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Human voice is a carrier of emotion, it helps co-regulate our nervous system. It is extremely rich in signals. It is known in modern trauma therapy for example

Human voice is a carrier of emotion, it helps co-regulate our nervous system. It is extremely rich in signals. It is known in modern trauma therapy for example that people who are emotionally disconnected or in a state of shock have less "prosody" in their voice - the voice becomes more monotonous. In my opinion this tech is bad - and the more we spend time listening to artificial voices I would bet it can have a disregulating effect on the listener's nervous system. There is also a unhealthy trend on YouTube where creators actually voice their content, but they speak really fast and they cut all the pauses. It's really stressful to listen to in my experience, and I believe also unhealthy for listeners on the long run. It's no wonder that some creators who are just chill in their videos, sometime attract a wide audience, become a father-like figure almost - they could talk about anything - because younger people nowadays are just starving for this co-regulation effect. Like I'm watching a certain "Dwayne" and I don't need to agree to everything he says.. but the delivery is so calm and grounded , and there's none of that speeding up / cutting pauses non-sense, that it genuinely helps me as I am recovering from trauma. It calms me down. It's kinda unfortunate that at same time modern trauma models are gaining ground on YouTube, all about vagus nerve, fight/flight/freeze etc, the concept of capacity in the nervous system... at the same time you have an increasing assault from this really disregulating content... I guess all I can say s more than ever you have to be really aware of what you consume.

thedorkknight 4y ago
Yeah the sped-up and micro-edited content is hard to miss after you start spotting it. I've definitely stopped watching certain channels just because of how grating it is
prox 4y ago
Interesting point you raise. I enjoy listening to Sovietwomble on Twitch, he just speaks relaxed like a radio host (he often mentions this as his inspiration) and he verbalizes what he is doing or thinking.
croon 4y ago
You mentioning youtube fast cuts is sort of the reaction I felt too, but at least in those cases they're usually filmed around the same time by a human. Outside of the generated glitching in the sound here, my main complaint is that sentence umpteen sounds the same as sentence one. When we speak regularly, our intonation and cadence moves over time and the subject matter. A sentence here sounds okayish, but all the sentences in a row sounds like they're generated discretely (which I assume they technically are), and all the cohesion is gone.
digitalsankhara 4y ago
That's a really interesting view and I'll have to look into it a bit more. I used to be a professional sound recordist and was really fascinated by the craft that actors and voiceover artists put into their speech. The intonation, emotion and pace are really important aspects of their work. I also learned that recording the human voice with all of its range and subtlies was harder than I thought. I agree, the jump cuts in a lot of videos can be exhausting.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
I haven't thought about it in that light before. For me, I just want the artificial to be free of any artifice. I'm okay with robots always looking robotic and synthesized voices always sounding synthetic. I have no problem with robots becoming more human-like in their dexterity and locomotion, prefer that artificial voices be intelligible. But apart from "look what we can do" I see no need for either to ever try to pass as human.
DoingIsLearning 4y ago
> In my opinion this tech is bad - and the more we spend time listening to artificial voices I would bet it can have a disregulating effect on the listener's nervous system Is there any evidence of this? I feel like I myself have 'disregulated' in maintaining rapport in face to face conversations over the years. As in I now feel that I don't know what to do with my eye-gazing during a face to face conversation specially with first acquaintances, I don't feel particularly introverted just feel ackward/unsure what to do, when it was fairly effortless a few years back.
raybb 4y ago
This kinda explains why I've often felt stressed a bit by listening to podcasts with the trim silence option turned on or at significantly higher speeds. It also makes a great case for me to use Audm more which has real people reading news (usually longform) aloud. Often it's even the journalist who wrote the piece.
sangnoir 4y ago
This comment is packed with speculation, and lofty predictions based on speculation. I grew up in a family of fast talkers, at least 2 generations - predating YouTube by decades. Nature or nurture? Who knows?! Family events are lively, and we've traded stories about when people occasionally ask us to slow down. I find listening to slow speakers a little annoying because of the lower information density per unit time. What's more important: knowing how the story ends, or the subtle inflections and dramatic pauses?
- cptskippy 4y ago
  > What's more important: knowing how the story ends, or the subtle inflections and dramatic pauses? The inflections and pauses are the story. People are often disappointed when a good story ends. If the goal of your story is just to densely transmit information then maybe you should just print bullet points on cards and mail them instead? It would save you the time wasted traveling to events.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    > If the goal of your story is just to densely transmit information then maybe you should just print bullet points on cards and mail them instead? This is exactly the reason why I prefer emails to meetings! Half[1] the meetings I attend can be replaced by emails, preferably with bullet points as you said. Edit: as child comment has pointed out, we may be talking across each other: for stories those are important but not crucial. For professional communication, I want as little subtlety as possible 1. Perhaps more. Meetings are a huge time sinks. Few people are effective at presiding over them: unactionable ramblings, repetition, demanding that people who don't need to be there to attend. Interestingly, the higher ups who invariably demand this "face-time" use similar arguments to yours
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      Not to interrupt a good argument too much, but you and the other poster may be equivocating between two types of communication: functional communication ("Mary, I need you to write a program...") and pleasure communication.
amelius 4y ago
> It's no wonder that some creators who are just chill in their videos, sometime attract a wide audience, become a father-like figure almost - they could talk about anything - because younger people nowadays are just starving for this co-regulation effect. Then perhaps this is exactly what text2speech packages will optimize for ...
throwaway675309 4y ago
Without TTS systems a lot of online content would be completely inaccessible to blind people. Systems that sound more authentic than Microsoft Sam are a big win for everyone.
hackerman123469 4y ago
It's necessary in some things, for example I made an app for myself where I have words/sentences spoken by text to speech, something like 12000 words/sentences, both in a normal speed and a slow speaking speed. That would be very difficult for me to do with natural voices as that would require some human to read these words/sentences, not to mention how expensive it would be, when I was able to do it for free with AI. There are some things where AI voices absolutely ruin it, but it's not always a requirement for "emotions" to be felt in the speech we're listening to.
canadianfella 4y ago
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thedorkknight 4y ago

Yeah the sped-up and micro-edited content is hard to miss after you start spotting it. I've definitely stopped watching certain channels just because of how grating it is

prox 4y ago

Interesting point you raise. I enjoy listening to Sovietwomble on Twitch, he just speaks relaxed like a radio host (he often mentions this as his inspiration) and he verbalizes what he is doing or thinking.

croon 4y ago

You mentioning youtube fast cuts is sort of the reaction I felt too, but at least in those cases they're usually filmed around the same time by a human. Outside of the generated glitching in the sound here, my main complaint is that sentence umpteen sounds the same as sentence one. When we speak regularly, our intonation and cadence moves over time and the subject matter. A sentence here sounds okayish, but all the sentences in a row sounds like they're generated discretely (which I assume they technically are), and all the cohesion is gone.

digitalsankhara 4y ago

That's a really interesting view and I'll have to look into it a bit more. I used to be a professional sound recordist and was really fascinated by the craft that actors and voiceover artists put into their speech. The intonation, emotion and pace are really important aspects of their work. I also learned that recording the human voice with all of its range and subtlies was harder than I thought. I agree, the jump cuts in a lot of videos can be exhausting.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

I haven't thought about it in that light before. For me, I just want the artificial to be free of any artifice. I'm okay with robots always looking robotic and synthesized voices always sounding synthetic. I have no problem with robots becoming more human-like in their dexterity and locomotion, prefer that artificial voices be intelligible. But apart from "look what we can do" I see no need for either to ever try to pass as human.

DoingIsLearning 4y ago

> In my opinion this tech is bad - and the more we spend time listening to artificial voices I would bet it can have a disregulating effect on the listener's nervous system Is there any evidence of this? I feel like I myself have 'disregulated' in maintaining rapport in face to face conversations over the years. As in I now feel that I don't know what to do with my eye-gazing during a face to face conversation specially with first acquaintances, I don't feel particularly introverted just feel ackward/unsure what to do, when it was fairly effortless a few years back.

raybb 4y ago

This kinda explains why I've often felt stressed a bit by listening to podcasts with the trim silence option turned on or at significantly higher speeds. It also makes a great case for me to use Audm more which has real people reading news (usually longform) aloud. Often it's even the journalist who wrote the piece.

sangnoir 4y ago

This comment is packed with speculation, and lofty predictions based on speculation. I grew up in a family of fast talkers, at least 2 generations - predating YouTube by decades. Nature or nurture? Who knows?! Family events are lively, and we've traded stories about when people occasionally ask us to slow down. I find listening to slow speakers a little annoying because of the lower information density per unit time. What's more important: knowing how the story ends, or the subtle inflections and dramatic pauses?

cptskippy 4y ago
> What's more important: knowing how the story ends, or the subtle inflections and dramatic pauses? The inflections and pauses are the story. People are often disappointed when a good story ends. If the goal of your story is just to densely transmit information then maybe you should just print bullet points on cards and mail them instead? It would save you the time wasted traveling to events.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > If the goal of your story is just to densely transmit information then maybe you should just print bullet points on cards and mail them instead? This is exactly the reason why I prefer emails to meetings! Half[1] the meetings I attend can be replaced by emails, preferably with bullet points as you said. Edit: as child comment has pointed out, we may be talking across each other: for stories those are important but not crucial. For professional communication, I want as little subtlety as possible 1. Perhaps more. Meetings are a huge time sinks. Few people are effective at presiding over them: unactionable ramblings, repetition, demanding that people who don't need to be there to attend. Interestingly, the higher ups who invariably demand this "face-time" use similar arguments to yours
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Not to interrupt a good argument too much, but you and the other poster may be equivocating between two types of communication: functional communication ("Mary, I need you to write a program...") and pleasure communication.

amelius 4y ago

> It's no wonder that some creators who are just chill in their videos, sometime attract a wide audience, become a father-like figure almost - they could talk about anything - because younger people nowadays are just starving for this co-regulation effect. Then perhaps this is exactly what text2speech packages will optimize for ...

throwaway675309 4y ago

Without TTS systems a lot of online content would be completely inaccessible to blind people. Systems that sound more authentic than Microsoft Sam are a big win for everyone.

hackerman123469 4y ago

It's necessary in some things, for example I made an app for myself where I have words/sentences spoken by text to speech, something like 12000 words/sentences, both in a normal speed and a slow speaking speed. That would be very difficult for me to do with natural voices as that would require some human to read these words/sentences, not to mention how expensive it would be, when I was able to do it for free with AI. There are some things where AI voices absolutely ruin it, but it's not always a requirement for "emotions" to be felt in the speech we're listening to.

canadianfella 4y ago

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