Isn’t it soothing to hear a familiar voice on TV or radio, even if the person is trying to sell something or giving advice?
Several signature voices come to mind: James Earl Jones, Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw, Julie Andrews, Meryl Streep, Maya Angelou. The list goes on.
What a difference between those voices and an artificial intelligence one. I recently tried listening to several articles in major newspapers, and I could not tolerate it for even 10 minutes.
Yes, the AI voices were pleasant enough, but they were also devoid of any context or feeling. The robotic sounds diluted the messages of the commentaries for me.
Are we now losing the pleasure of voice-driven essays and even poetry? Why?
It is certainly less expensive not to pay an actor or any person to read for us, but it is not better.
I remember hearing a local poet reading her own work at a gathering a couple of years ago. Everyone in the audience had a copy of her poetry book, and the wording of the poems was gorgeous. But the best part of the evening was hearing her read in her own voice.
The lyrics took on a new life and had a much brighter color when she read them than when I read them to myself. She knew what words to emphasize, and her cadence was such that we in the audience were bound to her and lost in the moment.
An AI voice cannot do that with most forms of writing. There are words, and then there are interpretations of those words.
Many years ago, I remember hearing numerous movie trailers, commercials and other word-driven projects in which it was clear that the same actor was using his voice completely differently in the various endeavors.
I don’t remember his name, but I do recall an interview in which he said he never left the house without some kind of scarf around his neck in order to protect his voice. At the time, he was being paid something like $1 million per gig.
What if a piece of music was recorded by machine learning? Think of the tender, delicate phrasing of, say, a sonata by a composer from the Romantic Era.
There are so many works that rip your guts out because you have surrendered yourself to the music and are absorbing its restorative properties.
It would be impossible for so-called smart algorithms to duplicate a musician’s interpretation of a composition.
We know we cannot go backwards with technology, but is it possible to have a consensus for certain literary and musical works not to be outsourced to an apparatus?
Think of how the following line from a William Butler Yeats poem would sound if a heartfelt human voice read it, versus a mechanism:
“And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes
dropping slow…”
Try saying that sentence a few different ways, and you will notice how your heart transforms the meaning each time.
A robot voice never sings or sighs.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Silenced voices, or what AI can and cannot do | OPINION
Reporting by By Andrea Elise, Special to the Amarillo Globe-News / Amarillo Globe-News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Andrea Elise, Special to the Amarillo Globe-News | USA TODAY Network
