Voices

[Ozexpatriate]

25 minutes ago, TheQ said:

If those gadgets had come out with only men's voices they would have been complaining that women were being ignored.. 

Most (pretty much all) examples I can think of* have a feminine voice. (I'm sure there are some masculine Satnav options but I am not familiar with them.)

 

* Including:

Apple Siri

Hey Google

Amazon Alexa

Bespoke telephone handling systems like banks

etc

 

I suspect that is because their market research as demonstrated a preference for feminine voices by both men and women customers. I can't imagine many woman wanting a 'mansplaining' satnav: "No you stupid cow, I said left", or for that matter the Sheldon satnav. (but I exaggerate a little here).

 

This is where it gets murky. Most people probably want a feminine voice, but why, exactly? There's a lot of cultural (and, I suspect, anthropological) baggage packed in there.

 

Edited May 22, 2019 by Ozexpatriate

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, Classsix T said:

Reorte will know what I'm on about but isn't the tech already installed that in a consumer society, can we not specify which voice we'd like in the first place, and give "resting between jobs" thesp's some additional income to boot? 

 

...

 

Though I'm aware we're specifically talking about generated speech and not sampled or stitched phrases, perhaps that technology is still some time away.

 

Synthesised speech has been around for a long time. It still sounds slightly robotic on the examples I've heard (although if you're creating custom phrases instead of a general text-to-speech program that could no doubt be improved on greatly). For a couple of game examples there's now the automated newsreader in Elite, and the PDA in Subnautica (the latter may have had some more than text to speech input to tweak things slightly for better effect). I've a vague recollection of reading somewhere that they're both using the same software and although both are female voices I'm pretty sure that it's not limited to just those.

Edited May 22, 2019 by Reorte

[brianusa]

I think that Michael and his comment on market research is right on.  I much prefer a female voice  for the reasons stated, points that become more evident as one ages and as one who prefers genders as intended, find the current need to change, a bit puzzling. 

[Ozexpatriate]

4 hours ago, brianusa said:

find the current need to change, a bit puzzling

Brian I see any change here as additive, not subtractive.  This is rapidly emerging technology.

 

Commercial solutions will offer what they think people will prefer. I can see a governmental organization choosing a neutral voice for essentially political reasons. I don't see this being mandated - at least not in the US.

 

Edited May 23, 2019 by Ozexpatriate

[Tony_S]

The default Siri on my iPad is British male. Until I read this thread I didn’t realise there were alternatives available. Siri is now Irish male . I will try the others. 

[kevinlms]

6 hours ago, Sprintex said:

 

I can assure you I won't be talking to any machine - if it ain't got a button or switch to work it then it ain't getting operated !! 

 

 

 

Paul 

I've heard Mrs kevinlms try to talk to Google and often it just ignores her, even when speaking slowly and carefully. If I ignored her like that, there would be hell to pay! But apparently a machine is OK.

 

On my phone, Google comes up with 'Are you tired of typing' from time to time, which I have ignored to date.

[luckymucklebackit]

Nobody nominated the original and best - Majel Barrett yet?

[Nick C]

What about cars?

Quote

Q: Thought you'd pay more attention to a female voice

Bond: I think we've met

(Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997)

[Reorte]

I have to say that this thread wasn't what I expected from the title and associated keywords - probably a relief, compared with what I was expecting from "Voices - real and imagined."

[Big James]

Feels like we are moving closer and closer to a collective Borg style hive mind. 

 

 Big James 

[adb968008]

Old news, its been here for years...

 

[Classsix T]

Ah, but at the core being of the Borg and Daleks is a sentient organic life-form. 

 

Speaking (arf!) of speech patterns, I have wondered if we as humans sometimes over anthrophamophise noises made by other creatures, or 'things'. I've done it myself as I suspect anyone with a "talkative" cat has, Moggy must be really hungry judging by her plaintive meow. Nah, she's just learnt a meow like that is more likely to get the desired result. 

 

To return to AI voices, it's going to require a significant amount of programming to correctly replicate speech inflection, ie urgency, sympathy etc.

 

It's surprising how much we've taken AI in films and TV for granted. I only recently realised that C3P0 & R2D2 actually had possession of the concept of mortality, and that was in 1977! But then so did HAL a decade earlier...

Two computers in Blake's 7 weren't there? Orac, the Xmas lights in a fish tank and Zen was it? Can't remember if it talked though!

 

Legion from the Mass Effect games will always be my favourite though.

 

C6T. 

Edited May 23, 2019 by Classsix T

[Ozexpatriate]

4 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Old news, its been here for years...

 

1 hour ago, Classsix T said:

Ah, but at the core being of the Borg and Daleks is a sentient life-form. 

Indeed so.

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, Classsix T said:

I have wondered if we as humans sometimes over anthrophamophise noises made by other creatures, or 'things'. I've done it myself as I suspect anyone with a "talkative" cat has, Moggy must be really hungry judging by her plaintive meow. Nah, she's just learnt a meow like that is more likely to get the desired result. 

The research on mammal vocalization would suggest that there are intentional vocalizations over some sort of instinctive reaction. This is pretty clear in cetacean mammals, primates and canines. Any dog owner knows the difference between happy bark, on guard bark and snarl.

 

It was taboo for biologists to talk about animals displaying 'emotion' but many are more willing to go there now. I'll stop short of self-awareness and consciousness, though the science seems to be heading in that direction.

 

Learning that a particular vocalization gets a response is one of the first things a human baby learns through crying. How is that different from moggy?

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, Classsix T said:

It's surprising how much we've taken AI in films and TV for granted.

Let's not underestimate Issac Asimov for this. "I Robot" (published in 1950) includes his notional positronic brain and, of course, the three laws of robotics. No work of science fiction, in any media since 1950, exists in isolation to "I Robot".

 

This encompasses all the AI from TV and post-1950 films. A study of Gort from 1951's "The Day the Earth Stood Still" compared with Robby in 1956's "Forbidden Planet" shows how much influence Asimov has on the notion of AI in science fiction.

 

It has been science fiction that has shaped the world in which AI developers operate. They are inseparable.

[Welly]

2 hours ago, Classsix T said:

 

Two computers in Blake's 7 weren't there? Orac, the Xmas lights in a fish tank and Zen was it? Can't remember if it talked though!

I am going through the DVD box sets at the moment and can say that both Orac and Zen (the screen with the random lights) talk - the same actor Peter Tuddenham spoke for them.

[Talltim]

On 22/05/2019 at 18:05, Sprintex said:

 

I can assure you I won't be talking to any machine - if it ain't got a button or switch to work it then it ain't getting operated !! 

 

I avoid speaking as much as possible as it is unless absolutely necessary, one of my Aspie traits, I don't feel the need to communicate verbally but have to sometimes unfortunately.

 

 

Paul 

Conversely, I recently saw a woman on the train having a text message conversation in a Chinese type language. However she was using the speech to text function for all of her end of the conversation. 

Of course this may be much easier than typing in a language with a huge character set.

[Steamport Southport]

We all know the real reason they want talking robots....

 

https://metro.co.uk/2019/01/28/sex-robots-cause-birth-rate-crisis-men-opt-plastic-love-slaves-instead-humans-8402895/

 

 

 

Jason

[EddieB]

My car’s Satnav, Google maps and Waze all have female voices to help me navigate. Google and Waze tend to sound younger, “preppy”, as I guess befits the App generation.

 

Regardless of her performance in politics, I’ve often considered Theresa May has an ideal voice for a Satnav: clear, firm and safe, lacking the stridency of our first female Prime Minister (I’ll leave out the obvious joke about Mrs Thatcher and Satnavs). Perhaps it might be a safety net for her if ever she’s thinking of a career change?

[Classsix T]

...strong and stable, as you career off Beachy Head...

 

C6T. 

[Classsix T]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Let's not underestimate Issac Asimov for this. "I Robot" (published in 1950) includes his notional positronic brain and, of course, the three laws of robotics. No work of science fiction, in any media since 1950, exists in isolation to "I Robot".

 

This encompasses all the AI from TV and post-1950 films. A study of Gort from 1951's "The Day the Earth Stood Still" compared with Robby in 1956's "Forbidden Planet" shows how much influence Asimov has on the notion of AI in science fiction.

 

It has been science fiction that has shaped the world in which AI developers operate. They are inseparable.

Gort is but a tool for Klaatu to complete his mission, in fact a fall-back should Klaatu fail in "negotiations" (ultimatum)? A slave droid in effect. 

 

Robby is the tool of Morbius. To protect him, his daughter or simply be a butler. The three-laws aren't immediately apparent with those tin titans until Robby is asked to fire the blaster. Or protect Morbius from himself. 

 

I don't recall you being a regular in the Gamer's Lounge Ozexpatriate, so I'd be assuming you don't do computer/video games. Mass Effect ran for three titles over a number of years and the end premise (spoiler!) was that a cycle of extinction had to happen (every 50k years) to keep equilibrium, that's to say it was felt inevitable that organics will create synthetics and those synthetic beings will inevitably overthrow their creators. Nothing new there of course, but brilliantly executed.

 

C6T. 

Edited May 23, 2019 by Classsix T

[Reorte]

13 hours ago, Classsix T said:

I don't recall you being a regular in the Gamer's Lounge Ozexpatriate, so I'd be assuming you don't do computer/video games. Mass Effect ran for three titles over a number of years and the end premise (spoiler!) was that a cycle of extinction had to happen (every 50k years) to keep equilibrium, that's to say it was felt inevitable that organics will create synthetics and those synthetic beings will inevitably overthrow their creators. Nothing new there of course, but brilliantly executed.

 

Well I'd say that was the part where it all started to fall apart personally, but ME3 is a bit of a sore point with me. The geth were interesting until they got turned into a bunch of robots with a Pinoccchio complex. The idea of a consciousness where components split and merged all the time, so there are no real sharp boundaries in it, that was an idea I'd have liked to have seen explored further.

[Big James]

The difference between a Borg and a dark is the daleks still have individual personalities hence why they get promoted etc. The Borg on the other hand all personality is stripped away and all they care about is the good of the collective. Which is what I feel like this is like. 

 

Big James

[Nick C]

15 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

The research on mammal vocalization would suggest that there are intentional vocalizations over some sort of instinctive reaction. This is pretty clear in cetacean mammals, primates and canines. Any dog owner knows the difference between happy bark, on guard bark and snarl.

 

It was taboo for biologists to talk about animals displaying 'emotion' but many are more willing to go there now. I'll stop short of self-awareness and consciousness, though the science seems to be heading in that direction.

 

Learning that a particular vocalization gets a response is one of the first things a human baby learns through crying. How is that different from moggy?

 

Our cats clearly understand a lot more than we tend to give them credit for - Not only do they understand which vocalisations (or other forms of communication) get which responses from us, they also clearly understand some of ours (or at least, they recognise particular sounds and tones) - for example they react to their names, and to words like "food", "dinner", "chicken" and "treat".

 

Our female cat seems to understand the concept of a question too - I can only assume that she's figured out that when one human says something ending in a rising inflection, the other responds, and that therefore when similar tones are directed at her, she should respond too. Obviously she doesn't actually understand what the question was, and we don't understand her reply, but she does actively try to be part of the conversation.

 

As for emotion, they clearly display that quite often - not through facial expression like we do, but through body language and behaviour. It's pretty easy to tell whether a cat is happy, sad, angry or scared, just from it's posture and the position of it's ears and tail.

 

A colleague of mine has a Labrador. Anyone who thinks animals don't understand us has clearly never seen a lab when the word "walkies" is mentioned...

[Reorte]

6 minutes ago, Nick C said:

 

Our cats clearly understand a lot more than we tend to give them credit for - Not only do they understand which vocalisations (or other forms of communication) get which responses from us, they also clearly understand some of ours (or at least, they recognise particular sounds and tones) - for example they react to their names, and to words like "food", "dinner", "chicken" and "treat".

 

But never to words like "get off!", "stop that!" or "leave that alone!"

 

One time when I fell off my bike when I was a kid our cat, who normally didn't pay all that much attention to anyone, came up to me and started meowing quite a bit. They at least appear capable of recognising distress.

 

Cats also appear to like companionship although there probably is a danger of looking at their behaviour through too much of a human perspective there. It's especially noticeable if I'm in the garden, mine will often hang around in the same general area that I'm in.