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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

#311

Post by drewg123 »

wruza wrote: post #195
serial_dev wrote: post #162

If the size could shrink to the size of a small earplug, I'd love to use this as a person who is not hearing-impaired (at least they couldn't diagnose me with it, so now I'm not sure if their diagnostics sucks, or I'm just a normal person and others pretend better that they hear everything well) . In groups and with friends, it's inevitable that you end up in a busy restaurant or a bar, and it always frustrates me th…

This isn't your issue though. A group chooses to talk in an environment where they can barely hear each other. Rather than using a device for it, I'd recommend to perceive the problem as it is and solve it in a conventional way. E.g. by saying "I couldn't hear shit, and you too probably. That's stupid, let's go instead" unless it's hard to do. Generally these places are designed for you to suffer unless you're scream…

You don't always have a choice. Sometimes there are loud places where you just have to be (airports, train stations, etc). My most frustrating time is transiting airports with my wife, who is a very quiet talker.

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

#312

Post by nosecreek »

ceejayoz wrote: post #189
superultra wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not hear anyone in any crowded situation. At middle age I thought my hearing was leaving. Yet every audiologist I went to said my hearing was fine. So I found the best audiologist in my fairly large metro area, and scheduled a year in advance (the wait list was that long). After a whole day of tests the audiologist comes in and says I have good news and bad news and good bad news. The good news is that my hea…

I've got a similar thing; I can't pull most song lyrics out of the song, and any significant amount of background noise means lip reading for me. Hearing's all fine, it's the processing that doesn't work quite right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder

Interesting. I suspect I may have the same thing.

I also have poor vision without glasses, and I’ve always found that when I go swimming (and can’t wear my glasses) my hearing also gets significantly worse. Or at least the cocktail party problem gets worse, as my brain seems to get overwhelmed by every single background noise. I think some of this is explained by many indoor pools being big echoey spaces, but it still happens at outdoor pools as well. I suspect that when one sense (sight) is degraded, my brain tries to compensate by focusing on another sense (hearing), and the end result is even worse due to APD.

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

#313

Post by helsinkiandrew »

Presumably this could be used to block out specific voices/sounds.

There's an episode of the sci-fi show Black Mirror (White Christmas), where a person is convicted of some hideous crime and permanently blocked/made invisible and inaudible from everyone (the entire population has embedded audio/video processing enhancements by then).

You can imagine future headphones where you could block out the guy in your office with the annoying laugh our download 'blocks' from the headphone appstore - no more Rick Astley or the politician you don't like etc.

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

#314

Post by ck_one »

Pretty cool what they are working on. However, I wished there would be more funding for restoring hair cells which are the root cause for most people with hearing loss.

Researchers are getting closer. Dr. Chen from Harvard was able to regenerate hair cells in mature mice last year.

The problem is also becoming more widespread. 30 Mio people in the US and 400 Mio people worldwide have disabling hearing loss. Regenerating hair cells and the synapses around them would also cure Tinnitus. 30 Mio x $5k for a treatment = $60B market (probably way bigger with aging population)

I think we probably need more rich tech billionaires to get affected to attract large funding.

What billionaires that you know are affected besides:

- Brad Jacobs

- Ryan from Flexport/Founders Fund

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

#316

Post by pavel_lishin »

1123581321 wrote: post #281
pavel_lishin wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto here. An audiologist recommended something called LACE therapy, but it wasn't cheap so at the time I didn't go for it - I need to look into it, and see if it's a legitimate treatment for this, or snake-oil.

I would not say it's snake oil, but it will only help if you've learned some helplessness or are bad at thinking about what someone is saying while they are speaking. A hearing aid or filter is always going to be more helpful if you only can pick one treatment.

But that's the thing, I'm in the similar position to others in the chain - last week, an audiologist said my hearing was tremendously good. But if there's noise around me, I cannot process what people are saying.

I'm not sure what you mean by "only if you've learned some helplessness." I'm not a complete idiot, I can generally guess what someone is saying based on context, but if I'm having a conversation with Group A in a loud environment, and someone from group B turns to me and says something, I don't have much context as to what they're saying.

(Also, a PSA: if someone who didn't hear you says, "what", or "can you say that again?", don't just repeat the last three words you said. Please repeat the entire sentence. I know that usually, the last few words provide enough context to reconstruct the sentence, but if you just tell me "this Sunday?" it's usually not enough, you have to just say, "Are you still planning on reconfiguring the encambulator this Sunday?")

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

#317

Post by darig »

ck_one wrote: post #314

Pretty cool what they are working on. However, I wished there would be more funding for restoring hair cells which are the root cause for most people with hearing loss. Researchers are getting closer. Dr. Chen from Harvard was able to regenerate hair cells in mature mice last year. The problem is also becoming more widespread. 30 Mio people in the US and 400 Mio people worldwide have disabling hearing loss. Regenerat…

[dead]

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

#318

Post by oaktowner »

dingnuts wrote: post #304
countvonbalzac wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there some cheap ways to muffle sound? Wood floors, rugs, curtains, artwork, acoustic panels, etc.

yes, really any soft surfaces will damp[0] (not "dampen") sound, but the techniques and materials can get very advanced (and expensive, and effective) 0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping

Whoa! Thanks for the clarification. As a word aficionado, I did not realize the correct form of this one.

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

#319

Post by mrandish »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #299
UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to act like an arm-chair doctor but have you ever considered that you may be on the ASD spectrum? That function of being able to mentally 'filter out' specific voices within a crowd is (semi?) common signal of autism. More accurately; I'm like that and I am autistic, I've read that it happens to a lot of others.

It can also happen with ADHD. I seem to have difficulty integrating sensory information and thinking at the same time. If it’s noisy, it causes a series of buffer overflows at every level of cognition.

Yep, I have ADHD and have always needed to put more effort toward parsing a particular sound in a dense sound field than other people. I've also always had trouble quickly identifying a particular object in a dense visual field. My wife jokes I'm "the world's worst 'Where's Waldo' player".

I can still manage to do these things but it takes longer, requires more effort and I'm generally never as good at it as others seem to be. I've always suspected these two things are related to each other and to my ADHD. There's a related audio issue I suspect is also tied to ADHD. When I'm mentally focused on a task, if someone interrupts me, I often miss the first couple words they say. Fortunately, when it happens I can usually derive the missing context from the rest of the content. Interestingly, it's not that I didn't hear the sound of the words, it feels more like a lag in mental context switching to parse the sounds into meaning.

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

#320

Post by gertlex »

richrichardsson wrote: post #86
gertlex wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My phonak HAs have some directional noise cancellation (or biasing at least; I don't have rigorous definitions for these terms)... It helps but isn't great. Has a problem that I think the AI headphones wouldn't solve either: in a (non-quiet) group setting you still need to anticipate who's going to speak when and look at them for best results. The direction bit is just biasing to preferring forward stuff (via two mic…

> Sadly, no backwards bias option for overhearing people behind you ;) Put them on "backwards"; left cup on right ear and vice versa: forward facing mics now face backwards ;)

It's a bit physically trickier than that due to curved tubing and ear molds... but I could totally "try" it with friends, e.g. rotating the BTE hearing aid 180 so it's forward, and they'd have fun too.
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