What if we told you that we can actually silence a noisy table right next to us in a café?
I'd say we almost certainly have different definitions of what 'silence' means.
this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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I can already do that
waves gun
*screaming intensifies*
"Whoops, turned it up instead of down, one sec."
BANG
I’m super sceptical. Someone claims this every year lately and it always turns out to be bullshit.This is like the constant claims of free energy.
Live press conference with demo or it didn’t happen.
As an autistic person this technology could actually allow me to access the community without being overwhelmed. This is revolutionary and would change my life.
Forbidden sushi
If only the PCB was white....
Is it a robot that smacks people when they go above a certain decibel level?
They're going to use that technology to spy us isn't?
Given that noise cancellation thus far as involved multiple microphones to identify background noise - yes
Why does every cool innovation have to have an immediately applicable shitty implication 😭
Eh, everything can be used shitty, but it's often more work to use a cool thing shitty than it is to just be shitty.
Like you could do this, or you can put a cheap directional mic in the ceiling where it has free access to power.
Being able to beat someone to death with a defibrillator doesn't undermine it's value as a life saving tool.
I mean, in this case all they need to do is attach data storage, and suddenly they have a massive data set of natural human conversation to sell to whoever's training AI.
Sure, but it's still cheaper to stick a microphone in the ceiling.
And if you're looking for training data, there's cheaper ways still.
I'm not saying you can't use this for evil, I'm just saying that it's easier to do those same things other ways.
I get what you're saying, but what I was trying to get at was how a lot of these shiny cool things lately seem to be a way to easily package unwanted things. Google's new AI integration openly reads and analyses everything you store and write in Google services, to assist you. People would be up in arms about slapping microphones around in public, but a public noise cancellation system that requires dozens of microphones constantly listening is just really cool.
There are easier ways, but the fact that it's cool sidesteps almost all the resistance. Same way facial recognition cameras covering the UK is talked about as method to only catch criminals, not something that tracks everyone that steps outside their home.
I think your Google example is a good one, but for a different reason.
Google was already analyzing everything you stored and wrote in their services; they didn't need to use AI as a cover for doing that, they just did it. They didn't even need to hide it or pretend they weren't.
Yeah, people probably wouldn't like microphones everywhere. Unless you just call it a security camera, and then we don't notice them.
Why invent a novel dynamic noise cancelation algorithm and robot platform when plastic dome technology is so well understood?
People are cheap and lazy, and even when they're being shitty they're not going to do more than they have to, or overly complicate things.
They didn’t even need to hide it or pretend they weren’t.
That's the thing though, they did hide it and pretend they weren't. Techies never trusted them, but the average user viewed google drive as a private cloud storage. Now, Bard is explicitly reading everything, training off of everything you have, and it's being fronted as a step forward.
Most commercial security cameras don't record sound, and most of the visible ones are dummy cameras just to make people wary. And again, there's a difference between a single microphone twenty feet off the ground, and dozens perfectly recording every word every single person speaks in the cafe.
I'm not making the argument that noise cancellation tech is being made so that people can be recorded, I'm making the argument that if noise cancellation tech works, they will 100% use it to capture high quality recordings of every spoken word to sell as a side benefit.
Why would they do this ? They already do it through your smartphone.
They're different people.
This tech isn’t at all needed to spy on you.
I was going to say, wouldn't this require recording of literally every noise around you in order to cancel it out?
They already do that in order to cancel everyone sounds, your conversation is the noise of the next table.
Seems soooo much more complex than simply using regular noise canceling technology which we've had for ages now. In my previous company it was amazing how well it worked. You could be maybe 5 feet away from someone you could hear them perfectly fine, but move 10 feet away and everything was just muted down. One day we had some electrical problems and the system was down, and that's when you really could notice how well the system worked because you could hear people all the way from the other side of the building when before when the system was running those noises were totally gone.
What you described from your previous workplace sounds amazing, but you must've used phase cancellation too, didn't you?
How is this so much different from what you've used back then?
Most office centers these days pipe in low-dB white noise to mitigate some of the chaotic noises of office work. Unfortunately if you're the kind of person with a neurodivergence that makes you sensitive to sensory overload this could be one of the reasons office spaces make you feel so exhausted 😃
The title is false. They are only microphones where a third party could tune into different conversations happening at a single table. This particular technology isn't there yet to do noise cancelling on a room scale with specific zones.
Researchers plan to eventually make microphone robots that can move around rooms, instead of being limited to tables. The team is also investigating whether the speakers can emit sounds that allow for real-world mute and active zones, so people in different parts of a room can hear different audio. The current study is another step toward science fiction technologies, such as the “cone of silence” in “Get Smart” and “Dune,” the authors write.
As sounds is simply vibrations through a medium, it would be cool if you could set up some sort of box with a device in each corner where they make some sort of wall that disrupts any sound wave passing through. Like some sort of sci-fi privacy barrier. Might still hear things but wouldn't hear words and whatnot.
The thing is, we dont generally needed the noisy table muted, we just need it reduced in volume enough at our own table so we are able to carry out a normal conversation
NSA loves this trick
What the swarm of microphones that follows people around? That's just to help keep the noise down.
Make robot who would make next table conversations interesting.
The cafes would not want that because guests are expected to leave and make room for new ones after some time. That's also why they crank up the music in these places.
Exactly. The restaurants are being made to be loud on purpose.
Hard surfaces everywhere. Loud music.
I'm tempted to get a decibel meter and threaten to file OSHA complaints.