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The processing made them sound robotic in my opinion. I'm certain enough engineering dollars thrown at the problem and you could make anybody sound like anybody

The processing made them sound robotic in my opinion. I'm certain enough engineering dollars thrown at the problem and you could make anybody sound like anybody else live. I am not in love with the idea that the fate of AI is to boil down each person to a lowest common denominator. I'm curious what others think, at what point between totally unprocessed source material and everyone sounding like the same four marketable AI voices does a solution like this become problematic? I get the intention of the product, appreciate the focus on clear communication, but can't help feeling some will take it further and I just don't like the subtext of forcing people to sound like some core "good" voice. What will be lost in that?

cyanydeez 2y ago
I dunno man, Capitalism wants us all to be the same grey goo buying slop, but it's clear people and mammals in aggregate desire to be individualized, and these two forces are in opposition but only one of them is currently taking over the world in authority and power.
nasmorn 2y ago
In the case of a customer service transaction I don’t really care about someone’s individuality. I just want to understand what they are saying. I once checked into a hotel in London and couldn’t understand the Indian staff for the life of me. How is it better to make them say every sentence three times. Indians are often harder to understand for me than someone who just speaks English badly because their vocabulary might actually be large and varied and they use very foreign to me phrasing. If someone is just a foreigner with little knowledge of English their 1-2k vocabulary will be much easier to understand even if their pronounciation is strange.
- robviren 2y ago
  I agree, but business won't leave it there. Will you be as comfortable if people in India or China use helpful technology to clear up your confusing accent if you hoped to learn another language? I have never seen a technology stay in the box we want it to. What I have seen is tech foisted onto society without a second thought as to the impact. Clear communication is a laudable goal. But I fear what might be lost in the ruthless pursuit of it.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  "In the case of a customer service transaction I don’t really care about someone’s individuality." That argument can be applied to practically everything, and so is invalid. It does not serve you or any of us other humans to dehumanize other humans, which btw you are in the set of other humans. People at work performing a function are still people, not functions.
  - dzhiurgis 2y ago
    Disagree. To work in call center you need to have accent thats clear enough. This will simply enable more people to work there.
  - nasmorn 2y ago
    I am not dehumanizing anyone. They can be whoever they want but if I don’t understand them they are not performing the function. Might still be the most interesting people but I will never get to know since I can literally not communicate
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      Reducing people to computer generated voices is literally dehumanizing them. And I wasn't charging you personally, I was talking about a range of things where this is only one example. Like talking on the phone while ordering something at a counter, as though the person behind the register is no more than a part of the register. Saying that communication is important does not magic away this problem. Yes, we get it, you want what you want more than any other consideration, how deep and thoughtful.
unsupp0rted 2y ago
> I am not in love with the idea that the fate of AI is to boil down each person to a lowest common denominator. Are you kidding, that's the holy grail! When I need customer service I want every interaction to be by the book, zero personality, from them or from me. The problem is it's not right now: when somebody with a non-Western English accent answers a call to a Western company (Airbnb, your bank, etc) it's pretty much a guarantee that you're about to deal with massive incompetence and apathy. You don't notice this until you live long-term in a homogenous country, where the people answering customer service calls are the same people you see on the bus/train after work. It's like a lightning blast into your brain: "holy cow, customer service actually works here?". And you might say, "well incompetence and apathy is all call center people who work for American companies are empowered to give you, regardless of the accent or geography". But that's not true: Filipino/a call center employees are gushing with upbeat script-following good humor, but they never solve your problem. Whereas "Dave" from the midwest sighs and rolls his eyes before taking every call but he actually figures out the reason you're calling and uses his brain to try to resolve it, in the boundaries he's empowered within. That's not a popular thing to think or say, but I know I'm not the only one who, after literally hundreds of these interactions, has developed this heuristic. And you might say, "well 'Dave' from the midwest is by definition higher up the ladder and more empowered to solve your problem, because otherwise you'd be getting someone in the Philippines/India who's only allowed to follow their script". Sure. But that's why it'd be great if there was one common-denominator: anybody who answers your call has as much ability to resolve issues as anybody else, tries as hard as anybody else, communicates as clearly as anybody else... that's the holy grail.
thunky 2y ago
> I just don't like the subtext of forcing people to sound like some core "good" voice. What will be lost in that? Would you have a problem with using full translation? The difference here is that the (accent) translator doesn't have to do as much work. Also it should work both ways: foreign language/voices can be converted to local Indian languages/accents too.

cyanydeez 2y ago

I dunno man, Capitalism wants us all to be the same grey goo buying slop, but it's clear people and mammals in aggregate desire to be individualized, and these two forces are in opposition but only one of them is currently taking over the world in authority and power.

nasmorn 2y ago

In the case of a customer service transaction I don’t really care about someone’s individuality. I just want to understand what they are saying. I once checked into a hotel in London and couldn’t understand the Indian staff for the life of me. How is it better to make them say every sentence three times. Indians are often harder to understand for me than someone who just speaks English badly because their vocabulary might actually be large and varied and they use very foreign to me phrasing. If someone is just a foreigner with little knowledge of English their 1-2k vocabulary will be much easier to understand even if their pronounciation is strange.

robviren 2y ago
I agree, but business won't leave it there. Will you be as comfortable if people in India or China use helpful technology to clear up your confusing accent if you hoped to learn another language? I have never seen a technology stay in the box we want it to. What I have seen is tech foisted onto society without a second thought as to the impact. Clear communication is a laudable goal. But I fear what might be lost in the ruthless pursuit of it.
Brian_K_White 2y ago
"In the case of a customer service transaction I don’t really care about someone’s individuality." That argument can be applied to practically everything, and so is invalid. It does not serve you or any of us other humans to dehumanize other humans, which btw you are in the set of other humans. People at work performing a function are still people, not functions.
- dzhiurgis 2y ago
  Disagree. To work in call center you need to have accent thats clear enough. This will simply enable more people to work there.
- nasmorn 2y ago
  I am not dehumanizing anyone. They can be whoever they want but if I don’t understand them they are not performing the function. Might still be the most interesting people but I will never get to know since I can literally not communicate
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    Reducing people to computer generated voices is literally dehumanizing them. And I wasn't charging you personally, I was talking about a range of things where this is only one example. Like talking on the phone while ordering something at a counter, as though the person behind the register is no more than a part of the register. Saying that communication is important does not magic away this problem. Yes, we get it, you want what you want more than any other consideration, how deep and thoughtful.

unsupp0rted 2y ago

> I am not in love with the idea that the fate of AI is to boil down each person to a lowest common denominator. Are you kidding, that's the holy grail! When I need customer service I want every interaction to be by the book, zero personality, from them or from me. The problem is it's not right now: when somebody with a non-Western English accent answers a call to a Western company (Airbnb, your bank, etc) it's pretty much a guarantee that you're about to deal with massive incompetence and apathy. You don't notice this until you live long-term in a homogenous country, where the people answering customer service calls are the same people you see on the bus/train after work. It's like a lightning blast into your brain: "holy cow, customer service actually works here?". And you might say, "well incompetence and apathy is all call center people who work for American companies are empowered to give you, regardless of the accent or geography". But that's not true: Filipino/a call center employees are gushing with upbeat script-following good humor, but they never solve your problem. Whereas "Dave" from the midwest sighs and rolls his eyes before taking every call but he actually figures out the reason you're calling and uses his brain to try to resolve it, in the boundaries he's empowered within. That's not a popular thing to think or say, but I know I'm not the only one who, after literally hundreds of these interactions, has developed this heuristic. And you might say, "well 'Dave' from the midwest is by definition higher up the ladder and more empowered to solve your problem, because otherwise you'd be getting someone in the Philippines/India who's only allowed to follow their script". Sure. But that's why it'd be great if there was one common-denominator: anybody who answers your call has as much ability to resolve issues as anybody else, tries as hard as anybody else, communicates as clearly as anybody else... that's the holy grail.

thunky 2y ago

> I just don't like the subtext of forcing people to sound like some core "good" voice. What will be lost in that? Would you have a problem with using full translation? The difference here is that the (accent) translator doesn't have to do as much work. Also it should work both ways: foreign language/voices can be converted to local Indian languages/accents too.