toronto: Artificial intelligence It is becoming more and more common in our daily lives. While these technologies mainly help us, they can sometimes be used in a negative way, such as in fraudulent or fraudulent calls, so we need to be able to recognize them.
According to a recent baycrest study, old people tend to be less able than their younger counterparts to distinguish between computer-generated (AI) speech and human speech.
“The findings from this study on computer-generated AI speech suggest that older adults may be at greater risk of being taken advantage of,” says Dr. Bjorn Hermann, baycrest‘s Canada Research Chair in auditory aging, a scientist at Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute and lead author of this study. “While this area of research is still in its infancy, additional findings could lead to the development of training programs for older adults to help them overcome these challenges.”
In this study, which was the first to examine AI speech recognition in older adults, younger (~30 years) and older (~60 years) adults heard sentences spoken by 10 different human speakers (five men, five women ) and sentences created using 10 AI voices (5 male, 5 female). In one experiment, participants were asked how natural they found human and AI voices. In another, they were asked to identify whether a sentence was spoken by a human or an AI voice.
The results showed that compared to younger adults, older adults found AI speech to be more natural and were less able to correctly identify when speech was being generated by a computer.
The reasons for this remain unclear and are the subject of follow-up research by Dr. Herrmann and his team. While they have ruled out hearing loss and familiarity with AI technology as factors, it could be related to older adults’ diminished ability to recognize different emotions in speech.
“As we get older, we seem to pay more attention to the actual words of speech than their rhythm and intonation when trying to gain insight into the emotions being communicated,” says Dr. Herrmann. “It could be that AI speech recognition relies on rhythm and intonation processing rather than words, which in turn could explain older adults’ reduced ability to identify AI speech.”
In addition to helping develop AI-related training programs, the results of this and future studies could help inform interactive AI technology for older adults. This type of technology is often based on AI speech and has increasing applicability in healthcare, long-term care, and other senior support spaces. For example, AI therapeutic robots can be used to comfort and calm people experiencing agitation due to dementia.
By better understanding how older adults perceive AI speech, we can ensure that AI technologies effectively meet their needs, ultimately improving their quality of life and helping them lead lives of purpose, inspiration and fulfillment.
