AI and Technology : Hearing without listening …
Technology never learns. To quote from the popular Simon & Garfunkel song, Sound of Silence, people hearing without listening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGLHadex0B0
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
Technology created by people, including AI does not provide for any reasonable listening, hearing maybe, listening almost never.
A highly neglected area of security, defense, homeland security, remote monitoring, hacking, threats and vulnerability ignores audio technology.
Let us take the personal safety of a human being and extrapolate this further later.
Assuming a jungle, hunting or hunted or threatening environment adrenaline in the human being enhances all the senses. Your sense of smell and taste is more sensitive. You sweat and tingle all over your body. Your sight is focused and keen. HOWEVER you sense of hearing is now your most dominant source. Sounds from behind you, to your side or from afar but nearing you is your primary sense to survival. Now if it is pitch-dark this is even more so. NOT to be hunted your primary survival is NOT to make a sound, not to be heard.
While you sleep your eyes are shut, other senses are less active, but your safety and security is now dependently primarily on your hearing and ability to listen.
So we have established the importance of sound.
Now lets look at movies, like Ocean’s Eleven, The Italian job, and even the real world biggest art and heists around the world. They use inductive weapons of mass destruction, power tools, cutters, drills and a whole lot of noisy auditory pollution and alerts BUT cut all the cameras, replace the visuals and create a complete illusion with the optics to security and monitoring authorities. Is art and film mimicking homeland security or is homeland security mimicking art.
There is a ground technical reality between VIDEO, visuals, optics and AUDIO. A video can pan, tilt, zoom and be even 360 degree in panoramic view creating a false sense of everything is ok if the video is ok. Audio cannot be captured easily. Especially if further away from the source. Other noise in the area will be equally captured, unlike the human ear plus brain that can selectively listen to what it wants.
In public trust based security such as across London in the UK, laws do not allow you to include and capture audio primarily for political reasons. Considered highly intrusive and resulting in a backlash. So we have a situation in London where 4 known terrorists are in front of a CCTV camera and talking plans to bomb the underground but legally and now technically they can’t be heard, should not be heard, will not be heard.
There is another side to audio. Take voice recorders, answering machines, Dictaphones, telephone conferencing, Skype and IVR’s. Audio technology is all around us. A whole world of audio capture, storage, input-output without video, visuals or optics. Can we build a security system, homeland security beyond the debate about phone tapping and existing media? What about audio only on Trumps 10ft taller wall. How about an audio array between the 2 fences of a DMZ in many border crossings. The array of microphones in a Corporate Conference hall or in a 7.1 surround sound recording for a film? Think Dolby Atmos and 64 speakers and the recording requirements for that. Think wireless and zigbee this is becoming possible, cheaper and the future.
So if its all only about legality or alternately eavesdropping, spy-games, walking the talk, boots on the ground. What is the alternate in a remotely connected, wired digital world? An entire need and environment has to be created for auditory, audio, audio imaging for security. Not just to watch but be able to listen intelligently.
To quote from the Sound of Silence Simon & Garfunkel song, “People hearing without listening”, but worse not even hearing before they get to listening.
It’s time has come. Just as in your personal safety the ability to listen at all times is paramount. The ability of an enterprise, community or county to listen is paramount to its safety.
In today’s volatile environment of division, a key success factor and solution is to listen. Listen to the other side. Imagine what we are doing with AI and listening — not even an iota of thought for the future of listening. I lament.
