Internal voice recognition device

Researchers have created a wearable device that can read people’s minds when they use an internal voice, allowing them to control devices and ask queries without speaking.

The device, called AlterEgo, can transcribe words that wearers verbalise internally but do not say out loud, using electrodes attached to the skin.

Discuss:

Think of the positive applications this device could have

What about the negative applications?

Here a some of the potential applications:

“Wouldn’t it be great to communicate with voice in an environment where you normally wouldn’t be able to?” said Thad Starner, a computing professor at Georgia Tech. “You can imagine all these situations where you have a high-noise environment, like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, or even places with a lot of machinery, like a power plant or a printing press.”

Starner also sees application in the military and for those with conditions that inhibit normal speech.

Do you think this device will improve our lives?

Cloze - prepositions

The headset is described ___ an “intelligence-augmentation” or IA device, and was presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Intelligent User Interface conference in Tokyo. It is worn ____ the jaw and chin, clipped over the top of the ear to hold it ___ place. Four electrodes under the white plastic device make contact ___ the skin and pick up the subtle neuromuscular signals that are triggered when a person verbalises internally. When someone says words ____ their head, artificial intelligence ____ the device can match particular signals to particular words, feeding them ___ a computer.

The computer can then respond through the device using a bone conduction speaker that plays sound into the ear ___ the need for an earphone to be inserted, leaving the wearer free to hear the rest of the world __ the same time. The idea is ___ create an outwardly silent computer interface that only the wearer of the AlterEgo device can speak to and hear.

Researchers have been experimenting with new interfaces to provide the knowledge and services of smartphones ____ the intrusive disruption they currently cause to daily life.

Nouns

accuracy       goal       interface     manner     threshold            service        content     

downside    time    potential

The AlterEgo device managed an average of 92% transcription _______ in a 10-person trial with about 15 minutes of customising to each person. That’s several percentage points below the 95%-plus accuracy rate that Google’s voice transcription______ is capable of using a traditional microphone, but the research team says the system will improve in accuracy over _______. The human ______ for voice word accuracy is thought to be around 95%.

The team is currently working on collecting data to improve recognition and widen the number of words AlterEgo can detect. It can already be used to control a basic user _______ such as the Roku streaming system, moving and selecting  ________, and can recognise numbers, play chess and perform other basic tasks.

The eventual ______ is to make interfacing with AI assistants such as Google’s Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri less embarrassing and more intimate, allowing people to communicate with them in a _____ that appears to be silent to the outside world – a system that sounds like science fiction but appears entirely possible.

The only ______ is that users will have to wear a device strapped to their face, a barrier smart glasses such as Google Glass failed to overcome. But experts think the technology has much ________, not only in the consumer space for activities such as dictation but also in industry.