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content/topic/(against)-the-coming-world-of-listening-machines.md
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| @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ has_experiments: ["living-with-a-black-box.md", "imagine-a-machine-listening-uto | |||
| "Machine listening" is one common term for a fast-growing interdisciplinary field of science and engineering which uses audio signal processing and machine learning to "make sense" of sound and speech.[^Cella, Serizel, Ellis] Machine listening is what enables you to be "understood" by Siri and Alexa, to Shazam a song, and to interact with many audio-assistive technologies if you are blind or vision impaired.[^Alper] As early as the 90s, the term was already being used in computer music to describe the analytic dimension of ['interactive music systems'](https://wp.nyu.edu/robert_rowe/text/interactive-music-systems-1993/chapter5/), whose behavior changes in response to live musical input.[^Rowe, Maier: 10.32-16.57] It was also, of course, a cornerstone of the mass surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013: SPIRITFIRE's "speech-to-text keyword search and paired dialogue transcription"; EViTAP's "automated news monitoring"; VoiceRT's "ingestion", according to one NSA slide, of Iraqi voice data into voiceprints. Domestically, machine listening technologies underpin the vast databases of vocal biometrics now held by many [prison providers](https://theintercept.com/2019/01/30/prison-voice-prints-databases-securus/ "Prisons Across the U.S. Are Quietly Building Databases of Incarcerated People’s Voice Prints") and, for instance, the [Australian Tax Office](https://www.computerworld.com/article/3474235/the-ato-now-holds-the-voiceprints-of-one-in-seven-australians.html "The ATO now holds the voiceprints of one in seven Australians"). And they are quickly being integrated into infrastructures of development, security and policing. | |||
| ,[^kathy_audio_1] transcription and translation - | |||
| ,[^kathy_audio_1] transcription and translation {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/22/ai-startup-transcribes-annotates-doctor-visits-for-patients/ "AI startup transcribes and annotates doctor visits for patients"), [ii](https://www.iflytek.com/en/products/#/Home "iFlyTek: Create a better world with A.I."), [iii](https://www.wired.com/story/iflytek-china-ai-giant-voice-chatting-surveillance/ "How a Chinese AI Giant Made Chatting—and Surveillance—Easy")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| targeted key word detection {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://theintercept.com/2015/05/05/nsa-speech-recognition-snowden-searchable-text/ "How the NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| vocal biometrics and audio fingerprinting {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://www.nice.com/engage/real-time-technology/voice-biometrics/ "NICE leverages voice biometrics for safer and more secure customer authentication"), [ii](https://www.acrcloud.com/audio-fingerprinting/ "What Is Audio Fingerprinting?")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| speaker identification, differentiation, enumeration and location {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://theintercept.com/2018/01/19/voice-recognition-technology-nsa/ "Finding Your Voice"), [ii](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100235169A1/en "Google Speech differentiation Patent")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| @@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ adversarial music {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.00126 "Real World | |||
| brand sonification {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://www.audioanalytic.com/brand-sonification-power-recognising-sounds-brands/ "RBrand sonification: The power of recognising the sounds of brands")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| aggression detection {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://www.soundintel.com/products/overview/aggression/ "Deterring and Preventing Assault"), [ii](https://www.audeering.com/what-we-do/automotive/ "Cars take care of their passengers")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| depression detection - | |||
| laughter detection - | |||
| laughter detection {{< nosup >}}[[i](http://www.hannahishere.com/project/the-laughing-room-with-jonny-sun/ "The Laughing Room")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| emotion detection - {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/8/27/21402493/amazon-halo-band-health-fitness-body-scan-tone-emotion-activity-sleep?__twitter_impression=true&s=09 "Amazon announces Halo, a fitness band and app that scans your body and voice")]{{< /nosup >}} | |||
| distress detection - | |||
| intoxication detection {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3872081/ "Intoxicated Speech Detection: A Fusion Framework with Speaker-Normalized Hierarchical Functionals and GMM Supervectors")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| @@ -38,7 +38,6 @@ scream detection - | |||
| lie detection - | |||
| hoax detection {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://amp.abc.net.au/article/12568084 "University of Southern Queensland gets $300k for hoax emergency call detection technology")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| gunshot detection - {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://www.shotspotter.com/ "Enhance Public Safety and SiteSecurity with ShotSpotter")]{{< /nosup >}} | |||
| autism diagnosis - | |||
| parkinson's diagnosis {{< nosup >}}[[i](http://www.canaryspeech.com/ "Using voice to identify human conditions sooner.")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| covid diagnosis {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://app.surveylex.com/surveys/5384d6d0-6499-11ea-bc3a-b32c3ca92036 "We are launching an initiative to collect your voices with a goal to be able to triage, screen and monitor COVID-19 virus.")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| machine fault diagnosis - psychosis diagnosis {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190613104552.htm "The whisper of schizophrenia: Machine learning finds 'sound' words predict psychosis")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| @@ -76,8 +75,8 @@ social distancing - | |||
| music streaming - | |||
| music education - | |||
| composition {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://disclaimer.org.au/contents/holly-herndon-and-mat-dryhurst-in-conversation-with-sean-dockray "Inhuman Intelligence")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| gaming - | |||
| brand development - | |||
| gaming - {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://voicebot.ai/2020/06/05/new-sony-patent-elaborates-how-the-playstation-5-voice-assistant-will-help-you-kill-zombies/ "New Sony Patent Elaborates How the PlayStation 5 Voice Assistant Will Help You Kill Zombies")]{{< /nosup >}} | |||
| brand development {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://www.adnews.com.au/news/the-most-effective-brand-audio-logos-in-australia "The most effective brand audio logos in Australia")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| marketing {{< nosup >}}[[i](https://www.veritonic.com/ "Veritonic The Sonic Truth")]{{< /nosup >}} - | |||
| acoustic ecology - | |||
| employee performance metrics - | |||
| @@ -105,7 +104,7 @@ Scientifically, machine listening demands enormous volumes of data: exhorted, ex | |||
| Because machine listening is trained on (more-than) human auditory worlds, it inevitably encodes, invisibilises and reinscribes normative listenings, along with a range of more arbitrary artifacts of the datasets, statistical models and computational systems which are at once its lifeblood and fundamentally opaque.[^McQuillan] This combination means that machine listening is simultaneously an alibi or front for the proliferation and normalisation of specific auditory practices *as* machinic, and, conversely, often irreducible to human apprehension; which is to say the worst of both worlds. | |||
| Moreover, because machine listening is so deeply bound up with logics of automation and pre-emption, it is also recursive. It feeds its listenings back into the world - /Yolande%20Strengers%20and%20Jenny%20Ken%20-%20Yolande%20Strengers,%20Jenny%20Kenned.mp3|951000|1390000),[^YS] colonial and colonizing, ,[^halcyon_audio_1] classed and productive of class relations - as Siri's answer or failure to answer; by alerting the police, denying your [claim for asylum](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14956532/germany-refugee-voice-analysis-dialect-speech-software), or continuing to play Autechre - and this incites an auditory response to which it listens in turn. The soundscape is increasingly cybernetic. Confronting machine listening means recognising that common-sense distinctions between human and machine simply fail to hold. We are all machine listeners now. We have been becoming machine listeners for a long time. Indeed, the becoming machinic of listening is a foundational concern for any contemporary politics of listening; not because mechanisation *itself* is a problem, but because it is the condition in which we increasingly find ourselves.[^Abu Hamdan] | |||
| Moreover, because machine listening is so deeply bound up with logics of automation and pre-emption, it is also recursive. It feeds its listenings back into the world - /Yolande%20Strengers%20and%20Jenny%20Ken%20-%20Yolande%20Strengers,%20Jenny%20Kenned.mp3|952000|1390000),[^YS] colonial and colonizing, ,[^halcyon_audio_1] classed and productive of class relations - as Siri's answer or failure to answer; by alerting the police, denying your [claim for asylum](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14956532/germany-refugee-voice-analysis-dialect-speech-software), or continuing to play Autechre - and this incites an auditory response to which it listens in turn. The soundscape is increasingly cybernetic. Confronting machine listening means recognising that common-sense distinctions between human and machine simply fail to hold. We are all machine listeners now. We have been becoming machine listeners for a long time. Indeed, the becoming machinic of listening is a foundational concern for any contemporary politics of listening; not because mechanisation *itself* is a problem, but because it is the condition in which we increasingly find ourselves.[^Abu Hamdan] | |||
| But machine listening isn't exactly listening either. | |||