying voice at a party!

For something that you could actually sell in volume, you may not be thinking large enough in terms of "party". It's common to wear ear plugs at concerts, to avoid destroying your ears. Not imagine replacing those ear plugs with in-ear headphones that filter everything except your family/friends and the concert, while regulating the volume (if your SO talks to you make that one voice loud over the rest), maybe keep t…

> I'm not in ML/AI/etc ... At all but my understanding is that none of that is actually impossible with current tech?

Over 4 years ago nvidia released a feature that lets you remove arbitrary background noise in real-time.

Here's a video where a guy put a fan, vacuum cleaner and leaf blower right next to his microphone: https://youtu.be/Q-mETIjcIV0?t=535

It definitely chopped out a bunch of his natural frequency but it was clear enough to hear him without issues. Earlier in the video he did more normal tests like removing the sound of his keyboard in which case his voice's frequencies were mostly left untouched. He also banged a hammer on his desk while talking.

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#142

Post by TeMPOraL »

andrelaszlo wrote: post #101
KaiserPro wrote: post #92

One thing that the HN crowd should appreciate is just how expensive and shit hearing aids are. go and look the up the price, they are deeply expensive, even for basic "make it louder" type aids. Worse still, because they interfere with your ear, you tend to loose the ability to "steer" your hearing. This means that you can't tune out other conversations/noises or stuff. The one good side effect of facebook spending b…

Modern hearing aids are pretty cool. They've crammed in an amazing amount of features in a super tiny form factor, with a battery that lasts for a week even when using bluetooth. My Phonaks have the ability to automatically switch programs to some extent, and to fine tune the program using a companion app. I can function and even have conversations to some extent in noisy environments, something that would have been…

> Meanwhile, I hope the trend of playing louder and louder music in cafes, restaurants and bars dies out. It's an accessibility nightmare, especially (but not only) for people with hearing loss.

I thought it's well established that they're doing it entirely on purpose. Restaurants, cafes and bars don't make money on you chilling out and having a good time with friends; they make money on you buying food and drinks. They want you to order and consume ASAP until you're full and leave, freeing the table for the next group of customers. Loud music that prevents you from having conversations is how they make this happen.

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#143

Post by HPsquared »

gravescale wrote: post #136
andrelaszlo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern hearing aids are pretty cool. They've crammed in an amazing amount of features in a super tiny form factor, with a battery that lasts for a week even when using bluetooth. My Phonaks have the ability to automatically switch programs to some extent, and to fine tune the program using a companion app. I can function and even have conversations to some extent in noisy environments, something that would have been…

> Meanwhile, I hope the trend of playing louder and louder music in cafes, restaurants and bars dies out. I don't hold out much hope because as far as I can tell it's done to make everyone "shut up and drink". I could believe it adds at least 50% to sales because when you can't hear a word anyone says, all you can do is smile and nod and take a swig. And if the place is already full anyway, they don't care if you lea…

It's depressing to think of the different ways people are treated like livestock on a factory farm.

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#144

Post by bowsamic »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #142
andrelaszlo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern hearing aids are pretty cool. They've crammed in an amazing amount of features in a super tiny form factor, with a battery that lasts for a week even when using bluetooth. My Phonaks have the ability to automatically switch programs to some extent, and to fine tune the program using a companion app. I can function and even have conversations to some extent in noisy environments, something that would have been…

> Meanwhile, I hope the trend of playing louder and louder music in cafes, restaurants and bars dies out. It's an accessibility nightmare, especially (but not only) for people with hearing loss. I thought it's well established that they're doing it entirely on purpose. Restaurants, cafes and bars don't make money on you chilling out and having a good time with friends; they make money on you buying food and drinks. T…

I've been to quite empty restaurants doing the same thing though. The thing is, a lot of people seem to love it, even though they're struggling to talk to the people next to them. I don't understand it at all personally

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#145

Post by hkwerf »

bdw5204 wrote: post #139

In my experience, most people don't seem to understand the concept of noise cancelling headphones and will still try to talk to people who clearly can't hear them. I can't imagine it'd be any different for these AI headphones in practical use. Probably worse because the person you're actually trying to talk to might think you can't hear them.

Maybe it's the opposite? ANC headphones are lacking a means of communicating to people that you're not hearing them. However, if your ANC headphones link you looking at someone with unmuting them, that communication barrier is crossed. This is particularly nice, as looking at someone is commonly a signal for "I'm listening to you".

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#146

Post by maeil »

darkwater wrote: post #128
consp wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an accessibility nightmare, especially (but not only) for people with hearing loss. I can't make out any conversation in a noisy environment so usually switch to try-to-filter-noise-and-fail plus some amateur form of lip reading which works ok for a casual conversation but not for a more serious one. Hearing is "ok" enough though when testing, so no clue what it is. It helps a lot when the ambient noise level…

Same here. I have a (I think) very good ear in silent environments,for example I can hear a very faint sound at night, but I always struggled following conversations in music clubs or bar with high music volumes. I always end up nodding and saying "yeah yeah" even if I have no remote idea of what the other person is saying. Edit: but OTOH I see people having actual conversations in those same environments, so I guess…

Interesting, I'm the exact same, but so far hadn't come across anyone else with this issue.

I think the two aspects might be related. Possibly the average brain is more finetuned to recognize speech specifically, which comes at the cost of recognizing other sounds, but improves speech recognition. Ours are less finetuned, with the opposite effect.

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#147

Post by moffkalast »

andrelaszlo wrote: post #135
moffkalast wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you tend to loose the ability to "steer" your hearing Do people genuinely have that ability, to listen to a specific person and ignore the rest? Asking because no matter how hard I try I can never understand a fucking thing if there's many people talking loudly in the background, it all mixes together into an incoherent whole.

"Selective auditory attention is a normal sensory process of the brain, and there can be abnormalities related to this process in people with sensory processing disorders such as autism, attention deficit hyperactive disorder,[30] post traumatic stress disorder,[31] schizophrenia,[30] selective mutism,[32] and in stand-alone auditory processing disorders.[33]" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_auditory_attent…

Ah interesting, I must have dis or that order then.

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#149

Post by maeil »

nkrisc wrote: post #132
darkwater wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I have a (I think) very good ear in silent environments,for example I can hear a very faint sound at night, but I always struggled following conversations in music clubs or bar with high music volumes. I always end up nodding and saying "yeah yeah" even if I have no remote idea of what the other person is saying. Edit: but OTOH I see people having actual conversations in those same environments, so I guess…

My experience is exactly the same. I doubt everyone is simply pretending they have any idea what everyone else is saying, so it must be something wrong with me. I’ve had my hearing tested. It’s within normal ranges across all frequencies tested. I have to assume it’s some kind of discrimination or processing difficulty in my brain. I’ve noticed the same effect can be triggered even in a white environment by only two…

I'm the same, and no, others are not pretending. It makes sense that our increased ability to recognize non-speech sounds may come at a cost of reduced ability to recognize speech.

Re: AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

#150

Post by giantg2 »

brap wrote: post #148

I don't technically have a hearing problem, sometimes when there's a lot of noises occurring at the same time I hear it as one jumble.

I think technically that is considered a hearing problem if you're unable to separate out voices. I forget the name of it though. But this can actually disqualify you from certain types of jobs, such as the police and military.
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