The Dangerous Junk Science of Vocal Risk Assessment, The Intercept
A really fine piece of work; yet another driver/symptom of apparently ever-burgeoning totalitarianism.
Check it out here in full, but here's a taste:
AC Global Risk declined to respond to repeated requests for comment for this article. The company also did not respond to a list of detailed questions about how the technology works. In public appearances, however, Martin has claimed that the company’s proprietary analytical processes can determine someone’s risk level with greater than 97 percent accuracy. (AVATAR, meanwhile, claims an accuracy rate of between 60 and 70 percent.) Several leading audiovisual experts who reviewed AC Global Risk’s publicly available materials for The Intercept used the word “bullshit” or “bogus” to describe the company’s claims. “From an ethical point of view, it’s very dubious and shady to give the impression that recognizing deception from only the voice can be done with any accuracy,” said Björn Schuller, a professor at the University of Augsburg who has led the field’s major academic challenge event to advance the state of the art in vocal emotion detection. “Anyone who says they can do this should themselves be seen as a risk.”
It may well be that mine is the first generation to actually have no problem with personal mortality (I'm 49), given what is very likely on the way in a couple/few decades. Not that I've "given up"; just that however optimistic the will, the intellect's screaming a nine-alarm fire's worth of warnings. It looks very bad, and that's reason number one my wife and I had no trouble at all not reproducing.
Interesting times.
Check it out here in full, but here's a taste:
AC Global Risk declined to respond to repeated requests for comment for this article. The company also did not respond to a list of detailed questions about how the technology works. In public appearances, however, Martin has claimed that the company’s proprietary analytical processes can determine someone’s risk level with greater than 97 percent accuracy. (AVATAR, meanwhile, claims an accuracy rate of between 60 and 70 percent.) Several leading audiovisual experts who reviewed AC Global Risk’s publicly available materials for The Intercept used the word “bullshit” or “bogus” to describe the company’s claims. “From an ethical point of view, it’s very dubious and shady to give the impression that recognizing deception from only the voice can be done with any accuracy,” said Björn Schuller, a professor at the University of Augsburg who has led the field’s major academic challenge event to advance the state of the art in vocal emotion detection. “Anyone who says they can do this should themselves be seen as a risk.”
It may well be that mine is the first generation to actually have no problem with personal mortality (I'm 49), given what is very likely on the way in a couple/few decades. Not that I've "given up"; just that however optimistic the will, the intellect's screaming a nine-alarm fire's worth of warnings. It looks very bad, and that's reason number one my wife and I had no trouble at all not reproducing.
Interesting times.